Feature Works

Long afternoon shadows on the porch with wine and Lee looking down at some rocks he may want to move around. But this morning he is with a caregiver who could only come at this time so I am in the apartment earlier than usual. Also here is the cleaning lady and the man who put the trail in. He and I are discussing new plantings of trees and bushes to hide the neighbors additions and parked vehicles that we see from the kitchen window.

It is most unfortunate that after all the investment we made in buying and surveying property so that not one homeowner would have to look at their neighbor we end our time here with someone who not only decided to make a full size home out of a cabin that we shared a driveway with, but rents it out continually all year. It is my own fault for not buying it when offered a few years ago and moving their driveway to the adjoining road away from us and then reselling the cabin with a new entrance and address. I just assumed that whoever bought it would be like the owners, using it as a vacation home twice a year at most. Lesson is, assume nothing. But the yard man is helping out with his expertise on plantings to block the view. Extra traffic on a steeply curved driveway, he can’t help with.

But today he is laying fresh mulch and pine straw, and checking out the trail. He will be spending several days here this season as we can no longer keep up the work that needs doing.

I found this fragile leaf on the trail the other day and had to bring it inside as a reminder how lovely “oldness” can be.

And keeping up with the marks book. I decided to leave the birdhouse uncolored.

Then on a chilly morning…palm trees!

And I finally started the Sticks and Stones Book.

It seemed a bit boring, so I decided to give the new graphite watercolor pencils a try to enhance the leaves and drawings.

It will take a long time to complete but looks interesting so far.

And the other day I saw a video on Ikebana using sticks. Shortly after Lee was wrapping a vine around some sticks to toss over the bank. I rescued it and made this for the kitchen window. I might just collaborate with him again on a larger piece. Problem is that Ikebana only looks its best against a plain backdrop…..hard to find in our house.

That’s it for now…might have a bit of apartment lunch….cheese, crackers, touch of wine.

Til later…

 

In the Marks book I am looking at stippling again for the next book, Sticks, Stones and Bones. It takes quite a bit of time and color doesn’t look right on the drawings. I also tried out my new watercolor graphite pencils. They are soft enough but rely on a watercolor brush to get the color moved around the right way. And the brush needs to be tiny for the drawings I want to do.

So…

The next double page in the book is drawn in with parallel marks.

Then the colors added that took away from the marks.

So…..

I am going over the sections and patterns with a Uni Ball Vision Elite fine which is my widest marking and permanent pen.

My capabilities are a bit limited when it comes to 2 D works unless it is graphite with eraser handy or acrylics with scraping and layering over the bad parts to make them look better.

Oh well, I hope this does not mean I have reached my limits in the Marks book. But I do have to say that the clothes and shoes pages are my favorites along with the landscapes of lines, dots and bunny/bird/nest. I might have peaked earlier on.

I was listening to Pandora on my Iphone while drawing just now and heard this old song from Bob Dylan….Girl from Red River Shore. The main person (Dylan using his voice) asks the girl from Red River Shore to marry him. She replies, “Go home and live a quiet life.” Isn’t that the kindest rejection for marriage? She could simply be saying she is not an easy person to live with, rather than for him to get lost. To which he claims that now he is “wearing the clothes of misery.” I just had to write those two lines down…..”clothes of misery”…..isn’t that a good way to express a state of sadness? The poor guy is now bereft…another favorite word…bereft.

Just a side note here…it is hard to tap your toe and be bereft at the same time.

It has taken me awhile to get into my second short story but once I realized the main character was not a young man but considerably older, AND what his tattoo was an image of, it is going easier. Sometimes you just come into their lives at the wrong time and they stay silent….now he is easier to get to know.

Here is the opening paragraph:

Coming Home

Charlie turned the coffee on and looked out of the kitchen window. The sun had yet to break the horizon when he began to stretch into his tai chi movements. His bare feet gripped the tiles as his body flowed into the first movement with a long inhale if breath, slight pause, then turned into another to exhale just as slowly. Lowering his left arm to flow into a third position he paused to stare at the tattoo just below his elbow. It marked him, made him feel branded, and forever connected. He raised his fingers to his lips before gently laying them against his arm.

Coming Home is the working title and gives me some direction. Also the kitchen is an important location of each story. That keeps me from bouncing around too much. I might reword some of the opening but it will mostly stay the same. And once I saw the tattoo so clearly and wrote what it means to him, I thought I wanted one just like it. Never wanted a tattoo before…Now rethinking that….

I am going to get out of this dining room chair where I am sitting. They are so uncomfortable! Since Covid, the one person who has sat in the chairs as company throughout the years, and now comes for lunch to give me someone to talk to and visit Lee, said, “I need to move into a more comfortable chair.” No one ever said they were that bad before but Covid has brought out a much appreciated honesty in so many of us. I am going to try and find a person to reupholster them…the counter stools as well. All of them I covered myself and thought I was so clever at the time. Should have read up on what type of foam to get. Always learning things a bit late, aren’t we.

Til later….

This one has very little to do with our daily lives here. I will say Lee seems very satisfied with his new friend, Dillon. This is his second time here and they both keep busy moving rocks around. When I pulled in the driveway from picking up groceries Lee was on the lookout for some men who took things and needed straightening out. I said I did not see them but assured him I would take appropriate action if I came across them. I do wonder who these bad guys are and how he sees them. I only hear of them when he comes to report as best he can what they are up to…nothing good, I can assure you. There is a poem in the Trusting the Tether Line book that I can’t remember if I posted earlier…so will do it here.

Home Intruders

 

Other people are living here.

Their names are,

“That other guy”,

“The big one”,

“The bad guy”.

 

I look out the window.

No Sun.

That’s how these strangers

get in the house

and take up residence.

 

They need clouds,

greyness,

not the dark of night,

but greyness.

Then they show up.

 

Staying until

I can convince

not just them to leave,

but the one remaining

that they are gone.

 

They are now coming around on sunny days and often move around the property taking things. I would love to tell them to stay away but I have come to believe they are needed to blame for things missing. I will find them useful for some of my own forgetfulness.

Anyway on the question of ethics….and I really do not know why this bothers me to the degree it does. I read a facebook post from one of those “friends” you accept because you have something in common. He was reliving his life on facebook as a way to document it. That in and of itself seems a bit self indulgent. But aside from that one of his latest “chapters” was him as an artist.

He had no problem naming a professional artist whose work he copies and then publicly discloses the cost of the artist’s works only to let the public know that his are considerably less expensive. I could not just shrug this off and move on….it bothered me. So I asked in the comment section if he thought there was an ethics question with his behavior. His immediate and simple response was, “I do not.”

Of course, I am sure that because he mentions where a customer can buy the professional’s works, then he is doing that artist a favor….promoting his work. I think he is only promoting himself because he can’t wait to add that all of his own works have sold so far. There are others in the comment section not only feeding into this but asking to be notified when there is more of the less expensive copies available. Someone even asked if he was going to teach this technique.

In this age of “me first” I wonder if there is not a curve we have gone around that leaves ethics pushed aside for the sake of self aggrandizement. We seem to be in an age of “So what”. “Who cares?” And I am left wondering if anyone does care.

It takes its toll. I used to be friends in real time with someone who painted from someone else’s extraordinary photographs and then successfully sold those works. It is work to develop one’s own talent and vision. And we live in an age of instant gratification…often on the back or cost to someone else. And I get that we can be inspired by others and follow along when we address our own canvases. But when it comes down to making money off those influences by copying, a line is crossed.

So with that I will step off the soapbox and show some fairly lousy pen drawings in my Marks book.

Fun drawings of boats on indigo.

A visual contemplation on lousy handwriting. Maybe, just maybe I should have spent some time in a calligraphy class.

And I have a follow up today on my soapbox from yesterday when I started this blog.

This morning I read on the “friend”s facebook page where I posed my question about whether he felt what he was doing was an ethics issue, a reply was posted from someone who wanted me to know that artists consider copying the sincerest form of flattery and copying is how the very best artists learned their craft. I responded that I did not think that artists who have spent careers developing their signature work only to be copied and undersold would agree. I also said that there is a plethora of writings on this subject and the sad thing is that there even needs to be.

I wondered why I was not getting a notice that more comments were made. So I went to the page only to find I have been “unfriended”.  Probably a good idea.

Today in the mail from my daughter I received the tin box of 12 Derwent Graphitint tinted watersoluble graphite pencils, two boxes of three each Derwent permanent line makers in .1, .3, and .5, and three Cretacolor graphite watercolor pencils in red, green, and blue….all HB…they are very greyed down colors….perfect. I will try them out in my marks book.

We walked on the trail this morning so I will leave you with a picture from there.

Til later.

This is the view from the apartment window toward the woods. It is a cloudy day. Drizzly this morning. Lee has a new caregiver today. His first male who seems nice, young and willing to work with Lee on his rocks.

I walk past this gong and sculpture getting over here to the apartment.

Today friends who brought me scotch, bread and madeleines a while back return with sour dough starter. I have a box of Second Best Malted Cookies I Ever Ate for them and a poetry book. Seems the least I can do for their kindnesses toward Lee and me. Kent draws funny cat postcards to send to Lee weekly and Catharine gave me some of her indigo powdered pigment to turn into a watercolor. I am using some in my marks book as background color to draw into. It shows up on the pages after these latest ones using another friends pigment from Italy.

I liked doing the mobile. Not the chimes. I did not like the sketchiness of the flora and fauna on these pages so filled the white areas with dots. My daughter has sent me some graphite filled colored pencils so I will try those for color next. There is a boat sailing off into Catharine’s blue on the next page…likely I will fill it with stripes….anything to avoid too much emptiness.

Speaking of indigo blue, remember this boro coat that a friend, Suzy, gave me in St. Louis?

 

Then I added my own old clothing bits and made this shirt modeled by Ed here.

Now I have put it into a sewing basket and bought a blue thread to add stitching lines on all the patches. This will be my next stitching project because the night time animals are finishing up.

I am working on the bat.

I tend to drag my feet when I get to the last of something. But if I have a new project waiting and ready, it is not so hard to wrap things up. Now what am I supposed to do with all those night critters?!

Catharine and Kent just left. They brought not only the starter but a beautiful loaf of bread and a handwoven towel. It was such a good visit talking about everything from taking online classes, to mutual friends in Australia to our children.

Lee wanted me to check out the stone work he and Dillon have been doing. He is bringing more stones from down below to up by the driveway to finish his project. With this much energy and Dillon’s help, maybe I can get them to work on the trail stones next. Dillon is scheduled to return Wednesday.

Better stop now.

Til later…