Beginning again (in more than one way...)

 In a college writing class the professor read a poem he had written that began with a complicated sentence many lines long. The next sentence was an emphatic and simple "Begin again." I can't remember anything else about the tone or topic of that poem, but that brief, abrupt command has been in my mind all morning. 

 No doubt that's because with pained reluctance I've decided to start over and completely remake a crucifix that I already got cast twice in different forms. I wasn't really satisfied with it, but I had cleaned up some problematic asymmetry and decided it was good enough, partly because I had already paid a caster. I just wanted to go to production and try to make that money back. Yesterday, I showed the piece to my daughter Lucy, an artist with a great eye, who used to contribute to this blog years ago, and she didn't notice the issue I was concerned about, but she made another, more troubling observation. "The cross doesn't stand out enough against the leaves. It's not easy to see what's going on."  Then someone else told me they thought the background of leaves was an elongated misshapen wreath, not the tree of life concept I had in mind.

Ouch and ouch. I realized that all along this piece has been too much concept and not enough thoughtful design. (I will spare you a list of other design issues.)  I've been sketching out some new designs, which I'll share soon. 

 Here is the crucifix that I am sadly letting go. I'm still kind of attached to it, in spite of everything.

 If you want to follow my jewelry making on Instagram, here's a link. @anthemsweet_jewelry

Satisfying work

Yesterday was a day of small, satisfying accomplishments as I attended to my Etsy shop, which has been neglected for awhile. (Here's a link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/anthemsweet)

Accomplishment number one: I added a new listing. This crucifix was the first piece I sold on Etsy, but yesterday I made a new listing of it with a chain. This unusual crucifix is a piece of wearable art. It is three and a quarter inches high and has a lot of silver--two thirds of an ounce. I love the weightiness of it.

 

 

Accomplishment number two: I received a package of pieces from my caster. It's so exciting to see the bright silver. As soon as more fine silver chain comes in the mail I'll be able to get my leaf pendant and my dove cross up for sale again.

Accomplishment number three: I finished carving a new, smaller crucifix in wax, with the cross sort of morphing into a leafy tree. It's one and a half inches long, which felt really tiny as I was trying to be realistic and create detail on the corpus.  Chances are I will further refine it before I send it to the caster, but for now I'm saying it's done.  This picture of the wax model is not very legible, I'm afraid. I used two different kinds of wax, a lighter blue, slightly translucent wax which is the foundation of the piece and a darker blue, opaque wax for details and corrections. To make it worse the dark wax is shiny and the light wax not as shiny. On top of that, some of the lighter blue wax has lost its color and gone almost transparent because I started this piece so long ago. But I'm sharing anyway because I feel so good about making something new. 

 

Back again with a silver sacred heart

After all these years I'd like to try posting here again with some regularity. I feel rusty as a writer, but here's to beginning again. Bit by bit I'll be sharing art I've been creating while I've been absent from blogger.

I spent some time updating my Etsy shop this morning, after educating myself a bit on how to make better use of its opportunities. I've added a few new things, and I will be adding more when I receive some pieces from my caster.

Here is a rosary or necklace centerpiece I designed. It's about the size of a penny. It could also work as a necklace centerpiece. It's carve in high relief and has a really nice, solid feeling. It's very satisfying to hold and touch.

Illustration Friday: Mind

 She carries the regenerative light of God, transforming the predatory and fearful natures of the creatures until they live at peace with each other, "one in heart and mind." (This phrase originally described the very early followers of Jesus, who freely shared their possessions with those in need.)

This is the first picture up to sell as prints on my Society Six shop. Click here to take a look. I'll be putting more pictures in as I make high-definition scans of them.

I would like to apologize to my email subscribers who received two blog posts with this art in their inboxes. I attempted to blog this picture yesterday, and accidentally published it before I was done. I fixed up the post a bit, then tried to share it with Illustration Friday, but IF wouldn't let me on for some reason, so I just gave up and deleted the post to redo today.

Illustration Friday: Snail

I made this with acrylic paint accented with colored pencil. It scanned much better than my mostly colored pencil drawings, though it's still not quite what I would like to see. It was also much (crazy much) quicker to make, which was a great relief. I feel that my desire to illustrate an entire story has just become achievable. If I weren't so sleepy right now I would be giddy about that.

Sketch book update

I thought I'd share some bits from my sketchbook.  I've been trying to get a better handle on how the planes of the face and all the features fit together, so I've been doing lots of faces. Here are two I copied from great painters.

A couple days ago I realized I could be taking pictures of my kids and using those for practice. This picture of my nine-year-old Daniel is a decent likeness. It's much easier to get a likeness with a profile, I find.  I drew it on gray paper and added some white highlights with colored pencil.

Here are some doodly drawings from my head. This sad fairy in her tiny cottage is for a story I've been working on intermittently for awhile.

An idea for a lacy looking fairy wing.

Cuteness just because.

And last of all, I've been messing around with acrylic paints trying to come up with a way of painting that is less time consuming and easier to reproduce than colored pencil. Perhaps this next image could be called a study for my next angel picture. It's incomplete and in some parts just wrong, but there is an energy about it that I really like, and that I'm afraid I won't be able to capture in the real thing. But here's to trying!

A bit of this and that

I haven't been here for awhile although I've been busy drawing and sketching a lot. I've also been reworking my angel with animals and trying to get it into a digital form I feel OK about putting on my Society Six shop, which makes prints on demand.  I've taken it twice to be scanned at an office store because it's too big for our home scanner, but the scanning process just doesn't work that well with colored pencil, and it takes more skill than I have in Photoshop to fix what is going wrong. Next week I'm going to talk to a someone in a print shop and see if they can help me. I am working on perseverance in the face of discouragement. Any glitches in practical, production steps get me down to a ridiculous extent.

Here are a couple snap shots--they are a bit washed out but still show some of the greater detail and depth I've tried to put into this piece.

Here are a couple sketches from great paintings and photos. I've been making such drawings daily, but I haven't been posting them because knowing I'll post them distracts me from learning and makes me stress out about making something I feel is good enough to show.  

A couple of doodles that might turn into something else someday.

And lastly, a cheery drawing from my little girl.  

Coloring page--angel with a violin

Seasonal illness in my family and me has slowed me down lately, and getting my next angel coloring page done took a lot longer than I expected. Even now, I'm not happy with how the scanning and Photoshop worked out (it should have been so simple), and I don't like the trees, but I need to move on. I was pleased, though. when this week's Illustration Friday prompt "up" seemed fitting.

I still haven't gotten my last drawing of the angel with the animals properly scanned and cleaned up. That's at the top of my list. Next is designing a wedding invitation for dear friends. After that I will turn my angel with the violin into a watercolor and colored pencil picture.

"Don't be afraid"

The next step is to take this to be scanned at an office store, and clean up smudges in Photoshop and correct color as necessary. I feel colored pencil reproductions look a bit faded until the volume is turned up a bit in Photoshop. It's too big for our scanner, and my husband took the picture with the scan app on his phone. Maybe I should have waited to post until I had a perfectlyfinished image, but to tell the truth, I'm feeling a bit impatient to share. I've been working hard and long on this and I wanted the feeling of checking something off my list.

My title for this watercolor and colored pencil drawing is "Don't be afraid." I don't have words right now to talk about the significance of the title--my mind is fuller of images than words just now. 

When  this image is spruced up a bit, I want to  put it on my Society Six store which has never been anything but empty.  

Illustration Friday: Swirl

I am reposting one of my angel-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin drawings for this week's Illustration Friday. I drew it almost exactly a year ago.

I have been putting many an hour into the colored version of my angel with a lamp and animals. I hoped to be able to share it last week, but I'm still finishing it up. It will surely be done in a day or two. Here's a work in progress picture, though there has been so much done to it since I took this photo that it seems like ancient history.

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Illustration Friday: Sound

A few years ago on a warm, bright spring day I was working at my carving desk. A door to the outside was open wide to let in the sun and the fresh green smells, and I heard a bird cheeping.  The sound of it was so sweet and high-pitched that I was startled, and I stepped outside to see what kind of bird it was. In a little tree just budding out I saw a light olive-green bird that seemed too small to be real.  My surprise at its being so small lasted for a good long gaze before it flitted away. Its legs were thin like fine inked lines.

I learned from a bird book that it was a female ruby crowned kinglet.

I did this drawing with my brand new crow quill dip pen and india ink. Its really fun to use--I love how flexible and expressive the lines can be. Today I figured out that drawing out a line slowly gives me much more control than scraping out a line quickly and nervously

Angel with animals coloring page

Here's the coloring page. The angel ended up looking a bit like my seven year old daughter, which I didn't mean to do, but I'm happy about it.

I'll be moving on to watercolor and colored pencil next. The coloring page looks stiff and like stained glass, which I'm OK with, but I'm hoping to get the painting a bit looser and livelier. 

I went ahead and posted it on Illustration Friday where the prompt for this week is "talk." I admit this is a stretch, but perhaps a small one. Communication is occurring, though not actual talk.

On another note, I haven't been doing my sketching of great art because my kids gave me a most thoughtful gift, a month of classes from the Society of Visual Storytelling. So until that runs out, I'll my learning time will be spent there.

Still more progress

I am pretty much ready to transfer this design to nice paper. I don't plan to outline each leaf as I did in this design step, but will outline just the masses of leaves. They will also recede into cool starlit shadows, while the angel and animals will be warmly lit by the lamp flame. Woodland blossoms may also show up dimly behind the animals, but I'll figure that out in the tracing stage.

I realized while working on this drawing that it is influenced by Holman Hunt's Light of the World. 

Work in progress

I've been working on the composition of my next angel picture, which I plan to make twice--once as a coloring page and once as a finished watercolor and colored-pencil piece. There has been lots of erasing and relocating in the peaceable kingdom at the feet of the angel. I hope I'm done with that, but I may see more to do tomorrow. When I'll really see how to do it better will be when it's all done. But that's OK. Learning is good whenever it happens!

Sorry about the weird shiny pencil glare.

A Nativity by Margaret Tarrant

It wasn't so bright and clean in the stable. Mary wasn't sitting up fresh and alert in a speckless white robe just after giving birth, though I think this prettiness can show a reality of goodness and spiritual cleanness invisible to our physical eye. But what I love about this picture is how the air is thick with angels. Our world is thronged with spiritual realities good and ill, and I love the image of eager, bright spirits bearing witness to the great mystery, the greatest of all happenings.

A merry Christmas and happy holidays to all! I'll be back next week sometime.

This image by Margaret Tarrant (1888-1959) is from here.

Sketching day five, another Bouguereau

The photo quality of this sketch is pretty bad. The midtones completely washed out, and the printer paper got a pretty bad crease through one of her eyes. Sigh.

But its all about the practice, not the product, I tell myself dolefully.

Illustration Friday: Spiral

Spirals of steam rise from a bowl of soup and a mug of tea ready to warm a hungry patient. And if I were sick in bed, I wouldn't mind a visit from a sweet kitten, either.

I haven't drawn one of these little angels for awhile. The pocket on her robe is like Mary Poppins' carpet bag--it can carry all sorts of useful objects out of all proportion to its size. It probably held all the ingredients for this light meal, as well as the dishes and tools for making it.

I mean this drawing as a coloring page. Feel free to download it and use it for that, if you like. I've meant for awhile to make a collection of free coloring pages accessible in the side bar of the blog. Maybe I'll get to that next week.

Sketching, day four: Bouguereau

Today's sketch is from William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905.). His work troubles me in a way I can't quite define. I think a part of it is that I don't understand the expression on many of the faces--they repel me somehow, and I don't know what the artist meant and I don't know what the subject meant. But there is no doubt that his art is exquisitely accomplished and I can learn a lot from it.

I found the image in Pinterest, but it dead-ended there. I don't where it is originally from.

I am going to keep posting sketches of figures for thirty days (though not thirty days in a row.) Then I should probably do some sketches of figures in a composition--which is not as interesting to me but probably more needful.

"And all the flowers looked up at Him, And all the stars looked down." (G.K. Chesterton)

I'm really happy I did this drawing over.  In some ways I like it much better. When this image first came into my head, I imagined the foamy softness of blossoming branches contrasting with the crystalline sparkliness of stars, which I didn't express the first time around.  I also wanted to make Mary older than she looked in my first attempt, and I think she does look a bit older here, though younger than I wanted. Somehow, the longer I developed the color, the younger she seemed to become. It happened the first time, too. It would probably be smart to figure out why.

I do feel that the overall composition of the first attempt was mostly stronger, though. The trees, grass, flowers and the great star on the top flowingly framed the central image in a way that I miss in this rendition. But I will not be doing it again. I am mostly content and happy to move on.

The next step is to put the drawing into a heavy book, because though I stretched the paper before laying down the watercolor washes, it still warped a bit, so it won't do a proper scan.

Sketching Vermeer (day three)

Today's sketch is from Vermeer's Young Woman With a Pearl Necklace.

I wan't be sketching tomorrow--or if I do, I won't post. I am working hard on my new Madonna and Child, and will probably share it Monday.