Summer crafting with paint, pipes and pearls

     For vacations in NYC and Maine, I ambitiously pack art equipment, art books, novels, magazines, sewing and bead projects. But on trips, I seldom paint and color. This time I did! One afternoon, before leaving the East Wind Inn in Maine, I took out a .05 pen, water-soluble colored pencils/crayons and sketched three scenes from the upper deck. Dissatisfied and wanting to surprise, I unpacked my mini-watercolor kit, put tape around where I would paint, and threw the colors down from fully packed brushes, little dilution. I shocked my bold and happy self. I think Joe was surprised I finally used what he totes! Sketching first emboldens.

iPad painting by David Hockney

    I have had fun studying three Apps for drawing and sketching. David Hockney uses Brushes. I use it as well. I recently downloaded Procreate Pro (Procreate is free) and Paper 53 (free, click on Sketches). Perhaps one should stick to one App to learn it well. I like exploring and thought these suggestions helpful. Tutorials for apps are at YouTube. We saw Hockney's big Yosemite Suite at the Pace Gallery last month in NYC. Inspiring!  The Apps are to a painter as a Kindle is to reader?

Click to enlarge photos.

    Before the trip, Joe made Emmitt, the granddog, a wheelchair. He found directions at DIY French Bulldog wheelchair. Unfortunately, Emmitt was too weak to use it.

     The night before the girls left for camp and we left for Maine, I quickly strung some beads using magnetic clasps. Erika ended up with Hannah's as well as her own. I have been trying to teach myself again the materials to use for stringing and how to do. Use it or lose it is true, since I have lapsed in my beading efforts.
 

    Creative Maine excites with galleries, museums and nature to explore. It is almost my birthday. I am hoping to play better :*) with my Fishuku www.goldfishguitars.com. We found this in the Mars Hill Galleries. CEO Timothy Harrington has a clever company with its fish-shaped ukuleles and guitars for children and adults.

Back to Painting...a new start

     Friday before last, Joe and I drove into the MFA to see the colorful quilted 6" x 8" flags sent in from six continents to celebrate Boston. Ahead of me, I had the quilt challenge of "CELL" by my Material Maven international art quilt group. Synergistically, Joe and I had just returned from a stop at the Neue Gallerie in NYC where we viewed "Adele Bloch-Bauer" which is always on permanent display. I happened on a movie of Klimt's life via Netflix and found an unread book in my library titled The Kiss about a Klimt painting. As it turns out, Klimt viewed a lot of cells under microscope which appeared in many paintings. The power of Klimt's paintings inspired me to pick up the brush again.

       Just at the hero and heroine in a romance novel are at odds before they fall in love, I had never liked Klimt's paintings as much as my other favorite painters. Absorbed in his work, I became semi-obsessed.

 
       At Costco, I saw a painting kit, a little more challenging than paint by numbers, and I painted Klimt's "Tree of Life" to get a feel for his cells or signets (an excuse to be a child again). I found some ideas for getting the grands to create their own trees at YouTube. Back into painting, I set up two portable easels to oil paint (alkyds) the grandchildren from photos. I prefer painting from life, but distance is a problem. Whereas I once painted 9 am to 9 pm, after two hours, I had had enough. The next day I realized I needed my BIG easel so I could brace my arm and Joe got me a tall stool. Painting became fun again.  I am looking forward to painting less traditional portraits inspired by Klimt, my teachers at the SMFA Boston and art history...now that I rediscovered my old, but bigger, easel.



       Here are the first day and the second day...MORE TO GO on both. Hannah begins to look like herself, I think; but Erika's is a major miss. But I won't give up! Try, try again, now that I am comfortable. I will save those portable easels for painting landscapes in the open aire, also inspired by Klimt and art history. Click photos to enlarge.

Painting in the studio: Landscape memories

     On my 50th birthday, this former English and history teacher went to art school for her 7th life. I painted dawn to dusk daily. Many of my paintings are at my website LindaHicksweb.com. Lately, however, I have been quilting and working in a variety of crafts encouraged by involvement with grandchildren.

     Down in my basement studio, I pulled out some little 4" x 4" canvases and my Winsor Newton Griffin fast-drying alkyd paints. In about 1 1/2 hours I painted three little vignettes from our recent trip to Maine.

      It may look like it, but I just sloshed around the oils with a little turpentine and bits of medium. I then painted skies, trees and grounds while thinking of Maine and some sketches of sites I had seen while on the road. I want to do several more memories until I run out of compositions or moods and then I can quilt them for handwork on road trips.

    Joe wanted me to do a small portrait of grandson. I felt I had just begun; but he told me to stop...it was finished. Hope David doesn't mind looking jaundiced! I am loving being back in the studio while I read The Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucien Freud