The First Star

The First Star

Size: 14.5 x 19 inches
Medium: Watercolors

I do think I've finally broken my Green streak at least, and instead landed squarely in a Blue/Gold one. Though with the next paintings I've got planned I'll be moving on from this as well. More wings and more angels coming up.

The other night I was going for an evening walk around the neighborhood with my husband, and we came across a 12x12 inch wacom intuos tablet that someone had left out with the trash (on top of a 21 inch CRT monitor, now that is trash!) I took it home, figuring it must be broken, but I'd give it a try anyway. Surprise, it worked! So it's quite a bit larger than the one I've been using all this time, 6x8 inches. I'm almost thinking it's too big for most of my purposes! Still it's fun to have such a large surface to work on.

Mmm...oven's preheated, off to throw together that pizza for dinner tonight! After years of searching, I've finally found the perfect dough recipe. It's really wordy, but the actual steps are pretty simple: http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/001199.html

Mat Inkings & Computer Whinings

And here I was, thinking my computer troubles were finally over. But such luck was not to be mine. Windows Vista (which I got saddled with as a necessity following the emergency purchase of a computer in September) upgrade to Windows 7 (which fortunately came free since it was so close to the release date when I purchased previously mentioned computer)...should have been a rather easy thing right??? As all the Windows 7 marketing material and packaging would have you believe. Well, after much more hair tearing (amazing I have so much hair still after these past couple months), and fortunately being able to search for fixes to my installation woes online with my husband's computer (he's a big fan of Ubuntu...and I'm getting there), I finally set about ditching the upgrade and just going for a clean install. Even though it feels like I just got my computer back into full working order less than a month ago. It took the whole day, but finally everything is all set again. Crossing my fingers that this is the end of the line for this string of unfortunate computer events.

My hands were not idle today while waiting for the install to finish though. I managed to finish these two mat ink designs. Normally I only do these for Dragoncon, but someone asked very nicely, and I haven't done any inks in while, so the fingers were feeling the itch. Besides, I just bought another big stash of pens from Jetpens.com the other day. If you're interested, I use the 0.3 thickness high-tec-C pens for all my ink drawings. They flow wonderfully smooth, and I enjoy the fine 0.3 point (they also come in 0.5 and 0.7).

And also added a bit more to the angel sketch. She's ready to be painted tomorrow I think. I'm a bit hooked on the color scheme and themes of "Gemini" and "The Transformative Nature of Music", so don't be surprised when I whip those out again. I'm having too much fun with those colors to be moving on just yet, though I think after this painting I should have it out of my system.

Coyotes, Bears, Phoenixes, and Angels - Oh My!

A number of sketches for new paintings in the works.

Part of a knotwork piece for a commission. Haven't done this type of celtic designwork in a while. Bear & coyote in here (and some stray fish!)

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A dark phoenix commission. Rough stages still. Started off as bits and pieces of abandoned Scorpio and Virgo sketches, but she's finding new life now in another form.

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And some angels... I missed my annual Christmas card angel last year, because too many deadlines got in the way. So getting an early start! Not sure which I liked better here, so I'm going for both!

The Transformative Nature of Music

"The Transformative Nature of Music"

medium: watercolor
size: 16x21 inches

This is the first personal painting I've had the opportunity to work on in over two months. While I do pick commissioned projects that interest me artistically, I still need to periodically make time to work on the concepts that are floating around in my own head, without the fingers of an art director plucking the strings. In a way though, the commissions give me breathing time to develop my own ideas, and conversely because getting my personal work out onto the blank page can be oddly more mentally draining, painting other peoples images lets me relax a bit. In the space of that relaxation the need for personal paintings starts to build up again. It's a cycle, and a nice balance.

On a technical note, yes the color scheme I used in this piece is very similar to Gemini. I enjoyed the colors and the approach to the butterflies in that piece. Enough that I wanted to use it again in this one, and perhaps push it even further.

Likewise, the piano/tree was something I had explored a little bit in the Nine of Pentacles from my tarot series years ago. However, I wanted to go further with the organic aspect of it. In that older painting the combination is more simplistic. It is more like a tree that just happens to grow through the instrument, while in this newer piece I wanted them to be inextricably entwined. One is an extension of the other. As if the tree somehow grew into this form, and its living sap flows with music.

In a way, this piece is the other bookend to a painting I did earlier this year, Potential. Their compositions and visual elements echo each other. While Potential is about celebration of the first stirrings of new life, and the unlimited possibilities encapsulated within a seed, within a child; The Transformative Nature of Music is a celebration of a different sort: of a life that has been lived, and the spirit that passes on. Not so much "death", as what I try to suggest with the title, with the impossibly melded tree/piano, and with the sheaf of music that flutters from the stand and metamorphoses to take flight in the form of the strange bird - Transformation.

The day that I started this piece, I saw two ravens winging through the skies above my house. It's not a sight I've born witness to here before; far more usual are crows. But there was no mistaking these regal twin black shadows that glided through the sky with crows. Their cries echoed down the hillside, and the other birds fell temporarily silent.

In the spaces between the notes
you can hear the breath of her name
A song of mourning
A song of memory
A song of celebration
Fingers trail in arpeggios
up and down the keys
Playing in the spaces between the notes

with the breath of her name

Zodiac Cover

Zodiac
Size: 15.25x15.25 inches

Medium: Watercolor

And with this one, the zodiac series is complete. This is the cover piece. A bit of a deviation from what Llewellyn has done in the past for the astrological calendars. They wanted this one to show representations of each sign integrated into a scene, rather than the standard celestial wheel with cut and paste sections for each month. I'm glad they wanted to go for something different with this year because I had more fun with this type of piece than I would have had mucking around with design and graphics to digitally stick it all together.

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On another note, I've had people asking about these for a while, but I've finally put up the tarot ink originals for sale here. I was holding onto them for a while until I had the book published just in case I needed to rescan anything.

Zodiac cover sketch & new etsy pendants

Sketch for the calendar cover. Blank room at the top and bottom needs to be left for the title information.

Also, 12 new zodiac designs added to etsy! *click here*

A few more new designs to come once I get my shipment of supplies next week hopefully.

Rain, Pendants, & Pianos

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain tapping its musical rhythm on the rooftop. It's the first rain of the season, and so our dry spell is over. It looks dim outside, but I climb out of bed to look at the trees and plants that are thirstily drinking it all in. The oaks and acacias leaves glisten, and the jasmine seems to glow, so brilliant is its sap green.

Wrapped in the warmth inside my house, my morning cup of tea seems to taste better than usual even, when I can curl my fingers around the steaming cup and watch the dancing splatter of droplets on the deck.

I was planning to finish off a few more pendants today, but unfortunately that won't be able to happen unless the rain lets up, since I can't put the finishing acrylic spray on. However, if there are any of these zodiac designs you're interested in, now's the time to let me know so that I can be sure to set reserved ones aside (or make enough of them).

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Finished off laying out the sketch for a personal painting before the Llewellyn art director got back to me about the zodiac calender cover concept I'd emailed to her yesterday. So I'll have to switch modes to go work on that before coming back to this piece. Deadlines take precedence over my own projects.
A few titles have been rolling around in my head, but I think this one is called "The Transformative Nature of Music". For my grandmother Un-Oi Law who passed away this last week. She had a piano school and store in New York most of her life. On Friday her spirit flew off. My aunts and uncles, my cousins, and their children, took turns playing the piano for her in those last few days so that the music could fill the hospice room. She is inextricably tied to the concept of "family" for me, a strong core that binds all of us together. She was a wonderful woman who took care of me the first year of my life when my parents were both at work and school still. And I'll think of her whenever I play the piano that she gifted me with for my wedding.