May 7, 2013 May 8, 2013

I have been having pain in my right arm and numbness in my right hand since November. Yesterday I had my physical and the doctor thinks I have inflammation of a nerve that runs down my arm and into my hand. Treatment has started and I won’t be able to do much with this hand and arm for a week or two so I thought I would “go back to the beginning”. In 2007 I realized that my love of art extended to the point of creating serious art. I have always been a drawer and a doodler and have taken occasional watercolor classes but my paintings were based on lessons in books or paintings of photographs  from calendars. I had never created art from scratch. I also had done NOTHING for 14 years. I dove in head first and have continued to learn and grow over the last six years.

I have always been fascinated by concepts and enchanted by certain words or groups of words. In 2008 I stumbled on the concept of the “Golden Mean” and started trying to think through interesting ways to use this concept. The painting below  was my first try and the first painting I sold in a gallery.

Tree – 2008

I started with the silhouette drawings used to differentiate different categories of trees in one of my landscaping books (for example; pyramidal shaped deciduous tree). Then I used a free form diagram of a landscape plan as the back ground. I have always been fascinated with calligraphy and oriental art so I integrated the word Tree and tried to give it an oriental look (today I could write TREE in actual calligraphy!) I had enormous fun with this and am still pleased to look back at it.

 

May 2, 2013 May 3, 2013

I hope all of my crayon paintings do not look the same to you. For me they are all different because I’m thinking about how to get differnt looks and how to handle different surfaces as I do each piece. I am always learning something new…

I was able to complete two more postcards.  On the first one I worked with greens, which are always hard for me…how do you get strong value differentiation? This one I punched up with red and a little yellow.

Postacrd 4

The second postcard used my favorite blues, violets, greens. I applied much less crayon than usual in order to determine how much was enough. Usually I apply crayon very heavily because it gives a nice, glossy, almost mosaic like, quality when dry.

Postcard 5

I got a nice, soft look on this one. Still haven’t “cleaned up” the edges on any of my postcards. It’s faster to do several at one time.