More Outdoor Sketches & Spirit Drawings

Last week, Martha and I spent a quiet, early morning at Meldrum Bar on the Willamette River rendering the river, rocky beach, wildflowers and birds.

Tuesday, we started a "Nature Journaling" class with Jude Siegel at the Multnomah Arts Center. The spirit drawings help connect the eye, heart and hand to draw the essence of a subject.

Use of dominant vs. nondominant hands makes a difference in the drawing. My left-handed drawings are much more free and loose.

Adding color makes the drawing come alive. I drew the tiger lily with my left, nondominant hand- larger and faster and like the results. Learning how to use watercolor paints is exciting. Oh, what summer fun!

Where in the world is Paula now?

Yesterday, our Portland Art Collective exchanged art made from recycled materials. Cynthia Mooney made me this wonderful shadow box. It says, "Where in the world is Paula now?". She knows how much I love to travel.

She even included photos from my trip to Tokyo. It's a very special gift that will look great on my yellow studio wall. Thank you, Cynthia!

Portland's Chinese Garden offers peace, quiet and time to reflect on its beauty with ink, watercolor and camera. Bamboo and stone form the yin and yang of this corner. The scholars' garden honors the virtues of integrity, love, health, wealth and longevity.

The sleeping water lily and the waking lotus bloom side by side.

Summer is a wonderful time to visit the garden. I highly recommend taking a tour and contemplating the view.

I printed this mermaid during a Gocco Print class taught by Shu-Ju Wang at the Focus on Book Arts Conference in Forest Grove the end of June. The Japanese orginally created the Gocco as a children's toy. Artists now use it to create books and fine prints. I'll play with it this summer and have more prints to share. Check out Shu-Ju's art at http://www.fingerstothebone.com/. I love her layered prints and paintings.

Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts

After viewing the "Pixel- Artists Who Use the Computer" exhibits and demonstrations at the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts, I felt compelled to draw a face using my Wacom and computer. This takes lots of practice! The new Wacom monitor I saw demonstrated there really caught my eye. The Wacom is built right into the monitor and you draw directly on the monitor screen. How cool is that? At $2500, I think I need to wait for several generations of product development before this monitor sits on my desk.

Drawing Practice

I want to improve my drawing skills and came up with this idea during one of my sleepless jet lag nights. I took a magazine photo (bottom center) and used different media to draw the image. The upper left is a pencil drawing, the upper right is the image with gesso and colored pencils, bottom left is arcylics looking at shadows and the bottom right is pen & ink with watercolor in Modigliani-style. Let's hope that you'll see progress as I continue to practice.

Japanese Treasures

It's great to be home again and I have so many special memories of people and places from Japan. In Kyoto, I painted this little dorei doll, a clay bell that looks like a geisha. In other regions of Japan, dorei dolls are painted to represent the zodiac animals or Daruma- an Indian monk known for his religious devotion. He sat in meditation so long he lost the use of his legs.

After painting the dorei doll, I searched for Saiun-do, a little shop in the Gion or geisha section of Kyoto that sells supplies for Japanese painting. The top photo shows Anekoji preparing the wonderful materials I purchased and am eager to use. The watercolor gansai paints are made from plant pigments developed over a hundred years ago by the original shop owner. The soft colors go with suiboku-ga, or the Japanese ink paintings.

Of course, one needs the brushes, brush holders, sumi ink sticks, a suzuri ink grinding stone, water holder to rinse brushes, and a tiny vessel to add water for ink preparation. The single handle with five brushes bound together is called a renpitsu- unique to Japan. It's used for large sweeps of color where a gradation of shades is desired with one stroke. Anekoji demonstrated how to use the brushes and the different ink colors. I wanted to take her demo book home with all of it's soft colors, brush strokes and muted tones. I felt very honored when she had me sign her guest book along with other painters from all over the world.

Now it's back to unpacking, getting prints made of the photos I took and finishing my Japan journal.

Tokyo Sights

Last Sunday, we went to Yoyogi Park to see the Harajuku girls and rock bands. The next day I passed through Shibuya Station and captured a photo of Tokyo's "Time Square". The highlight of the week had to be Tsukiji Fish Market. We got up at 4am to be there at 5 to see the market open up and the tuna auction. The world's largest fish market- 400 species of seafood weighing over 2500 tons from all over the world arrive every day. It trades 10 times the volume and five times the value of New York's New Fulton Fish Market. Women control the money in tiny little booths scattered throughout the market. Business is based on a handshake, very low tech with workers respected for their skills and knowledge. The surprising thing is that it doesn't smell fishy. They use seawater to clean everything and make ice to chill the fish. Jean spoke to an operator of one of the fish moving vehicles and he invited us to ride with him to a sushi place- a highly unauthorized and hair raising view of the market which not many get to experience. The sushi meal tasted great- fresh right out of the market.