Pirates or Ninjas

One of the first questions Daughter had to get settled with her assigned college room mate, when they connected on-line prior to moving in this year, was, "Pirates or Ninjas?" They both answer that question Pirates (so do I). Other friends of Daughters say Ninjas over Pirates.

Somehow this all came together in my head with Yin and Yang and I realized that I could produce an image of this question with cats, using the pirate patch for the little bit of Ninja, and the eye hole in the Ninja wrap for the little bit of Pirate...

So I made this and sent it to Daughter.

Pen and little Prismacolor on a white cicle of card stock (from that Swoozies present Summer sent me - thanks, again!)

So what's your answer?

Cicadas

This painting came to me while looking at the amazing wings of Cicadas (that middle "a" is pronounced long here in the Southeast). Actually I've been trying to do this image in some form for years now (without the insect - that seemed to be the unifying element, finally). It comes in part from looking at Paul Klee paintings of houses and roofs and lollipop tree shapes, and it comes from stacks and piles of houses in coastal villages in France and Italy (though these don't look very much like Southern Europe).

Anyway, this was fun to paint. My favorite thing might have been drawing the cars...

Watercolor on 140 lb. Arches hot press - 19 x 19 inches. Some green lightfast ink outlines.

"Ugly" Tomato

My chief pleasure every week is the Saturday morning walk in our village of Hillsborough followed by the visit to the Eno River Farmers Market. I'm wearing the market's t-shirt right now. We know more and more of the farmers/vendors by name, like Marsha who sells cut flowers (we always get enough for our wall sconces and a large vase upstairs), and Rachel the fellow homeschooler who sells fresh eggs, jams, lemon curd, and the best meringues I know. We get butter beans, zephyr squash, fresh greens, eggs in mixed colored dozens, French bread or ice box rolls, Carolina Gold potatoes, cucumbers, blueberries and strawberries, when each is in season, origami dragons, caterpillars that turned into Painted Lady butterflies a few weeks later and which hung around our flower beds after release. We discuss how favorite vegetables or fruits are doing, and how many more weeks we might be able to get a particular thing before it's time in the seasonal round is done for another year and we have to wait for it to show up again.

But the best thing is being with my Dearest for the walking and talking, and then sharing all the colors and sounds of the market with her. There is almost always some kind of live music, and that adds to the festive atmosphere. It's a little country fair, with just the right amount of new and old each week. And that could be said of the conversation, as well, as we discuss the week past, and the weeks coming up.

Several weekends ago I bought my first big yellow-orange "ugly" tomato from Marsha, our cut-flower friend. Gladiolas, zinnias, hydrangea, celosia, Queen Anne's lace, rudbeckia, and a big fat irregular tomato. It made two killer sandwiches, but before I ate it I enshrined it in both my moleskine, with pen and ink, and attempted to capture it in watercolor in another sketch pad. Like all sketches, they pin down the memories for me, making them far easier to reach again later - but these recollections have taste and fragrance, too. It was a hot afternoon and looking at these images I can smell the tomato and feel the long slow moments and hear the silence in the house when I worked and reworked the watercolors until I wore the paper out in several places. I can feel the weight of the big beautiful thing in my hand.

Sketching continues...

We have this amazing bean out on our deck. This is just the top 6 feet or so. It starts on the ground below the deck, and climbs about 10 feet up to the bottom of this sketch. It has, since this drawing, climbed higher, reached out five feet in all directions looking for something else to climb, succumbed to gravity and put down long tendrils that reach the deck rail and start back up again.

I understand where the Jack and the Beanstalk stories come from. This beast is almost as fast as kudzu.

When I sketched this, which took about 30 minutes, I noticed at completion that the long tendrils had changed shape and moved. I'm not sure I would have noticed that (how fast they grow and change) if I had not been so focused and had a plain and accurate measure of previous location.

Hyacinth bean - large moleskine - fine black marker. If plants were track stars, this would be a sprinter.

CHICAGO! - Art Trip - Ride Home

I was ready to head home after Saturday (July 10th). It was great to be someplace exciting, and to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, but I missed having someone to share it, and I was starting to talk to myself. (Even in Chicago or New York people will look at you on the sidewalk if you start talking to no one and you don't have a Blue Tooth in your ear.)

The trip back was all about airports and plane rides. O'Hare is a busy place (for years it switched back and forth with Hartsfield-Jackson, in Atlanta, for busiest airport in the world - Atlanta is the top). Sketching people there was fun, and even easier than it had been on the way out, largely because I was warmed up and over my inhibitions.

This young man (on the right hand page) had a pink and brown plaid hat, red (crimson) short cropped hair, and was wearing capris and Argyle socks. His t-shirt had a stylized mobius strip on it that said, "Eat, read, sleep, eat, read, sleep, eat, read..." Chicago streets were a riot of tattoos, piercings, creative hair styles, and personal dress styles, on people of all genders. It was fun.

Planes, like people, don't stay still long, especially when they are no longer at the gate. So this one didn't give me enough time to give it side windows (poor passengers). What was fun about this view, and the challenge of this sketch, was to get the shape of the foreshortened plane. I love their shapes. After it left, I focused on the tails of all the United jets at the opposite concourse, and the truck with the hose on the back. I particularly like this one. It's a larger format, too, in a sketch pad.

I graduated from just drawing the seat in front of me to trying to capture the cabin around me. That was fun. Most of my fellow passengers fell asleep. I probably should have done this in the large moleskine, but this is the small one (4x6 inches both pages together).

In Detroit I nearly missed my plane, because I didn't realize we were no longer on Central Time. That surprised me. I was about to take and hour and do a watercolor of the bright red tram that runs back and forth inside the long concourse in Detroit (an almost totally white interior, except for that red red train), when I noticed a local clock and realized it was only 10 minutes till my plane boarded.

On the flight from Detroit to Raleigh we flew over one of the Great Lakes, and I saw had some awe inspiring views of clouds and shorelines. I was surprised and delighted. I tried to capture an impression of the shore, island, and clouds in this sketch. There was a small city on the shore.

And that's all from the Chicago trip. The coolest thing is that I've continued to draw and sketch. But that's for other posts. I'm almost two weeks behind on those...

CHICAGO! - Art Trip - Part 5

Four of my favorite photos from the trip to Chicago... It's not a coincidence that they're all vertical.

CHICAGO! - Art Trip - Part 4

I could go on and on about Chicago. My Saturday was a 14 hour day in town - I probably walked more than 6 miles altogether, all over the Loop, into Greektown (lamb for lunch), and ultimately down to the lake shore. I had an Irish dinner at Katie O'Shea's, outside, where I ended up the only remaining outdoor patron when a ten minute rain shower scared off everyone else (I just raised my umbrella and kept eating my sausages and pretzel in Guinness mustard and piccalilli). Earlier in the day I caught some of the Transformers 3 filming (supercars and an 18 wheeler (Optimus Prime) roaring around corners of blocked off LaSalle and Jackson streets). Got some great photos, more of which I'll share in later posts. It was a very full day.

I had started it with a tour of the public art in the Loop, which I had printed from a blog and brought in my pack . It began at the Art Institute, where I sketched this Henry Moore sculpture. Henry Moore believed that art should have titles that made the viewer think - rather than giving too much away. He felt a good title might keep a viewer engaged longer, letting the art sink in and have its desired effect. He has been one of my favorite sculptors since I was a teenager, when I sketched and drew from photos of his work. One of my favorites is at MIT, in Cambridge, MA. His compositions live in the same place in my mind and heart that certain poetry does - Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot, and Kenneth Rexroth, in particular.

The art tour wandered through Millenium and Grant parks to the Aon Plaza, where I sketched the interesting waterfall, and some of Chicago behind it. These falls are over stacks of dark stone, cut in uneven octagons and other polyhedrals. It was already getting hot, by then, but I was so focused I didn't notice the shade had moved off me until I finished the drawing and I was dripping wet. This is one of my favorite sketches from the trip. The morning light was beautiful on the older architecture on Michigan Avenue.

After the tour, I ate in Greektown and then walked along the river and passed most of the famous bridges, stopping to do a watercolor of the bridge on Clark Street, from the Chicago Riverwalk. These bridges are amazing, mostly built back in the 1920s, and full of large rivets. The towers on either end are the best on the older bridges, like this one.

The sun was hot, and I had a hard time with this painting, using the kit's tiny brush. I finally got out my bigger brush and then it went better.

Before dinner I bought another moleskine (a wonderful red one) and started it off with a sketch of one of the bronze boys holding spraying fish, on the large sculptural fountain (Fountain of the Great Lakes) in one of the courtyards at the Art Institute. This is in pencil, and the paper was so smooth that it was hard to get any dark shadows. I love the boy's embrace, and the lively reaction of the reluctant fish.

Then the ultimate triumph, for me, was that I stood on the street in front of the Institute, with my moleskine held at eye level, and drew the lions. While hundreds of people passed me, I ignored everyone and drew. The green one isn't as good as I'd like, but the black drawing is a good likeness of my favorite of the two lions - the one on the north side of the entrance.

Then I was finally too exhausted to do any more, and I took the train back out to the hotel.