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.