Thursday, January 26, 2017

sketchbook

I've been keeping a little sketchbook with surface pattern ideas.
the paper is awful for painting, perhaps better used for drawing, 
but I love the scale of it and the pretty coptic stitching on the spine,
so I'm determined to fill it up this year.
I'm not one to keep a sketchbook with any regularity, 
preferring to simply dive in an make work and see what happens.
However, keeping a sketchbook is a great way to paint or draw 
something every day, especially when I can't devote 
as much time as I'd like to painting.
 
Sometimes the work-life balance skews a little more toward life,
and that means less time for painting.
I find this a great way to keep working in some manner or fashion
and that makes me and my brushes very happy.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

2 0 1 7




Happy New Year!
I've been experimenting with portraits and pattern.
Diminutive paintings with little borders.
More is more. Pattern on pattern. Layer upon layer.
I made several lists - as I always do - of people I'd like to paint.
Plans, though, are made to be changed.
I began with some ladies of fashion and then jumped to 
women naturalists and gardeners of which Vita Sackville-West 
is the first. However, I've side stepped and started Virginia Woolf,
so I have no idea where it will all end up but that's fine by me.
It's a year for doing new things.
that is for sure.