Keeper of Keys

Keeper of Keys

Size: 7x10 inches

Medium: Watercolor, ink, metallic powders, gold leaf

Prints ($16.95) and Detail closeups available -here-

I was visiting the Berkeley Botanical Gardens the other day, right about at sunset. The sun was slipping down and through the dawn redwoods, setting golden fire to the edges. A bit of that image trickling through my mind, as well as the lovely bark textures of the redwoods, and a desire to revisit Muhru from my Dreamsign painting of last month.

The sketch on the board. I didn't bother with sketching much of the background. I was going to let that happen organically. Just had a vague concept in mind for what I wanted, and the colors. The rest would happen as the paint dripped.

Here's the initial wash. This one takes the longest to dry. Because I use so much water, to let the pigment from the ink, metallics, and watercolor move, it usually takes about an hour before I can proceed.This is the scariest phase usually, though less so for this particular painting, because I spent so little time with the initial sketch. When I have a very intricate sketch it can be rather unnerving to pour all this ink onto the page and then hope things work out. I've started to lightly spray my sketches with workable fixative before proceeding so that the graphite doesn't get obliterated. I didn't used to fix my sketches.

Once that dried, I dabbed watercolor ground for the keys. I let the ground blob and mound up to create relief texture. Watercolor ground is basically a watercolor gesso-like substance. It's porous, and so you can paint watercolor on top of it.

And I lay a glaze of the watercolor ground over parts of the background as well to soften up the hardness of the black ink textures.

My daughter loved the keys. Every time she came to peek at what I was doing, she ran her fingers over the raised parts!

Once those base layers of texture are in place and dried, I start to pick out forms and shapes from the randomness with highlights and shadows.

Wasn't quite done with the background yet, but I decided to move on to Muhru and get him painted in so that I could figure out what colors he would be and therefore what other colors I needed to pull out of the background to tie things in cohesively.

Worked some more on the background, and then the final step was to apply gold leaf to the relief keys.

Dreamsign

Dreamsign

Size: 14x14 inches

Medium: Mixed

For detail closeups & prints ($16.95), -click here-

"Dreamsign" -- the elusive anomaly that a dreamer can learn to use to gain lucidity. It is a moment when clarity pierces the fog. Ironically it is often in the form of the nonsensical and out-of-place. Suddenly the fabrications of the mind become apparent as such. Exhilaration and control take the place of fear, anxiety, or confusion, and perhaps carry over in some small measure to the waking. Muhru is dreamsign. The sound of his wings beat like a pulse through all dreams, and he is the guardian of the thin line the separates the knowing from the unknowing.

* * *

Some of the in progress photos:

I have long wanted to revisit this concept from earlier 2013. The first piece was a very impromptu painting that emerged from the ink and paint splatters. I wanted to retain that dreamy emergence aspect of it while developing it more though.

Initial brainstorming and sketching.

Finalized sketch. I didn't do any pre-sketching for the background -- I was going to let that develop organically.

 Had an idea to make the key a little bit 3-dimensional. Originally thought to get out my paper clay and mold some of that, but it would involve opening a whole package for just a tiny bit of clay, and paper clay tends to dry out very quickly once the air-tight package is opened. So I went for just very thickly applied watercolor ground. Tried it out on a test scrap of paper first and was pleased with the results, so then I went ahead with it on the final painting.

Applied gold leaf to the raised key.

Conversations in the Woods (and at Night)

"Conversations in the Woods"
8.5x11.5 inches
watercolors

The Dragon Beign and O meeting in the woods for the first time. Cover piece for a poem-story by Mary L Riggs. Looks like I'm stuck on greens these days. Must be residual Hawaii.

Coming home from there to California though, I notice something about my own very green surroundings. There is a very different quality to it. While Hawaii is vibrant, shiny, yellowish-bright-sap-greens, California is more muted -- beautifully soothing viridian-blue-green. Damp tropical scents are replaced by the spicy aromas of redwood forests.

There's one path in Muir Woods (where Dana proposed to me) that I call "the Cinnamon flavored trail" because as you hike up the hill the crimson-barked manzinita, the towering old redwoods, and twisted oak trees combine just so to make a cinnamon smell.

* * *

Twice while in Hawaii I leapt up from a IMAX 3-D view nightmare of spiders. The first time, I jumped out of bed, the albino white spider as large as my hand staring evilly at me.

me: There's a giant white spider on the pillow!!!! (Standing next to the bed at this point, with the lamp on)
dana: (Who's used to these nocturnal outbursts from me, usually in reference to mosquitoes that he is then charged to kill. He looks up groggily) Hm? Where?
me: On the pillow!!! (Pointing)
dana: Honey, there's no spider.
::pauses::
Also, if there was a spider, how could you tell it was white in the dark?
me: (Damn logic...) Oh. Yeah. Right. Must have been a dream. (Climbing back into bed. A bit reluctant. Because damn it, no matter what he says, and what my logical awake-brain is telling me, I KNOW there was a giant white spider dripping venom there a moment ago!)



We didn't see any spiders there. Here back at home in Oakland though we actually do have some monstrous sized arachnids! Ironically I never have spider nightmares here.

A change of pace - strange dreams

A question I get asked often enough that it should be on my FAQ (but isn't) is whether I paint what I dream. Before I can form an answer, the first question is often followed up by comments of how my dreams must be utterly fantastic.

Nothing could be further from the truth. When my brain shuts down at night, it shuts down. If I had to paint the incomprehensible blather that my mind comes up with when I'm sleeping...well, I'd probably put myself to sleep (again) in the attempt. Generally it's prosaic, mundane imagery slapped together with about as much cohesion and story as a three year old would be capable of with a set of refrigerator poetry magnets, and the buildup of a shaggy dog joke.

And so I was as surprised as anyone the other morning to wake up with some rather vivid images in mind that begged to be put to paper in some form. Strangely, even in the dream I remember stepping out from among city streets to see this towering emerald giant, and wanting to pull out my travel journal to sketch on the spot (I suppose I would have been sorely disappointed upon waking to find any dream drawings to have been as ephemeral as the dream itself), but was pulled along through the rest of the journey by inexorable forces. Passage along a thin rocky path that wended its way along the spine of two oceans colliding, lit by the thin torchlight of city lamps.

At any rate, witness the first two images I have ever done from dreams. I guess I can't answer the question any longer with, "No, I never draw from my dreams."