Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Hooray! My Favorite Writing Teacher's BOOK got PUBLISHED!!

Hooray! Marcy Allencraig, my favorite Creative Writing teacher, just got her book published!
 A WOMAN OF HEART
(click on the title)

You can find it on Amazon.  I just downloaded mine to read on my Droid!  Looks like a wonderful summer read!

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Sacred Madona - Developing stages

Got back to painting her yesterday afternoon.....

 I'm not content with her dress yet.... any ideas?
 Here you can see my aviary (still no birds), my Black Madonna from last year, and Holy Mother Mary


Friday, June 24, 2011

Pictures of my Yosemite Sketch Book

Here's a few pictures of the Sketchbook I created for my Yosemite trips.
The cover is a collage, using some beautiful papers as the background for a print of an acrylic painting I did of Yosemite, Tunnel View, last year. I love photoshop... I added a pic of me peering over the valley. Added a few collaged rocks and flowers. A coat of varnish makes it sturdy. The front and back covers start with a heavy cardboard/matboard with the paper collaged on.

 Here's the inside and a few sketches....

 

 And here is the back cover with more of my original art collaged on.


Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Hooray.... Blogger is working again. Here are the pictures from my blocking in stage. This is only the foundation. It will look very different!


My Madonna... Early Stages

Good morning and happy Solstice. It's hot. Hooray, summer finally arrived! I've been working on my Black Madonna this week. Shilo's class HERE is fabulous! I'm taking this nice and slow, sacred step at a time. My canvas is huge: 30x40", the biggest I've ever worked on. I started by writing a prayer on the blank canvas, then covered that up with black gesso, then several drippy glazes of aqua blue, deep blue, and red, spraying water constantly to get a drippy, melded look. I love how the light aqua showed through.

Then I meditated again and, while I did have several sketches of what I wanted.... something about the shadow on the canvas revealed the Sacred Madonna. I usually paint when the sun is behind the three huge Redwoods, these pictures were taken afterwards.

Wow... for what ever reason, the pictures wont load today. Bummer. I'll try again later.

Sweet Blessings, Chris

Monday, June 13, 2011

Day 13 A Lovely Easy Monday

Ah... no big commitments this week. No classes. No homework. No writing or painting assignments. I can do what I want. What a luxury!

So, today I painted Color Drop Flowers and made 16 greeting cards. I think they turned out cute. They are mounted on really cool green paper from Napal.




Sunday, June 12, 2011

A Lazy Sunday, Day 12

Wow... greatest of intentions. I was going to paint all day. WAS. Instead we moved some front porch furniture, mainly my porch swing, and created a planting bench. I was going to say it was a do-nothing day... but playing in my garden was something!

Originally, I bought this metal rack to display quilts at quilt shows... now it's 're-purposed' and works great as a garden bench.
 Some of the succulents I potted....

 A "Chinese Bell" potted today...
 Does our porch look too gaudy? It's my favorite room of the house!
 I love the moss growing on our bricks..
 My cottage garden has grown wild.... I love it!



 We had to put a little fence around my Quan Yin garden.... Molly and Lulu loved to wrestle there! Everything will come back though, just not the pups!

 I don't remember ever planting this. I think it's called a Dollar Plant?

So, it really has been a relaxing, art-filled day! Nature's art.
Sweet Blessings

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Saturday June 11 Yosemite Watercolor Sketchbook

I just love using up the pages in this sketchbook.
I put on some finishing touches to this valley view that we did on site with Geri on Tuesday.

 Then today I played around with sketching some rocks. Still have some to learn, Practice makes perfect... well maybe not perfect, but practice brings improvement! So here are some of today's rocks and a tree, just to fill up the page.

A great blog to check out!

PLUS! she's giving away a beautiful journal. Leave a comment, and you might win it!

SPARKLE BLUE FAERY

Have a great, art-inspired, Saturday!

Friday, June 10

Do you ever have one of those "do-nothing" days? I was so excited about having nothing scheduled for today... giving me so much time to explore and paint those rocks.

But, nothing. No motivation. Pure procrastination.

So I visited some cousins for coffee. Called my niece and nephew, sons and granddaughter.

Family connections. That's something.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Thursday, June 8th Always Glad to be Home Again

I actually thought it would be easy to sleep in my car! Thought that I could take my little Honda CRV and just zoom up to Yosemite, saving on the cost of gas. Brother! Wrong. It just wasn't worth the misery of tossing and turning on the lumpy car seats. Next time, I'm taking my comfy van!

It's always good to be home again. In just two days little Molly has grown! Here she is with her first bone....

No art today, just catching up around the house and got to have coffee with a friend I hadn't seen in a few years.

Wait! I didn't actually do any painting or crafting.... BUT I did start Shilo Sophia's BLACK MADONNA SACRED PAINTING class! This looks to be an amazing on-line class, just four weeks. Check it out HERE. I collaged just a few of her images to show you. It's not too late to get in on the class! Last nights phone call has been recorded so you can catch up fast!


Wednesday, June 8th, Stayed an extra day & I'm SO GLAD I did!

Oh my gosh... I told Geri how much I like her rock paintings, so she took us to a small creek right in front of the medical center... a new place I had not discovered before. Nicely shaded, a few benches to sit on, and a creek overflowing with the melting snow run-off.

 At first she demonstrated an ambitious view of the cascading water rushing over the granite rocks....
it was fabulous to watch her develop this... but we all felt overwhelmed, there was sooo much to translate to paper.
 So, she moved downstream a few yards and focused on just a few rocks, with minimal water flow in the background.  I took so many pictures in progress, here is one well into it. She used a toothbrush to splatter color on the larger rocks. Later she covers the rocks with layers and layers of translucent washes.
 As you can see here, while the painting is not done, she has magically translated the life, light, magnificence of these simple boulders!
I had to boogie home before the class was finished for the day. Sadly, I haven't seen the finished painting. She's still in Yosemite, teaching through the end of the week. Hopefully she will post this picture on her website in the future! I just FELL IN LOVE with her technique! I spent the whole class time just focusing on her step by step development and didn't paint myself. But I fully intend to get one started asap!

Tuesday, June 7th, Yosemite Valley Art Center

This last minute trip was so worth it. Geri Medway is a fabulous artist, very detailed oriented.

I LOVE the way she does rocks! But today she has us out on the edge of a meadow painting the wonderful light on Half Dome, bouncing off the new green meadow grass.










I like to take many photos as her demo develops...

Here's a closeup......


 Then, the light changes, as it does so quickly in the valley.... and I had to catch this amazing cloud formation!
Even in this light, you can see the multitude of hues in the meadow grasses.

Monday June 6 A quick trip to YOSEMITE!


She always calls me
The Holy Mother
Yosemite Valley Her Wonderful Womb
"Come and be still
Find the beat of my heart
Still your monkey mind
Deeply listening
You find me here"

Plus, an amazing watercolor teacher GERI MEDWAY will be on hand! Yosemite Art Center offers amazing art classes, 30 weeks of the year. Find their listings HERE, or look back to last month's posts where I linked their whole season's offerings.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Not bad for a Senior Citizen!

Grade Point Average by Term
Term
Spring 2011

Total Earned CreditsTotal Grade PointsTerm GPA
12.00
48.00
4.000

Course/Section and TitleGradeCredits
DM-4 70163 Digital Graphics Photoshop
A
3.00
ENGL-14A 70318 Adv.Fiction Workshp
A
3.00
ART-37B 69803 Watercolor
A
3.00
ENGL-14E 73919 Autobiography Workshop
A
3.00

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Ahhh... no more classes - a day at the beach!

I'm finally calming down. School, classes, assignments, portfolios... a thing of the past. Today I headed to my favorite beach spots, just to sit, meditate, and do some simple art journaling.

 This is the mighty view from my comfortable seat in my van... surprise! I get good internet reception here! (Not that I use it!)





 Then, I got rousted! You now need a permit to park in this area on a weekend day. A year's pass is only $30, but you only need the permit on the weekend. Crazy! So I relocated to my favorite, BEST EVER parking spot on the Wharf.... What a view! Feels just like I'm on a cruise ship! (This is in Santa Cruz, by the way)









So, I ordered the clam chowder, and fiddled around with these two Art Journal pages:






Saturday, June 4, 2011

Day 4 - Watercolor Class Pictures

As promised... here are pictures of our final projects. I wish my pictures could capture the extreme beauty and talent exhibited. I'm going to miss these wonderful fellow artists!
Enjoy their works....