Labor Day Effort

For quite a few years, the Filthy Pikers have toyed with the idea of "10K for Labor Day" -- that is, writing 10,000 words over the four day Labor Day weekend. I've never managed to achieve that, but this year, I thought I'd give it another try.

In my voyage of creative discovery, I realized anew this past weekend just how much I hate deadlines and quotas. I could not find a single drop of desire to write, even though I have two interesting stories started.

However, I followed my sudden rabid urge to create. I needed to make an image to go with Charles Cicirella's poem "Modern Day Job" in the Piker Press, so I tackled a work of pastels. No, I wasn't thinking of the Hulk when I made green the focal point of the picture. (In fact, when I was done I wished I hadn't used green.) It was a lot of fun having ALL my pastels spread out on the side of my work desk, so much so that I'm going to do that again today.

Then it was time to move on. My Sony camera has more features to it than I was ever able to use (DSC-H400), but with the creative urge on, I perched on the back patio in the morning light and just played with the thing. Photo after photo, setting after setting -- it was glorious!

This is the breadfruit plant that thrives in the southeast corner of the yard, under a canopy of fern pine and hopseed. I loved the way the light was shining through this newly-unfurled leaf.

My neighbor's queen palm was blooming, and I had a good view of the fascinating golden cascade. Using the fence as a tripod, I was able to get a nice zoom-in of the blossoms.

Back to the shade and morning light! Bernie has a coleus on the shady bank, the variety is called "Camp Fire." The stems are dark red, nearly black, and the leaves catch the light beautifully. Sadly, the camera didn't want to catch the light except as a glare.

All that warm, pinky lit-from-within color was lost. How can a camera see things so much differently than my eyes? Exploring a light-blocking setting on the camera (for the first time ever) gave a somewhat better result:

From the darkness of the shadows, I moved to full sun on my potted corn plants. After giving me a few delicious ears this summer (it has been a lousy corn year everywhere in the Central Valley because of the high heat), the corn has dried. Beautiful when it's green, beautiful dried, too. When it turns white, I think of it as "ghost corn."

Back to the studio, and Photoshop. I needed a cover image to accompany Ken Dubuque's humorous essay, "Armed and Dangerous." Using some public domain clip-arty images, I was able to cut and paste together a contraption that put me in mind of the mommies who barrel along the sidewalks, shoving huge buggies before them, all the while staring at their smart phones:

The stripes were simply for graphic effect visually, but what was stupendous to me was that in fiddling with settings and tools in Photoshop, I was able to get onto the screen just what I could see in my head.

Between Photoshop and my camera, I was able to capture this antique-colored portrait of Bernie's zinnias. I've always loved how zinnias hold their shape even while their summer color begins to fade.

And finally, since our cell phone joined the ranks of Electronics That Refuse To Do What They Were Meant To Do, Bernie got me a Motorola g6 that has a pretty spiffy camera feature of its own. This is the first photo I took with it, on Monday evening:

My glass of wine! What better subject could there be, at the end of the holiday weekend? And with that tenth picture, if a picture is worth a thousand words, I did achieve 10K for Labor Day. Cheers!

My First Giclee

Joma and I were wandering around Kaiser Permanente Hospital the other day (while Dzyiadzy had a quick routine eye exam) and I noted, on the walls of the halls, some art work whose medium was called "Giclee." (Kaiser has some really, really absorbing art on its walls, displaying local artists' work.)

I was impressed with some of it, but I had no idea what "giclee" was. So I Googled it when we came home. Giclee is an art form, recognized (named?) in 1991. It involves a print of an original work, enhanced by application of other media, such as paint, pastels, pencil, ink, whatever.

HAD to try it out, so I printed out a picture of one of my corn crops in the past, one in which I had leached out much of the color to give a shady look to it. Then I added a couple yellow/orange values to it, some purple, and a bit of green. I was thrilled with the result, even though Bernie viewed it and was unable to see where I had added anything. (It's subtle, okay?)

He went on to snark about "giclee" meaning "pintura por los numeros" in Spanish, which was rather rude, but kind of funny, too.

The main drawback I see is the cost of printer cartridges, but it was fun to add my own highlights to my own photo and come up with something a bit different. I have another print waiting for me on the work desk, but tomorrow is tentatively "oils" day, and I plan to stink up the studio with solvents on multiple canvases, throw convention and decorum to the wind, and paint like a maniac.

Fun Is Hard Work

Today began with a 7am wake-up. I really didn't want to get up that early, but I had a trail-ride scheduled, and that meant I had 2 hours to come up with a cover image for the Piker Press.

And to eat breakfast, get dressed, and make lunch for three riders.

I had a couple reference photos to work from, and chose to use pastels on black paper. Six colors only. The result was simplistic but worked. I photographed it, loaded it to my computer, and darkened the background, correcting the glare of the light on the paper.

I like the pants the best, and the shoes weren't too bad.

Then it was off to the kitchen to make sandwiches on french rolls (cheese, salami, bologna, turkey) and vinaigretted lettuce to add later; I packed chips and oranges and soft drinks into my cooler-on-wheels, and off I went for the ride.

Which was exotically beautiful, because Woodward Reservoir has been partially drained, exposing yards and yards of sandy beach. The grasses are green (green is our winter color) but the weeds were brown, and beyond the golden beach, the water was bright blue, and crested with little whitecaps on the waves. Sunshine kept us warm enough.

Whitecaps? On a reservoir?

Yezzz, the wind was up, about 15 mph, stirring the water. And right out of the north, so we needed the sun to keep us warm enough.

When we had our sandwiches after the ride, I watched the waves on the reservoir, just drinking in the gold and blue and green, glad to be done with the saddle, looking forward to a hot shower at home. Dink, after a week of good food, had been a handful -- he can't wait to get out on a new trail, and always starts out like he's on fire. That's good, that meant he's improving, health-wise, but wow, it also meant I had to ride like I knew what I was doing, not slog along like a sack in the saddle.

Good sketch, good ride, good day.

Catching up on Art Stuff

I'm still loving up the 15-minute art project idea. It worked really well for gift tags at Christmas time.

I started with some VERY cheap brown paper we scored at Lowe's, paper that is meant to be used as masking paper for painters to mask off windows and stuff they don't want to spatter paint on.

The paper -- in huge rolls for about $10 -- had a nice medium tooth to it. I don't know how it will hold up to light and age, but for 15-minute projects and practice pieces it will be fine.

I began by cutting my pieces of paper, no mean feat considering the dampness of the weather and the penchant for the paper to curl like Lillian's hair.

Then I soaked them on my polyurethaned watercolor boards, to stretch the paper and get it to lie flat. There's a slight finish on the masking paper, which I thought (correctly) the water would break down.

Once all four pieces were well and truly yummily wet and flat, I went at them with my cheap watercolor paints, swiping in broad shapes.

I kept the board with the papers flat, not wanting any runs if I could help it.

I'd decided on four seasons, one for each of my housemates, excluding baby Joan, who would only appreciate the art if she could munch on it.

After the initial splats of paint, I had to let each one dry a bit. Then I came back at them with additional pigment, thicker watercolors.

Another drying time had to come, and with it, the realization that the paper had held much more dampness than I'd expected, and most of the pigment had bled out into the brown paper.

The answer? More pigment, of course! I did some thicker blobs of color, and let it dry again.

And dry it did, and began to curl again, so I taped it down with little masking tape doughnuts (tape curled with the sticky side out, making it two-sided) and then had at it with pastels, just a bit here and there, to add texture and definitive lines.

I gave all four a quick spritz of fixative and set them out to dry yet another time.

With the Spring and Autumn ones, I also used an indelible ink pen to help with the trunk lines.

And then, I added a sentiment to each of my beloveds, to be carried on their Christmas gifts.

I photographed each of these against black paper; the angle of the camera gives them that not-quite-square look.

All in all, the project took considerably more than fifteen minutes, but each stage was short, and could be done in little bits in between other pressing daily matters.

I like the brown craft paper as a medium. The tooth is nice, and the color pleasantly neutral. Once our weather moderates, I'd like to cut a bunch more of it into manageable sizes and use it for pastels.

Hey, This Was Fun!

Yes, this was what I had in mind when I came up with my next idea for a 15-minute art project challenge.

I went out into the pouring rain and found five eucalyptus leaves (unmunched by leaf-cutter bees) and a sycamore leaf. Howie assisted by snatching leaves out of the gutter-full of rainwater and tearing them to bits -- that's his idea of gathering autumn leaves. I was simply looking for a few that were flat.

I slathered thick white watercolor paint on them, put them paint-side down on various papers, and then weighted them down with cardboard panels and cans of beans. Not crushed pineapple, not sauerkraut, beans. Butter beans and garbanzo beans, if you like specificity.

That was enough for one day.

The following day, I peeled the leaves off the paper to find lovely ghostly leaf prints. And over the next couple days, I added touches of pastel pencil to each.

There were three of these little projects: one was on cheap black construction paper, one on a not-quite-as-cheap gray craft paper, and the pictured one on Aquabee Bogus Rough Sketch, an unbleached paper that always disappoints me with its uneven tooth. You can see all three at my Flickr gallery.

I don't think I've had so much enjoyment from an art project in decades. It was simple, it produced a charming result, and it was FOR NO REASON. Cheap paint, on very cheap paper. Is that a waste? No, I guess not.

Today we took a walk, and on the way back, I collected another handful of variously-shaped leaves. Guess what I'm going to do with them!