Magic Moments-just peaches and lilies

Life has gotten bigger than me and I am scrambling to catch up. A friend just gave me some tiger lily bulb-lets; they need to be planted out right away and the peach trees are dripping peaches. There are 3 shows I should be entering; I”ll be lucky to get work ready for even one. I think for the next several days I’ll be focused on canning peaches when I’m not helping out at Hollister House Garden, or Gallery on the Green (yearly maintenance) or working the Art League tent at the Peach festival.

Here is one painting I recently finished which i hope to get matted and framed. There are a couple more figure studies that I’d also like to show.  For sure, “I’m traveling faster than my soul can go….”

“Life’s a twinkling but its such a fine thing” (Carrie Newcomer)

Holly    PS how many of you noticed the Cobalt Blue Teal in the painting above? Debi’s right; it really is a cheerful color. Now i just need time to experiment with it!

Magic Moments-Living with Enthusiasm-part 2

“Yes!” the best word in the universe. Answering life’s questions with a positive attitude, approaching each new adventure with enthusiasm is the magic we all need to live in the moment. Too often we are met with the cautious, guarded response and sometimes even with, “No, i don’t…” While caution built on knowledge and applied responsibly is a very good human attribute, alone it makes a poor opening to gaining new experiences. Enthusiasm balanced by caution and thoughtfulness allows magic to happen. When confronted with something unknown or new i like to respond with an enthusiastic, “Yes”, lets go see, let’s try it out.
so out i go with my card and magnifying glass to view the eclipse myself. This should be fun.

about 1:45

2:45 but it’s hard to see the shadow of the moon

 Let’s try it from the bike path bridge and looking down saw…

bigger is better

So I went down to see closer and met Robert Siegel who was projecting the image using the telescope his dad built. He and his wife Judith have opened an alternative School called True North located below the bike bridge in the Collinsville Mill complex. He pointed out the sunspots visible in his projection. We had to keep moving the scope because the sun travels so fast. i wish them well in their project! Kids need enthusiastic people like this.

continuing on down the path below the bridge

i went to pursue my own project: sketching the path back of the mills

-A satisfying end to the day although this little sketch falls far short of what i want. Hopefully i’ll find time to paint this again and get it right. If I do I’ll post it.

Live each day deliberately, and laced liberally with enthusiasm and love.

Holly (aitd)

Magic Moments-Living with Enthusiasm

“Yes!” the best word in the universe. Answering life’s questions with a positive attitude, approaching each new adventure with enthusiasm is the magic we all need to live in the moment. Too often we are met with the cautious, guarded response and sometimes even with, “No, i don’t…” While caution built on knowledge and applied responsibly is a very good human attribute, alone it makes a poor opening to gaining new experiences. Enthusiasm balanced by caution and thoughtfulness allows magic to happen. When confronted with something unknown or new i like to respond with an enthusiastic, “Yes”, lets go see, let’s try it out.

so out i go with my card and magnifying glass to view the eclipse myself. This should be fun.

 

More to follow its 1:30 now

Magic Moments-with more figure drawing

This week allowed me time to do some plein-air (see my blog)

litchfieldhillsplein-airsketchersandpainters.wordpress.com/

And even better to do some more figure drawing at both ALNB and at G on G

While I have been blindly experimenting with various papers and drawing instruments more seasoned students of art are admonishing me to become systematic-fat chance!

 

 

However, I will try to limit my experimentation in the future.

I find I am gravitating toward expression through flowing contour lines and lines which describe movement ant tension.

When I do work in pencil it is with a very light touch.

Working in the company of many other artists one sees all kinds of approaches to the figure. Often modeling and working with shadow and light to create volume the other artists work mostly in pencil, charcoal or conte’. Or they may abstract the figure into geometric planes or focus exclusively one part of the figure. This is all good practice in which i need much much more!

I, however, find myself fascinated with ink and watercolor.

So much to learn!

I frequently go back to studies and work them up in more detail or create a setting. Time with the model is terribly limited.

Here is some of my work (unfinished) from this week.

Holly

Magic Moments- figure Studies

This last week i have been pretty much focused on figure drawing and have been enjoying rendering the studies in watercolor and Tombow pen. the first is very touchy requiring the lightest possible washes of color.  I use raw sienna, ultra marine blue, and vermilion with some sepia or vandyke brown.The latter is rapid fire and rather scary as the ink can bleed all over the place. I also have many pen and pencil sketches from the week. here are a few-rather poor photos-forgive me, please.

Holly-staying busy

Magic Moments- somewhere in time

Somewhere in time i knew you well.

Pencil drawing of a white rose done while waiting for my Mother on Star Island 2013

Our souls are autonomous; expressed perhaps through our physical being and reflected in our relationships with others but they are independent of us or…well we really don’t know do we? So when one dies what happens to their soul? Where does it go and what does it do? Is it dependent on time at all? Or is only its expression dependent on time?

The idea of soul is a beautiful thing and one which can give great solace or great pain. I happen to believe that we each do have souls. I believe that because how else can I explain the extrasensory perception I have experienced and that has been confirmed from time to time to be absolutely real in time. There has to be a ‘me’ external of my physical being for those things to have occurred.

When a loved one dies each of us may say, “May her Soul rest in peace”, and each will have their own reality in mind. The soul of the departed will be as it will. Let us wish it well and filled  with happiness, and contentment wherever it may be.

And so I wish contentment for my mother, Jeanne Robert Ott Saunders who physically left us a little after 1:30 this beautiful summer afternoon, August 11, 2017. She opened her eyes briefly for my husband, Jamie, and died peacefully shortly thereafter. She was at home where she wanted to be under my sister, Erika’s care. She got to see and be with all her children during her last few days. She would have celebrated her 99^th Birthday in a week on August 25^th.

Jeanne on Star Island 2002 pointing out Norman’s favorite flower, the tiny blue-eyed lily.

May her soul rest in Peace-the peace of our love for her-that connection we have had and continue to have with her somewhere in time. And may it bring us peace, contentment, and happiness to know she is there. I’d like to think she has finally joined our father, Norman, and is also with her father, “Daddy Roar”. Her real presence is missed by all of us. It has been a long good-bye following a vibrant life.

 

Jeanne at Leland house 2016. “Consider the lilies how they grow… And yet i say… Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.” She loved the simple beauty of the natural world, the beauty of music, art, poetry, and most of all dance.

Holly (angel in the dust)

Love Selflessly

and again more poetry with apologies to those who are following watercolor- but this is me. And, Oh, I did spend yesterday happily doing a watercolor of my friend doing an oil painting of the West Meadow, I’ll get that posted when i return from Boston. For now this poem by Owen Servant is a must-share. i hope it strikes a cord with you.

No Talent For Certainty

Love selflessly and you will pay the price
of what it is to give and not receive –
the heart of flame, returned with touch of ice;
a soul encumbered, longing to believe;
the joy that is, at once, a call to grieve
within the emptiness of letting go —
but love is worth it, worth it, even so.

Love selflessly, and time will halt its course
and lay upon your mind the universe;
at every turn to press with so much force
that feels a maledictive sort of curse –
a swirling mist the heart cannot disperse
that magnifies what we’d least like to show —
but love is worth it, worth it, even so.

There’ll be an ebb, of course, with every flow:
but love is worth it, worth it, even so.

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MAGIC MOMDENTS-THE POWER OF WORDS

a poem re- blogged from NoTalentforCertainty.wordpress.com

sketch of Esperanza done for an advent calendar

A life unfinished, glowering in the distance,
A diffidence, a shyness from the day;
The slow conceit that happiness is wanting,
A careful plan turned into throwaway.

The birds know things, I think, that I’m still learning,
Like how we must move on, sometimes, to live —
I see them round the palace in the morning.
We’re made to take; we have to learn to give.

There’s moisture on the windows of my vision,
As though the night had cried itself to sleep;
I hear the distant calls of faint derision,
Resentment for the company I keep.

It’s up the hill: my fate, my destination,
To Movingstock, to live among the crows,
And breathe a song of maybe-new tomorrows,
And feel each passing season as
It goes

by Owen servant

Magic Moments-Lilies

Again. This is the third try-

111/2×15 soft cold press

(I will try Aurolian yellow next time instead of Quinquidrone Gold and will stay with Vermillian and Prussian blue with raw and burnt sienna. I’ll also leave out brilliant orange i think. it’s funny i thought the gold might work but i can’t lift it and somehow it ended up looking grey. In landscapes it adds a wonderful quality to the greens and browns but not here. And the orange seems opaque to me.)

I’m not playing by the rules of three strikes you’re out because I’m not satisfied. So I’ve started another one. I want the sun to turn on in my picture!

Stay tuned Carsten Wieland has given me an idea.

Holly

Magic Moments- It’s a Strange Life

Thunderstorms and sketch of the bend in the river at Satan’s Kingdom.

Traffic on the highway bridge above me lends a surreal feeling to an already surreal day. All around me people i love are hurting and i can’t help them. I don dark framed new glasses, and strappy platform shoes I bought this afternoon on impulse. I think I’m losing my mind or just reacting to the reality of its loss. Who the ___ am I and why am i alive? I don’t have any answers just heartache and unanswered questions, a CD, and a bottle of Jack Daniels. The music and songs deepen the anguish in my heart. An evening with friends last night seems a light year past. Plans for tomorrow so irrelevant. Nothing soothes. “Sometimes it seems this whole life ain’t nothing but a long Good bye, nothing but a long Good bye”…. Odd I’d like to dance a polka right now. i often want to dance and have no one to dance with….Maybe a brush can dance?

I guess it’s time to try painting those foolish lilies again. Golden in the light they’re a symbol of the beauty of this world we are all so lucky to share.

“Didn’t nobody teach you there’s a time and place for every thing? Didn’t nobody teach you here’s a method to this madness, my Dear? Didn’t nobody tell you? Didn’t nobody teach you?”

Angel in the dust