The Back of the Flower Stand on Graduation Day

This painting originated from a sketch. There was a graduation ceremony next to the farmer's market and this Asian family was working hard to keep up with demands. The workers breathed a sigh of relief when they were able to go to the back of the stand and arrange the bouquets. This painting was done in oils and it's 10"x13" on stretched canvas.

Guitar Player on the Steps

Turning sketches into paintings. Guitar Player on the Steps is 8"x10" in oils.

Portland Sketches, Mostly Musicians

Keeping up my weekly routine of sketching at the markets in Portland on the weekend. I sprained my ankle so I had a painful time getting around, which meant I couldn't spend as much time as I would've liked. In any case a captured a few decent ones.

First up is the didgeridoo (?) player, who I have not done justice to:

 Kids and adults alike are endlessly fascinated by this man. His sounds make sketching easy to fall into.

I then traveled over to the main stage, where a pretty good singer-songwriter was crooning. I caught her on her last song, so the sketch didn't go very far:

The last one I did was the best and unexpected. I was just waiting for the bus for 20 minutes and happened upon a decent sketch of a Portland street:

Summer is still here! Soak it up!

More Sketches of Portlanders

These busy summer markets in Portland are a free education in life drawing. I can't think of a better place to capture real, beautiful scenes.

There was a graduation ceremony at PSU, so the flower stand was especially busy and full of flowers:

At the Saturday Market, there was a band that called themselves The Homeless People, who were playing their way back to Oakland, CA. They were really enjoyable to listen to. This little brunette that's not in the picture was playing the washboard and singing with some serious soul:

Apparently, there is a big chess tournament in Portland this weekend, which is where this gentleman was on his way to. For $100 you could play a woman who is one of the greatest female chess players, Susan Polgar. She was ranked the number one chess player in the world at the age of 15. 

Paintings to come.

Sketches of Portlanders in the Summer

I spent the day yesterday trolling around the city, searching for scenes to sketch. There was no lack of subjects - the public spaces were filled with people playing games, playing music and enjoying the beautiful weather. I started my journey at the Velo Cafe stand at the PSU Farmer's Market, where they drip the coffee to order:

Coffee in hand, I then searched for musicians, which are easy to find at the farmer's markets. I sketched this jazz band for a while:

Then took it down a notch to sketch this acoustic guitar player, named Wesley. The floating figure on the right is the adorable dog he had with him that I gave up trying to fit into the sketch:

 Then I headed down to Pioneer Sqaure, where I found people playing chess on a tall podium. The guy who seemed to keep winning was Chery, a former football player from England and competitive chess player:

There are some truly fascinating people in this world. Till next time...

Tiny Self Portrait in Oils

"Here form, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing..." (pg. 19)

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci are thick with knowledge and exercises for artists. I've been on Vol.1 for longer than I care to admit. I keep stopping because I want to experiment with these suggestions he supplies. For example:

"Experiment [showing] the dilatation and contraction of the pupil, from the motion of the sun and other luminaries...The pupil of the eye, in the open air, changes in size with every degree of motion from the sun; and at every degree of its changes one and the same object seen by it will appear of a different size..." (pg.23-24)

I began with the idea that I would just paint the eyes over and over again, changing the light each time but I got wrapped up in just finishing a portrait instead. It was the right thing to do for the composition on this tiny canvas, even though I'm told I'm not this "pointy." 4"x6", oils, wet-on-wet.

Dill Gone to Seed

You can stop the dill from flowering, so that it will continue growing the spiky leaves that do so well with cucumber salad, fish dishes or soups. But the yellow bursts of their flowers are difficult to resist. Plus, the seeds are easy to save if you just let the plant run it's course. This one was tough to do so small. 4"x6" in oils, wet-on-wet.

Cucumber Salad
1 sliced cucumber
1/8th of a red onion, minced
2 dashes of fresh dill
1 1/2 cups brown rice vinegar

Mix the ingredients in a bowl or shake up in a jar. Keep refrigerated for a cool, summer salad.

Nasturtiums on tiny canvas'

Nasturtiums are a complex flower. These bright bursts of beauty are like a cross between a morning glory and a tiger lily. They grow in any kind of container, wrap around any object nearby and despite their weed behavior, they have a lot to offer.

My mother gave me seeds over a year ago and I finally had an extra container to plunk them into. As they grew, I learned that they are an effective deterant for aphids. Plant these beauties next to your nibbled on roses and those tiny green guys will be gone in no time. Although they are an effective pesticide, they are edible to us humans. Put the flowers in your salad to beautify your meal, they add a fairly intense but sweet flavor.

It is these things and the way that the plants exploded on one side of my container garden that has fascinated me. So, per the usual, I painted them in oils. All I have to paint on right now are these little 4"x6" canvas boards.

Restoring an Old Watercolor

I don't usually do this but a friend of a friend had some water damage on an old watercolor that they wanted fixed. It took me a lot of time blending, dry brushing and manipulating watercolors on a very old piece of paper. I was unable to use any water, which would inevitably pull all the paint up off the old paper. Here is what I was given to work on:

And here is what I was able to do to fix it:

I might still try to do some more blending, but we'll see. I'm about ready to move on to something more creative.

Music to Paint to

There are two artists that I've been painting to lately. They're addictive, their albums are very long and they seem to get more interesting the more I listen to them.

Cotton Jones:



Moon and Moon has this incredible album, that's really just a singular piece of art in itself. I don't know how it will translate as just one snippet, but here you go:

Corporate Ivy (Updated)

My newfound obsession has already been documented here. I'm finally putting my thoughts into images. I completed this sculpture for my Sustainability class. It combines my thoughts on English ivy with the concepts laid out in the books Affluenza and When the Rivers Run Dry. The basic concept is that corporations like Coca Cola, por ejemplo, are working overtime to manipulate communities of people for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they want to make money off of water supplies that should be free to the people, or sometimes they just want to sell a product. The global offenders that I've glued to these English ivy leaves have all taken part in trying to manipulate the public in some way. They do a disservice to society as a whole and set us back leaps and bounds through money-backed legislation and taking advantage of those who are ignorant to their methods. If you're reading this, I'm sure you know all this already.

The sculpture is made of red clay and is situated on a recycled piece of wood from an old cabinet. No live model was used. The ivy was pulled from the forest around my house. This little guy is about 8" tall, with a base of about 10". He inevitably will deteriorate with time, and I hope to update this post with the continuing status of his decay.

UPDATE: The Decay...

Faith in the Kitchen

I love being in the kitchen. It's pretty much always my favorite room in a house. My sister is a chef, my mother used to be a chef and both my parents are excellent cooks, who have a passion for creating great dishes. I also love to cook and bake myself. When my parents owned The Deer Head Inn, we spent an extraordinary amount of time in the kitchen. My mother was the chef and both my sister and I would either help or just hang out and chat there. That kitchen was the hub of the business and became the hub of our family in a lot of ways. As is typical, this vibe was not lost on our cat. Faith enjoyed perching on high places in the kitchen to observe the action and perhaps see a small scrap of cheese or turkey thrown her way. This painting is 24"x30", painted with oils.

Ivy

I'm becoming a bit obsessed with the English Ivy that grows around my apartment. It's gnarly stuff, wrapping around trees and sucking the life out of them, creating a six-inch layer of foliage that blocks all other seedlings the chance at life. It's all over the country, but really taking a toll on Forest Park here in Oregon. I've been pulling the seedlings of the ivy when I see them, because the roots are only a few inches long and it's an easy way to try to help. The birds eat the purple fruit and then shit out the seeds to start a new crop. The ivy is all-consuming. Even humans have been unable to fight it back, because other people keep planting it as decor around their property. The ivy creates what are known as "ivy deserts," which I think is a pretty vivid description for the future temperate rainforest if nothing changes around here.

...so, with this all in mind, I've been learning about the attitude of consumerism throughout the United States. I've never been ignorant to the constant barrage of advertisements in our lives, insecurity machines, and constant bullying into spending money "for the economy." Nevertheless, when you really start taking the time to notice the system in its entirety, you realize that you've been battling against it every day of your life. And unfortunately, unlike ivy, you can't just uproot it in order to stop it's proliferation of your brain. Mother Theresa said that the United States is one of the poorest nations she had ever been to, because the people here lacked spirituality. If our spirits were like little plants, reaching towards a life force beyond our capacity to understand, then perhaps the ivy is getting a little too thick in this country.

Oil Spill Birds

I started a painting when the oil spill off the Gulf coast happened last year. The images that were coming back of animals drenched in heavy tar balls were bringing me to tears. This is the image I needed to get out and was finally able to complete:

Oils, 24"x18", raised canvas.