Developing values

My father was an avid photographer. I inherited his many photo albums last year, along with those of my mother's father. The images go back through my childhood to the youth of people I only knew as grown ups. I find myself studying them: young adults, even children themselves. The wheel of time is strange.

Here are a couple of sketches, value studies really. (and yes, that's a pun.) That's my big sister on the right. My dad took the photo; my grandmother made the matching outfits.

I am trying to tease out the shapes, their placement and relationship.  One of my students has been wrestling with the same question. Helping her got me working again.

Late Summer series

Several pieces been waiting for months to be finished. Finally this week I turned my hand to these:

waiting

The series comes from thoughts, photos, and sketches made during late summer visits to the beach.

finished

I made the stencils last year, as part of demo for my Free Form Fabric Collage class at the Arlington Center for the Arts. (Still a seat left if you'd like to join us. We'll be making stencils this week.)

The monoprint portion of this one was made with watercolor on gelatin, then layered with collage.

The series will at Open Studios next weekend in Lowell.

One piece remains. It's more like yardage, and hangs from my studio door, asking what comes next?

what next?

Collage Cards

I was raised by a classical pianist. The way to start every day when I was a girl was finger exercises at the piano. Today, that urge, to review, to practice, to warm up, continues, most recently expressed as a series of collaged cards. 

Some might call it working in a series. I call the cards siblings.  An idea emerges, a combination works, and I lay out 5 to 10 cards (depending on how crowded my workspace has gotten) and set out to see how that idea can grow. Often my favorite of the series spurs a new idea. The process feels like a plant growing: leaves sprout, tendrils twine, and the sun pulls growth upwards.

This set was ordered by a friend. She's picking them up at Open Studios today in Lowell. I hope she loves them. You can also find them at Gift of Art, 50 Cross Street, Winchester, which has extended its hours through January.

Taking note(s)

 Back in high school, art class had one requirement: carry a sketchbook at all times. Great advice. Today I'm not fully dressed until a sketchbook is within reach.

 For years I traveled with just pencils, a sharpener, and an eraser. But now the portable tool kit has color too: watercolors, oil pastels, colored pencils.

 These are pages where I let my hand wander: a chance to ask"what if?" and work with what happens.

When it is cooler I will take my kit to Fresh Pond, and study real trees, real shadows. In the meantime, these are the echoes they leave in my mind.

Work in Progress

A new piece began as the old piece finished. 

The effect felt boxy, flat.

So I worked back into several prints with dye and paint, 

to modify stark contrasts and make both text and image more oblique.

 

This is how it looked when I left.

That evening I thought, if it's about sky, make it about sky.

This is the edited version, manipulated in Photoshop.

 

Tomorrow I go back to the studio and see if this works.