Drawing Joe at LindaDrawingTime

      What do you blog about when you have a series of failures? Something else. However, although I still have hope for the botched quilt, I have been getting used to my new computer. I had to exchange the new one and start over. Since my last posting, I did find I could project old Super 8 movies onto a screen, film the old reels with iPhone or Flip, then digitize and edit on the computer. The results were good but not great since the old projector is deficient. I finally took two movies, rolls of The Ram (live action) and Beowulf (claymation) made by son (he just turned 50) when he was in junior high, to Costco to have the short movies put on a DVD. Theoretically, in a month, I can take the .VOB files and raw footage off the DVD to put on my computer for better results, music and more. Do we see hope, or more failures.  And I like visuals in my blog.

      In the meantime, I must not delay a posting. Thinking NYC would be fun for the holidays or sometime soon, I enjoyed reading Deborah Soloman's article in the New York Times on the paintings that the great artist Cezanne made of his wife Hortense, many of which are at the Metropolitan Museum. According to Soloman, Hortense "sat for 29 paintings by her husband and smiles in none of them." Hortense has suffered verbal abuse by critics and artists but Soloman is glad Cezanne's wife and mother of his son is having her day with drawings, watercolors and 24 paintings from over a period of 20 years. "Aha!" thought I. To get into the zeitgeist, I will show a few paintings and sketches that I have done of Joe. I seldom paint anyone smiling and certainly not myself as you may know from my website (which may go by the way with the new computer since Apple no longer supports iWeb). It was great to get back to my wild sketchbooks. Enjoy my favorite model who mostly smiles in real life. Click to enlarge the photos, I hope!

Medieval Quilt: a daughter's desire finished!

     Beware giving your children a choice of what quilt they would like you to make! Times have changed. Many of us still love traditional quilts with patterns to follow. Now that more painters and the art world have moved to quilts, the love of freedom to design one's own is liberating. It is sometimes tiresome to quilt another person's patterns.

Click to enlarge.

    Nevertheless, Donna Jean, good friend and mentor, just completed daughter Nicole's beautiful quilt (fragment above, with the book). Nicole, a college student, several years ago was intrigued by the possibilities in the book U is for Unicorn: Medieval designs for applique by Eileen Campbell. Who wouldn't be!

     I bought the book immediately on seeing it.  I remember young son Jim's looking in the local library for Beowulf in the Old English. Such designs might be something he would take to...a comforter or throw after a hard day at the office. I found this paperback book of designs at Amazon (probably "used-very good"). So beautiful, I wanted to possess it! I love applique and looking at the letters of the alphabet, the animals worked into the patterns. Although there is plenty to trace or to copy, there is also inspiration to make it your own. DJD survived and finished. D for Dragon could have motivated!