The Seared Blue Hair Comment: Saturday Sniffles and Stuff

Well it's been a while so I'm posting some new and some old things. I've been sick with a cold for the past several days. I don't like being sick because I don't feel like doing much while I'm sneezing and coughing. Today I had enough energy to make some home made fresh chicken soup. I did this with the help of my pressure cooker which I so love to use!! Once all the dicing and cutting is done .. and the heat is up enough the time it takes to cook up is just 12 minutes! I added a crusty piece of toasted bread and it was yummy! And this I think does work miracles on my nose and head .. and it's great on a cold cold night like we are having here tonight!! Brrrrrr-r-r.

Below is a work done in charcoal some years ago and it was a wood shelf with wood blocks on it. It makes me want to do more with charcoal. Next is a photograph of some roots and rocks on a nearby road.

To the right is a photo of my most current tree painting. This is done on watercolor paper and is painted with a layer of turquoise acrylic paint then the tree is painted with walnut ink and then filled in with white acrylic paint in lines and dots. this photo doesn't do the original justice.

On the left is aged book pages that are glued onto paper and then the drawing is done on the front with walnut ink and then the white acrylic is painted afterwards. It has a wintery feel to it even though there are no snowflakes in front of the big tree branches.

On the right is a tree that is done on paper also with walnut ink stained and then outlined in more walnut ink and white acrylic and white colored pencil and colors of pencil and dots of white and walnut. I like mixing stain with watercolor pencil pigments.

The work below is a collage of paint and different paintings and drawings that have been added at different times. I guess it's kind of an evolving work. There is a poem in this piece also.

Its very hard to see that the image to the right is on a book page of words. I love the color of this but it's not accurate as the photo was taken indoors at night under warm lights. So there is a more yellowish red cast to the lovely walnut ink there.

Below are a series of images that are something that I like to do sometimes. I find a book that has an interesting title and I just paint on it and make it my book. I try to use it as a sketch book or journal of sorts. I use the words that are already there and use them to make new words or sentences. I remember the first time I tried this it was really difficult to allow myself to repurpose the book. Somehow it felt like it was so wrong that the book God's were going to strike me down like the keys on an old typewriter or something and I would have letters permanently embedded on my skin. I have done this in various books over time and recently I was going through some of my old books and found this one. Thought it would be fun to share here on my blog. Also on that same day of going through books and such I found another one that I did that I had no decoration to the front and completely forgot that I had altered some of the pages inside. It makes me wonder if I had inadvertently put it into the thrift store bin and then someone purchased it there and found my art in it.. would they be mad or excited about it. I think I would be fascinated by that if I found a book like that. Anyway .. it served it's purpose at the time that it was done. The sketches of people in these images below were of my daughter. The thoughts that were provoked in the writings were where I was in my head at that time. I'm grateful that life changes. Even though the future can bring difficulties there can also be acceptance of the difficulties that were or changes to the ones that had been and it feels better for a time until then next challenge arises. I am also so grateful to have an outlet for self creative expression. This will always give me great joy .. no matter what.