Celestial Spring, the phases of the sun and moon, II

This is the latest in the series, a big mixed media mess, but OH DID I HAVE FUN MAKING IT! I've been fiddling around with it for months, it's on a full size sheet of Arches watercolor paper, so it's not my normal size, the big ones always take longer to make. I don't know if the picture here will properly document the layers involved, but what I've done is start off with a flood of yellow watercolor, then I let it puddle and dry, throwing salt on it, tipping it so the wet can run and drip, I splattered white acrylic paint all over, then let it dry. After it dried I began to draw on it in pencil and colored pencil, spattering water all over it, shaving pastel dust and water soluble pigments (graphite and colored pencil) , and then weeks on and off of adding more drawing and shavings, water, splashes and scratches, until yesterday when I said "All done!" There are plans for another, a but a winter theme, something deep ultramarine blue...very dramatic...fun stuff like that! I'm adding two details, I hope they will help give you an idea what's going on in there...

Have a happy new year!!!!!

More from the "Celestial Spring Series"

Is it any indication that I'm already tired of this winter when I'm thinking about spring???

Hmmmmm...maybeeeeeeeee...





These two came from the same mixed media pallet, usually when I find a combination that I'm enjoying, I make the most of it and get busy making more the first one is an Untitled, it's part of the Celetial Spring Series, made on a scrap piece of mat board that came from a cut window, and the second one is also from the Celestial Spring Series, but it has a name: April Hath Come On... it was exhibited last Summer/Fall at the Syracuse Technology Garden. They're watercolor and graphite, splattered, shaved, brushed, drawn, scratched, and sprinkled...lots going on throughout the surface...

























Sometimes I just have too much fun!

The Ocean

I love the ocean, the few times that I've seen it, waded into it, and the one time I went on a whale watch (Gloucester), one of my favorite books is Moby Dick, and I grew up watching Jacques Cousteau...the ocean is such a fascinating place, a force...lovely.

This drawing is a mixed media, watercolor, color pencil, and pencil on Arches paper...it's a busy surface, and the lines trail along, swirl and curl, some of the holes have fine details that the watercolor made which I didn't have the heart to manipulate...there's an Art Nouveau essence about it...it flows and grows...

On spirituality and free will...

Making art for me is spiritual...some would say my talent is a gift from God...I do know that my art comes from me. These drawings are what I do, they give me great joy, and I have never been happier with my art as I have been these last few years of making art. Yes, at times it mystifies me when I finish a drawing or reading a passage in my books and declare my amazement that it actually came from me. I very often surprise myself while I follow my bliss...it's part of the fun...

Maybe I'm too secular in my thoughts for the comfort of others...somehow being enlightened by knowledge and questioning the "higher authority" makes me immoral or somehow "lost" in the eyes of others. I am part of this world, and I believe in something other than what is preached from a pulpit, and I do not take what is written in the Bible literally...I learned at an early age that if I did, I would be a repressed, unhappy soul, too afraid of going to Hell for the crime of having independent thoughts...therefore, I have gone through life with my free will firmly intact. I have no problem with the beliefs of others, "to each his own" rolls off my tongue quite readily, I have no quarrel with such things...this is a free country, God does not offend me, the traditions of Christmas warm my heart, I only dislike the in-your-face marketing that starts just before Halloween. I take exception to being called "faithless" because I don't participate in the public professing of faith within the confines of organized religion. What I have is special, it is "wonder", I can look around and experience awe as I look upon the landscape covered in snow, the sunshine shimmering through ice, marveling over the blue in the jay's feathers, and his clarion voice. I have the sincerest belief in the sanctity of life, of all life. I believe in the human spirit, the light within us that burns bright, and that I will go on long after my body has become tired and has perished. And I believe in freedom. I don't suffer fools gladly, and I don't take kindly to politicians who alienate half the population of our country because they believe they are "just" in their crusade against those intolerable secularists who believe in the separation of church and state to ensure that all men are equal. It is sad to see my country so divided, I am sad to see our world at war over doctrine, and whose god or prophet is better. Who has the bigger bomb? Or the most bombs?

The Golden Compass is just a story created from someones imagination, it isn't something to fear because it expresses an idea that conflicts with someones faith. Your faith cannot be very strong if you feel threatened by fiction. It frightens me when creativity is shunned, threatened, put on trial, forbidden, blacklisted, banned, or worse, if ever, shut down. That is unacceptable to me. People who berate an artist for their creative motivations do not believe in freedom. It's ironic that it is a story about free will...my goodness that's such a scourge of humanity! If you have free will you might question everything told to you, and become a non-believer. And it's written by an atheist, the poor devil...

Oy vey, I not only make incomprehensible pictures, I also play with words!

I look to this recent drawing, and love it for its freedom, the dabbling and curiosity that lead me to making it, and how I wallowed in creating it from my heart, my mind, my soul...I post it here today with my thoughts on spirituality and my wayward politics that might piss-off the "right people"...

I drink a toast to free will.

Luna

How about some color...yes, I do like color and play with it on occasion, Luna is a simple little piece of watercolor splashes, color pencil and pencil drawing layered on top, the texture of the Arches watercolor paper also has a hand in the resulting feel of the piece, I like digging into the heavier paper with a hard pencil lead, or brushing the surface with the side of a sharpened point...

It's very peaceful, soft splashes of pre-dawn twilight and celestial spheres...

Dreams on a New Moon Night

Another nocturne in which my pencil wanders around making random marks...going with the flow...

Night Haze

Another one of my nocturne images, its funny thinking about a hazy moon lit summer night in November...why not, right?

Eclipse Symphony

There's a glow in this one that I love...


I tend to lean toward the darkest darks, call it a weakness...in the places where I keep it light, I try to make the most of the marks I make, I try not to leave too much 'dead air' in there...call it a compulsion, I would do it in elementary school too, I'd fill the entire sheet of paper, edge to edge with something just to make it look "finished".

I once had an adjunct at SU get on my case about my use of dark colors in my work, she even said something ridiculous (naturally out loud so everyone could hear) "Do you have mental problems?" What an ass, right? I was so insulted, I left the classroom, went down the hall to the office, got an Add/Drop form and did the deed. I had had about enough with her long before that comment, I dropped the class to get rid of her negative influence...at the time I was "in love" with the idea of Ad Reinhardt's black paintings, Joseph Albers' Homage to the Square, and Mark Rothko's work, the subtle differences these artists mixed into each color, and then laying them down on the canvas was positively fascinating to me, a chemistry of color. I guess she wasn't "getting it", and I was too immature to really know what I was trying to do with color and having to conform to the curriculum of the class...I was always doing something wrong or something not to someone's liking, thinking beyond the newsprint pad in figure drawing class, finishing the drawings when the prof wanted them to be unfinished...again the compulsive need to fill the sheet with "something", telling a story, giving the figure a room to sit in, something more than a shadow or a chair...always "playing". Man, I was a lousy student. I was always torn between what I wanted to do with my art and what was expected from me...in some cases it was a battle of egos (not that I have an overwhelmingly huge one, but I was tired of being bullied by those who did.) So, I wound up making a bunch of art that I didn't really like during my junior/senior years, I painted these awful things to annoy people, then sat there at critiques in my paint spattered finery, wearing sunglasses, smoking cigarettes, and then having the nerve to say what annoys everyone the most: "It's too personal to talk about"...it was all an act, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Ha ha! I laugh at it now, but I was really bitter back then, I was so disgusted by the experience, it's no wonder I didn't paint much for a long time after graduation. I pretty much had to start over again, and relearn everything.

Thankfully, I'm in a good place with my art now...I'm where I wanted to be back when I was nineteen, and I was a sponge, soaking up information to think about later...experimenting, and playing, going with my personal flow...following my bliss...I'm truly happy with my work.

Turner's Joy at Dawn

This is a little one, only 8 x 8 inches square on Stonehenge paper, I taped off the square in the middle and painted it with white acrylic, let it dry, took off the tape, then had fun all over it with graphitint pencils, drenched them with water, scumbled all over it with a brush, scribbled with the blue and the white tinted graphite pencils while the paper was still damp, and touched up here and there with a 6H pencil...

Oh, I had so much fun!

The colors reminded me of J.M.W. Turner's work, he's been an influence in my work for many years, so I give him a nod in the title...

The central square has appeared in a couple of other pieces that I've done this past year, I treat it like an additional window, adding a different texture to it's surface creates a different platform to work on, a focal point...a structure in the midst of the natural elements...

It's a nice departure from the complex twists and whorls of my other drawings, I don't ever want to be limited to just one "style" of drawing and painting...there will be more to come from this direction, I have a fresh pad of Stonehenge paper just for this type of "project"!

Black n' Blue

Graphite, watercolor, colored pencil, and a few pinches of salt for texture...this drawing is about playing with texture, letting the salt and the hard lead pencils rough up the paper surface...I had quite a bit of fun with this one...

A touch of purple

Sometimes it's just a touch of color that I want to tip a drawing toward something special...something dear to my heart...but no one else's. This was one of those drawings that blackly rambled without direction until the purple touched off a spark, like a stained glass window, and then I smeared in with a Chinese white colored pencil to make some of the black lines recede into the background...I love the motion of this drawing, it rambles and swirls, ripples and flows...natural chaos...

Sometimes I have a hard time deciding which way is up, usually I settle for how it sat in my lap or which side I worked from the most, but I worked from all directions so for now I like it this way, but I also enjoy looking at it upside down...and from either side...

1 - 2 - 3 - 4...

Must it be? It must be!

The Beethoven String Quartet in F (Opus 135) cries out Must it be? It must be! (Muss es sein? Es muss sein!) in the last movement, the portentous question is replied with an exultant answer...this drawing is my bit of personal inquiry while searching for answers...but mine is less confident than Beethoven's query, this quartet written near the end of his life gives off a sense of being content, cheerful, and "above the fray" after a stormy life filled with frustrations and stress, there was no conflict, just peace.























I crumpled the paper specifically for this piece...a representation of my personal stress, and then initiated peace into it by using the wrinkles, tears, and creases as media along with my pencils, the result satisfies me in a curious way...I adore this piece...

This pair on green paper, continues the process (I love the color), the result remains interesting. I'm looking to make more, only I want to be more bold with the "destruction" of the paper surface...possibly gouging, making tears, holes, and losses, uneven edges, creating fragments to piece together, like a puzzle...or like the pieces of crumbled stones that I find in the yard with fossils impressed into their surface, I like piecing them together, opening the layers to look at the remains...just having fun...

Lumina

This was a drawing I almost gave up on, but pushed it a little bit further figuring, what the hell, I had nothing to lose doing more to it, could it get worse, well, yes it could have, but it didn't...every time I look at it now I'm glad that I did it.

On a Cold Day in July

Forgive the lack of cropping, but why not show the messy parts along with the best...I had sooooo much fun making this little one, I just scanned her this morning and I'm dressing her up in a mat and frame for an exhibition in downtown Syracuse at the Syracuse Technology Garden! This is watercolor, pencil, colored pencil, and salt on Rising Stonehenge paper, it's approximately 8 x 8 in size, just a little one, but it's gorgeous in a big way.

Night Haze

That's what I wrote in the margin when I first finished the drawing, but lately I've been calling it "Dreams on a New Moon Night."

I fooled about with the new point of the pencil on this one, some of the new pencils come from the store with these nifty ridges on the point, I love to roll them on the paper to take advantage of the texture they make until they're worn off and I have to sharpen it...

Pastoral Window

The first day of July actually feels like the first day of September, it's chilly enough to put a fire in the woodstove.

This drawing is a patchwork of mediums, the "window" is a square of white acrylic paint, that fantastic burgundy color is the Derwent Graphitint "Port" pencil after adding water, then additional dry sketching with more tinted graphite pencils , colored pencils, and regular pencil (hard and soft) enhanced the natural flow of the water drenched pigment.

A lovely bit of work.

Rise

Wow. Another inspiration from just a graphite dust smear, my sketchbook is loaded with so much productivity, it's been real fun going with the flow of creativity. I worked with dust, hard leads scratching the surface, and soft leads to "etch" the lines that the hard leads made, create deep shadows, and then lifting soft textures with a kneaded eraser...

The heart of everything that is...

I counted how many drawings I've made since my show at the Delavan in November and it seems I've made ninety new things...I've been busy...this little drawing is one of them...

I've been playing around with soft pencils, 9B and 8B mostly, I'm in love with their squishy texture, and the dust...you see, I've bought wood less pencils so I keep the shavings from the sharpener in a small tub, dip in and smear it around...oh, yes, I'm having way too much fun with it. These aren't as detailed as my others, the harder pencils are best for that...

I also bought a very small sketch book (about 4 x 4) back in April, I'm filling that up with more random marks...for a while there I was doing a drawing a day, but life often gets in the way of that sort of pace...so I've slowed it down a little bit and just go with the flow...

Celestial Spring

This is a mixed media, watercolor, pencil, water-soluble graphite shavings, pastel shavings, and color pencil...I think that's everything...lots of splashing, lots of color, and lots of thought...I have looked the spots off it today, I'm thinking it might be done...

Rites of Spring

This little drawing goes well with this "melty" day...the birds at my feeder have started to make their spring time songs in spite of the three feet of snow drifted around our yard. My dog Max is shedding his winter coat, he leaves tufts of black fuzz on everything, even on the snow. There is a change in the light, the feel in the air, the day is as changeable as the texture of this drawing.

Eyes on the Prize

This small mixed media image is a treat, kind of an accidental watercolor happening that I teased out with color pencil and pencil, creating delicate ribbons of color. Not bad for something that I almost didn't do anything with. It's that Prismacolor tuscan red that I like so much, it really has a nice glow to it that I like. I tend to draw a lot with the television on, I'm a PBS fan, and I happened to have on the civil rights documentary "Eyes on the Prize" and I was feeling somewhat empowered at the time, so it came by its name that way...

Winter Song

Winter Song is a fitting image for the blustery day, Lake Effect snow, I said earlier in the day: "The snow devils are thick as thieves out there, they've got us surrounded!" Along with the blowing and drifting snow I've seen patches of blue sky and sunshine...it's been a beautiful January day, a good day for staying inside and making something beautiful.

Epiphany

Well, this is the finished product from an earlier post...her name is Epiphany, I finished last night...stayed up later than I should have, but I can't resist the drive to work when it's there...

The process is as follows...

The paper is 140 lb cold press Arches watercolor paper (15 x 11 overall size, image is 13 x 9 1/2"), it has a nice "tooth" to it to create texture when using dry media. I taped the sheet down to a piece of matboard with artist tape to make a clean margin and hold it in place. Then I took my raw graphite chunk and scrubbed it over the paper allowing the crumbles to make random lines as well...then using a paper towel I softened the overall image area, grading dark to light and carefully maintaining the curving lines that developed. Then lifting the black and gray with the kneaded eraser creating fluttering marks and light gray lines. I've carefully defined shapes with hard pencils, the 5 H, 4 H and 2 H, again touching off details with the eraser. Once I finished I misted it with fixative to prevent smudges.


How do I know I'm done? Well...sometimes I don't...but last night I knew...so far it's been a productive new year!