These days

| maggiebird

The fiddler and main computer guy of the house finally convinced me to back up my computer, so I’m trying out the mythical cloud storage route. Now my trusty little laptop is occupied with the upload that never ends, and I’m reduced to the fiddler’s old machine that, a few months ago, came out on the wrong side of a tussle with a cup of coffee. Not all the keys work all of the time. I don’t hold that against it, but it does make it hard to type.

I’m feeling better from the walk-in-the-park-from-heck surgery, and am back to the day job and doing some painting. Paul Fox’s Habit Building forum really helped me get back into a groove. I know I’m establishing a habit of taking out the sketchbook or paints in the evening, even if I’m a wee bit too tired to do much actual drawing or painting. But without much work, I don’t write many blogs

But I have been enjoying the blogs of others. Painter Keven McEvoy has written a lovely sweet blog about the Four Ages of Man and the power of a portrait. James Gurney has a link to a neat old movie about Hollywood matte painter Peter Ellenshaw. Sue Favinger Smith (who is really a terrific landscape painter) talks about the importance of learning to draw, and offers links to several sites with photos of models for you to draw. And Matthew D. Innis has gifted the blogosphere with a look at the paintings of Michael Klein (both are painters of a quality to which I can only aspire).

Building better habits

| maggiebird

 

Fox in Snow
Watercolor sketch done as part of nightly habit-building practice

Since surgery, I’ve been having trouble climbing back on that part of the wheel where I paint and draw. It’s not just the exhaustion and residual pain that keeps me from picking up pencil and paintbrush; it seems like something deeper. It’s as if my drive chain got rusty from all the anesthetics and antibiotics.

This will never do. A few days vegetating in front of Netflix is okay, but I would never be happy with this as my lifestyle.

But serendipity often smiles on the frustrated. This week, Paul Fox at Learning to See began a daily practice forum that will last for a week. Only 6 days. And the beauty of it is, he emails every morning to remind us.

The idea is this: To develop a habit (any habit, but in this case, a daily art practice habit), you look for a trigger action. It can be anything small, but definite. Like drinking a cup of coffee. Or combing your hair. Something that’s routine, so that you’ll do it everyday.

You use this trigger as an entry point into the habit you want to create. It reminds you of the following action. For example: After you drink your coffee, you take out your sketchbook and draw.

I chose the trigger of our nightly walk, which is a longstanding habit that’s triggered by eating dinner (believe me, we never miss a meal). After coming home from my walk, I stretch a bit, take off my shoes (putting them away), and then start to paint.

It’s worked for 4 nights in a row. We’ll see if I can keep it going after this lovely little habit-building forum is over.

In praise of privet

| maggiebird

Privet
© Margaret Sloan 2012
Watercolor 

Two weeks ago, shaky and hollow feeling, I came home from hospital to our un-airconditioned house (really, it’s just an uninsulated box sitting in the sun). Our house, besides being horrendously hot during warm summer afternoons, is not really set up for relaxing (except in the bedroom, the hottest room in the house). We’re set up for working. Or eating. Because working and eating? Those are pretty much our main activities. The living room is my studio. The extra bedroom an office. We don’t do much lounging.

But after 4 days flat on my back in hospital (No food! No ice cream!), I couldn’t work. I needed a place to rest.

We’re lucky to have a backyard. And in the backyard beginning at about 1 p.m., there is a lounge chair that just fits in a small wedge of shade cast by a privet tree.

Normally I hate privet. It’s weedy. It sprouts in every inch of the garden. Sprouts that, at 5 inches tall,  require a shovel to extricate them from the center of my favorite perennials and shrubs.

Because of a miscommunication with the mow-blow-and-go lawncare service, this privet, once a semi-tamed shrub in a mixed hedge, went without pruning for so long that it has now become a tree. For many years I’ve threatened to cut it down. And now I’m glad the chainsaw never touched it.

Because for two days after coming home from the hospital, I rested in that pool of privet shade and watched the white blossoms against the blue sky. The fresh smell of the flowers helped clear the nasty hospital and medication odors from my nose, and the sound of insects buzzing through the flowers lulled me into much needed sleep.

Yes, I know. All those lovely flowers will become blue-black seeds that will create a veritable privet lawn in the garden, and I’ll be cursing the privet soon enough. But for now, I sing, grateful and loud, in praise of the privet tree.

The sun finally rises

| maggiebird

I always thought I’d be like painter Chuck Close, painting feverishly from my sick bed if I had to. But when I was actually confined to a hospital bed?

I’m ashamed to admit, I was useless.

That senile body part I mentioned in my last post? That had to come out. It was to be a surgery that would be a walk in the park, the surgeon said. He didn’t mention which park, or how difficult the trail would be. It was a class-5 trail, I’m afraid, uphill most of the way.

For 4 days I huddled in the hospital, hazy, woozy, hungry and sick to my stomach at the same time. My sketchbook, paints, and pencils waited for me on the bedside table, but I could not sit up long enough to sketch. Worse, my mind—usually brimming with stories, pictures, and color—was a mud-hued blank.

But finally, one morning I woke to notice the sun streaming onto the building next to my room. It was perhaps the first image of beauty I had noticed all week. I clambered out of bed, sat in the hospital chair, and painted the picture for this post.

The painting is not a thing of beauty, but the morning was exquisite. As I finished this, the surgeon came into the room and sent me home.

Riding the wheel

| maggiebird

Turning the wheel-Unfinished watercolor
© Margaret Sloan 2012

While I’ve been working on this painting, begun on my birthday, the meaning of getting older has become more germane. Last week a certain body part, which until now was self-regulated and well-behaved, went rogue—well, senescent, really—and evidently needs to be removed. It’s nothing major (thankfully it’s not my brain), but it still reminds me that, while my wheel is still spinning and humming, the revolutions per day will someday begin to slow down. But not just yet.

Still, it’s all the more reason to enjoy this crazy ride while I can!

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I want to thank the Toemail blog for picking up my original post about this painting. 

Best in show

| maggiebird

I was thrilled to win first prize at the Santa Clara Watercolor Society show “Think Large…Paint Small.” Really thrilled.

And see the red dot? Someone bought it–A friend who does Irish step dancing.

I couldn’t stop smiling.

Think Large…Paint Small

| maggiebird

Sorry, I have to do a little more crowing. My painting was included on the poster! (click here to enlarge the image).

The opening is Friday, July 6, 5:30-8 p.m. in the Norton Gallery  (That’s the small but beautiful upstairs gallery) at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto. It would be great to see you there; you’ll know me because I’m the one who will be beaming with smiles.

Into a show!

| maggiebird

Beginner’s Reel
Watercolor on 300# Arches hot press
© 2012 Margaret Sloan 

I’m super excited to tell you that this painting of a little Irish dancer has been accepted to the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society’s show, “Think Large…Paint Small.”

It’s one of my favorite paintings I’ve made this year. I saw this little girl dance last spring at an exhibition show for children at the Bay Area Discovery Museum; she was the only one in her beginner class, and she danced alone. I thought her quite a brave little girl to dance solo for an audience of her peers.


More on turning the wheel

| maggiebird

Happy After-Solstice Saturday!
My birthday doodle has turned into a painting idea.

I like to plan my paintings, doing lots of composition sketches, and then making thumbnail color sketches. (which color combination do you like best?).

Then I spend time perfecting the drawing.

Still some work to do on the woman’s arms and torso, and some cleaning up of the face.

The little girl finally has a face.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to begin painting.

My artist friend Cynthia says that I like the planning part best; that’s the big part of my process of making art. Yes, she’s right.

I do like to plan, and not just because I’m a tad bit compulsive. I like to plan because that allows me to be more spontaneous when I get to the big painting (on the expensive paper). I like to experiment before I start, trying out many different things. In fact, I wish I had time to do more of it.

Who knows how this painting will turn out? Sometimes it’s all a crap shoot, really. Sometimes all the pre-planning in the world doesn’t make for a good painting.

My blogging friend Chris (who brilliantly identified this drawing as a mandala, before I even made that connection), at Groundswell, likes to play Mahjong at the computer. She wrote last week:

“We think we are at the end. . . that no other possibilities for movement exist. . . and then, we see one more tile, turn it over, and everything opens up, everything changes.

We can never see everything or be fully “prepared” for what’s to come. And in this Mystery is much of the joy that is life, and, of course, some of the suffering.”