Art Below DingleBurn

Much Ado About Vance

2010-06-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

Second post! These are sketches I did last September during an out-door production of Much Ado About Nothing in Cannon Beach. One of the most fun plays I've ever attended. In slow moments at work and while waiting for this and that I've been "hand-tipping" them because the sketchbook I used has a really heavy-weight paper. Perfect for my travel paints which are always in my purse. The first is probably Leonato, and the second is Benedick in his masquerade chicken mask. The last is Vance during a concert. Love those converse.

Magwyn and Dragwen

2010-06-02T15:13:00.001-07:00

Okay, two posts here with multiple pictures. Most of these have been taken with my phone and "fixed" in photoshop, so bear with the result. Sketches! The first is Maggie listening intently to the recorded track to which she was playing her bodhran the day she and I did recording for Hank Cramer in Fife. Lots and lots of fun. The second is a way-cool dragon-man hybrid my art class and I developed as an anatomy/imagination experiment. Cause and effect: what happens when you cross a reptile with a human? I really liked the result.
#2 pencil on computer paper.

Katie's World

2010-06-01T20:15:00.000-07:00

Haven't been posting nearly as much as I should, but this one deserves it. My dear little Katie has been a student of mine for two and a half years and today was her last class with me. As a good-bye present I painted her as she painted, dropping in behind her all her favorite things to paint from over the years: daffodils, her nieces and nephews, trees. She's gotten so good. You'll see the picture she was working on today on the table in front of her. This is from my phone, so it's not brilliant, but it will have to do.

Left-handed drawing, right-handed painting.

Darte

2010-05-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the less than stellar quality of this photo-- I used my phone. This is Darte, the creature who lives under my coffee shop. The only part of him visible to the common observe is his back fur. This looks extraordinarily like grass, and would be mistaken as such on Google Earth. I painted him one slow shift when the wind was being particularly frisky and his fur was rippling gloriously. Thankfully he doesn't mind having it cut. You can find out more about him from the text on the painting. ☺

The Latest

2010-05-14T15:04:00.000-07:00

Last week I was at some friends' watching their darling children. They have a stunning view of Mt. Rainier, as you will see from the photograph, and I couldn't help painting it as the sun set. All the light was shifting, so I had to catch it as I could, but I like the result. Then, the oldest and I had a deal: I would paint him and then he would paint me. My picture is below, and I wish I had his. Isn't that monster truck great?! It's definitely the first one I've done. ☺

My favorite part of our deal was that when he was posing me so he could sketch he wondered aloud how I should sit. "I know!" he answered his own question, "You can draw!" So he sketched me with a marker in my hand. ☺ Made my (very early) morning.

Written-up!

2010-05-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

Here's something fun! Chelsea did a write-up on the painting I did for them (Lucy, below) on her excellent blog, which can be found here.

Lucy

2010-05-08T22:46:00.000-07:00

Yea!!! I can finally post the project that has occupied a great deal of my artistic time lately. Chelsea, a school mate from Ecola, commissioned me to paint two portraits of her daughters. This is the first of Lucy. They live on a ranch in Eastern Oregon, and I truly enjoyed capturing that is this image. I tried to tell the story of Lucy more than render her precisely and I was pretty happy with the result. There is something delightful about children and puddles. The best part, of course, was that Chelsea likes it. ☺

Magwyn

2010-03-26T14:30:00.001-07:00

I've been wanting to post this for months, but first it was a Christmas present for the family, and then I decided it needed more work. So I've finally got it done to my satisfaction (or as close I get to it), and have put it back on the wall. I used the trace and transfer method of this, and did most of it in a fit of inspiration. Took about four hours to get the bulk of it done, then probably that much again to tweak it. The victory? Maggie didn't like the picture of herself, but loves the painting. ☺ Happy sister.
Learned how to do eyes on this one.

Steven's Snowball Fight

2010-03-26T14:22:00.001-07:00

This was actually homework I assigned for my class on Tuesday and decided to do myself. I wanted high contrast with the dark right next to the light. This took me a couple hours from sketch to finish and I really like it. It doesn't really look too much like the original subject, but I got his hair (which I've been trying to capture for a long time now). The tongue stuck out and clamped between his teeth is confusing, but if you know the story (he's in the middle of a gleeful snowball fight) it makes more sense. Still, context needs to not be the savior of a piece. So it needs work. But I like how different it is from my normal stuff, and how much more it is like the portraits of my favorite artist, John Singer Sargent.
I also learned that I need to be careful of copying the mistakes of the photograph: his real nose looks nothing like that, and the picture sent me the wrong way.

Poplars

2010-03-26T14:18:00.000-07:00

Studies in contrast! This was winter poplars, out of my head, trying to remember from earlier this year.... yeah. Needs work, but I have made my peace with it. It didn't work at all till I made the road purple. Funny how that works!

Steph and Joel

2010-03-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

This has been a fun one! My friend and former roommate Stephanie married a fantastic guy last year (Joel) and this is their much-belated wedding gift. I had their collusion on it, which was awesome; Steph sent me a couple pictures she would like as paintings and I got to pick. I didn't fall in love with either of the shots right away, but suddenly one evening the muse descended with a rush and this was the result. I did the trace-and-transfer method (which I usually do with portraiture that "matters") on aqua board (or clayboard) which I love. It's a little tougher to work with in that it sets pretty irrevocably, but since you're on board it doesn't wrinkle or warp and when it's done you can just stick it in a frame! If, that is, you have painted it the right size for a frame. Which I didn't. So we had to mat it creatively. But Jesus worked that whole thing out in forty minutes as I was on my way to give it to the lovely lady herself. This was so much fun to do. Loved the wall. And the plus about truly knowing the people I'm painting is that when I didn't get her mouth exactly the way it is in the photo, I could relax because I knew it was still a common Stephanie expression.

Sara

2010-03-02T12:02:00.000-08:00

Did not realize how many times I've painted my cousin Sara! Obviously I have good taste. ☺ I'll keep painting her too. I have an ultimate portrait in mind for later.... (not involving frisbee) This is from a couple summers ago. Probably 2007. Uncle Phil took us fishing on Mayfield and we got a lot of good pictures that day. This one has been kicking around my art bag since then and one afternoon in class I just whipped it out to practice. The mouth is not hers at all, but the hair, the eyes, and nose, and the attitude in which she sits is all Sara! I like the looseness of this one. Classic watercolor, but sometimes that's best. Needs more contrast, actually, but I never finished this one either. Not even signed.

Looks a lot like chaos

2010-03-02T11:52:00.000-08:00

This one was an experiment with "pouring", inspired by this painting by John Howe. I dropped highly saturated blue and pink onto wet paper, let it set a little, then literally poured a bowl of thick black watercolor on top. The trouble with black and watercolor is that it goes dead if one isn't very, very careful. The context of the black in the painting is very important, and the ratio of pigment to water is very important. Usually I say don't use black out of a tube at all: mix it! But John challenged me to try tube black and see if I could wrangle anything from it. Honestly, I was thrilled with the result.

Rhododendron

2010-03-02T11:37:00.000-08:00

Here's an odd one. Summer of 2008 I took a class with Marlene Ahmann. She's a fantastic local artist, inspired frequently by Zoltan Szabo. Taught us a lot about negative shapes. For this exercise we were told to find something outside we liked and paint it, using negative shapes and light. I loved the way the sun lit up this gnarled and ancient rhododendron. I never really finished it, but it's grown on me as-is. What do people think? What does it need?

Tuscan Road

2010-03-02T11:16:00.001-08:00

I'm going to upload a few today, since I'm feeling like it and have the time because I'm home recovering from a doozy of a cold. This is one of my oldest pieces (as noted by the old signature), but it's also a favorite. It's some road in Tuscany that I've never seen, but which has inhabited my brain for years and years. I want to go there someday.

Tulips

2010-03-02T11:00:00.001-08:00

Time for a little update! It's not that I haven't been painting or drawing anything, I just haven't been scanning and uploading. ☺ Below is a little class demonstration that got wild. It was all by instinct after I copied the initial sketch by Susanne (thank you!). Didn't know where it was going. Once home I brightened it up with pastels. I love mixed media! And yea for making flowers immortal!
(I've already made it into a card. ☺)

Manhole Man

2010-01-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

More homework! Assigned by (mostly) Taite Voetberg during Tuesday's class. I was told to do a statue in browns and oranges and reds and purples. Originally it was to be The Thinker, but finding a shot of that among my friends' pictures was unrealistic so I settled for this awesome bronze from.... Bulgaria, I think. Some friends visited Europe a couple years ago and let me snitch pictures. I just love that they have statues coming up out of the cobblestone streets! Hand-drawn and watercolored in about two hours.

Homework!

2010-01-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

Yes, homework. One of the only New Year resolutions I made was to invite my art students to give me homework, since I have thus far been the sole recipient of that delight. I was told on Tuesday to do a sky, "Since we know how much you love doing nature," and "the blue has to touch the orange."
Well. I have apparently taught them something, because they now know what is difficult! Not creating brown mud out of ethereal blues and oranges nestled against each other is... well, difficult. ☺ But here is my attempt. I decided to use the "island in my mind" again, just as a point of interest against the all-important sky.
(And, if you'll notice, Bethany, there are several places where blue touches orange. ☺)
There's another new post below, too!

Sarah Fishing

2010-01-06T15:07:00.000-08:00

Yea! One more given so now I can share it. ☺ This was a gift, several years over-due, to my fabulous cousin Peter. I had promised him a painting of his choice for a birthday or Christmas, but we were never able to settle on a subject. Then, at Thanksgiving, he showed me this shot of his sister Sarah fishing off the rocks at Reef Point, and it was chosen. The day before a family gathering at my aunt's, I got the unmistakable sudden urge, obtained the picture from him, and knocked this out in a little less than four hours. When the shoe fits....
The ponytail makes it.

Lately

2010-01-01T20:15:00.000-08:00

Well! For much of December I could not post any projects because they were all for Christmas and birthdays. Those are almost all over now, so here are most of them. Two are not finished yet, and one is not given yet, so you'll have to wait for another day.

The first was for Clan Cummins. I did it over a year ago, and added the finishing touches on the 26th. This was beloved Chamois (pronounced Shammi), departed over eight years ago now. The picture from which I took the painting was from her puppy days. Trace and transfer method, watercolor.
This second is another dog, Piper, as a puppy, with faithful owner Sara. It was begun as something to do, and turned out so well it was converted into a Cousin-Christmas gift. ☺ Sketch and watercolor.

Lastly, a couple of sketches from my new sketchbook (which I love). The first is a snowboarder, dragging his left hand in the mountain, helmet bent, left foot forward (for those of you who care).
The second is a dragon, one of the many I doodle. I was trying to make this one look more nefarious than not. It's all in the angle of the eyelid. ☺ Left-handed, pencil on paper.

David and Keslie Smith

2009-11-22T14:53:00.000-08:00

So here's a fun one: a progression! This is a painting from start to finish. It was a gift for a couple who's wedding I coordinated last year, but they didn't get it till this week. ☺ It began with this excellent photo by Sam Ramsey (who kindly conspired with me) and went from there. I'm most happy with it because I drew the whole thing by eye.Masked, with a background wash.

That foot was a favorite. ☺

Mary's Corner

2009-11-05T23:14:00.000-08:00

So tonight I drove home through the dark and the rain and the wind to arrive home at 6:00... or it would have been 6:00 if someone hadn't been driving an average of 27 mph on a 40 mph road in front of me. But it was okay because I figured God had a reason for me to go slowly, and even if I never find out what it is, it gave me a chance to study tail light patterns on the wet pavement. And then stop light patterns. That's what this is: from memory, Mary's Corner (looking south) on a dark and stormy night.I think this turned out to be a light-weight mat-board and not watercolor paper, but it worked. It's also fun to use black-- watercolorists aren't supposed to use black. But on this occasion I could come up with no better way to get the point across.

I could do this everyday....

2009-10-21T15:03:00.001-07:00

I did a dragon for Elisabeth. Here is it:

Addiction Part 2

2009-10-20T22:12:00.001-07:00

And here's another. Like I said, there's always an island... (This one has ruins.)

Addiction

2009-10-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

So I had some fun this morning when I should have been getting ready for work:

Found a sketching program on http://sketch.odopod.com/ thanks to Kati Barker, and I will shortly be addicted. Knock yourselves out!

Bookend Sketches

2009-10-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

Two recent (and unfinished) doodles. One, a paisley pattern gone epic. I started with the classic shape, asked "What if?" and pretty much abandoned classic. Can you find Rainier, and the ship?
Two, a castle on an island in front of a Maxfield Parish sky. There is always a castle on an island in my mind.This makes me think of Guliver's Travels, and The Fisherman's Wife, and of days spent in the Red Books when I was a child. When I look at this sketch I want to dip my hands into the pictures and scoop the island right out of the sea and inspect it very closely. Grr.

Coy

2009-10-12T14:12:00.000-07:00

So this is not "what I've been doing lately", but after a year of having it on the board I finally decided to quit and got it scanned. I may work in a few water ripples later and repost it, but we'll see. Today, I'm just glad to be able to bring you..................
COY!

Phipps at midnight

2009-10-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday my drawing instructor asked me to bring in what I'd been working on lately. "There isn't much," I told him, but upon rounding up six different sketchpads I found more than I'd remembered. Here is the best of the lot, a sketch I did late at night while genius burned and I was supposed to be sleeping. It's left-handed, as most of my best stuff usually is. The original is a portrait of Mrs. Wilton Phipps by John Singer Sargent, c. 1884. The man is far-and-away my favorite portrait artist. This challenge was to open the book anywhere and draw what I found.
The lift of her right eye (on our left) is wrong and makes her look less awake than she is, and the smile I gave her is not nearly as sweet at the one Sargent gave her. I have her face a little narrow overall, and her ear too small and too prominent. But for an hour's work I'm fairly happy with it. And I really like her hair.

Russ and Annie

2009-09-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to a wedding in California. It was a total gift. While there I planned and executed a painting for the happy couple just before, during, and after the ceremony. It was a really fun challenge to get something workable in that short time, but I'd had a chance to think about composition and test colors and sketch a rough before the actual event. Still, their position and the dog were a complete surprise, so God kept it fresh. ☺ I'd love to redo it of course, but at the moment, I'll take what I can get!

Fern

2009-09-14T23:00:00.000-07:00

This is what I did today:

The first page says, "Fern kept a journal. (Most giraffes don't, you know.) She kept it because she liked the way it smelled, the way it looked lying open, blank, with light on it. And sometimes she even wondered what she might write in it."
The second page says, "There wasn't much to say, really, when it came right down to it. When you have beans in your feet, just how exciting can life be?"
Dana, bless her, picked up this giraffe for me the other day. We christened the cute little thing last night after a brief but alarming search (Ulysees? Ted? Edwina? Thank you, no). Boomer finally read "Fern," and there it was. Obvious. Like all names should be. This afternoon I set her on a stump and drew her. And later during band practice I set her on her "journal" and drew her again. The text of page one came to me while cleaning my shower. Most of my brilliant ideas occur in or near the shower. Page two came much later and was in no proximity to the shower. We'll see if it stands up as well as the first.

Work in Progress

2009-09-13T15:30:00.000-07:00

So here's a fun one. I'm a little further than this now... Have refined our legs a bit and worked our feet in. But I'm stumped for a background, or background color. Xander and I were originally sitting on a white porch rail, back against a white pillar, green fields behind. For various reasons that won't do. Any ideas? I was most proud of this one because it was one of the first I just drew. Doing a lot more of that now, but this was a step at the time. It's from March I think.

The Beautitudes

2009-09-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

My "regular" blog, being a theology/current events blog, has received the integrated stew of my female existence. However, in an attempt to "boxify" some things I've created this virtual portfolio. I'll be uploading bits of my sketchbook and projects-in-process if all goes according to plan. And so I give you The Beatitudes.
This is acrylic on second-hand salvage-yard canvas (thank you, Emily), painted entirely with my fingers, tubes of paint, and a couple toothpicks. It was an eleventh-hour attempt to compile a summer's worth of Bible Study notes on Matthew 5:3-12, and as a friend stood there and watched I talked my way through it and so know exactly how to explain it to you.
Words and concepts have always been associated with colors in my head. I didn't really notice till about seven years ago when I discovered not everyone though that way. Then I started actually paying attention. Mid-August of this year I decided to test the thing by taking a look at the colors of the Beatitudes in my head. This is what I found:
My favorite response so far has been (in the sweetest possible voice) "Oh!" :-) To make sense of it, read the following key.
*"Blesseds" are blue. There's a swath of blue under each "section."
*Starting in the upper left-hand corner and going clockwise, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the kingdom of heaven. "Poor" is that somewhat-regrettable brown. "Spirit" and "Heaven" are that vibrant yellow.
*Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Lots of black and red and deep magenta.
*Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. The blue and white are gentle, but, as the original Greek assured us, there is a strength in humility that is almost counter-intuitive, thus it's not a walk-over-me blue.
*Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. "Righteousness" and its accouterments have always been red.
*Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. This is the only one I'm not completely happy with. "Mercy" is green, but not exactly this green. It's too dark. There's a light and a spark to mercy, in color and concept, which I could not capture. Mercy is no dead thing. It lives!
*Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. "Pure in heart" as a phrase is very black and red to me. All the more, since I associate it with a person.
*Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. This is my favorite part. That vibrant, living green, almost what Mercy should have been, and therefore perhaps they are kin. I love the marbling. So cool.
*Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. More black and red and deep purple, but with lots of blue showing through.
*And at last into the middle. Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you, falsely, on account of Me. Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Here, all the colors meet, for He culminates His list with this one.

What was so cool to me was the way God "verified" some theological concepts through the paint. We learned that each verse had a link going forward to the next one and back to the previous one, and that in general they built to a climax. (Boomer put it this way: "Could the first beatitude mean that if we are poor in spirit and humble, we start a journey into Him? From a humble person, to one who mourns for what he has done; to a meek, gentle person who understands evil; to one who, after seeing that evil, cannot help but hunger and thirst for righteousness; and once they have been filled, see they must give mercy to all, for they have been there; after that they have become pure enough to be blessed to see who God really is; and one of His main attributes is loving peace, but in a fallen world peace has to be brought, not kept; which brings us to the last beatitude, for all peace we have brought, and all the righteousness we bring, we will be persecuted. But that in itself is a blessing.") And we learned that each verse related to every other verse in the series. So my colors go forward and backward, and then across to every other pile. Some ended up with more colors from elsewhere then I expected, and then I had to stop and think why those two verses might be deeply related, and so on.
Then, the white loops. He showed me that's the unifying thread-- His voice speaking it all, tying it all together, and at last exploding all over the last verses where He suddenly brings the list home and applies it to our relationship to Him.
Lastly, if you make the image big you can see the mosaic effect I got by dragging toothpicks through the piles. I did it because I liked it. A lot. But then He showed me what else was there: us. We're all those little tile pieces making up the shared experience of the body of Christ, and each of those little tiles experiences most of these verses/colors one way or another.

Isn't that cool! I was so high by the time I finished it that I couldn't quit planning the next one. We'll see what comes of it. I want to try to do 'portraits" this way. Watch out-- you just may end up seeing what you look like in my head!