More Time Spent Drawing/Painting/Walking

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I love how the light shines through the grasses when Lee and I walk down to the mailbox on sunny summer mornings.

Things sparkle.

I went back to the six way book of wildflower paintings. It is a good thing my expectations are fairly low for this work.

The good part about it is how many I have managed to put in here and it still seems endless just to get to the end of this one section. The other thing I like is how the pages rustle together when I flip through the images.

I have kept up with the drawings a day and haiku.

Black, grey, taupe and red

are the colors of Guttermann

linen unwaxed threads.

 

My one last purchase

from the Australian button

lady of notions.

Covered chalk marker

and white vinyl eraser

are in the tool bag.

 

I wish these glasses

could let me see how to draw

them so much better.

I particularly like the single large spool of thread above. It was the button lady’s last time to come to the conferences in Australia and I had purchased these big spools of beige linen from her in the past. I would never use all the thread on this spool let alone the others. But once I hold this spool in my hand, I need to have it. I am sure that all those who attend the fibre conferences will miss the button lady. I am sure she has a name but “button lady” was what we all called her. You never knew what treasures she would have among all her buttons and sewing notions.

Today I drew the pair of scissors in the tool bag. Tomorrow I will draw the tool bag itself and then be through with that source for interesting drawing things. Maybe I will go back outside and pick up more bits of nature….we’ll see.

Better go.

Til later.

Sketchbooks for Specific Places

Posted on by Sandy Webster

An old friend in Australia reminded me after the last post that she was so happy to have one of the Common Thing books I talked about. Gloria Alport, who hosted me on several early teaching tours in the Sydney area. I smiled when she mentioned having the little book. The memories of being in her home and walking to her garden stepping on sample squares of upholstery textiles. They made such a lovely path, like magically marked slate stones embedded in the grass.

I also think of Gloria each time I attempt to draw something in a sketchbook. She took me to the Art Gallery of New South Wales and we drew things together. She told me that I made lines around the things I was drawing and to remember that those things were objects in a space, part in sharp detail and part fading away into the blur of edges. I remember that every time and remind myself to not just look at the outside edges but see what is happening in the space it takes up.

So I took along a sketchbook that I bought in New York City when Gwen Diehn and I were touring museums. It is a replica of one that Van Gogh used…..or so they say and of course i needed to have it. Here are a couple of drawings with Gwen done in that new book and the book itself.

Gwen has always been the fastest pen sketcher I know. It took some doing to keep up and get the ideas down quickly to use as reference later for my work about men in graduate school.

And here are the pages I was drawing with Gloria a short while later.

See what I mean?

Mostly I used this book only in museums and tried to get as much information as I could to take back home with me.

Here was my introduction to Bea Maddock, an Australian artist, print maker, and user of earth pigments. I could have stayed in front of this massive piece about the land of Tasmania and its Aboriginal history for two days and not seen all it had to offer.

Over the years that followed I had many more opportunities to see her work. And the only book about her that I have is more about her time as a print maker.

Later on I found myself in Vancouver at a museum without this little Van Gogh book so had to buy another small sketchbook in the museum store. It was an exhibition featuring the works of Emily Carr, Georgia O’Keefe and Frida Kahlo. I evidently did not bother to make my way to Kahlo’s work. I was too busy looking at the trees of Emily Carrs, reading her words and Georgia O’Keefe’s.

“What is that vital thing the woods contains?”  Emily Carr

“It is the unexplainable things in Nature that make me feel the world is big, far beyond my understanding. I attempt to understand it by trying to put it in form, by finding the feeling of infinity on the horizon or just over the next hill.”  Georgia O’Keefe

I found this book I made to explain about altering images of fine quality inked magazine pictures and then using those in your own work once they are way beyond the original artists work. It was a National Geographic aerial view of someplace arid, changed using a cleaning solution after a few hours of making marks with gesso and clear glue.

I was also giving a lesson on coptic binding used on this book and not wasting paper by folding the too long parts back into the book rather than cut and toss.

I like the feel of this book in my hands. It is about 4.5 x by 5.5 inches x 1.5 inches thick. I wrote how the book was made on the inside front page, then being influenced by Emily Carr I did a wash of trees over the ball point ink writing.

I think I will use this for just thoughts…the kind you just need to get out. No drawings allowed.

Here are six days of drawings a day…even went a day ahead just to finish off this sketchbook. It was number one of four made to use this year. Now I can start on number two day after tomorrow.

A pink flowered shrub

was planted meandering

throughout the landscape.

 

Bright yellow wild weed

helps itself to the outer

untended fringes.

Honeysuckle vine

has crawled all over every

available tree.

 

Little blue-eyed grass

can’t decide whether to be

a grass or flower.

Tiny lavender

flowers on delicate stems

on spaced out leaves.

 

So called creeping thyme

actually moves along

at the rate of time.

Okay enough for now….taking a break and going to read.

til later.

 

A Lot More Drawings and Stoat Story

Posted on by Sandy Webster

First a catch up on the drawings a day.

 

Multiply this bloom

by more than twelve times for full bloom

of rhododendron.

 

What a complex bloom

the Siberian iris

can be for drawing.

 

Rogue wild daisy says,

“he loves me, he loves me not.”

And could not care less!

 

Akebia vine

bought to hide a fence hiding

an ugly tractor.

 

A yellow iris

flops itself along driveways.

Its work now finished.

 

This poor hydrangea

suffered a late and nasty

frost on her leaf tips.

 

And the stoat story text pages are finished and placed inside illustrations with their little pull tabs.

Now I just need to make the covers.

By now the old woman knew not to question anything the stoat told her. The basket really was magic. A sleeping bag and tent flew out when she needed a place to sleep for the night. Hot cups of tea and meals were inside when she asked for them.

She remembered to say her “please and thank-you.

One morning the basket even held pancakes covered with syrup when all she asked for was more toast and marmalade. It delighted her because they tasted just like the ones her grandmother made when she was a girl. Buckwheat pancakes with lots of butter melting under the warm maple syrup.

Did the basket know that?

One day they sat by the river and tried to catch fish. The stoat was much better at it than the old woman. He would go into the bushes to eat his catch after leaving one for the old woman to ask the basket to cook for her. And the basket not only cooked it up with a nice crusty skin, but put it between two pieces of sourdough bread with a smattering of tarter sauce and a leaf of fresh lettuce. Delicious!

With all the walking the old woman felt lighter and her clothes became looser. She had to roll her pants up twice so far. One day she found a new pair of shoes in the basket and when she looked down understood why.

Their journey continued for some time. Each day simply rolled into the next. There was always sun in the blue overhead and a night sky full of sparkling stars. And the parade of sights never stopped, just gently flowed by with the breeze.

The old woman did not ask where they were going. By now it really didn’t matter. She was here on some great adventure having the time of her life with a wonderful companion.

They did not need to talk to each other all that much. All they needed was to know the other one was there close by and happy for their company.

One day out of curiosity the old woman asked if they were getting close to where they were going.

“It won’t be long now. We are over half way there.”

That was enough for her to know. And with every step she was lighter and happier. She felt how she felt years ago….before she was sore and tired most of the time.

And the things she saw along the way became more extraordinary with every passing day.

 

That’s enough for now. I will finish the story for you next time.

Til then

 

 

 

Interesting Week in the Kitchen and Elsewhere

Posted on by Sandy Webster

This week I felt the need to bake. Bake using very old self rising flour and even older instant yeast. Why waste the good stuff, right? Well I now have a very salty dough that can be kept in the refrigerator for up to two weeks or until I decide what to bake next. The pecan sweet rolls are okay…just salty.

And today thinking about Australia I decided to make my first ever Anzac Biscuits (cookies) in honor of their holiday of remembrance coming up this Saturday.

The last time I had Anzac cookies was when I was put on a bus in Katherine, NT and sent on my way with those cookies to snack on while heading up to the Katherine Gorge. It was a gift trip/tour from the Northern Territory Craft Council for teaching workshops in their area. I loved those cookies.

And I remember that on that bus ride there was a woman driver…..a no nonsense driver. She stopped the bus at a camel farm. She said we had to stay on the bus and just look at the lone camel through the window. She said that she used to let the people off the bus there for a closer look but one day an American woman said she knew camels and camels knew her, so she could get close and pet the camel. The camel bit the woman. The driver glared at me and said that it was because of that American woman that no passengers were allowed off the bus to look at a camel since. Isn’t that funny! I don’t think I look any different than an Australian woman but that bus driver knows things. I smile when I think of her and am very sure she never thought of me again.

So back to now. I found the recipe on a Google search. I had all the ingredients in house. I was confident that if I made a mistake like I did on that stuff in the refrigerator it would be fine because Lee and I went very, very early to the grocery store and got almost everything on my list. Paper products, no, but enough of everything else to keep me out of the store for the next month. I found meats, breads, eggs, fruit, vegetables, flour and plenty of wine and beer. I think if my calculations are correct I am paying more per ounce for beer than wine.

So I mix up the cookie recipe. Check to see that 125 grams of butter is one half cup and 175 degrees Celsius is 350 Fahrenheit. I like this recipe because the soda gets added to the hot butter and syrup so I can watch it foam up. I might just do that with other recipes that are such sticklers for keeping dry ingredients together.

Bake 15 to 20 minutes. Oops, sidetracked and smelled burnt sugar. Rushed to remove them from the sheet.

Lee says, “They smell burned.”

I say, “Yes, I may have left them in too long. But let’s think about this, Lee, when is the last time we even had a burnt cookie?”

He agreed and picked the blackest one for himself after they cool down. I ate two other very dark ones to make doubly sure they were edible…even just edible. It is a good thing that my oven has hot spots and not so hot spots. Better than half the pan are just overcooked with dark bottoms. The rest are what most people would call burnt. I paid attention to the second sheet of cookies….none overcooked.

I do remember that years ago when Lee’s uncle had some sort of intestinal cancer, he was told to eat burnt toast often. So these could be something good for us.

If there was someone else living in this house that wasn’t either deluded or suffering from dementia, that person might suggest I stay out of the kitchen for awhile. But here we are, perfectly content to cook and call it “good.”

Also beside the early shopping and baking, Lee and I cleaned house again. It is the day every two weeks when our cleaning lady would be here. We are paying her to not come til things look safer and think we can do this ourselves for now. I do notice that Lee needs more help steering the vacuum around. And I don’t mind doing that because it takes me away from cleaning those bathrooms. Those have been officially put off until tomorrow.  Vacuuming, dusting and washed kitchen floor was enough for now.

I took a picture of my mixing bowl. I bought this at a garage sale before Lee and I were married over fifty years ago. This is the perfect bowl for mixing bread dough and big batches of cookies. Even meatloaf tastes better if it started out in this bowl. Maybe I have been giving it too much responsibility lately. I am going to leave it in the cupboard under all those dinged up stainless bowls for awhile.

To further amuse myself I started drawing into the leaf patterns in a concertina book that I stitched back to back in the grooves. The poor little critter on the lower edge started out to be a cat and quickly got changed to a weasel like animal. It is a stoat. Do you remember how the weasels and stoats took over Toad Hall when Toad was put in jail for stealing a car? I am talking Wind in the Willows here. Remember? Anyway, I am making the stoat a regular in this visual narrative of nothing in particular….just Stoat’s Property. I simply draw whatever occurs to me to fill in the spaces between the existing patterns from the contact printing. It is just doodling. But now I have the idea to have something on the pages that will start with a letter in the alphabet. There are lots of images on the pages but at least one of them will have something starting with the next letter in the alphabet.

The starting page.

The next two pages that need to be filled in when I get back to it.

See how that bear got there?

And when my stoat was more of a cat? Anyway I am entertaining myself with this.

The drawing a day continues. It is definitely making me a better drawer so I hate to give it up. Sometimes I groan at the thought of going outside to find something, but am always glad that I took the little time it takes to do these while listening to the news.

From garden to stove

my healthy thyme plants carry

their flavor with them.

 

Such a delicate’

little weed with yellow blooms

among shamrock leaves.

 

Once the leaves pop out

the dogwood blooms begin to

deteriorate.

 

Lovely maple seeds

blown away from their branches

for dancing with wind.

 

And the latest on the Social Distance book.

The pointy parts are the top and bottom of a portfolio type binding that will be covered in black later. The poem is the center of the opened portfolio and the two sides with the arms outstretched figures lay over on top of each other. So if the book stands up with the long part of the portfolio cover laying out front and the two side sections of the portfolio open out to the sides, the figures are keeping their social distance….but when closed they are close and are reaching for each other.

Here is how I worked that out when I wrote the poem.

I almost put an extra page behind the open figures to give a nice background to them but then realized that that extra page would prevent them from embracing so am going to go without it.  Technically I am not sure this is a book, but it does have text, illustrations and a way of holding itself together and being narrative. Here is the poem again.

 

Social Distance

We are told to keep a social distance.

Six feet away from anyone else.

 

They say that’s how far the virus

can travel on our spoken words.

 

Fine.

 

I don’t want to be social right now.

I don’t need to speak to anyone.

 

And with just one look

they will know to keep their distance.

 

Because their over there should be

nowhere near my over here.

 

For now I will be distant and alone

until someone is allowed to get close enough

 

to hold me.

 

I am liking working with words again. And for some reason on my facebook feed is Billy Collins reading his and others’ poetry each evening during this social distance time. He is so soothing to listen to and I am so glad he chose to do this. Usually I can not listen because it is at a time when Lee needs attention and we are eating. But I can go find him again later when it is just Billy and me. It really is lovely.

Better go and finish up the book while Lee is being taken care of.

I will say that I might now be getting bored with the cut out illustrations. Like having to do screen printing in my classes in college, I hated that the image was there due to only having something not there. It was either ink or space. Here it is the same way…hard to give form and therefore much “feeling” to the illustration. It is a bit too just plain graphic for me to get excited about. Might try one more bit of writing to illustrate this way and then go back to something else. Stoat’s Property, Wildflowers, Drawings a Day with Haiku…maybe something altogether different…..

Til later.