Spring Sketch

A collage sketch for those of you wishing for an early Spring:

Hang in there!

Winter Gardens

Hyacinths are ordinary plants but come January when all is cold and drab, I need a few to buoy my mood and remind me that more clement times are coming soon. I bought some right around the new year. Here’s the progress from bulb to flower:

Too bad I can't share the beautiful scent because it is a big part of the plant's charm. It fills the room but is never cloying or overpowering. Right up here in the attic I have my own little winter garden and the hyacinths are doing all they can to spark creativity. The colors (violet mixed with blue) and the scent wake me up.

Another way to lift the winter spirits is the classic standby: take a walk. Sunday, my daughter and I were at a loss as to where to go so I had a bright idea. After seven years in this town, we’d never been to the cemetery. I realize this is a good thing but I was curious and it gave us a goal. Short term goals are important. (Cemetery + goal = lifted spirits. Hmm. Hope the only "spirits" lifting will be ours.)

We found it by following a path of winter trees. I love winter trees and have been painting them on and off for a few years now. These particular trees rekindled my desire to paint my trees so I knew it was a good omen. (I’ve since started two new paintings.)

We saw all kinds of French grave sites ranging from very old to very new. French cemeteries are different from those I knew in New England. There’s no grass, just gravel. We missed the grass but in the old section we came across some interesting resting places like this one with lots of moss and enamel mementos.

And as we approached the exit, we saw this very old stone slab with a grassy moss growing in the inscriptions.

So we got the grass we were missing after all.

What do you do to keep your winter garden lively?

The Thinking Chair

A post in honor of Picture Book Idea Month - November 2010 #PiBoIdMo

Productivity is everything. I produce therefore I am.

But before I can crank it out, I've got to think it out.

Thinking looks a lot like not doing anything at all. I know this because I've been caught thinking more than once in my life. It wasn't pretty. "Are you okay?" "Why don't you go out and do something?" A couple of years of that and even the most intrepid thinkers join the ranks of the doers and start accomplishing something. Anything. And learn to think on the sly while getting stuff done.

But sometimes I really need to sit down and think. I know my last post was "Stand Up and Get to Work" but this is different. This is about sitting down and getting those ideas that will lead to work.

I set up a chair just for thinking. It's a little kooky but it's working so I'm sharing. Don't worry about going out and buying a chair just for thinking. You probably have something on hand that would work out just fine. Look in the garage or attic. Shopping for the perfect chair would only serve as procrastination. Plus spending money might set up an obstacle to sitting down and doing some serious thinking.

My Thinking Chair is just a canvas lawn chair souped-up with some pillows. The great thing about a lawn chair is that I can fold it up and prop it against the wall when I need the space.

Having this place devoted to thinking helps me focus and validates the process. When it's time to start, I sit myself in the Thinking Chair. I keep a pad nearby. I keep coffee nearby. I think. I calm down and don't become overwhelmed by what is or isn't happening. This chair is where I give myself the chance to work things out. It only takes a few minutes of thought to fuel a good work session. Once I've allowed myself the time to think, to figure out what I want or need to do at that moment, I'm free. My mind is allowed to work. It's amazing what is already in our brains. Thinking is like rummaging through drawers and finding all kinds of great things we forgot we had. Sometimes I'm amused at what my brain spits out when I let it take over, when I get out of it's way with all my demands to get something done. It's like a patient friend that guides me, "You knew it all along. You just needed a chance to put it together."

The Thinking Chair is like a flag to alert the entourage: when they see me in it, they know that short of a fire or gunshot wound, I am not to be disturbed. This is serious business: brain cells are synapsing perhaps even reproducing. (I don't know if that's true but it could sound impressive in an authoritative tone of voice.)

Thinking gets a bad rap. It resembles sleep or spacing out. You run the risk of being called "lazy". Ugh. The "L" Word. But dare to sit in your Thinking Chair and think.

I think therefore I am therefore I produce.

I want to wish everyone a great Picture Book Idea Month. Here's to many thoughts sprouting lots of ideas (at least thirty!). And I want to thank Tara Lazar for thinking it up and bringing it all together for a second year.

Stand Up and Get to Work!

I used to paint in oils a lot and my paintings got bigger and bigger. Then I started working in gouache in an attempt to do more sketching and experimenting instead of the very finished work I was doing on canvas. When I moved house, I had an attic space to work in but it wasn't very big so I opted to continue in gouache as I really didn't have the space for backing up and looking at my work (plus the smell and mess wasn't working for me either).

So I began painting in gouache on paper at my drafting table and worked smaller and with more detail. I painted a series of paintings of views of the airport and this style captured these moments. It worked. Eventually I found myself hunched over my paper on gouache going further and further into details. But I wanted something different for a picture book text I wrote and have gone through a series of attempts, trying to recapture a looser feel that I felt the story needed and that I'd be able to carry through 32 pages.


My last blog post shows one of the character studies from those attempts. I wasn't happy with the work then I began thinking about oil painting. I've realized that I miss the physical aspect of working in oils; standing up while I paint at an easel, moving in front of the painting and backing up. I decided I just had to stand up and paint in gouache over my drafting table. I'm using bigger brushes and a kid's set of big gouache pastilles on regular old sketch book paper. The big tools make it hard for me to get into details. The thin paper forces me to not go back in too much because this quality can't take too much going over. And standing up keeps it big: gestures, modeling. I'm physically engaged with what I'm doing by backing away.

It's harder to do tiny details standing over a piece of paper with a big brush. I was especially tempted to sit down for the little girl's face but I had to resist and I'm glad I did. I'm much happier with the result.

I think backing off and restraining our need to tweak it just a little more is important in lots of aspects of life. Writing while standing might be a bit much but perhaps the same idea can be applied by writing uninhibitedly: no editing that first draft until it's done and been left alone for a week or so. Or writing in a notebook outdoors instead of on the computer in the office for a change.

Now I'm going to get up and get some work done! What do you do to shake it up and push it to the next level?

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D'abord, je veux m'excuser pour le dernier blog où dans mon hâte j'ai oublié d'écrire un petit mot pour mes amis francophones.

Aujourd'hui, je voulais simplement faire voir encore mon travail de recherche des personnages. J'ai changé ma façon de peindre un petit peu, secoué mes méthodes afin de faire ce que j'ai envisagé. Les habitudes s'installent et parfois j'ai l'envie de m'en débarrasser donc au lieu de rester assise à table de dessin, je me lève et je peins debout avec les pinceaux plus gros et la peinture en pastille énorme (destiné aux enfants) avec un nombre limitée de couleurs. Je utilise un papier de bloc sketch. Comme ça, j'arrive de porter les gestes moins minutieux, de limiter les détailles et d'éviter le désir de faire les images trop réalistes.

Qu'est-ce que vous faites pour remuer les automatismes dans votre travail ?

NaPiBoWriWee and Beyond

Last week I participated in the National Picture Book Writing Week invented and organized by the dynamic Paula Yoo. I did it last year too and I'll do it again next year. It's like everything else; the more you do it the better you get at it. I wrote 7 first drafts of 7 picture books. Might seem easy but the hardest part at times is sitting down, taking out those ideas that have been rattling around in the dark corners of the brain and putting them to the test. Do they hold up on paper? Not always but that's okay because then you can move on. And the other ideas, the ideas that start to look promising— they need revision but that's okay too. I'm always happy when I do something, move it all forward even a little bit and in the context of this challenge it was fun. Paula was rooting for us and provided tons of support and advice. And then there were the other participants: I met some great people in the 'comments' on Paula's website and on twitter. I attempted new things and learned some too. What's not to like?

This week I'm getting back to what I was doing before the NaPiBoWriWee madness began. Some painting and a picture book dummy. I revised the story in places so that requires new illustrations then I decided I needed to rethink the couple of paintings I had already done for it… hmmm

This is another study for the main character.
I'd changed my mind while doing it so this is really for working things out.

Now I'm going to go back and start over. Don't worry! I will figure this out. I'm pretty sure. :-p

This is a little painting of a subject I've done before as an attempt to develop an illustration 'style'.

I've since bagged the idea of working that way… got to keep it natural, me. So I redid it as an exercise to get back to where I was before I started fiddling… That's what you see here. And I'll probably do it over again.

Next week my daughter will be taking a big trip with her Latin/Greek class to Greece and so I'll have lots of uninterrupted time to work. Let's all keep our fingers crossed I use my time very wisely!

Snapshot

This is a little gouache I just did to send to my mother for her birthday, painted from an old photo from a batch she sent me. I love the intimacy of the pose. I love all the memories it brings back. I remember the furniture and objects in the living room and even that wood paneling that was so popular back then. It makes me think of the person taking the photo too; my father. I see him with an old rangefinder camera taking pictures of all five of us kids growing up. I like that he saw my Mom and sister sitting there and felt that the moment was worthy of a photo. This is life. All those little moments.

I hope Mom likes her gift.

Une petite parenthèse pour faire voir un tout petit tableau à la gouache que j'ai peint pour l'anniversaire de ma mère. Enorme nostalgie pour moi. Les petits moments de la vie qui sont quand même poétique...

Thanks for passing by.

Emotion

This is a character study for a picture book I wrote. It isn't definitive; I need to take it a lot further. What emotion do you think the girl's face and posture express? There is no right answer. I'd just like to know what you think.
Thanks!