accordion

30-in-30: Plein air watercolor painting at 60 miles-per-hour

| maggiebird
Distant water 3.5" x 2.5" watercolor in Strathmore Mixed Media Journal
Distant water
3.5″ x 2.5″ watercolor in Strathmore Mixed Media Journal

This week I had to make a sojourn to the Bay Area. The fiddler likes to drive, so while the fiddler steered the infernal combustion machine, I painted.

I love passenger-seat painting. Give me a wide enough view and a straight enough road (I suffer from motion sickness), and I can paint for miles.

In the studio, it’s easy to get in that zone of hyper-focus where thought takes a backseat to conscious action. If you’re a painter, you know what I mean. Pick up some color with the brush, dab it on—ooo pretty—dab some more—ooo pretty pretty—dab, dab, dab—pretty pretty pretty—dab, no, wait, dang it, arggh! What have I done? If you don’t pause and move back, pretty soon you’ve created a muddy mess.

Green Hill 3.5" x 2.5" watercolor in Strathmore Mixed Media Journal
Green Hill
3.5″ x 2.5″ watercolor in Strathmore Mixed Media Journal

Painting landscape studies in the car (while someone else is driving—duh!) is a good way to break that kind of zen-zoned out paint daubing. You can’t focus for very long on one scene, because the scene changes minute-by-minute. So you have to make your decisions rapidly and correctly.

Fallow field 3.5" x 2.5" watercolor in Strathmore Mixed Media Journal
Fallow field
3.5″ x 2.5″ watercolor in Strathmore Mixed Media Journal

All you have time to do in the car is decide on a quick composition, draw the big shapes, get the right color and value on the palette, and paint the shapes. I start with the sky first usually, the brightest and lightest shape. The jiggling of the car prohibits any attention to detail; it’s all about composition, color and shape.

I love these little watercolors. The challenge is to bring this freshness and life into larger studio paintings.

Winter trees 3" x 6" watercolor in Strathmore Mixed Media Journal
Winter trees
3″ x 6″ watercolor in Strathmore Mixed Media Journal

Reynard’s accordion

| maggiebird
Reynard's accordion 2009 Margaret Sloan Watercolor
Reynard’s accordion
© 2009 Margaret Sloan Watercolor

The accordion has gotten a bad rap in this country, thanks to cheesy lounge lizard music and guys in glittery suits. But there are other sides to this instrument, facets that do not include champagne bubbles and Lady of Spain. Accordions have morphed into something new whenever a culture touched them.

I like accordion music, particularly music played on the button box. Particularly Irish music played on the button box (no surprise there), although I’ll take a good French Canadian reel too. English country music on the button box sounds great. And don’t forget accordion is a staple in  Cajun music.

It makes sense to me that a fox should play the accordion. And the fellow in this painting reminds me of a fox.

Raynard the fox was, in European folklore, a trickster, a shape-shifter, a magical animal. May Day seems like a day he is in top form.

I like to think of my Raynard  attracting fluffy white rabbits with his accordion, wooing them with a rockin’ reel or a seductive waltz on dry-tuned reeds and then…well, what he does with the bunnies when he catches them is best left to your imagination. I can assure you that my Reynard doesn’t bite their little heads off, and that they’re pretty happy to have been caught.

Anxiety and accordions

| maggiebird

Last night I was waylaid by anxiety. You know the feeling: heart racing, mind jumping like a monkey shrieking at each imagined worse case scenario.

It felt something like this:

Colored markers on slick paper
Colored markers on slick paper

Well, I wasn’t actually feeling quite this armageddon-ish, despite world events cascading towards something scary in a most remarkable manner. Instead,  my anxiety was of a personal nature, stemming from the feeling of falling behind, of not painting enough, of not moving fast enough towards my goal, of being too lax, too lazy.

Part of this stems from late night reading of artist blogs, stories like Middle of Nowhere, about a toymaker in the UK, or Andrea Joseph’s sketch blog, that has lovely drawings in such a beautiful style. I admire these artists, and  they give me something to stretch for, to be sure, but also they make me feel so far behind.

So, since the bed was making me feel prickly and itchy, I got up at 1 a.m. and drew this fellow.

Accordion player number 1
Accordion player number 1

It’s my first pass at a painting I want to make of a Morris accordion player on May Day. However, this fellow looks too innocent. Too farmboy to play a diabolical instrument like the accordion.

This is better. I like his smirk. I like that he looks like a magician. The Morris dancers say they dance to keep the sun coming up on May Day. Some days I think it takes a magician to do that. I’ll start painting him this evening.

Accordion player number 2
Accordion player number 2

Music from Quebec sets us dancing

| maggiebird
Pierre-Luc Dupuis, accordion and harp player. He's seated in this sketch, but he was just about to stand up and do a little dance.
Pierre-Luc Dupuis, accordion and harp player. He's seated in this sketch, but he was just about to stand up and do a little dance.

One of the reasons we wanted to visit the Port Townsend area was because it is the home of the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, a week long fiddle extravaganza featuring workshops and performances by some of the best traditional musicians in the Americas.

Synchronicity was working in our favor this March. Centrum, the force behind Fiddle Tunes, had hosted a three-day intensive workshop on music from Quebec, and the teachers were three lads who form the group De Temps Antan. Thursday night they played for an old fashioned Québécois-style dance. I’d found out about it before hand and bought tickets. Glad I did; it was sold out.

It was fantastic. These three young men are hot musicians (and easy on the eyes too). This is high-energy music; like good rock music, it forced my feet into motion and I danced sets until I was dizzy. When I got tired of dancing I tried to draw the band, but they were in such constant motion, all I could manage were gesture drawings (tiny because all I had was a tiny note book).

Éric Beaudry was guitarist and rhythm section for the band, keeping time by stamping his feet (called foot clapping or podorhythm).
Éric Beaudry was guitarist and rhythm section for the band, keeping time by stamping his feet (called foot clapping or podorhythm).

After I came home, head still swirling with music, trying to figure out  3/2 rhythms and crooked tunes, and feet still clapping and clattering, I tried to sketch portraits of the lads based on my gesture drawings, and, to be honest, watching them on YouTube videos. I never could get André Brunet, the fiddle player right. He was in constant motion, even more than the other two musicians, and that’s saying something. The box player was fond of standing up and dancing while playing.

I’m just posting the drawings of the accordionist Pierre-Luc Dupuis (seated in this drawing) and the guitar player Éric Beaudry.

Get their cd, or better yet, keep track of where they’re playing and go see them. They’re terrific!