#41, #42, #43 of 100 Creations in 100 Days. Aboriginal Designs and CitraSolv Papers

#41

As a child, I spent a lot of time doodling in my notebooks while also taking notes.  I had certain doodles I always went back to, like drawing flowers, or creating auras around objects, like words written in "bubble script". Recently I was browsing the work of aboriginal artists from Australia and found ones that reminded me of the doodles I used to do so I  decided to use them as the basis of some new work.  These two pieces are the result. They are both done on black paper using a white (and gold) gel pen.

#42

The paper that both have in common is a paper I purchased, not something I drew.  I just liked the juxtaposition of one to the other.

#43

This third piece is done on a page from a National Geographic which was treated with Citrasolv.  Citrasolv makes the ink dissolve, sometimes completely, sometimes just a bit. This page was primarily text with a block of image. The ink hadn't completley dissipated so I played with the patches where is was lighter and darker, creating auras around each light patch, then coloring in some of the curves created from that patterning. I plan to play with this technique some more.  It was enjoyable to create and I like the results.

#37, #38, #39, #40 of 100 Creations in 100 Days: Visual Journal entries, memorial to Lisa Fisher Johnson

Feb 7, 2019 was all about teaching and playing in my visual journal.  There are times when I don't have the energy to stand and work at the easel and I don't have any big ideas. That's when I pull out my journal and let myself riff on ideas that have been rolling around in my head for a while.  It's easeful and relaxing and generally satisfying.  It's about process, not product.  It's so good for me to move away from a product orientation because I generally don't let myself play and try new things enough.

Before I got into the studio, I taught my "Zentangle Ladies". They're a group of women to whom I was initially teaching Zentangles, but the group has morphed into a lovely amalgam of friends who do art together.  Right now I'm teaching them the Fundamentals of Drawing.  The first lesson I always teach is Blind Contour Drawing.  One of the more advanced lessons with Blind Contour is having them draw the person sitting across from them.  This drawing is by one of my students, Barbara.  I posted it because I absolutely love it!  It's funky and fun and weird and wacky and wonderful!  And it even captures the essence of the woman it's of.  It excites me when my students make such fun work!

Once my wonderful students left, I went out to the studio to play.  I worked with circles and Citrasolv and photos and whatever else was on my table. When we were in Wintergreen a few weeks ago, I began the picture on the left with all the intersecting circles.  It's based on fabric created by Knoll. 

I had the idea to take a page from a National Geographic magazine which I had doused in Citrasolv (it makes fascinating textures as you can see on the right hand piece) and cut circles out of it in the pattern of the piece on the left, then to glue it around the circles drawn there.  That didn't work well because I simply wasn't precise enough, but it did give me a lot of cool circles - and another idea!  The piece on the right was the result of those experiments. (The software for Blogger is again making me crazy!  I can't get the B&W ink drawing to stay next to the Citrasolv Circles, so the layout looks shabby.  Apologies!)

#38 Citrasolv Circles

#37 ink drawing based on fabric
design by Knoll

#39 Collage, photographs, calligraphy, citrasolv page

#39 I've been working with images of my husband Chris for a while.  I took a series of pictures of him to use in a David Hockney-type portrait collage.  I didn't end up creating that, but I have used the pictures to weave with, and, on this day, I used them to illustrate the quote "Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed."

January 26th, my esteemed colleague and dear friend Lisa Fisher Johnson passed away. She had had a brain tumor. She was an amazing artist and one of the kindest, friendliest people I've ever known.  She was a marvelous person and a good friend.  I will miss her terribly.  I attended her memorial service and the reception afterwards where I was hoping to talk to people and to share my memories and grief, but I ended up feeling a bit too shy to approach people to talk.  I left early and came home and created my own memorial to Lisa, these pages, where I wrote about my feelings and thought about how dear she was to me.  Art can be so healing.

#40 Memorial to Lisa Fisher Johnson

#19 of 100 Creations in 100 Days: Dettifoss Waterfall

When Chris and I were in Iceland in October, we decided to drive to Dettifoss Waterfall because it reportedly has the greatest volume of any waterfall in Europe, 500 cubic metres of water per second plunges over the edge. Sure enough, it was deafening and impressive!

The drive to Dettifoss on icy roads

The drive to the site was long and arduous as the roads were icy, and it was beginning to get towards sundown. I wasn't sure we'd make it with enough daylight to see the place!  Chris was concerned we would have to walk some distance to get to where we could see the falls - I didn't think that was the case because most tourist sites make it easy for tourists to get to the good places!  I was wrong!  

Me, happy in my crampons!

When we got there, the parking lot was emptying out.  We headed to the trail.  Immediately I began slipping and sliding even though I had my great hiking boots on.  I asked people coming off the trail what it was like and how far it was to the waterfall - treacherous the whole way and over 1/4 mile.  Oops!  Thank goodness I had my crampons in the car and Chris was generous enough to go get them for me because I was slipping every step of the way - I don't know what kept him upright - great balance, perhaps?  He had no crampons at that point.  

My glorious crampons!  Like bears'
teeth. A wonderful invention!

Once I had my fabulous crampons on, I could walk over the ice beautifully!  They have teeth like a bear trap so they dug into the ice with every step and kept me from falling really well.  Note:  if you decide to go to Iceland in the winter, get/take crampons!  

The "trail" to Dettifoss

The walk was still arduous.  The trail wasn't clear and obvious - rather, we could tell where people had gone before because the snow was better packed down and in some places there were ropes showing us where not to go.  The terrain was rocky, full of ancient rhyolite volcanic boulders and debris.

Once we got to the waterfall, I was disappointingly underwhelmed.  It was, to be sure, massive - and LOUD!  So much water!  Therefore impressive.  But not beautiful.  There wasn't much light and the water appeared very muddy, not the fabulous white of other falls I'd seen.  Perhaps it was so turgid, it was grey and brown instead of white - I don't know.  Or perhaps I was tired and couldn't see the beauty. A friend of mine posted a beautiful picture of it from a different observation point from the summer and it looked gorgeous, so clearly it has a lot to offer which I didn't see this time around!

Dettifoss Waterfall (for scale, note the size of the posts and ropes of the trail markers)

And here's the artwork I created in response to our trip to Dettifoss.  The CitruSolve papers provided the perfect texture for me to express the flow of the water and the challenge of walking on the ice and the challenging rhyolite rocks.  The image of the falls themselves is from a postcard I bought in the area.  It gives a better sense of the actual color of the water than my picture since there wasn't much light left when we were there!

#19 Response to Dettifoss

#15 - 20 of 100 Creations in 100 Days : Fun with CitraSolv!

After a week of no entries, I'm back!

The living room converted into our work/play
space!

I spent the last four days at Wintergreen with four friends creating! What a wonderful fun time!  We stayed in two condos there, one of which we converted from a lovely living room into a temporary studio and filled it with more art supplies than Michaels and AC Moore sell combined!
And boy, did we play hard!  I haven't seen the others' work because I was so busy making my own, but we will share Thursday when we gather again.  I played with CitruSolv, an organic cleanser which artists have discovered will take the ink off of the pages of National Geographic and will turn into beautiful textures!  Leave it to artists to discover the craziest things!

#16 20 Shades of Blue

#17 Abstract Strips

The prompt for the piece on the left was 20 shades of blue.  I used my color pencils, watercolors, and Tombow markers for many of those, but when I needed more, I rifled through my CitruSolv papers to find more.  Unfortunately some of them have a bit too much glare on them to be able to see well, but some you can see.  The piece on the right was me playing with strips from CitruSolv papers to make an abstract design.

#18 The Wisdom of our Elders

This tree is one of my favorite Citrusolv pieces.  One of the women in the group shared with me a children's book about planting trees in Israel which had lovely illustrations.  I decided to make my own version of one of them using watercolor for the background and Citrusolve papers for the tree.  I'm crazy about the textures that come from this process!

#19 Response to Dettifoss Waterfall

#20

#19 is a combination of a postcard image of Dettifoss Waterfall in northern Iceland and strips of CitruSolv papers.  I write the story about it in my next blog post.

#20 contains an unlikely combination of elements - a page from National Geographic which wasn't completely destroyed by CitraSolv's magic along with a photocopy of one of Monet's late paintings.  I was drawn to the marks Monet made and their abstract quality juxtaposed against the texture of the CitraSolv and the ropes and other linear features remaining from the picture in National Geographic.

I can see that CitraSolv holds much potential for art for me.  I look forward to playing with it more in and out of my Visual Journal and am thankful for the chance to explore its possibilities this weekend!