Frog

Not Grenouille - this is a different frog, drawn on a circular piece of orange card stock from Swoozies. This is #2 in a series I did and mailed to my Mom and Dad.

Mountain Trip - Painting 1

Here's the first painting I did on vacation. These are all done on 10x12 Arches cold press, that was in a block (which helps prevent buckling during painting). I did a border of about an inch, so these images are little paintings, just 8x10 or so. We were near a prominent mountain, called Grandfather Mountain, that looks a little like the one that dominates the background of this composition. And it wasn't until several days later that we saw peaks emerging out of low lying clouds like the foreground.

These two photos made up the bulk of the lines that got drawn to start the painting. I didn't think to take a photo of the line drawing before I started. I did that for the next two little paintings, so you'll get to see that soon.

Maybe you can recognize where some of the shapes came from in this painting. Sometimes only one line at the side of a shape in the bridge, or just a few of the rocks in the water, was all that remained. A lot of the first photo stayed, but it became more like atmosphere or lighting. What fascinated me was that the drawing came from the Golden Gate bridge, but the painting arrived from what was all around me, and what I was so happy to be doing for the next two weeks. That happened even though I couldn't see any of the items in the painting from where I was working.

One Word Meme

A la The Pagan Sphinx, who was kind enough to not tag anyone and inclusive enough to invite everyone. 11 one word questions.

1. Clothes - denim pants and jacket. Soft long sleeved shirts and sweaters. A red beret. I don't like shorts or the clothes of summer. I don't like being barefoot (too distracting), so I like socks.

2. Furniture - I can't decorate or pick furniture for appearance. Comfort matters, but I seldom get that right, either. Our bed is my favorite item, and, after nearly 30 years, we finally got it right.

3. Sweet - My dearest, whose smile, voice, touch, and shape are all joys to me. Everything else is a sad failed copy of sweet. But within that sweet is a very sharp mind, with a spicy attitude. Like a chocolate covered red hot.

4. City - I love so many - Small ones, like Winston-Salem, Lynchburg and Charleston to large ones like Boston, San Francisco, London and Paris. They're like people - all different but instantly recognizable. One thing that I retain and recall most about cities is their unique qualities of light. This is particularly true of Paris, Greenville, NC, and San Francisco.

5. Drink - Sometimes only tequilla shots will do. Sometimes a good beer with a friend (thanks, Alex!) Sometimes a really good wine, like a Muscadet (bottled sunshine!) or a good Montepulciano with a red meat sauce. I don't care much for soft drinks, and coffee caffiene makes me weird and unpleasant (for me and for other people).

6. Music - Everything from P!NK to Vivaldi, from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony playing in my head (everyone in this house has an internal soundtrack, and we compare notes - if we don't mind the contagion that results from sharing...) to Cake playing on the PC that sits on my art table (thanks, again, Alex).

7. T.V. Series - None. No regular TV. Hardly any watching of anything, in fact. Cuts off painting. My muse does not like competition.

8. Film - Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro, both by Miyazaki

9. Workout - at lunch at work I like to sit in the break room ALL ALONE and do logic puzzles. Sudoku and fill-ins are favorites. The Sudoku deductive reasoning events feel physical to me, like particular named climbing moves to lever, chimney, and friction climb my way around the walls of a challenging cubical interior. I don't rock climb in the corporeal world...

10. Pastries - Cinnamon rolls. Raisin bread. But more than anything, the yeast sweet rolls found in Italian bakeries in the towns along the Hudson River in NY. The water makes them unique, and they remind me of many happy childhood moments.

11. Coffee - Decaf only - see #5. I drink it unpredictably, and only when out. We don't own a coffeemaker. I will drink it black, with cream, with cream and sugar, and even iced - all without pattern. Sometimes I crave it. It's the most complex food (chemically) that we ingest, and I can easily believe that when drinking it. SO much going on.

Like the Pagan Sphinx, I tag no one, and invite anyone to play along.

>>>> Appendix de Grenouille <<<< I also perform this meme.

Clothes - do not be silly.

Furniture - voila - you have already witnessed my preference for tomatoes.

Sweet - mayflies are perhaps my favorite.

City - Nice before Paris. St. Paul de Vence before Nice.

Drink - Never inside, but it is nice outside. Of moi, I mean.

Music - I am indifferent, quelle dommage. But I hear well beyond the range of Etienne and other humans.

T.VSeries - Qu'est-que c'est?

Film - Marx Bothers. Tous tous droll.

Workout - Qu'est-que c'est? Is this perhaps the commute, when one works outside the home?

Pastries - A variation on baklava, using beetles instead of noisette.

Coffee - but of course, Coffee Frog has already demonstrated this.

Painting During the Break

When we went to the mountains I took a block of Arches water color paper along. It was cold press - not my favorite - but that was part of the interest. It was just a 10x12 - so the paintings would be small and immediate. Most were done in one day, or at most over two.

I love to engage the edge of my compositions - so I always draw in and tape an edge. To me the edges are an exciting part of the shapes, so I want to know where they are when I start the drawing and painting.

There were several beautiful photo books in the house we rented - one on San Francisco, one on Oklahoma, and another about Virginia, among others. Those three, in particular, spoke to me. The photos were beautiful, and the shapes were inspiring. So I used images from the books to do blind contour drawings on the pages. After enough lines were there, I would improvise.

It was interesting to see what came out. In subsequent posts I'll show the photos that started things, the drawings that resulted, and the final paintings. I don't have that for all of them, but for a few, so you can see how things change for me. It's a process that still surprises me.

The mountains themselves, and autumn (my favorite season) were all around and inside me, and they came out repeatedly in the paintings.

More later.

Back on the Net and from Trip

We are back from a mountain trip, where we did without TV, computers, etc. and spent lots of time hiking, reading, talking, painting, and playing games , instead. I don't think the colors here in the Piedmont of North Carolina are going to be as gorgeous as the ones we saw in the mountains. Here is a sample - a sugar maple around the Bass Lake on the Cone Manor, in Blowing Rock, NC.

I'll catch up with blog reading and commenting as best I can over the next few days. It's good to get away, and it's good to come back. Now, if I were wealthy enough not to have to go back to work on Monday...

But I console myself that it's labor that makes leisure sweet, and I'm grateful I have a good, rewarding job to go back to. I'm glad I could take two weeks off. It was one of our best vacations.

To those of you who read and commented while I was gone, many thanks. It was fun to review the insights and humor of the past two weeks.

Grenouille, Thanks for helping to hold the fort while I was gone. I see you made some good use of "the mechanism." S.

Skeletons

>>>> Appendix de Grenouille <<<<

How marvelous, and incredible, that such different animaux contain the same types of bones. Le chat is Tamlin, of course, and like the brachiosaurus, and like moi, he has vertebrae connected to hips and shoulder joints, with four limbs and ribs. It is true that the others have tail bones and I have none, but tails, you must agree, would look ridiculous in speedos or any other swimming garb. Perhaps toads can have tails, but grenouilles? Non. And the lack of tail makes us more like humans.

But to return to my thesis, even the limbs are jointed in much the same way. It is true that my femurs are not as grande as tooth picks, while the brachiosaur's were the size of tree trunks... And also it is true the joints of chat Tamlin are barely joined, so he can be sinuous as a snake (and almost as difficult to dose with his medicine), but voila, we all three have elbows, knees, and ankles. Tamlin and the dinosaur, observe closely, also share that they both walk on their toes, while I, more like Etienne, walk on the whole foot.

Tails, toes - from these we perhaps are tempted to suppose that dinosaurs and felines are of similar habits and intelligence, and likewise humans and grenouilles? But, non. Humans are not half as civilized as frogs.

Grenouille Economic Lesson Conclusion