Remembering Snow

The snow has melted away.  Once again, the ground is brown.  So I'm sharing some snowy shots that I took the last couple weekends.

(Above.) Woodstock, VT.  This is the view from Charlie's condo.  Not too shabby, eh?  I love the long shadows falling across the hill.

This is also Vermont.  This little stream is right outside the ski resort Suicide Six.  As Mike drove around there were lots of beautiful little streams and such, but it's hard to get a good shot inside a car.  I was happy to be walking right past this scene.

(Below) Back home.  Last weekend we finally got some snow.  We did some shoveling, then we hit the slopes.

I had bought a toboggan at a summer tag sale, so I was happy to finally try it out.  It even has a padded seat!!!

And it's pretty quick too.

Magoo and Curly work on a ramp for the sleds to fly over.

Magoo has such long eyelashes that they often catch snowflakes falling down.

We let the boys stay out as long as they wanted.  It's such a wonky winter I didn't know how long the snow would last - and it was a good thing, too, because it didn't last long.  We got two days of sledding and by Wednesday it was gone.  Booooo.

Let's all do a Connecticut snow dance and bring it back!

Until then, hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Yarn Along: Sweater

It's Wednesday - so it's time to join Ginny's Yarn Along.

The sweater is coming along nicely.  Since my yarn isn't quite as thick as the yarn they suggested, I had to add a couple rows in before I tied off the arms.  Don't want the arms too high or too tight.  Fortunately I have a dress form in the basement which is basically my size - so I just whipped it on her and made some measurements.  I've worked through the decreases in the torso and now it's time to make some mild increases to create a bit of a bell shape before I do a seed stitch finish.  Then there are the sleeves and the cowl - so there's still a ways to go.  But I have to admit that I'm psyched for having gotten this far in a week!

The yarn I'm using is Nashua Handknits: Julia in color: Squash.  It's lovely.

I finished The Night Circus and I LOVED IT!  I did a review of it on Goodreads.  If you're a member of Goodreads I think you can view it here.  (I think.)  If not, let's just say, if you like magic, romance, mystery, and you're alright with time jumps - you'll probably like The Night Circus.

Right now I am reading Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Prince.  I'm literally not even through the first chapter yet, so I can't say much one way or another.  But I loved the first in the series: Clockwork Angel.

I've also been delving into abstract art, so I've been checking out Painting Abstract by Rolina van Vliet.  I should sit down and read it, but what I usually do is look through the pictures, get a tip or two, and start painting.

Happy Wednesday everyone!  (Oh, I tried to add a Yarn Along button but Blogger wasn't being cooperative.  I'll try again later when I'm not trying to feed a boy breakfast and usher him off to school.)

Abstract Workshop #1: Dirty Sunlight

Dirty Sunlight        j.c.phillipps       Jan. 2012        

You know how last year was The Year of the Bird and I spent the year working on watercolor and collage birds?  Well, this year is The Year of the Abstract.

I am drawn to abstract art but I've never been good at it.  I've always felt I needed to have a concrete path, such as: I am painting a fish.  And when the painting looked like the fish I wanted it to look like, then I was happy.  I slapped my name on it and said, This is a good painting.

That's much more difficult for me to do with abstract, because I don't know how to map out a path.  Or judge my work when it's done.  And, quite frankly, it's kept me kind of crippled when approaching abstracts.

Still, I really like abstract art.

So I decided to take a different approach.  I'll start just like I would start any other painting, with a spark of inspiration.  I'll see something in nature or in a photograph that will spark something in my watercolor brain, such as this photograph by Kat Sloma.  And that will be my starting point.

Photo by Kat Sloma

I was attracted to the color stains on the wall and the bold rectangle in the middle of an otherwise loose composition.

I reproduced the basics on my paper, let them dry, then I ditched the photo and simply let the painting tell me what to do next.  I think the trick is to accept that it may suck.  In fact, it did suck, so I added something to it.  That caused me to add something else to balance it out.  Then I started scrubbing rectangles away.  At one point I blotted out some loose paint with a paper towel and that left a paper-towel pattern behind which I quite liked.  And so on and so on.

All I'm working with is my own sense of composition, really.  And I don't sit there for hours either.  I just leave the painting out, work on something else, and tinker with it between other projects.  That way I keep coming back to it with fresh eyes.

Finally, it's to the point where I think (think) it's done.  It feels balanced to me and I'm happy with it.  I can always come back to it later if I have a watercolor epiphany, but for now it is the first in my abstract series.

If you're interested in doing a little abstract workshop of your own, check out these books:
Water, Paper, Paint by Heather Smith Jones
and
Painting Abstracts by Rolina van Vliet

Happy Tuesday!

Sunday Morning Art Class: Figure Drawing

It was around this time last year when I started teaching Magoo and the B Boys (Curly and Mo) art on Sunday mornings.  It went really well, so we decided to do it again.

We started off with figure drawing.  Well, actually, we started off with some symmetry warm-ups (which they did OK with), then we moved on to figure drawing. 

Drawing is such a strong fundamental skill, that I like to teach it off and on all through the "semester."  But these are high-energy boys and I want them to have fun too, so we jump from project to project: clay, watercolor, T-shirt design, comics...

Anyhoo, back to the task at hand.

The first thing we did was break down the body into part; ovals, circles, and rectangles.  Then I gave them all copies with three bodies already drawn out and we broke down the parts on those bodies: head, neck, shoulders, etc.  I really want them to understand what's in the body, where it goes, and how it bends.  When they get that, they can draw anything.

Then we drew "activities" from a bowl to sketch out.

This is Curly's "Tripping."  Curly was very good at capturing the motion of the physical activity.  Can't you see this guy really falling forward?

Here's Mo working on "Climbing."  Mo's climbing guy is getting up on a chair.   I love the tongue sticking out in concentration. 

Magoo's climbing guy is working his way up a precarious branch.  From the proximity of those clouds, it looks like he got pretty high!

(I like the T-shirt that says I am right 94% [of the time.]  I want to make a shirt like that.)

I was very proud of the boys.  They only needed one reminder of how they are expected to behave during art class, and then they were great.  I think it's most difficult for Magoo to make the transition from kid-in-his-own-house to art-student.  And when I'm teaching them, I'm pretty no-nonsense for an hour.  There was one point when Magoo was feeling down and wrote I hate art class on his paper, especially for me to see.  :)   I just gave him a tissue (he had a few tears) and told him (in a nice voice) that he needed to work through it, and after a while he was back on task and having a good time.

In other news:  It was a crafty Sunday.  Magoo and I also made a car from cardboard and rubberbands from this book: Amazing Rubber Band Cars.

In addition to having a fun toys, we learned about axels and friction.  And Magoo learned how to use the hot glue gun, cautiously.

Also - We FINALLY have some snow!   It was a two-day sledding extravaganza!!!  Pics tomorrow.

Happy Monday!

Almost Finished

It amuses me how messy my desk can get after a single illustration.  I suppose it makes sense.  Any given illustration usually requires; pencil, eraser, ruler, scissors, a multitude of papers, hole punches, Xacto blade, liquid glue, glue stick, and sometimes watercolors.  Oh, and a little pen work too.

I'm also using some wire and thread in this book.

But I am ALMOST DONE.

Today I will finish the last full illustration in the book.

Of course, I'm not done done.

I still have to fix some things here and there, glue it all down, design the cover, make the cover, maybe make endpages (I don't know) and other little detail work.

Still - it feels good.

In other news:  It snowed!  Finally!  I'm hoping to get some sledding in this weekend and we may start up the Sunday morning art lessons this week as well!

Have a a great Friday!

Yarn Along: Road Trip Mitts

It's Wednesday, so I'm joining Ginny's Yarn Along.

I finished the mitts.  I got a ton of knitting done in the car on the ways to and from Vermont, so I'm calling these Road Trip Mitts.  The pattern is called Optimistic Mitts and its a free download off of Ravelry.  The yarn is Malabrigo Twist in Burgandy.

Now onto the new projects.  The moss will be for a Honey Cowl (off of Ravelry.  What would I do without Ravelry?)  And the squash is for (drumroll) my very first sweater!!!!  I'm going to attempt the Francis Revisted Sweater on Ravelry.  (Right now I'm just making a gauge swatch.)

I'm still reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and loving it.  It's dense, like a thick chocolate cheesecake.  The chapters are short, so I only read one or two and then I set it down and digest them.  It's also unclear as to where the story is going - but in a good way.  It's more like a puzzle than a normal novel.  You get pieces of sky and pieces of mountain and pieces of a tree, etc.  And slowly, slowly you put chunks together here and there, but you don't 100% know how they're all going to fit together as a whole.  I can imagine that might be an issue for some people.  I have such faith in the writing, though, that I know it's going to be a wonderful surprise!  (At least, I hope so.)  I'm half way through and I think it's fantastic so far!

Photography: Windows

I read this blog post about photographing windows and it got me thinking about the window photos in my repertoire.

This shot was taken in the courtyard of the Eric Carle Museum.  It was a gorgeous day and the the big door/window had the a fabulous reflection that I thought looked cool against the simple white walls.

What cat doesn't loving basking in the sunlight?  One of Java's favorite spots is peering out the big picture window.  I have a few different photographs of her in similar poses, but I like this one the best because the light is so bright it has drown out all the details of the window and is threatening to smother her in its glow.

One Thanksgiving morning, several years ago, it snowed.  This was a first snow of the season and Magoo was little enough that he probably didn't remember the previous year's snow all that well, so this was like magic to him.  Delight through a window pane.

Just this last weekend I snapped this shot of the hall window in Charlie's Vermont house.  I was attracted by the sun coming in the windows both upstairs and downstairs and all the lights and darks created by that.

Since reading that post, I know I'll be looking for other window opportunities when snapping shots, but it seems I was already drawn to windows as photographic inspiration.