Good Things: Seth Godin's daily blog wisdom.
Here's his wonderful entry for today: http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b31569e20167640fb1f6970b
Someone asked if my art is influenced by Asian art. Here's a Susan Holland Sumi-e
Some little drawing projects
I've been experimenting with two free drawing programs and having a good time. One is a vector based program called InkScape. And another is called SmoothDraw, which is closer to what I am used to.
Each of these utilities has its strengths. I love the calligraphic possibilities with the InkScape. The vector thing is new to me, so I am relieved to take my InkScape drawings over to the SmoothDraw program to add fascinating textures and brush strokes to them. The reason I got into making heads like these is to provide myself some avatar images that were not "me" but were by me. If I get proficient at this maybe I will print put them on playing cards or something. Nice gift idea. |
|
October 7 2011
I won TWICE today! Got featured, won a book ... Nice PR for an odd old artist!
My Pea Green Boat was featured in a comment that I made on Robert Genn's Twice Weekly Newsletter... !My comment is the third one down after the body of the "clickback."
ALSO: I won a book! From Everyday Bright, I was one of five winners describing the function of fear in the art life. Wow! All this news coming today. I like it!
ALSO: I won a book! From Everyday Bright, I was one of five winners describing the function of fear in the art life. Wow! All this news coming today. I like it!
 SKYLIGHT PATTERNS
SEPTEMBER 26 2011 |
The Rain Has Begun ...
One of the best things about my little cabin dwelling is that my bed is surrounded on four of its six faces by windows! No need to ask what the weather is. The skylight tells me what is actively happening, and the actions of the trees and fern just a few feet from my bed tell me how much wind is involved, and how heavily the rain is pelting the forest. The colors glow with their rain coats on.
It all begs to be painted. Now that the Farmer's Market is over for the season, I may get some painting days-- good things to look forward to. I'll dig out my wellies and dig out the area around the studio to keep the streams of rain from entering the front door. ... Definitely, the season is changing, and we are "into" winter now. |
WHAT'S UP IN THE WORKSHOP NOW?
It's about cattails right now. Fall is wetting down everything outside and the colors of fall are rivalling springtime colors. It's making me long to paint, and paint is what I am putting on mango utility bowls. The dremel is perfect for making those wonderful dark cylinder tassels that stand out so crisply against the glorious blues and russets of fall.
I am using some Daniel Smith Watercolor Ground.. a new product that I have been playing with that preps many surfaces for painterly treatments. I roughed up the face of each bowl with finishing sanding "sponge" before applying the white ground. It takes oil paint wonderfully. I carefully did dry brush over the incised lines which I had previously rubbed with raw umber violet paint, so the ground would not get into the depressions. Then it was fun to work the colors around my etched marks to form a background which produced a white mountain looking very much like Mt. St. Helens!
I'm liking this. So I prepped two more bowls for further explorations. I will finish these things with a barrier coat of clear shellac, and then with a finish coat of clear satin varnish. The folks who like representational art will enjoy these.
I am using some Daniel Smith Watercolor Ground.. a new product that I have been playing with that preps many surfaces for painterly treatments. I roughed up the face of each bowl with finishing sanding "sponge" before applying the white ground. It takes oil paint wonderfully. I carefully did dry brush over the incised lines which I had previously rubbed with raw umber violet paint, so the ground would not get into the depressions. Then it was fun to work the colors around my etched marks to form a background which produced a white mountain looking very much like Mt. St. Helens!
I'm liking this. So I prepped two more bowls for further explorations. I will finish these things with a barrier coat of clear shellac, and then with a finish coat of clear satin varnish. The folks who like representational art will enjoy these.
What's up?
The Pierced Bowl with free form handle
The workshop is full of works in progress, or works in process, if you are speaking of shaping, sawing, sanding ...all those s words.
I've had one bowl hanging around for the longest time. It's one of my favorites, but it has a couple of things that made it a "second" that are interesting, but not necessarily an asset to the bowl. I didn't want to "fix" them (i.e., fill and refinish) because they were interesting and the bowl has this story that I didn't want to eradicate.
Today I took a chunk of local Yew wood and fashioned a very free formed handle to go into a nearly rectangular slot in the edge of the bowl. And when I fitted the handle into the pot, I thought it needed a hand carved peg to secure it from the bottom so, once glued in, it would not be stressed into wobbliness.
While I was at it, I made a peg to go into a nearly round hole that occurs in another side of the bowl. That peg is not glued in so if a person doesn't want it, they can just draw it out. I think it's interesting and fun and interactive. The whole bowl is strange. A conversation piece. And yes, quite sensual looking.
The glue swells when it cures and often makes a mess on the areas around the joint, so I put "blue tape" (used by folks to mask off areas to protect them) around to save the finish. I've spent some time chasing (that's what they call it in bronze casting) the bits of tape and glue from the site. More will happen tomorrow with cleaning up seams and putting on finishes, but in the meantime, I have some very nice images of the project I've had the privilege of working with today.
I've had one bowl hanging around for the longest time. It's one of my favorites, but it has a couple of things that made it a "second" that are interesting, but not necessarily an asset to the bowl. I didn't want to "fix" them (i.e., fill and refinish) because they were interesting and the bowl has this story that I didn't want to eradicate.
Today I took a chunk of local Yew wood and fashioned a very free formed handle to go into a nearly rectangular slot in the edge of the bowl. And when I fitted the handle into the pot, I thought it needed a hand carved peg to secure it from the bottom so, once glued in, it would not be stressed into wobbliness.
While I was at it, I made a peg to go into a nearly round hole that occurs in another side of the bowl. That peg is not glued in so if a person doesn't want it, they can just draw it out. I think it's interesting and fun and interactive. The whole bowl is strange. A conversation piece. And yes, quite sensual looking.
The glue swells when it cures and often makes a mess on the areas around the joint, so I put "blue tape" (used by folks to mask off areas to protect them) around to save the finish. I've spent some time chasing (that's what they call it in bronze casting) the bits of tape and glue from the site. More will happen tomorrow with cleaning up seams and putting on finishes, but in the meantime, I have some very nice images of the project I've had the privilege of working with today.
 |
 The bowl will be finished with a few coats of special wax made of food grade mineral oil and natural beeswax. |
SHELTON FARMERS MARKET 9/1/11
|
GOATS! A TEAM OF FOUR HITCHED TO A KID-SIZED CART OFFERING RIDESThe market was colorful in other ways. One of my favorite features turned
up...the team of four goats pulling a cart that gave children free rides. The woman who owns, trains and handles the goats does it for fun. Shelton is blessed with such home town surprises.  The Kind and Skilled Goat Ride Neighbor 
|
WHAT'S HAPPENING
The workshop looked like this today, July 29 2011. The greenness is overwhelming here in the Olympic mountains. If something isn't already growing somewhere, weeds do. If you zoom in you will see that we are chockablock full of materials in that place. Part of the stuff in the carport part is BLACK WALNUT! A treasure, to a person who loves to carve hard, smooth, seasoned wood that comes off the chisel already glossy.
  |
The large chisel is sharp and the mallet my son turned for me works with it to make a sensitive machine that takes lovely slices off the grungy outer layer of the log. Now and again it finds heartwood close to the surface and I can smell that characteristic sourness of black walnut -- and I am back in college again, working on a huge log salvaged from cleanups at a local swimming pool. I am sitting, in memory, atop this horse of a log taking off the outer bark and skin. Happy in the driveway and talking to someone...and then, not watching, missing the mark and knowing painfully that the chisel has cut a crescent into my left knee. It was my first go-round with stitches on an accidental cut, and it was a bad one...on a Sunday, as I remember, so we had to get a doctor to open his office for us.
Lesson learned, and a scar to remind me. I chisel with my eye as well as my hands now, rather automatically. How do my hands know how to do it? I am one with the chisel and the mallet-- it's a dance, with certain music, sweet, but percussive. This is a kind of bliss. The bottom image shows a round that I have purposely cut a slight depression into so I might enjoy the beauty of heartwood. I put some oil stain on it, which is what will happen to anything I make. It comes up dark and dusky with beautiful markings. I am in love with this wood. The man who offered me the pile of logs found me at the booth, saw my carved bowls, and asked if I would be interested in wood he knew he shouldn't put in his fireplace. Without hesitation I said Yes and took down the directions to his house down on the way to Elma. In payment, he and his wife ask that I paint an Emu Egg for them. They used to raise Emus and have all these eggs, worth $40 per blown egg. I am designing an egg, of course. They gave me two, one for them and one for me. There is no way I could say that the little town of Shelton is not a good place to find generosity. Tomorrow I set up my booth in the short block allotted to the Shelton Farmer's Market for six hours. There is a friend coming to pick up some bowls and he will possibly have a maple root for me in his car. This needs a place like our mountain place, this wood collection. Whet the chisels!. . " |
not loafing ...meditating BLOG TIME
reclining redhead, watercolor 40"x40", copyright Susan Holland c 1997
IT'S NOT A SELF PORTRAIT, FOLKS, just because it has red hair!
TO READ THE "STORY" OF THIS PAINTING, CLICK HERE
IT'S NOT A SELF PORTRAIT, FOLKS, just because it has red hair!
TO READ THE "STORY" OF THIS PAINTING, CLICK HERE
LIKE BEING IN A NEW WORLD WHERE THEY DON'T USE PLUGS...
Talking to my housemate today about how hard it is for someone who has made websites before to come back to it after major changes.
Really, the change from the old HTML of the 90's and the current XML and etc they have today is significant enough so that it's not a snap to change to!
I said to her it is like Rip Van Winkle waking up and trying to find his way around a world that has done away with light plugs. Where do you plug things in around here, he wonders, looking in vain for the familiar sockets that are supposed to be on walls. It's totally disconcerting and very discouraging, too, when all you really want is to make something normal happen, like turning on the lights. I am indebted to Weebly for making it possible for me to skip another career change and get on with my life...I will let them do it for me!
Today is Sunday, Hallowe'en, actually, but it's only 1:30 am. I am working late. It's good to be uninterrupted, if that's what you could call it. In the studio I have a paper with a wash drying. It has been through three dryings already these past three hours, and I will put another thin wash on it before I fall into bed. I have spent an hour looking for an affordable infrared light to hasten such drying needs. So I have been between computer and studio. I guess that is a sort of multitasking, but at least it's all on the same general subject...getting paint to behave on a paper. (Sigh.) That's why they call them WORK shops, I guess.
Really, the change from the old HTML of the 90's and the current XML and etc they have today is significant enough so that it's not a snap to change to!
I said to her it is like Rip Van Winkle waking up and trying to find his way around a world that has done away with light plugs. Where do you plug things in around here, he wonders, looking in vain for the familiar sockets that are supposed to be on walls. It's totally disconcerting and very discouraging, too, when all you really want is to make something normal happen, like turning on the lights. I am indebted to Weebly for making it possible for me to skip another career change and get on with my life...I will let them do it for me!
Today is Sunday, Hallowe'en, actually, but it's only 1:30 am. I am working late. It's good to be uninterrupted, if that's what you could call it. In the studio I have a paper with a wash drying. It has been through three dryings already these past three hours, and I will put another thin wash on it before I fall into bed. I have spent an hour looking for an affordable infrared light to hasten such drying needs. So I have been between computer and studio. I guess that is a sort of multitasking, but at least it's all on the same general subject...getting paint to behave on a paper. (Sigh.) That's why they call them WORK shops, I guess.
