Memories

In college  I interrupted my English major lifestyle of reading lots of unassigned books and putting off writing papers to take a life-drawing class that still informs how I make art. The professor praised my work and encouraged me to become a professional fine artist. "There is a place for you," he said, which were encouraging words, words I bring to mind sometimes when I feel insecure about making art. But I had lately discovered beautiful children's book illustrations and I thought that what I really wanted was to write and illustrate children's books. I loved (love) books, which was why I was an English major, but I didn't love them only as repositories of ideas. I loved the smooth, almost velvety texture of good paper fanning out from strong binding. I loved looking at pictures that illuminated words, and I liked enjoying art sitting in a comfortable chair. I showed my professor an out-of-class sketchbook with some fantasy illustration ideas I thought were pretty good and said I was interested in becoming an illustrator.

I still remember his condescending smile. The drawings were no doubt fussy and immature, different from what was developing in his helpful class, but mostly he didn't think my subject matter was worthy of  art. He didn't respect illustration as a profession. In so many words he asked me if I wouldn't rather be a real artist. "Not really," I thought. I felt embarrassed and emptied as I left his office. There were no illustration classes at my college anyway.

Too bad, huh? Though even if he had respected illustration as a legitimate way for artists to spend their time and had said something constructive, I might not have been able to go anywhere with it at that point because although I respected illustration as worthy of artists, I couldn't respect myself as an artist for a very long stretch of time. I got help with that later, and now I am well established on an exciting journey that makes me feel young and ambitious.  Maybe that's something people my age don't always get to feel.

Here's a smudgy, charcoal self-portrait from my college days. I was wearing glasses which had fallen halfway down my nose, but they seem to have worn almost completely away.

Soon after I graduated, one Halloween our pastor asked everyone who wanted to make a picture of a saint for All Saints Day (the day that Halloween, All Hallows Eve, is the eve of). I did this St. Francis painting super fast, for me. I should have done something like that every day!

I think I did this iris around the same time. I bought it at a florist shop--which is how it can have a forsythia blossom in the same composition. For some reason I cut this bit out of the larger composition. I was probably having trouble getting the yellow right in the forsythias. The water damage is interesting, I think

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Angels in one form or another have fascinated me for a long time, This week's Illustration Friday prompt is "light" so I think I'll post this over there.

How many angels

In a college creative writing class a fellow student wrote a funny, rather brilliant poem (I thought) about looking through a microscope at the head of a pin, seeing the punch bowl, the chips, the scuff marks on the floor, but noting that "the angels were gone." He was thinking of that old story about the Byzantine church leaders cloistered away, wondering how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, while Mohammed's armies surrounded Constantinople. That story is, of course, completely made up. If you want to read about the real origin of this question, go to StraightDope.com.

But as I was mulling over what or if I would post on Illustration Friday for this week's prompt of "wobble," I remembered my acquaintance's delightful little poem, and decided to do a quick drawing of one of my angel characters trying to dance on the head of a pin. Here she is.

If you want to see more of these angels, go here in my blog.. There are angel posts before and after the one I linked to, making twelve in all. This one is my favorite.

Tree of life drawing

I finished my little tree of life drawing. I'm not sure how I feel about all the black. Next time I want to try something with deep indigo blue. 

Below are some pictures that I used for inspiration and reference. I hesitated posting them just now because they are amazing and I feared my work might suffer by contrast, but I really wanted to share them too, so I decided to just get over myself.

The tree design below is by English Arts and Crafts designer C.F.A. Voysey. I found it at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The next is by Maud and Miska Petersham, illustrators from the last century whom I really, really love. I wish I knew what book it's from. I found the image on The Lop Shop, which is devoted to all things lop-eared bunny (yes, its true).

This bracelet is by Art Nouveau designer Henry Vever, and can be seen on World's Luxury Guide. 

The Illustration Friday prompt this week was "slow."  I thought I had at least a little justification for posting this picture there. For one thing, it has a turtle in it. I also though it could be a symbol of the slowly maturing fruitfulness that can happen when we mindfully slow down. Not that I thought about that while I was doing it or feel like that is its essential meaning.

Illustration Friday: Natural

We slept with windows open last night, and the air was cool and sweet, easy to breathe. The spring peepers were out--little tree frogs that make a soothing, trilling sound at night. I seem to remember them being louder in past springs. Though they can survive freezing to a certain extent, our bitter winter must have killed off a lot of them during their hibernation.

I sketched these fawn lilies in the woods last spring. Lucy found some blooming yesterday and more today, but I have not been out to look at them yet. Another, uglier name for them is dogtooth violet. (Why ever?) Their bulbs were a food of the native peoples of this region, and I've heard that in very early spring they taste sweet like corn on the cob. I've wanted to harvest some bulbs ever since I learned about them, but I never think of it at the right time, which is very early in spring before their leaves come out.

I used graphite and white Prismacolor on kraft paper, which got wet and wrinkly at some point. For me, unfortunately, that sort of thing comes naturally.

Illustration Friday: Survival

I have always been a messy person. I've always had trouble organizing and managing things outside of my head. When I was a little kid in school, my desk, bookbag, cubbyhole were always the messiest of the girls' in my class of thirty, though there were always boys who were worse than me. I would lose crayons, pencils and erasers and have to scrounge supplies from I don't remember where. I just remember the motley stuff I ended up with--random broken crayons, pencils disgustingly full of someone else's tooth marks. My nice cap erasers would be long gone, so I would bite the metal ring around the worn down pencil eraser to make it stick out enough to erase a little. I would look at other kids' tidy, full boxes of supplies and wonder how they managed to keep them so nice, how they managed to keep them at all.

As I grew older I would go on cleaning binges, resolving that I would never be messy again. I loved the sensation of peace and clarity that came with a clean bookbag, a clean room, but I could never maintain it. I didn't know why. As a grownup, a mother of four no less, I continue to struggle, sometimes sinking beneath a deluge of mess, sometimes feeling more in control. Sometimes I have maintained a consistently ordered home by giving it my undivided emotional and mental attention, while squelching or derailing dominant aspects of my personality--dreaminess, prayerful contemplation, making pretty things with my hands. I now consider such complete attentiveness to maintaining outward order dangerous and self-destructive for me, so usually I clumsily juggle my responsibilities and aspirations, trying not to neglect either my inner or outer world too much but not doing anything as well as I want to.

Until the last few weeks. Perhaps I speak too soon, but I feel that I am finally figuring out how to maintain a consistently ordered outward life that does not suppress but enhances the inner life and creativity that is core to my identity. It's very simple, so simple it's a little embarrassing. Several times a day, I set a timer for ten minutes and work nice and fast on a category of mess. When the timer goes off, I set it again and work on something else. With the time limit, I don't get swallowed up in a single cleaning project that I complete but don't maintain. I have put boundaries around the cleaning and ordering part of my day, to make sure it doesn't overtake the creating part of my day, and I am happy to say I am getting more time in the studio without feeling so burdened by outer chaos, and I'm getting some parts of my life in order without the frustration and sadness I feel when I neglect my art.

From my kraft paper sketchbook:

Illustration Friday: Sizzle

I have an idea for a story about a rambunctious monkey brother and sister loosely modelled on my younger two children. (But we won't tell them that....)  Here they are not rambunctious at all, because looking into a camp-fire is hypnotically soothing. I heard somewhere that looking at fire or running water is soothing but never boring because the steady movement combined with infinite variation doesn't weary our brains. Maybe so.

No doubt these two will be hyper soon from staying up too late and eating all those marshmallows.

I did most of this as fast as I could before my kids got up yesterday morning. I used two very soft pencils so I wouldn't be tempted to take time I can't afford to build up thin layers of gray with a very hard pencil, which is how I like to do graphite nowadays. But I ended up fussing over it, taking too much time, and overworking parts of it anyway. A jeweler's-wax carving teacher I read said that if you feel something is wrong with a piece you're working on and you don't know what the problem is, pay attention to where your eyes get stuck. That's probably what needs to change. My eyes get stuck on the girl monkey's face, mostly, and if I had time I would do her again with closer set, more monkey-like eyes. Instead of just doing it over early on, or just quitting for awhile to give my subconscious mind time to solve the problem, I kept trying to fix it without figuring out exactly what was bothering me. It's hard for me to start something over, but I have learned that I get a lot farther making ten five-minute drawings than I do working for three hours trying to save one drawing that has gone astray.

Illustration Friday: Spark

As I thought about this week's prompt, I got a mental image of some of the earliest

flowers of spring bright against the damp leaves of a forest floor.