New Year

Gotta say, I don't enjoy this time of year, cold and dark as it is.  I don't really like hunkering down in the house trying to stay warm, but there are some good things.  I catch up on my reading, watch some of the old movies that have piled up on my DVR, and I doodle and paint more than any other time of year.

Take this doodle, drawn yesterday in a successful attempt to avoid having to make some hard decisions about a collage/painting that is cooling its heels in the studio.  I had recently read an interesting book about Kurt Vonnegut's drawings, and spent a nice afternoon really looking at them, reading an introduction by his daughter Nanette, and an essay about his art from a critic.  Then I shamelessly copied a few into my sketchbook, since that seemed to be the best way to analyze his style.  For me, anyway.

Then I opened an email from Carla Sonheim, whose fascination with doodling into photos of sidewalk cracks leads to some very interesting, and often whimsical, results.

Anyway, I downloaded her "crack of the month" - which sounds dubious but is quite legitimate, and found myself channeling Kurt's style, more or less.  And I liked it. 

So, this afternoon I will quite procrastinating and go up and see what I can do with that troublesome collage/painting. 

Happy new year.

Finished - Winter Sisters

Winter Sisters

11x14 inches, oil and collage papers on canvas

This collage and oil painting of me and my younger sister is about done.  It was great fun to gradually see the image develop, and to imagine the colors of our coats and shoes.  

I honestly can barely remember us at that age, though it must have been about the time when I was questioning Santa Claus.  I recall thinking that the logistics of him flying all over the world were pretty shaky, when on Christmas Eve it snowed, and the heifers broke loose.  When I woke up on Christmas Day there were hoof prints everywhere in the fresh snow, and I decided - at least for one more year - that Santa had visited.  

We believe what we want to believe.  Merry Christmas! 

Another Work in Progress - More Personal

One of the things I especially enjoy about working from old snapshots is the opportunity to really look closely at the images.  I usually work with pictures of people I do not know, but this time I wanted to work with an old photo from maybe 1956 or so of my younger sister and me.

I scanned and enlarged the original, and drew us, simplifying the background so much as to be pretty much unrecognizable.  In the original we were standing on the covered front porch, in front of the wooden door that had an oval window filled with beveled glass.  The sun was in our eyes, and we were dressed in our good wool winter coats, trimmed in fur.  We both wore hats, tied under our chins. The shapes of the door and window behind us are only suggested here by using an old diary page, wallpaper and bits of a Wisconsin map.

Yesterday I started pushing back the paper background, suggesting a shadow of the overhead roof, and adding shadows behind us girls.  I still need to make decisions about the floor, and later when the skin tones are more dry, I need to warm up the flesh tones and deepen the shadows.

Staring at the old photo I remember how much Mother liked decorating the old farm house for Christmas.  I removed the homemade styrofoam-pipe cleaner-felt Santa head that hung on the door from my painting, and the bit of our Flexible Flyer sled that showed.  Clearly the picture was taken in December.  In those early days we always had green Christmas trees, covered with glass ornaments and heavy lead icicles that we kids liked to toss on the tree in a very un-artistic way.  Funny all those memories that return, just from staring at an old snapshot.