Abstract scribble

I'm done with my holiday break now and am back in class. Although it continues to be demanding, I'm still loving it. Our next assignment is called an Abstract Scribble. First we were instructed to use a big fat marker and create quick, simple line drawings of shapes that were abstract. This is what I came up with.

Then the client chose this one to be my motif.

Once the motif was selected, I reduced it and made a tossed layout.

The client approved the layout and I am working on color comps now. I'll post those when done.

The way we arrive...

Although I don't plan on ever giving birth, this is a topic that is important to me as a woman. The film examines possible reasons why our country has one of the worst infant mortality birthrates in the developed world - I think it is the second highest. It looks at the way our western medical perspective can encourage pregnant women and their families to feel that birth is a medical catastrophe waiting to happen. In countries with low infant mortality birthrates, use of midwives, doulas, etc. is very high (approx. 80%) and home births are much more acceptable. My desire in writing about this topic is not to say that every woman has to have a home birth. Like most other women's issues, I really just want women to be informed about all the choices available to them and then make the decision that is right for them. I was privileged and honored to attend the birth of a dear friend who was very thoughtful in her delivery choices. Since she was an "older" woman her pregnancy was considered "high risk." Her insurance would not cover any aspect of a home birth. So she and her husband came up with a combination of a hospital delivery attended by a midwife, doula and a supportive friend (me). It ended up being exactly the right choice for them. The delivery was awesome and they welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world. Afterward there was some difficulty in delivering the afterbirth and it was necessary for my friend to have additional medical care at which point we were all grateful to be in the hospital under the expert care of the doctors and nurses. Almost eight months later she and baby are thriving. Although this is a women's issue, it is actually something that we all experience in one form or another. We all have to come through that birth canal and that first ride should be the best of experiences.

dearest one...

Today is the 44th birthday of my dearest one. I was 16 years old when we met and he was 17. All it took was staring into his beautiful baby blues for me to be a goner. He was and continues to be unlike anyone else I've ever met. He can have me laughing by uttering a single syllable - it's more the look in his eye and the tone of his voice. He's sensitive when necessary as well as pragmatic when called for. He loves his family fiercely and surrounds himself with loving friends. One of his best attributes is that he takes wonderful care of me. So on this day celebrating 44 years of his life, I am definitely the lucky one. Here he is with the only other "honey" in his life other than me... our niece.

Happy New Year

A special gift from the Earth & Sun on the last day of 2007.

a white Christmas...

the view from the window of our mountain house in the Sierras.

light, shade & shadow

The last workshop I took in the fall session was called "Light, Shade, & Shadow." Although we learned about shading in the earlier workshops, this one was focused on shading from a more general perspective. We learned how light and shadows fall on different objects like rope and silk ribbon.

bamboo weaves & trellises

This artwork came from a workshop called "Bamboo Trellises & Weaves." The main idea we learned about here was where and how to shade it to make it look like the bamboo was weaving under and over itself. I found that taking the workshops also helped me to learn more about working with gouache so that I began to feel more comfortable mixing colors and applying the paint. My classmates agreed that spending the day painting with gouache really sped up the learning curve.

to you and yours...

May all beings have peace.

May all beings have love.

May all beings have joy.

May all beings have health.

May all beings have abundance.

vintage flowers

The next workshop I took was called "Vintage Flowers." We worked from existing pictures of flowers as reference to draw pleasing bouquets of flowers. Then we painted the flowers using a "vintage" palette which means we added sepia to each color to mute it so it would have a faded look.

flower drawing

The first Saturday daylong workshop I took in the fall session was "Realistic Flower Drawing." We brought in live Lillie's and drew them using various different pencils & smudging implements in order to achieve the shading. Although they are realistic looking, they are also somewhat stylized in that we changed the shading to adapt the image to the textile industry. Using the techniques we learned in this class, we can make realistic drawings of other subject matter that we may use in our textile designs. It is hard to give up one full day of my weekend but if I have to do so, making art is probably the best way to do it.