Painting from mail

Just before stuffing one of those clear envelopes with something for Marie, I unfurled the upcycled mylar - a Lloyds bank advertisement, cut down to make an accordion book, and placed it on yesterday's collage color study. "I could paint from that," I thought. 

small painting from new model

Every morning I get up and make a list of things I really hope I will do, but my discipline stops there.  I do things all day but if something takes my fancy, I will not stick to the list. Some kind of response to Monday's new model not been on my list but if the list said 'paint' 'draw' 'monotype', I might have read 'return to that model.' The thing that has been on my list since H and F have been back at uni has been colour studies and I haven't ticked it on one single day.   I don't think this is finished, yet, but I have enjoyed stroking colours of paint next to colours of paint in a pastel approach, maybe it counts as a colour study?

A new Model

2 min

2 min

2 min

2 min

2 X 2 min

2 min

10 min

10 min

10 min

10 min

 I remembered to bring my smaller pad with under-painted pages and attempted to apply my summer drawing approach to the model.  Looking at Vuillard before the session evident.

Loosening up

10X12

12X18

After a long hiatus from painting (2+ months), it's fun to see where I begin. I approached the start by beginning as freely as I could, with a loose idea in my head and some drawings to set me off.  As ever I feel like I can't remember what I've learned in the past, which may be a good thing.  I think I need lots of little canvases for the moment, a few colour studies and lots of drawing.

15 minute sketches

Bread to bake, so had half an hour spare, en route to drawing.  I purloined this pad and fixed pastel colours on each page with rubbing alcohol just before the timer sounded.  Next the task was to use about 5 pastels to record some part of a scene at the dock, primarily using colour in 15 minutes. I want to do three of these evry day until the book is filled. The pad pages are roughly 4X4.5".

Below a glimpse of what happens at the dock at night, written 31st July, 2013.

Night Swimming in Maine

Limb-tangle of night jumpers

pouring their bodies rapid fire

into the sea.

‘It’s a party down there,’

says the birthday girl,

breathlessly.

Light pools on bikini shoulders.

Wring of towel.

Barnacle tiptoe up stairs.

And squeals as water

peels from backs,

Labrador-style.

We listen from the house

Imagining our smaller frames

Stepping off the dock into the night air.

Light on table

What could be better than spending the morning edging a beautiful garden, midday the time to record light on a table, followed by a walk to the end of the island and back under the ripple of a hundred flags with my niece, Molly? Peter Lloyd Jones http://www.peterlloyd-jones.co.uk (who I happened upon painting the activity around the church) agreed with me that Cranberry Island is paradise.

noticing how figurative and abstract intersect

Pastel on paper 10.5 X 7.5"

Fused plastic 6.75 x 6.75"

acrylic on cardboard with fused plastic stitching  6X8"

An addition to Maine Time

Fog time

thick light 

presses down

Boat engines rumble

We leave footprints

across the lawn