a record of what i am learning|thinking|creating
Still loving my watercolor Moleskine. And I found my old Spirograph in a box of old toys that my parents dug out of their garage, so you’ll see a couple of little geometric doodles floating around the pages. Such a simple but brilliant little gadget!
bridge (2009.03.11):
sine waves (2009.03.15):
lemon drops – an idea borrowed from my food series (2009.03.17):
East of Eden was our April book club pick – after a couple of relatively quick, fun, “modern†novels, we felt we were due for something with a bit more depth and literary merit (whatever that means). Yes, the length of this book was daunting, and yes, there were times when I felt I had to trudge through Steinbeck’s detailed descriptions of the Salinas Valley, but there were also times when I found myself becoming completely absorbed in the lives of the characters and their constant battles between good and evil. By the time I got to the end of the book, I really felt like I’d been on a journey with a couple of the main characters – like I’d come alongside them in their joys and struggles. This feeling of investment is the sign of a good book to me, and so I’m giving this one 4 stars out of 5. And it’s nice to finish a novel with a real sense of accomplishment, with the belief that I am now a more well-rounded reader. I just wish I fully understood all of the parallels between East of Eden and the book of Genesis – where is my high school English teacher when I need him? Mr. Huth, if you’re out there, some of this was over my head…
Below are a few more food paintings, done for my art class which ended on Thursday. It’s fun being “outside the box”. My mind is still brimming with all kinds of new possibilities.
This one was done on rice paper, with curry powder sprinkled over tea and a small seaweed accent (can you tell I went a little crazy at the Asian food store?).
Pod outlined in tea on soy paper (I totally scored when I found these brightly colored wrappers) and sprinkled with cinnamon.
Flower shape cut with an X-acto knife out of dried seaweed. Smells fishy, but looks pretty.
Seed shape painted with red wine and dashed with cinnamon, for good measure.
Seed outlined in pencil (I cheated a little), filled in with olive oil, and dotted with soy sauce. Simple, but the color of oil-soaked paper is beautiful.
Rice paper soaked in water, dribbled with soy sauce, and laid out to dry. I love the translucency of the paper and the way it wrinkled and cracked.
Lemon slices soaked in wine and used as a stamp.
I’m ready to switch back to regular paints for awhile now, but I expect I’ll revisit edible art-ing again someday. It’s good when art-making feels like playing.
Trying new things, some of them working, some of them not…Â Nonetheless, it feels good just to be making stuff.
migliore (2009.02.04):
west elm (2009.02.11):
bulb (2009.02.22):
And I recently purchased my first watercolor Moleskine journal. The paper gives me a lot more flexibility to play with different types of paint (my standard sketchbook won’t take anything besides ink or pencil), and the landscape format is bringing out some new ideas.
wilted (2009.02.23):
light/dark (2009.03.01):
We had our second book club meeting last Saturday, and our February reading assignment was The Glass Castle. This collection of the author’s memoirs tells of a life that was marked by poverty and parental neglect. Heart-breaking, painful, and infuriating when parents refuse to play the role of parents. Makes me appreciate my relatively normal childhood. Stability was always something I took for granted – I never thought to be thankful for the fact that my dad never lit the Christmas tree on fire, my mom never relied on me to get her out of bed and to work in the morning, and I never had to fret over where or when I would find my next meal. Passages like this one made me cringe:
“Once, when an extra-big royalty check came in, Mom bought us a whole canned ham. We ate off it for days, cutting thick slices for sandwiches. Since we had no refrigerator, we left the ham on a kitchen shelf. After it had been there for about a week, I went to saw myself a slab at dinnertime and found it crawling with little white worms. Mom was sitting on the sofa bed, eating the piece she’d cut. ‘Mom, that ham’s full of maggots,’ I said. ‘Don’t be so picky,’ she told me. ‘Just slice off the maggoty parts. The inside’s fine.’ ”
But hope is found in the fact that despite the struggle of living in poverty with an alcoholic father and a self-absorbed mother, the author and her siblings band together to overcome the tragedy of their circumstances. Walls’ life seems to be a true tribute to resilience and self-empowerment.
I’m taking a class on abstract drawing and painting at a local art school on Thursday nights and have recently been introduced to some really fun, new ways of making art. Case in point: My assignment for the next 4 weeks is to make at least 10 drawings out of edible materials. I am using patterns found in nature as my source of inspiration, and these two pieces are the start of my tasty little collection.
The first drawing is a blow-up of the shell of a foxglove seed (I found a fantastic book that has beautiful microscopic photos of plant matter). I used a paintbrush dipped in Diet Coke to fill in the solid areas, then sprinkled the drawing with salt. This has faded a lot as it has dried, but I kind of like the mix of subtle color and gritty texture.
The second is a cross-section of a pomegranate. For this one, I painted the core with tea, then sprinkled with paper with cinnamon, which stuck to any of the wet areas. The texture and color remind me of rust. Cool.
I never knew there were so many art supplies to be found in our kitchen cupboards! Olive oil, molasses, corn meal, the possibilities are endless… Stay tuned for more savory drawings.
As always, haven’t been putting pencil to paper lately nearly as much as I’d like to, but I have managed to crank out a few little sketches. I’ve always wanted to be able to draw the human face and figure well, and so that’s been a theme in my sketchbook lately. I’m also into playing around with different media and still really love collage. My watercolor pencil is fun, too (although this moleskine is terrible for watercolor…). Anyhow, this is what’s been rolling around in this scattered old head of mine:
woman sitting – from how to draw the head and figure (2009.01.08):
face studies – from how to draw the head and figure (2009.01.11):
waterfall – collage from magazine clippings (2009.01.25):
bud (2009.01.27):
drippage – media exploration (2009.01.29):
man from toulouse-lautrec’s alfred la guine (2009.02.02):
This book tells the amazing true-life story of Greg Mortenson – a man who has devoted his life to promoting peace in Pakistan and Afghanistan primarily through building schools and educating children. His story is both both inspiring and daunting. Inspiring because it demonstrates the change that one selfless man can inflict. Daunting because it demonstrates the change that one selfless man can inflict. So much for using “I’m only one person” as an excuse for sitting on my butt… When you are willing to set aside your wants and needs and personal comfort, you are freed to focus on the lives of others, to empower them and bless them and make their lives better.
I love Mortenson’s attitude toward the fight against terrorism – it’s not about scare tactics, or weaponry, or implementation of American culture and systems. It’s about providing the often-desperate impoverished people in these rural areas of Pakistan with an alternative to the existing Muslim schools which often exclude girls and indoctrinate young boys with extremist beliefs. It’s about respecting other cultures, empowering them with the knowledge of a well-rounded education, trading our arrogance for humility. So much easier said than done, I understand, but isn’t it clear that the U.S. government’s current approach has not worked? Time to try something else, maybe?
Read this book.
This book was the subject of my very first monthly book club meeting. Several girlfriends and I have decided to read a book together each month and then convene on a Saturday morning for coffee and discussion. Our first book choice, unfortunately, turned out to be rather mediocre, and all of us agreed that we had a hard time really connecting with any of the characters in Run. I’ll spare you any of the uninspiring details. However, I will sing the praises of this whole book club idea. It’s a great motivation to read more, and a fabulous way to regularly connect with friends. I’d say that only about half of our discussion yesterday really focused on the book, but that was ok, because I’m in this for the friendship-building more than anything else. And it was neat to hear other how other women’s interpretations and impressions differed from my own (though we all generally agreed that this was a so-so read overall). Shane and I have been blessed with a wonderful group of common friends here in Seattle (rather than the my friends/his friends situation we had in California), but there is still great value in taking time to just hang with the ladies. And the fact that we’ve chosen meet at Macrina Bakery, which serves the most fantastic lemon lavender coffee cake, definitely doesn’t hurt things…
I haven’t been much into knitting lately – seems my focus is more on reading and studying these days, but still, I wanted to post a quick update on the projects I finished up last month.
This neckwarmer was a quick project, fun because it was a stitch pattern I’d never seen before. I got the pattern from Ravelry and used a double strand of really soft alpaca blend yarn. In retrospect, I wish I’d used a chunkier yarn so that the neckwarmer would stand up and hold its shape more (same problem I had with the cowl I made a few months ago), but then again, it does drape nicely this way. I’ve been keeping my eyes out for cool big buttons so that I can crank out a couple more of these when I have more time – they’d make great gifts. Or, if they happen to end up on my own scarf rack, so be it, because a girl can never have too many neckwarmers, right?
