End of August 8/30/2020
I spend some hours this weekend sitting and painting some rocks that I’ll put around later when they’re finished. I did some painting too, gouache on black paper and then cut out and pasted on another piece of black paper.
I’ve put out a lot of my rocks. I sort of wish I had counted but I’m not that organized. All I know is people seem to like them (I always keep a few at work which I know goes against Covid as I’ve given a few out there). I’ve kept some rocks that I couldn’t part with:
Kerfe and I wish the WordPress community the best as we head into fall.
New Batch
My favorite out of the new batch of rocks. I tried to do something different from my wonky mandalas. I still love to paint the rocks black first.
The whole batch. Other folks in the neighborhood are painting/distributing rocks; there were two ocean themed ones by my little tree in the backyard!
We are taking off tomorrow for a little break. Some friends have a house in upstate New York and we are heading up there for the weekend. Hope everyone is doing well! Nina
The Kick-About #8 ‘Cicada’
Some really amazing cicada visions here. Enjoy!
Our last Kickabout prompt, based off Sickert’s painting ‘Ennui’, inspired a range of new work by our participating artists on themes of listless, languor and waiting. When you consider the prolonged incubation times of your average cicada, you could say we haven’t moved all that far this week! That said, we’re a long away from Sickert’s rather drab little parlour, as instead we seek to celebrate the life, times and associations of these extraordinary insects.
Tom Beg
“Even after I’ve long since left this place I currently call home, cicadas more than anything will be the thing I associate the most about summer in Japan. Of course, the amazing sound they make is their most recognisable and iconic trait, but they have another peculiar behavior I find quite morbidly fascinating. After they do their yearly cicada thing, the final resting place of an unlucky few ends up being in…
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Drawing from a photograph
I follow a Paterson site by a guy named Bernard Jaz Payne. He posts some great photos of old Paterson. This one is William Carlos Williams, a pediatrician/poet who wrote “Paterson”.
Here is the photo:
I recently bought a pad of good drawing paper (Arches 85% cotton) and it is much better than the sketchbooks I usually use. Doing this drawing on this paper was pretty rewarding. I could get different textures and shading much more easily.
Have a great week! Nina
shell
well, first the wayward wind—grey—if you tried to hold it, your hands remained empty–
the song of the sirens, spilled into a traverse of stone and sea—perhaps some dragon’s breath—a shape becoming uncovered, a shape turning into a wheel that reminds itself to spiral—
the beach is hungry, but in a subtle way—do not conclude that it can be ignored–
gaping portals
azure shimmering
meeting places
Stream of consciousness for Grace at dVerse. I’ve been doing a lot of this because of a recent prompt I saw that incorporated this technique, where you took a treasured object and wrote a bunch of unedited stories about it. This was from my origin story.
The original writing for this haibun took up a whole page–I just selected a few parts and made a kind of haiku by removing words from one “sentence”. The drawings are once again taken from my archives. I’ve spent a lot of time drawing shells.
An oldie from the 60’s
I majored in painting and sculpture at the University of Cincinnati. Recently found this tombstone that I made; it used to have the epitaph “she dug it” on one of those bottom panels. I was a Louise Nevelson copycat and spent a lot of time in the room with the lathes and table saws. I’ve also always wondered why in my time girls took home economics and boys got to do industrial arts. (My high school also had only one girls sports team: bowling. That was before Title 9 and was really deeply unfair!)
A closeup of one of the rocks. I’m going to try this as a painting.
Random page from sketchbook. I’ll post some more of the swoopy paintings later when they are done.
Have a great day everyone. Nina.
Read More…castle in the sky
our bridges reflect themselves,
shimmering as we cross
between the solid and what
we cannot control–
the light tells us stories
about what we think we see,
about what lies beneath
the surface of where and who
we think we are–
more, there is always more
that stays unfocused,
that contains what can’t be
seen it its entirety,
that reconfigures itself
with wind, or clouds,
or tides rising from the unseen–
they say humans prefer the mirrored
image to the camera’s eye—
the uncapturable moment
of possibility
For Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.
Draw a Bird Day: Rainbow Songbird
Nina’s internet has been out since the tropical storm, with no promises of when it will be back, so she took a photo on her phone of her bird and sent it to me to post. Another colorful tribute to Draw a Bird Day!
And hopefully her internet will be back soon so she can post more of what she’s been doing.
Draw a Bird Day: Carolina Wren
The Carolina wren is common throughout the eastern United States, but it is more often seen than heard. Ground dwellers who prefer the undergrowth near forests, they live in pairs, and are believed to mate for life. The male is the most vocal, but they can also be heard in duet. Although shy of humans, these small brown birds are active and inquisitive.
deep rivers wander
tree to earthstone,
listening–
brown birdsong grows wild,
seeding wind with ancient light
A gogyohka from the Oracle for Colleen’s #tanka Tuesday, poet’s choice.
The Kick-About #7 ‘Ennui’
The latest Kick-About, with much to say about Sickert’s painting “Ennui”.
ennui: a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.
Gary Thorne
“A most welcome challenge to enjoy the mood and establish a balance between location and figure. As always significant changes up to the eleventh hour, perhaps a blessing with oil as this chap had a companion all the way through, yet his removal as well the monochrome against a sliver of colour has pushed this to a more ambiguous resolve.” Oil on canvas board. 40 x 50 cm.
Vanessa Clegg
“I wanted the process of the drawing to be as tedious as possible (and it was!) creating a sense of time stopping/ dragging… the only indication of its passing being the alteration of pencil type and pressure… repetitive pattern making tying me to the work table. A sense of entrapment. Clouds are mercurial by nature, constantly metamorphosing, so, by freezing the…
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method two madness 
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