Thursday, August 20, 2015

A Maine Storyboard



Just thinking about favorite places in Maine.
At this moment in the background of my mind 
I am hearing the Beatles: 
"Love, Love, Love..."

Hmm...What to do with this? 
Is it a storyboard for some paintings? 
A storyboard for a little book?
Might I add text & turn it into a graphic novel of sorts? 
Hmmm....

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Portland Farmer's Market with Maine College of Art


 I spent a day in my beloved old home city of Portland, 
at the downtown Farmer's Market, 
sketching with a Maine College of Art Workshop. 
Above, not the original, as the raw sketch was 
too full of fast, scribbly lines. 
 Also a sketch from the sketch. 
Sketching with a class gave me the bravado to plunk myself 
& my little stool down in the midst of a sea of 
moving people, colors, & sounds. 
What a great way to slow down & to focus 
on one subject at a time.
If anyone was peeking over my shoulder, I didn't notice. 
This is the actual on-location, raw sketch.
Our Lady of Victories, is the monument in Monument Square,      
created to commemorate lives lost during the Civil War. 
Every Wednesday she looks down on the market below. 
I was looking up at her while eating at a sidewalk cafĂ© table 
on the edge of the sidewalk.
Also on the edge of the sidewalk was Myron 
playing blues harmonica & singing lyrics, 
some traditional, some invented on the spot. 
He played well to the young children
& made them dance. He made me laugh. 
That's a foot operated tambourine!

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

My New FWB: Favorite Watercolor Book

I'm been making little gifts of dried lavender that I got 
from the local Glendarragh farm & the shop in Camden. 
Purple, violet, plum, lavender, 
periwinkle, mauve magenta 
& crimson hues are calling to me. 
Over the years so many 
of my young girl art students 
chose them as favorite palettes, 
& not just on Valentine's Day.
Such beautiful palettes in Mimi Robinson's book,
Local Color: Seeing Place Through Watercolor
Influenced by Josef Alber's work showing color relationships,
 & realizing how much she enjoyed painting color tests before painting subjects, she started using palettes 
in & of themselves as a form of visual journaling. 
 The  book is meant to be instructional, 
but it is beautiful in its own right between her photos, 
the palettes & her representational paintings.
So many watercolor books have overlapping information, 
so I rarely buy them anymore. 
But this book is unique & a pleasant addition to my collection.