When I was a kid, there was a phrase that meant “great!” It was, “Out of sight!”. “Man, this cheeseburger is out of sight!” usually, “out-a-sight!” I was going to to call this painting “Friends are out of sight!” because friends are great, and each of these 3 friends are there for each other even when they are invisible. Ghosts dissappear, black cats can’t be seen in the dark, and the moon seems to disappear once a month. With these three particular friends, they are still right there even when they can’t be seen, but real friends are there for you even when they’re not actually there. You know they will stand up for you, and encourage you, and protect you even when you are apart. Now, that’s “Out of sight!”
Category: watercolor
Kali Night V
I’ve been working on this for a few days and I think it’s getting close. Either that or I’m going to start over lol. I wanted to do a big kali Night painting on watercolor paper with watercolors. I’ve been doing them small in ink on a really absorbant paper from the Himalayas, which is culturally poetic, but I wanted to see what I could do with a medium I have more experience with after learning on a less forgiving media. Turns out I face many of the same difficulties.
Having said that, it is nice to really wade into watercolors again. There’s a much more alchemical feel to them, because the colors interact with each other differently. With inks they’re all just basically dyes. At least the ones I was using, anyway.
Let me know what you think.
Secret Jumblies project
Since it’s national poetry month, I thought I would share my secret project with you. I’m working on illustrations for my favorite poem; “The Jumblies,” by Edward Lear. My 1st sketch shows the seive with the pea green veil. In this sketch, we have a frog and a hedgehog in the seive. My confusion is, are the characters in the seive the jumblies? Are they the ones whose heads are green and hands are blue? Or are the ones in the seive traveling to the land of the jumblies whose heads and hands are so colorful? For this sketch, I have decided the latter. In the preponderance of illustrations I’ve seen so far of this poem (that are in color) the characters in the seive have the colorful anatomy. So my illustration is contrary. That seems like reason enough, but my main thinking is those with green heads and blue hands are unusual, and would live in lands that are far and few. I will show you more sketches as they come. It’s a long, detailed poem, full of fanciful imagery, so it should be a lot of fun.
THE JUMBLIES.
I.
THEY went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, “You’ll all be drowned!”
They cried aloud, “Our Sieve ain’t big,
But we don’t care a button, we don’t care a fig!
In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!”
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
II.
They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband, by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
“O won’t they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it’s extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!”
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
III.
The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, “How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!”
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
IV.
And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
“O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a Sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!”
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
V.
They sailed to the Western sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
VI.
And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, “How tall they’ve grown!
For they’ve been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore;”
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, “If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve—
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!”
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
Adelia
My daughter Adelia is just 7 months old. I did this when she was pretty new. Probably at 3 mo. I love being a father. I am also father to 2 yr. old Gabriel. Adelia, btw had just this moment, fallen asleep in my arms. She was fussy when I started this post, so I’m holding her in one arm & typing with the other.
Anyway, what I wanted to tell you is that she is developing such a great personality! She laughs and is tough and determined to work hard to sit up & crawl, and become chief justice of the Supreme Court. I swear she is already talking.
I love doing portraits of my children even if they are quick sketches. Lately, I have been working on a children’s book, and raising these two wonderful monsters, but I think I get the most personal enjoyment painting my children. Of course they love to participate and Gabriel has made many improvements to my drawings.
Update/3-29-18
At 9 months old, Adelia is almost standing on her own. (she uses lots of things to pull herself up and support her.) she’s crawling faster than Gabriel ever did. We’ve put up barriers until the place looks like Minas Tirith, but to no avail: she overcomes every obstacle. She follows me everywhere and climbs up into my heart.
Gabriel & Adelia
Here are some of the sketches I’ve done of my children. Mostly they are done from life, or in the few moments I steal at night when I am supposed to have gone to bed. They are, therefore, mostly done quickly. Generally, I start with a sketch with a fountain pen, and then rough in some water soluble, brush tipped markers. Then I blend the markers with wet brush, after which I have to fix all the disasters that causes. The finished product resembles a quick watercolor and that is basically what it is.
Uriel, The Angel of Light Watercolor Print
The Faerie Ring
Violette had been practicing for months. The Summer Solstice Festival was coming on Thorsday and she was going to be singing. Everyone was going to be there: Pansy, and Lily, Poppy, Lavender, & Rose. And there would be boys there too! Ursus the bear, Salamander, Puck, and Jasper. They had all been rehearsing together and the day was finally coming. All the faeries in the valley would be there.
At first Violette had been nervous. She had been given a difficult part and it was important to get it right. The Summer Solstice was sacred to the faerie folk and the Music of the Spheres was the most important part. It didn’t just signify the delicate and intricate symphony that permeated and sustained the Universe; it WAS that symphony. Everyone had to play their part and the Fey valley’s was during the Summer Solstice. Violette was so afraid of making a mistake that she couldn’t sing.
Then Aisling had given her the ring. Aisling was Violette’s favorite aunt and a Pillar of the Circle as well. When the Faeries of the Valley met, they gathered in concentric circles. The priestess was at the center surrounded by her council, and there were Pillars to keep order in all the rest of the circles. They were like the standing stones of the Fey circles of the land: dependable, honorable, wise and without bias. They were the leaders of the Valley and it was a great honor to be chosen by the council to be a Pillar.
The ring was a magical musical instrument. It was wrought of pure gold, and when struck however slightly or hard it rang with a sustaining tone; The root Sound of the Universe. The ring was ancient and bore inscriptions of long dead tongues upon it. If the ring were turned so the wind could pass through it, the Root sang like a ghost. With the ring to guide her, Violette couldn’t go wrong.
She quickly became adept at playing it and everyone who heard her admired her skill. She never tired of it and spent long hours coaxing the ring’s secrets from it. As the days grew longer and the cool nights bore witness to the stars circling the sky, the Fey looked forward to the festival.
They practiced in late afternoon sunshine. It raked across the landscape, touching the trees and the rocks, filtering its way through the leaves and casting long, blue shadows in a patchwork across the wild grass. Jasper had had enough for one day and decided to see if he could get a reaction from Violette. He had been slowly, nonchalantly making his way around behind her. His wings fluttered nearly silently in the still air and he floated up behind Violette. He ran a finger gently up the edge of her shimmering, gossamer wing, which he knew from experience tickled. She jumped and turned and as he propelled himself backwards up into the trees, she laid down the ring and chased after him. Lily saw and pointed and followed to see. Jasper, flitted around the elms and the birch, his ruddy, earthy brown clothes blending in to the woods, making him hard to track even for the other faeries.
Violette would not give up easily and chased him up and around, banking ever on his left to drive him rightward until he almost flew into a briar patch. He stopped to face her and they nearly collided.
“I give up!” he said, hands raised defensively. She closed in on him and pummeled him with her tiny fists, laughing. They were both breathing heavily from the chase. The other faeries gathered around laughing and the cool breeze carried the sound of their laughter through the leaves of the trees to the brook, which giggled along.
They heard the bell for dinner and they flew off to sunset hill where the faeries had their communal dinner each evening as the light of the day slowly faded. Lisa heard the dinner bell, and tore off running for home. She didn’t want to be late again, or she would catch a whuppin for sure! She glided over rocks and wove between trees like the wind itself. She came to the brook and grabbed her skirt by the bottom and gathered it up and leaped the stream in one graceful bound. She could only be this way in the woods. when she was around the other children, she was awkward and shy. She had few friends and longed to tell someone all her ideas and questions. Even if the other person thought they were silly, she wouldn’t care as long as they listened. She came to a small clearing and was momentarily confused. She hesitated for a moment, and in that moment, she lost her balance, tripped and fell.
There, laying on the grass in front of her, slightly hidden was a golden ring.