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.

Illustrations by Pauline Baynes

The Chronicles of Narnia are among the most influential books of my childhood and continue to shape me profoundly, but I did not fall deeply under Pauline Baynes', the Narnia illustrator's, influence until I was in college.  I remember walking around my college campus and seeing her lines in all the trees, especially in newly planted birch trees and dwarf crabapples with their bright clustered fruit. I don't remember what triggered my awakening to Pauline Baynes. Possibly it was the trees that did it. 

Here is an end sheet of  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe showing Narnia's first spring after the White Witch's long winter. I love the rolling hills; the delicacy of feathers, fur and leaves; and the tiny distant trees and waterfalls.

She illustrated for Tolkien before Lewis.  There were plans for her to illustrate The Lord of the Rings, but that work just grew too big. 

Here are a few illustrations for his smaller works. I love the precise, delicate, graceful lines. There is enough detail to fully engage but not so much that I feel overwhelmed and confused. (Aunt Deanna, I hope you like these lovely line drawings. Thank you for your wonderful "comment" via real mail!)

These rare Baynes prints of the four seasons in medieval style please me profoundly. Why ever are they not in print anymore? I wish I could show them bigger, but they're as big as I could make them. 

All this art and more I found at Pauline Baynes.com. Click here to see her work table and the view from her window.              

I hate being too busy for art!

But I love it when I come back after neglecting it for awhile. In the big picture it's usually not about being too busy, anyway, but about not being determined enough to apply my intelligence and creativity to solving the problems that keep me out of  the studio. Today I was able to do some carving with my newly oiled, smooth-as-silk flexshaft machine. What a joy that was! I'm rebuilding the bail on the descending dove cross (no, it's still not cast) and starting from scratch the tree of life cross that has given me trouble. I think that one is on its way to the finish line now. Hooray!

I didn't do a new Illustration Friday post this week, but I linked an old post to IF. The prompt this week is "red."

To make up for no new IF things, I decided to share some colored pencil sketches I did awhile ago on kraft paper. I love how colored pencil pops on kraft paper and I love the warm brown.

The crop on my Photoshop isn't working, so I'm posting pictures that work best uncropped. I would do better if I could.

Gerard Manley Hopkins and Dame Laura Knight

            
                Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things--

  For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;

    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; 

Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls, a finch's wing;

  Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow and plough;

    And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
           Praise him.
                                   Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

 
Spring by Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970), from the Tate Gallery.  You might enjoy clicking on the link to get a somewhat larger view of this delightful painting.

                          

Lucy's spring garland number two

 Posted by Lucy

Yesterday it was sixty degrees outside! It was wonderful to run barefoot on the grass again. The ground was still cold, of course, and in most places pretty squishy, but some patches were dry, and there I could sit down, relax and breathe the fresh air.

On this garland, from left to right, there are three budded twigs, the first, some kind of maple, the next two lilac; then a little leaf I found, sprouting up out of the ground. It got a little wilted before I could take the picture. Next is a knotted bunch of grass. I had to sort out the green blades from the brown. The green is fighting a winning battle, but as of today it only holds a small percentage of the lawn. Next are two willow twigs, and lastly, a twig from a cherry tree.

Spring cleaning

It's time to declutter. (What is it about artists and clutter? Or is it not about artists, just about me....) I'm sorting through books, tossing some, donating some, rediscovering others with joy. One book I uncovered with mixed feelings is a cookbook I illustrated ages upon ages ago when I was newly graduated from college. There are so many drawings I wish I had done better, but the most uncomfortable part is seeing bits that express the most potential and regretting my lack at that time of consistency, direction and confidence. To some extent I labored under the delusion that you had it or you didn't, and consistently developing skills without fretting over failure, making daily incremental progress was not how I operated.


I look at the book and think "what if?" What books would I be making now if I had just stuck with it then? How much farther along would I be on this journey if I had been a steady, patient tortoise instead of an erratic, stressed-out hare? Why did I quit using a dip pen? (Oh, yeah--because I had kids. They don't mix with open bottles of india ink.) But these thoughts are no more helpful than the old "I'm not a real artist because I don't draw like Leonardo," and I think I'm ready to toss them out along with the broken board books.

I've been reading The Chronicles of Narnia to my six year old and was struck by an exchange between Lucy (my co-blogger daughter's namesake) and Aslan, the great Lion and Son of the Emperor Over the Sea. Aslan summoned Lucy to follow him to help young King Caspian overthrow his usurping Uncle Miraz, but she didn't because her traveling companions didn't believe she had really seen Aslan and wouldn't go with her. Being the youngest of the party, she didn't quite realize that she could have followed him even if no one else came along. Later, she saw Aslan again, and he helped her understand that she could have followed him alone if necessary. Lucy was sorry and wondered what good thing would have happened if she had followed him when he first had called.

"You mean," said Lucy rather faintly, "that it would have turned out alright--somehow? But how? Please, Aslan, am I not to know?"
"To know what would have happened, child?" said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that."
"Oh, dear," said Lucy.
"But anyone can find out what will happen," said Aslan. "If you go back to the others now, and wake them up; and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at once and follow me--what will happen? There is only one way of finding out."  Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis

So I will never know what I would have done if I had known then what I know now, but I can find out what will happen as I follow the knowledge I now have. I am finding out every day.

I checked on Amazon, and you can actually buy this cookbook there. It's called Remembrances of Things Passed and was self-published by Alabama cooking teacher Bonnie Bailey. She's a good writer and the recipes look delicious, though I cannot personally vouch for them. If I ever tried making any of them, I can't remember it.

Watercolors by Eric Ravilious

I love how light is diffused through netting, glass, and leaves in these paintings by English artist Eric Ravilious (1903-1942). I recognize the light from nursery greenhouses and outdoor displays with shade netting where I  browse each spring. I also love the incidental beauty of plants under cultivation for use and sale rather than landscape decoration.

I think these paintings appeal to the child in me who loves enclosures that aren't our regular habitations--tree-houses, forts, tents, green-houses, odd little attic bedrooms.

I found this painting of a strawberry-bed under bird netting in EmilyBooks.

This greenhouse full of potted cyclamens and green tomatoes is at the Tate Gallery. This was the painting that put me on the Ravilious trail. The symmetrical arrangement of the passageway and growing things feels a little like folk art to me, though I doubt Ravilious had that in mind. That pale diffuse light, reflected on all the cyclamen leaves is so right on. And the tomato leaves are darker because that's how his eye saw them against the bright glass.

This greenhouse full of carnations is being sold as a print on Ebay. I love how the passageway with its warped posts, takes up most of the picture, how the carnations, full and abundant, are pushed to the sides. 

This attic bedroom can be seen at the Fry Art Gallery.

This Ravilious design for a mini-greenhouse can be seen at The Fine Art Society.