Coffee And Paint Drips Blog - Page 52 of 79

Thought for Thursday

“Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.”
Nora Ephron,author

While my granddaughter was fast asleep after her bottle this morning, I headed to my watercolor paints at the dining room table. Like I have mentioned before, the light from the window at this spot is great. Even thought it’s a rainy, windy morning the light is still good, north facing light. The basement studio hasn’t seen any action in a while because it’s easier to keep an eye on my charge if I paint nearby. I set up the usual suspects and painted for twenty minutes.

I haven’t had the chance to get a smaller block of paper for these quick works so, as suggested by a fellow artist and blogger friend Pat, I cut larger paper down to the size I need. The way I paint, the bigger the paper, the bigger I go so I have to pencil in a dot to limit the area.

The paper I am using is Arches. The small notebook was Canson, and I’m noticing a difference. The Arches paper block stays wet longer, not so the Canson notebook pages. I’m also finding that I can’t paint as fast with the Arches because it’s still wet when I want to add color and then it gets muddy. I have to pay attention. Learning how to use the tools is part of the process, so it’s all good.

This is how the painting looks after twenty minutes. It’s not exactly how I’d like it to be so later on, if I get the chance, I will go back to clean it up.

On impulse yesterday, I purchased a 10 pack of small stretched canvas for almost no money at, gasp, Michael’s Crafts. I do hope there will be some oil painting in my future, meaning this winter. How does twenty minutes of oil painting sound? Can it be done with any success? Can I do it with a modicum of success? I guess I will have to try it and see.

Painting on Sunday

The weekend was pretty quiet around here and I had hoped to get many things done. The Mr. had planned a fishing trip with his buddies so I planned to be home getting the house ready for holiday decorating. My Sunday was set! I even hoped to take time out to paint something for twenty minutes.

The fishing trip was leaving from Freeport, NY, on Long Island. Freeport is on the way to Jones Beach and very close, which was a plus to The Mr. He’s gone fishing out of Montauk on the south fork and Greenport on the north fork, and every where in between. This trip was a short drive to the boat, but then the captain takes the fishermen out in the Atlantic Ocean for three hours to the spot. Gear, food, and men were ready for a full day. The boat was leaving the dock at 3A.M. Sunday morning and expected to return by 7P.M. Sunday night. All day.

I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast. Usually I’m the pancake lady on Sundays. Now I could sit with my little breakfast, my hot coffee and my newspaper. A quiet morning is one of my best times. If I’m pancake lady I’m so busy making them that my coffee gets cold before I can enjoy it. This time, nice hot coffee! I daydreamed of the day ahead, what I would get done, and what I was interested in painting.

Since I was invited to join a new blog The Little Art Club, I thought I would try the theme “Candy” in a twenty minute time slot. It would be just enough time to paint something as a start. Ideas floated around in my head while I sipped my coffee. When I was ready I headed off to paint for twenty minutes. Heaven, and it was still morning! Later in the day I worked on this another twenty minutes.

(I tried linking to the blog for this post, but it seems it’s unavailable. I wonder what happened?)

Around 11 A.M., The Mr. called to say they were already back from the trip. It seemed that another fisherman collapsed as they started casting their lines. Frantically, the captain, his mates, and the other guys performed CPR to try and revive the man. The Coast Guard was alerted and they tried to help, but unfortunately they were unsuccessful. When the boat returned to the dock three hours later, they were met by the police, detectives, fire personnel, and ambulances. The Mr. and his buddies had to give their names and statements. Needless to say he was home early.

Back to the Future

When I was in college studying for my BFA in painting, my professor threw it out there that women very rarely become full time artists because they end up getting married and having children. Oh great, thanks alot. But really, when the time came that’s what happened to me.

In the field of study I chose, I was able to do studio art, commercial art and art education. I had worked for a studio doing paste-up work on fashion catalogs and electronics magazines, so I had that knowledge. I liked the idea of art education, but hated the high school kids I did student teaching for. Real cocky kids, not my cup of tea. After I graduated I landed a full time position as a paste-up/layout artist where I stayed for a few years up until I had my first son.

Those days most women were still at home with the children and that’s what I did. Even if I had the idea to keep working there was no one I could trust to leave my son with, every family member I had was working. Let me say I was thrilled to be at home with him. No more jealous bosses, crazy co-workers and wild fashion magazine overtime. No thanks! I’ll take my chances being at home raising my kid. I marveled at how he grew and changed every day. We played, sang, took walks, drew pictures and it was all fun for me. When he slept I painted or did pastels, knit, sewed little outfits, cooked, cleaned, and did the things to keep the house. I ran the roost. I was the boss. My son was my side-kick, my little helper.

Art had to take a back seat like my professor said. Over the years I made my art in fits and starts, while my babies slept and later, when they were at school. And as the time passed the field of commercial art changed so much that I couldn’t go back. The paste-up artists’ bull pen had been reduced to one artist and the computer. I missed that boat. So it was back to painting.

Now I’m home having a ball watching my granddaughter. Thank goodness I’m an artist at home or I wouldn’t have this precious opportunity. I am back to the beginning, painting while baby sleeps! This time around I have more experience under my belt and I know how to get more art in. That great idea of twenty minutes of painting was unheard of in my college days, but now it’s how I roll. Twenty minutes is working. Even though I hit the brick wall of resistance a little bit ago, I’m back in it.

I am back to the future. Life is amazing.

Thought for Thursday

“A lot of Thanksgiving days have been ruined by not carving the turkey in the kitchen.”

~Kin Hubbard

I’m very thankful for the great readers and commenters here. Thanks to all you for listening to my yapping! I hope everyone enjoys a wonderful holiday with family and friends.

Leaves of Resistance

Knock Knock! Who’s There? Oh, it’s You..Again

Where have I been this past week? Right here, at home, visiting with Resistance. Yeah, it hit me again, that lousy Resistance, with a capital R. Sometimes things go a little off track and lands me smack in the blahs of creativity. Meaning no creativity. Meaning resistance mode.

What’s an artist to do? Well, first I decided to lay off bugging and nagging my inner artist. I gave in to resistance and took a nap. Maybe it was well deserved. Feeling off is not going to help anything, but dropping out of it can. So I did. That’s all I could do on Day 1 visit with Resistance.

To back up a bit: I ran out of paper in the travel watercolor pad I was using. Bad move #1- I didn’t shop for another pad. I still have paper, but it’s larger. So, I decided to just use the larger paper for the next work. I set up a small still life of the usual items and added some interesting agate stones I have for my jewelry making. Maybe they were too interesting? Make that Bad move #2.

As I was free from babysitting one day this week, which is another story I will have to tell another day, I sat down to paint this set up. Remember, bigger paper. I began to sketch in the objects with paint, no pencil drawing. I had hoped to do twenty minutes. Bad move #3-20 minutes on big paper with interesting items that had detail, lots of detail.

How did it come out? Disaster. Knock-knock, Resistance at the door! Hi, how have you been? Come on in! It’s been such a long time!

The next day I took that nap. The day after that I pushed myself outside to take some photos of the Japanese maple tree with it’s bright red leaves. I wanted to post them, but Resistance wouldn’t let me saying we should have a coffee together. So I had coffee in my ‘dream corner’ of the living room and looked out the window at the back garden. Resistance told me to just leave that horrible painting on the dining room table where I started it. Sure, look at it every time I pass through to the kitchen, why not?

The following day I ran my errands and totally ignored the painting and anything to do with it.

Do you know how hard it is to fight the soothing call of Resistance? I must say I’ve been lucky these last few months. Keeping resistance at bay was a breeze. It was smooth sailing for a while, plugging into creativity, staying in the mode with 20 minutes at a time, happy with the process and feeling good about the outcome of it. Nice work. I guess a visit with Resistance was inevitable sooner or later.

What did I do after all that? I knit. After I knit, I am going to ditch that painting.

Redecorating

Welcome to my redecorated blog! I started fooling around with the new templates on Blogger while playing with the iPad and decided to change it up a bit. It’s almost as satisfying as rearranging the living room without the heavy lifting. But by no means is it easy.

What size typeface, which typeface, can I even change the typeface? And then which colors look good with the backgrounds, photo background, flat color, no color? Can I move this here or not? Will it fit, can I change it? So many choices and then not enough choices.

The template with a black post background is really interesting to look at but not so much fun to read white type from it. It made me cross eyed. Then again I didn’t play with the options to change the colors. It can make one dizzy, so I stopped at this design you see.

The banner at the top is another story. I painted this watercolor a while ago and made the banner somehow and I have trouble trying to fit it into this set up to make it fit across the page. Okay, so I just added the color to clean it up and fit. I think it looks alright the way it is. I know it’s just a blog, but it’s like you are coming to visit my house. I would like it to be neat, clean, and comfortable for me and for you.

Now if I have time I might move the living room couch across the room for a different look there. Will it work? I’m not sure, but it might be fun to try it and see.

Friday Fun

Yes, Friday is sometimes fun. It’s a busy day for me with lots of things to be done before the weekend. One thing is food shopping. Why do I always have to visit the fruit market or the big super market? Why do we have to do all this eating, and cooking, and shopping? It’s too much.

So I did my running around and came home exhausted. By the time I got myself together at home it was already afternoon! Where does the time go? I should, at least, be having a blast doing something I like to do. And even that doesn’t get a whole day!

Yesterday the town where we live had trucks out vacuuming the fallen leaves for mulch. When I came home from my errands I found that one of my neighbors had blown all my leaves into the street for the trucks. He’s a nice guy, very energetic. In the winter he plows the whole block with his snow plow in the driving snow. Like I said, energetic.

A small, bright red Japanese maple leaf was poking itself up over the mounds of leaves as if to say Hi! Over here! I took it out of the leaf pile and put it in my Artist’s Way notebook to dry.

This afternoon I arranged it with my favorite rocks and painted it. I did the twenty minute challenge thing so when the time was up I stopped painting. I got a little watery with the rocks, which I didn’t want to do, but the leaf looks good to me. I will go back and work on the rocks after this dries so I can better define that area.

I’m happy to say I’ve kept up with these twenty minute paintings. It’s never boring. I like the process and I’m even comfortable with the outcome most times. The challenge is helping me produce more finished work besides.

The hydrangea painting is waiting in the studio. I think it hates me.

Thought for Thursday-I’m Just Not Ready for Christmas Yet

Today I had the day off from sitting with the Princess and I had some errands to run. I’m not ready to run around with her in my car. I don’t have one of those car seat things yet anyway. But she’s still small and I’d rather be at home with her until she gets a little bigger. So the days we’re not together I do my own things.

While I was out I remembered I needed those flood lights for my kitchen. One by one they blew out and I had no back up bulbs. I stopped in a nearby store that once was a 5&10. Remember those? Dark and big with creaky wood floors, it was fun to look around and find just about anything you could think of. Well, they renovated it and now it’s all bright, shiny and new. Rats! They still have everything, but I liked the way it used to look. It reminded me of being a kid and rummaging through Woolworth’s. Is anyone going to remember Woolworth’s anymore? Anybody remember the luncheonette counter at Woolworth’s? I do.

So I looked in this store to no avail. Plenty of light bulbs, not the ones I needed. I decided to visit one of those huge and inexpensive hardware stores, Home Depot. Plenty of light bulbs, not the ones I needed. No luck.

Next door to this Home Depot is Marshall’s, a designer discount store. Also big. Would it hurt to just take a quick look around? I thought not, so I did. Guess what? I couldn’t wait to leave! I did a run through and I was done. Why did I run out so quickly? Christmas had exploded in that store!

I love Christmas, but not the craziness that comes with it and every year it seems to get worse. If I had been out shopping in October and saw Christmas stuff out I would have to leave. I’m not ready for it until after I see Santa Claus at the end of the NYC Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! Don’t show it to me months before.

The whole store was decorated. The gift items were out, all red and green and gold and tinsel and Santa Claus. You name it, they had it ready for gift giving. But I’m not ready. All I wanted to do today was buy those light bulbs and all I got was the anxiety of what gift to give who. Yikes!