Painting What I Know ~ The Trailer Park

This is one subject that until this past month hasn't seemed to inspire me and I'm not sure why. I've lived in this park for over 20 years now. I actually lived down here for a short time in the mid 70's with my husband and my first son. My youngest son was born here. Well, while we lived here. Then we moved on like most folks that live in these parks but I never forgot how much I enjoyed park life. I returned in the mid 90's and the rest is history. This particular park sits right above Lake Charlevoix with lake access for the park residents. Lot rent is reasonable and that's saying something in Charlevoix, believe me!

My intention at this time is to...ummmm...I'm not sure what my intention is. I think I'll let it come to me as I go along. Maybe I'll chronicle the features of the place that stand out to me most. I'm talking series here. I know this was the intent with this piece. The trailers are set along a drive that is terraced. The drop to the lower terrace is extremely steep so the drive out is equally steep. Along the way are all the lovely speed bumps. Try going over those while in labor. Not fun but I digress. Using acrylic paint, cut paper collage, graphite and gesso I've tried to portray the scene of the hill in early morning. I was walking a fine line between concept piece and illustration but think I may have fallen off into illustration. I'll let my visitors be the judge. Chime in if you wish.

Miss Willmott ~ sketch completed

A little confusion in the center but you get the general idea

Part deux

I completed the second half of my sketch and put the two together in a panorama using Irfanview. I used scanned images and, without the aid of Photoshop, I did the best I could to merge the two drawings. Not an exact match but I did my best. I have a palette in mind but I want to do a few color studies before committing to a larger painting.

Miss Willmott ~ pencil sketch

Inspired by Miss Willmott, I drew up this sketch while watching another rerun of Jaws on the telly this afternoon. I'd like to paint this in a long(wide), narrow format so I need to sketch more blooms. I just ran out of space on my paper. To be continued on another sheet.......

Drawing Tip ~ Flip it!

If you work from photographs and struggle with certain subjects, here's a tip that may help. For example...I'm not the best at free handing people, especially faces. I usually resort to tracing or if a perfect likeness is called for, I will use a grid. Several years ago I spent a great deal of time on Wetcanvas.com in the Drawing & Sketching forum and participated in the weekly drawing challenges. The reference one week was a photo of a little boy and girl having a big hug with each other. Loved the photo but it scared me to death. It was not only people but children and the faces were at very odd angles. I flipped the image upside down in my photo editor and worked from that. Flipping reduced the subjects to nothing more than various shapes and lines that made no obvious sense to eye. Then I proceeded to simply draw what I saw. When completed, I flipped my drawing over and surprise! It looked a great deal like the photo. Why couldn't I have drawn this with the image right side up? Probably fear and an untrained eye my brain didn't trust. I wish I could remember who suggested this to me because I would love to credit them. Give it a go. You might surprise yourself, too. 

Sketching Crows

We've had an abundance of crows in the park this year and I enjoy watching them interact. All the posturing that goes on and some seem to be holding conversations with each other. Intimate conversations. Backs hunched, heads close together...I can almost imagine them whispering secrets

only crows can share. They are such smart birds. I wonder if they gossip. One would think so watching them. I've spent time sketching these crows while I sat on my sofa and watched them out my front windows. I thought I'd share a few. They might find their way into a painting or two. Who knows.

                                                                               

A Cemetery Mink

Sometimes I don't feel like making happy, beautiful art. Sometimes it's fun to explore something a little darker in nature. For some odd reason I've had a quote from an unknown author running through my head lately and at the time I first read it, it evoked a visceral reaction that has stayed with me long afterward. It's from the book 'Silence of the Lambs' by Thomas Harris and although it was printed in italic(making the reader assume it's a quote) no author has been named. How delightfully mysterious. In context, it appeared as an errant thought/reaction FBI agent Clarice Starling, the heroine, had when observing the villain, Dr. Hannibal Lector during one of their encounters:

He's a cemetery mink. He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart.

How deliciously creepy! For all the descriptive passages I read regarding Dr. Lector, this quote made me truly feel the character. I thought of a black mink that had made a home by burrowing into an old grave and setting up home in a cage of rib bones, cushioned by rotting funeral garb. Makes perfect sense to a mink...right? As an analogy to a man though...well, it speaks volumes toward this character's 'creep factor'. But anyone that has read this book or seen the movie already knows 'creep' doesn't begin to describe Lector. One aside: I took a good friend to this movie when it first came out in a local theater. To this day I don't think she's forgiven me.

Garlic ~ thumbnail sketches

I've been on a bit of a hiatus. This winter has been rough on my lungs and I really haven't been in a very creative mood as a result. I finally bucked up and drew these simple thumbnail sketches the other night. I'm thinking of a small, garlic themed series. I've painted a garlic braid (ristra) before but I've never painted the scapes. When the scapes first appeared in my garlic patch I was quite enamored with them. For those that aren't familiar, they are the stems and flower buds of hardneck garlic and they look like graceful, long necked birds. They appear almost overnight and begin to coil around in the most amazing way. I haven't decided what medium I'd like to use yet. I'm thinking pen and wash. 

BTW, I'm happy to report the client loved the portrait (JUGGS). Yes! I found out later that this is his 40th anniversary gift to his wife. And here I thought it was for Valentines Day. I'm kinda glad I found out about the anniversary after the fact. It would've added that much more pressure.      

Just Doodling

It was brought to my attention(thank you, Margaret!)that my first composition was leading the viewer's eye off the left side of the picture. I agreed so I added a few bare twigged bushes in strategic places to bring the focus back into the main comp. I do believe that worked. It never hurts to get a second(or even third)opinion when creating a composition. Sometimes it can be the most obvious flaws that we(I)tend to miss.

I've been trying to come up with a composition for my trilliums without much luck. Who would've thought it would turn into such a chore. They're just trilliums...right? I finally started doodling in an old sketchbook I found(surprising what you find when you go rummaging)and came up with this idea. I really wasn't planning on including so much landscape but I kinda like this concept. As I mentioned in my previous post, the woods are very dry and the trilliums are in short supply this year. In fact, our local weather has been such that my own gardens are at least three weeks behind in terms of growth. A lone clump of trilliums blooming valiantly next to a piece of deadfall in a sea of dry leaves seemed to capture that sense of the promise of Spring to come.