Palindromes all week
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I haven’t been posting so much. These last weeks have been horrific. The last moments of Pluto in Capricorn, to be repeated May-January, so we’re not out of the woods yet. At least it is familiar territory, but, gak, already.
The power was out for a mere 24 hours, it was blowing like a pig and rain, rain, rain. Happily, I had solar camping lanterns, a bag of ground french roast, sweaters, blankets, hot water, and gas stove burners, and a new laptop charger. My oven is digital, so I couldn’t use it, for heat or cooking. It occurred to me that if it was on, and the electricity went out, how would I turn it off? I’d have to get Art to bring the power pack to plug into, or turn the gas off, try unplugging it. Scary.
A branch from one of the redwood trees hit the roof and shattered, a large twig is still on the roof of the porch. I went out to see what the noise was, heard a clunk–just missed it, whew.
I also reassessed my bug-out bag and found it lacking, so added and extracted things.
I took the laptop to charge on the inverter in my van, but further adventures, I needed to replace the fuse to the cigaret lighter. Pro tip, I discovered that 8 amp fuse #8 controls my brake lights! Slot #7 holds a spare. Planned to go get some dry ice for the freezer, but found a solid 8# bag of ice; $8, included a tiny yellow bic lighter. Around 3 PM the power came on. Now I have camping ice, so 8 threads are coming together.
I haven’t been doing any drawing whatsoever, but I have been playing with my ink collection, contemplating and admiring my calligraphy practice. I think it has been a month, let’s just call it a fallow period. The new table, tho! After the storm passed, and the power was still out, I went for a walk and found a cedarwood bookcase on the curb, 28×36, 3 shelves 8″ apart. I cleaned it up and switched out the smaller shelf for boots by the door. It suits the theme better, all the pine furniture, minus the big white book case.
Also pulled out my giant 5″ thick Webster’s Dictionary, on the advice of a speaker on the Global Walkout CA zoom call last night. Are you saying what you think you are? BTW, there were 21 people there, two people I recognize. TMI, maybe.
Meanwhile, I wait for the Coder Kids to reprogram the demon robot dogs to dispense ice cream and Solfeggio tones.
The Looming Anniversary of the Great Demise. Maybe I’ll save that for another day.
I just want to bask in the glory of Now for a while.
Woke up weary
2.27.23
There is no inanimate object in my universe. I wake up in gratitude to the 500,000 new cells in my body, a new sun rising through the rain. Everything is moving, everything is alive. The sink, the air, the water in my bath. I love you, water. I love my legs, I love that I can still walk. Where would I be without my self, mice elf, who has brought me so far?
Russel Targ said, Above all else, each morning, put your little paws on the coverlet and give thanks for the new day.
I woke with a headache, be it too much popcorn, too much emotional input, sad stories and beloved friends. I went back to bed and took a nap, woke at 1:30 PM to black coffee and a hot magnesium bath, and a bit of soup.
Heading out tomorrow to tend a friend with the saddest news ever.
This week, a breakthrough. How to draw heads, I thought I would never figure this out. In three sketches, my trajectory is visible. Life is good, if you have it.
Who’s house
Abandoned, a house, a shed, another shed, a cat, two greenhouses, a pine tree, an apple tree, clutter and more, and more indeed. A long driveway. Room for a garden. A view of “mountains” and the moonrise. A dream. A beautiful dream.
Manifesting a Work Table
1.27.23
Out with the round black table I bought from Conran’s for my apartment on Emerson Street in 1981. Took off the legs and rolled it into the hallway closet. I had to move out stuff to make room, two boxes of JD and Pearl, et al, into the Underhouse. Also my vintage Ludwig snare and stand. Why not consolidate, the bass drum is out there.
I set up this pine work table I found last year, abandoned on the street by a painting student. I had to scrape and sand off quite a bit of paint to make the surface flat, leaving it pre-loaded with a patina of artistic energy.
I now have about 3 sq. ft more space in the room, as this table is also an inch taller and fits closer to the treadle/printer table. Someone warned me that rectangles are bad feng shuy, but not if it makes more room to ease through the space.
Already I feel a creative upgrade. It was easier to paint from these old photos of Death Valley near Racetrack, 10.03.03; and a view of upper warm spring in Saline Valley, circa 1997.
Also the current view out the back window from the table.
Winter weather
Crazy rains, wind, trees down, houses sliding off hill tops, king tides, cliffs collapsing, beaches eroding, an ant invasion, and me in my little possum holm. Heaven. A bit of hiking the streets between the storms, where I found some cool kitchen things in a free box. A (sweet) potato masher, which I need, a 1/3 cup stainless steel measuring cup, always handy. Several wide mouth pint ball jars, yay, and a red coffee mug I can contribute to the Sunday Salon. It’s a full life.
I made some soup from the meaty carcass of the Christmas turkey, with shiitake mushrooms and fat Italian egg noodles. So good. Also tasty and festive are small chunks of wild salmon, gold potatoes, green beans, broccolini, pink lady apples, coffee and cream, from hikes to B. Bowl.
More little sketchbook play, with opera rose and white gouache, white Signo, micron, Kuretake brush pens, french ultramarine, various greens, yellows, and random watercolors and stains from old messy palettes.
xmas haul
1.3.23
Back from the north, where we visited an abandoned, boarded up house with a shed and a garage, and an empty lot on each side. I so want it! Imagine the garden, and the painting studio! How many millions will it take?
The best deal of the season was a stack of sweaters, three turtlenecks and a zip-up cardigan from mimi’s stash of donations. I also bought a long gray skirt at Goodwill. Gift are so unnecessary.
On returning home ahead of the storm (before NYE, which I slept thru) I hunkered down with my new sweaters and youtube, covering up sloppy swatch charts in old sketchbooks, inspired by screen shots from Marina Willer, and previous grid play.
Hermitage
I’ve said too much. Just an image.
What could be happier than this window full of sky, sunlight and squirrels, me and youtube, old sketchbooks, brushes and paints?
What better than unending days of not watching a clock. Just this.
Landscaping
11.20.22
Took a fun workshop in luminous landscape watercolor with Andie Thrams this weekend. I LOVE the juicy yellows, the square format. Many thumbnails and color tests.
Oops: edit: caveat: didn’t mean to hit the Publish button yet.
Some notes: Engage with your subject: why did I choose this subject? What am I seeking? What is my hope? What is the viewpoint? close, far, big, small, hard, soft, gestures, detail, mood, flavor. Be present. Consider the possibilities.
Shake out the hands, roll your neck, mix little color swatches, then pools of color.
Meanwhile: Complaining shrinks your hippocampus.
Gratitude boosts endorphins to produce a euphoric rush. It can boost oxytocin, the love drug (like rubbing the ears of cats). It can boost seratonin to make you happy and calm. It activates the brainstem to produce dopamine. It boosts the immune system, lowers stress and blood pressure.
“Perfection is a stick with which to beat the possible” –Rebecca Solnit
Be peace. Be love. Be here now.
RATS!
October 25/eclipse 2022
My friend gave me a little Mexican-made chest of drawers as a gift for helping her in her studio. Just in time! because now instead of having my acrylic paint tubes and bottles in open trays, subject to terrorist assault by hungry rats, I can keep them secure. The chest had been left outside for a bit, sufficient to have the drawers stucky and wonky. I sanded them all down and got them working nicely, and touched up the outside with successive grades of sandpaper and a coat of Feed-N-Wax.
Meanwhile, I found four aforementioned chewn-open and partially eaten tubes of paint resting atop a container of some dolls–I found the hair of Pocahantas in the paint-tube tray. Titanium white, Neutral gray, phthalo blue, and for good measure silver, turned out to be just the colors I needed to mix and match the “cape cod blue” I had used on the floor last month. Squeezed what was left into jars, and started mixing; way too much white, so I ended up adding a few drops of carbon black, dang close, I’d say. The rat had also chewn into a bottle of bronze paint, and I tried using that as a stencil color, but it was too faint, so back to the iridescent blackish, and done.
By the way, I had been painting most of the interior in this patchy style, using Zinsser 1-2-3 due to the history with mildew. On the window-well walls here I pulled out some interior latex, which turned out to be what I had used on the ceiling “Summer Sky” almost imperceptibly sky-blue. I love the way it gradually moves from blue to white as it goes from the floor and up the wall.
Banana light
10.19.22
skating on the edge of gouache and watercolor, brush pens, mysteries of light.
Falling Up-
October 5, 2022
Playing with my new gouache in a small sketchbook of olive green paper, portraits and anatomy from photos and screenshots. I took photos of some of the images in the book Natural Fashion, Tribal Decorations from Africa (wait–I can’t underline?? wth?) that I bought Vikki for Christmas, at last getting around to working from them. Also a screenshot from Vania Bashur, who teaches classes on Domestika. Nothing inspires me more than new materials.
I was telling the story of how I keep buying classes (mostly around $10 each, special discount) but can’t work in the linear structure of the courses. I get hooked on the trailer, and then am not happy with how the instruction plays out. So I am just taking screen shots from some of the video introductions and copying them, then clearing them off my computer.
Also about copying, judgement, what is art. Ok, here we are. This week’s work, so far.
Studio Floor- blue
9.29.22
Finally found an image I could cut a template for, to stencil the studio floor. I had smeared some of this deco-color cape cod blue from a tiny bottle on the deteriorating plywood to see how it would last, and heck, good enough. That’s how it happens, after months (years) of a blue floor rattling around in my head, i just started in. Cutting the printout I stuck to a sheet of bristol board with tape, I used a stiff acrylic paintbrush in different intensities to dab Daler Rowney FW iridescent acrylic black ink through the stencil. So satisfying! The more i used it the more water resistant the stencil got, pretty permanent now. Finished with a coat of Golden acrylic sort gloss medium, supposedly waterproof. Too late, I realized I could have extended the blue a bit with the medium. But I’m happy.
Tiny Haul: Late September
August was so busy. Every weekend we have been out of town, festivals, campouts, and visiting friends; San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, Felton, Cotati, Pescadero. (check out photos at possumfamilysingers.com).
I’ve decided to stop worrying and love the new Berkeley, after finding a huge new art supply store on 6th Street. Been wanting to replenish my gouache supply for ages, and the fact that they are not behind locked doors was a temptation too great to resist. I went on a tiny shopping binge: a minimal array of six colors, a micro palette, Daniel Smith mineral watercolor dots to try; a 2.3 mm eraser pen and refills, a purple glue stick. All laid out on the tablecloth as I waited for a slice and a pint at soon-to-be-demolished North Beach Pizza.
I chose six colors of gouache: spectrum red, spectrum yellow, spectrum violet, phthalo blue, chromium oxide, van dyke brown. Add these to my big tube of permanent white, and opera rose.
So many colors, I wanted to document the swatch display for future reference and further investigation. Now, back to work.
deck chairs on the titanic
I have wanted to do this for so long. I tried white, ow, my eyes. Green, hideous. I really thought the blackish, chalked, charcoal gray would be awesome, but too hot to be practical on the sunny porch. But then, one day, looking out my window, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had seen some gorgeous patio chairs in black and they were perfect. I’ve had these great stackable chairs since the John and Linda times–that would be circa 1990, at the latest, and they were used then. The table was abandoned by one of my clients some ten years ago because it had a screw loose. Don’t we all, at some time. I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out. Plus, Vikki’s birdcage.
p. s. The first can at my local hardware store, $6.49. The second can, at a 3-letter chain down the road, $13.99. Wth?
Stalled in the Fall
So busy, music wise, not much time or energy left for the pencil and brush. To see what I have been doing in August check out my site possumfamilysingers.com. Every weekend has been a gig, a festival, a campout, from Santa Cruz to Santa Rosa. I plan some downtime for September, yessirreee.
moth crochet
when I was a kid there was a corner store with a screen door that had been painted with an ad for orange juice. It was magical to me how you could see through the paint, but also see it as an image floating in space. It lead me to try painting on screen, and to copy a crochet moth with tinted acrylic medium on this 1/2″ hardware cloth.
Bighorn Sheep
Hmm. This is all I’ve done this month. in the realm of 2D art.
I have been doing a lot of physical work in the yard, uncovering an old flagstone path, rebuilding the grape arbor, cutting back the wild growth everywhere. I have been hiking about 3 miles every day or so, downtown and back, up to College or Telegraph Avenue, in search of pizza or gelato, and miscellaneous free items on the street. I found a circa 2013 gaming PC with Windows 10 that I named Curby–found it on the curb, had to buy a 19-pin monitor cable, transferring all my old photos and some music via thumb drives. Really fun to have a random project appear, just after I rearranged my office to take advantage of the summer sun.
Instagram Spring
I started an instagram page quite a while ago, following on my massive output of last summer. I have been remiss, neglected to share them here, until now. Oh deer. Never feer. They are not that square. Oh well, we shall see.
Birthday flowers
Art wandered the neighborhood today and brought me some flowers that fell into his vicinity.
Don’t know if I posted these critters or not. Sometimes I find things I have photographed twice, but I don’t want to go back and edit pages, so inconvenient and random for my fan(s) out there.
What the heck. Orange trees, undated, painted 20 years apart in the same sketchbook.
Roofing House rustic do-over
A year since I tripped and broke my ankle . . . The jarring peachy yellow was so inappropriate for this redwood circle/compost heap environment. I had thought for months about how to fake a log-cabin effect, then found I had a can of Oxford Brown Acry-Shield exterior paint that was a perfect semi-gloss aged-wood color. I tried several greens that showed up too blue against the warm brown, until I hit upon a tube of Winsor Newton permanent sap green acrylic. I just used a couple of artists brushes, a 1-inch flat, and a #10 round for getting into the corners. I left the side facing the tracks in the original puke-y pink/yellow so as not to alert the neighbors, or be crashed into by the UPS van. I have since painted over the white poetry patches. Still debating what to paint the upper trim boards- green or brown . . . ?
Bonus points to Art for the ramp, help with the foundation, and relocating the extension ladders.
Eastlake Holstein
I found this OLD chair on the sidewalk, had to have it. It is the same era and style as the Eastlake hardware in the 1900 house I live in. I had to pull out about 200 tacks, stuffing, ragged fabric, 6 iron springs in a metal frame, to get down to the wood. There was a badly repaired crack which I couldn’t extract the nails from, so I glued and clamped it, and hope it holds. Thanks, Art, for cutting the thin plywood for the seat, snapped into place, and just the right amount of flex. This fake Holstein fabric probably cost as much as an actual cow skin, and the fringe . . . Crazy fun project. I am really satisfied and happy at how it turned out.
Safe Home
I have spent months dithering over the possibility of buying into a local community, a 2-floor, 2 bedroom townhouse to the northwest, where a couple of my friends live. There were yard parties to be had, and a view of Mt Tam from the little shed and an upper window. Things seemed so sketchy here in my tiny abode, and it really would have had many blessings and benefits, not the least of which was a place to put my massive work table and garden tools and westfalia and . . . suchlike. It was a goal, a hobby, to design and plan and discover and ponder, while my ankle healed. Seemed like a good idea to have a flight of stairs to climb on a regular basis. In the end, though, I felt a pressure to comply with too much, with other people’s goals and schedules and beliefs. I just couldn’t shake it loose, there were too many what ifs, and ultimately, my sense of home, privacy, autonomy, is here, right here, where I am now.
Patterns
I love to copy these little designs, I love how the brush and watercolor makes little shapes and variations in tone in my sketchbook. Also fun and pointless, painting the patterns on a paper towel while sitting by the wood stove in late autumn.
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