We watched a thicker crescent moon last night sink into the hills as we worked late.
She calls to the Light to build her dream.
Crescent Moon hears and is pleased.
Earth supports, Rosh Chodesh.
© LunarMoondae 2013.
Images courtesy DKatiePowellArt.
I’ve spoken about the series on My Family I created for a year-long study group with Brugh Joy. One of my favorite paintings from the series is of my grandmother, Lyle Genevieve Smith. I was the last grandchild, and so she was always an older woman when I knew her. The older I get the more I look like her, which bothered me until I got old enough that I saw her in my own face and body, the grandmother I loved so much.
I painted her using the ancient goddess figure, the “sitting woman” of Hamangia. She had three children, but I found out she miscarried, also something she and I shared. She loved the outdoors, and I associate her with red earth and snakes and deer and horny toads and turtles and laughter and her garden. She made me love daddy long-legs, the only spider I tolerate, because she told me never to kill one, because she might come back as a daddy long-legs. They were everywhere at the ranch, and so it was good that I grew to tolerate them!
She was a crack shot, and slept even in winter on the sleeping porch at the ranch house with a gun under her pillow. She was normally sweet, but hated to be tickled, and I usually tried to do this when she was washing dishes, and would inevitably end up with a mouthful of soapsuds. My grandfather Ivan was a pain-in-the-ass, and she often could be heard talking to herself in an animated manner, probably about him, while she cooked and cleaned in front of the kitchen window overlooking her garden.
Remembering, I also felt her to be sadder as she grew older; my idiot grandfather moved her away from the ranch near Oregon House she had grown to love, and into a trailer park in Newhall. He shot the horses and her turtles and cats. I didn’t understand the man then, and don’t now, and had grown to dislike him, a feeling that was to turn to hatred when he put her into a home to die against the wishes of my brothers, mother and I.
The night she died, my mother and I had the same dream. I woke with it, and it ended with my Mimi telling me she was fine. I went into my mom’s bedroom to tell her of my dream, but she told me of hers first — and it was essentially the same dream. We saw Lyla-Mimi-Mom in a field of flowers above Rock Creek near Bishop, where my grandparents and mother and uncles camped when they were younger. She looked to be about 35, much younger than she was when I knew her.
While driving back on California Highway 99 near Marysville, I saw the image below of a California Grandmother figure in the corn and wheat colored fields sweeping up to the foothills. She is a sunny version of my grandmother, and she also contains a lot of me.
Both paintings are acrylic on primed canvas, the first 30×36-inches (not for sale), the latter, 48-inches tall.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
This gallery contains 16 photos.
Originally posted on katwritesfood:
Yuuummmmm, I love it when my husband cooks. He is a good breakfast cook, especially when I want bump eggs. This morning I volunteered him for the job, and we finally tried the Chukar eggs. Chukar…
Today, new moon, silence.
Dark of the Moon
Tomorrow, silent New Moon
Painting into the dream
Writing the questions
Waiting for the answers
Moon-dreaming.
© LunarMoondae 2013.
Images courtesy DKatiePowellArt.
I finally bought nine of Golden’s QoR Modern Watercolors, and I am sold! Golden has by far the best acrylic paints on the planet, and now they have made a line of watercolors that is making me want to ditch many of my favorite Daniel Smith Watercolors (except for the Primatek line of gemstone colors, so yummy.
I played at both ends with QoR’s silver and Daniel Smith’s Genuine Hematite, and what you see above is the mix. Later I dropped some water in the middle just ot see what happened. I do think that the watercolors have a bit more staying power that normal watercolors, but as I work with them we will see.
I’ve fallen in love with the Terra Green, which I wish I had a dozen time in past, and the Bohemian Green. QoR’s Green Gold is much more what I think a green-gold should look like, as opposed to Daniel Smith’s, which is a beautiful color, a bright lime, but not Grene Gold (I will continue to buy DS’s color, however, as i am in love with it.) QoR’s Van Dyke is richer, and has a bit of a burnt quality to it, not quite as flat, tho that is what VD Brown is in most colors, so be warned this VD Brown has a flare of orange in it.
Drawbacks, only one that I can see: The tubes are small, like Sennelier, which makes them more expensive than, say, Daniel Smith . . .
What I love best after testing them is that they are intense. I missed the ability to move really intense color in any of my other watercolors, and when I dipped my brush into the Quinacridone Magenta, I was shocked at how far the bold the color was. I quickly wiped my brush, thinking I had put a lot of paint onto the brush, but NO, it was a normal amount of very lovely dense color — and so I went to see just how far that bit of color would go, and after the top left square, you can see that it continued to be thick and lovely, even as I dropped a bit of water on it to stretch it to see the lighter color. Omigoddess! the Indigo and Green Gold also had staying power in intensity, lovely lovely deep color! Yay!
I came back and added Daniel Smith’s Quinacridone Gold to a few colors: Quin Magenta, Van Dyke Brown, Permanent Green, and Indigo. I always have to see what Hematite and Quin Gold, my go-to mixer colors, do to the paints. Amazing how they held their colors and played nicely.
So, when money allows, more QoR colors. And Daniel Smith Primatek’s. Yummo!
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
(How funny. I wrote this during the A-to-A Challenge and forgot to post it!)
This year, we are finally getting Saturdays off — yaaaaaah!
Mitchell made us bump eggs from Ralph — chicken, duck and turkey, yummy runny heavenly over toast. We wandered around Portland today, as wandering is one of our favorite things to do. Portland Saturday Market was a quick dash because it began to pour, so just the basic, what we can’t get in the markets: local organic corn tortillas in the pepper flavor (as if they are too hot?) and amazing carrots.
We headed over the bridge to Sellwood for a bit of rummaging in the antique stores. We tried dickering a bit but Oregonians don’t dicker. A woman had boxes of old screws and nails (Mitchell likes weird stuff) and they were $10 a cigar box, a bit steep, and she was going out of business. He offered her 25 for four boxes, and she could keep the nice boxes and sell them separately. “Nope.” She has one week left in business and she turned down $25 for old screws and nails! Both of us are Californians, and I was raised dickering in Mexico, so “What’s your best price?” is standard for me unless it really is a great price.
We ended up with lunch at our favorite Cha-Cha-Cha. This is a chain in Portland, and it’s a weird chain, in that each family member owns one or two. The quality varies wildly from one to the next. Unfortunately, the one that is our favorite is in Sellwood, the farthest away — but omigoddess it is good basic Mexican food, which I miss. And I want to paint our office the colors of Cha-Cha-Cha, and work in a space drenched in bright orange and fuchsia. Mitchell says it is not advised: color bounces off walls and onto objects, so the problem is not being able to see a color clearly. He is right, but I can still dream.
Lunch was so huge and so late we did not eat dinner, but picked up the cats for a night with us at home, curled into bed with chocolate cake and cold goat’s milk. Not enough good cake in this town, and so far, New Seasons has the best. Chocolate Port, and German Chocolate, yum.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
When Artist’s Cook, my foodie blog, which is usually about organics and GMO and the like:
Living in Oregon with the Alaska-Oregon fishing connection means that in early summer we can buy whole salmon at amazing prices, and the butcher will cut. This year the coho was so wonderful I went back and got a second, so will will have wild salmon for the next three months. I like this with filets, but you could do it with steaks. If so, I would not put the steak on top of the corn-bean mixture, but to the side, due to bones. It takes about 45 minutes to cook, unless you have to blacken the peppers.
This is a two step process. If you don’t have the Blackened Sugar Chili Pepper Pesto, use two blackened chili peppers finely chopped, your choice. If you can’t handle hot, use a poblano or other milder chili. Take the time to blacken the outside skin, and leave the skin on —…
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I am getting ready to teach an exciting class, and here is a hint: The Earth Watching the Moon Pull at her Belly. Follow Lunar Moondae for announcements on this and the Lunar Moondae Challenge!
I know, know, I already posted “Gaia Watches the Moon Pull Her Fertile Belly,” above, but I have more to say about her, because she’s been driving me crazy. This is all about process.
Gaia + Moon + Sun came to me at 3am just before the full moon. I was sketching, unable to sleep, a common time for me to be awake. I drew this little sketch, right, and thought they were all wonderful. I love the raw sketches!
Then I did the watercolor below, and liked it, but saw room for improvement in the difference between what I had in my mind and what I painted. Watercolors are still new to me, remember? I have visions and can’t execute them — which is hard for someone who is good with another medium. Her nipples inadvertently slipped from her breasts, melting like a cake in the rain. Were…
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Pink and corals are not my go-to colors, but I use them when painting Missions. We bought some local peonies that were luscious a few days ago, and they used every pink I had to paint! I loved how they faded from the vibrant corals to the palest shell pinks in a few days. I still have petals on mine, one more day!
Below is the amazing flower that had me looking at coral and pink!
This is the same flower several days apart.
I’m a day early: Happy Paint Party Friday Thursday!
And now I will be doing Friday Sketches and Artists Play Room!
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Billy Al is one of my favorite artist; here, a curator from LACMA talks about the installation of one of his exhibits. LACMA’s blog is a good blog. . . .
As you may have heard, last week we launched the Reading Room, an online space devoted to the electronic publication of the museum’s catalogues. Our first selection of books focuses on the L.A. art scene of the 50s, 60s, and 70s—a real heyday for L.A. artists, galleries, and art institutions.
From the beginning, even as we were selecting which books to digitize, one of our biggest concerns was that we’d lose something deeply valuable by putting the books online, that the tactile presence of each of these great artifacts would instantly evaporate. One way to address that, we determined, was to show them in someone’s hands in order to give better context for their scale. We also thought it would be helpful to hear a thoughtful narrator describe what each of them meant as books and also as exhibitions. We asked Senior Curator of Modern Art Stephanie Barron to…
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Mitchel and I met, had our first date, and married within a week in May, with a few years between meeting and wedding. We celebrate it as a weekly event.
On the full moon this year Mitchell and I went on walkabout to find a perfect outdoor place to do a ritual in gratitude, and to set intention for another wonderful year together; we had a small kit to do a fire puja.
puja |ˈpo͞ojə| (also pooja) noun
Hinduism & Buddhism
an act of worship
ORIGIN Sanskrit pūjā ‘worship.’
We to the coast, and the trip is offering topics, not all of them uplifting, to write about on zenkatwrites. This post, however, is to show my journal entries of that wonderful day with my beloved.
The drive out we took High way 30, a drive through small beach, riverfront and old logging or caning towns. May is glorious in that it usually is not hot (it was this year) and the wildflowers are in full blossom.
Holding hands with Mitchell, exploring, being quiet with each other, both in the dense forest and on the beach. Wandering time is important to my mental health. Standing with our toes in the ocean was such a treat. We could find no place that would allow us to have even the small fire of our puja, and so, we did a water puja on that very hot day.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
It took me a while to want to write this.
I learned a lot from the A-to-Z Challenge — and probably won’t do it again.
I don’t want to set out to write short blurbs just to collect followers and they don’t necessarily hone my writing skills either. I noticed that with few exceptions, many high traffic blogs don’t really interest me, unless they post art. I really love getting The Sketchbook‘s posts daily, for instance. WOW. Candy.
I like writing interesting stuff — interesting to me, anyway.
I like writing consistently about art best, so dkatiepowellart is my favorite blog to write.
I can write, consistently. I did this challenge to see if I could write consistently and I can, day in and day out. Three blogs, 26 posts. Yeow.
I want real followers and to connect with great bloggers that want to share their stories too — I try to visit everyone who come to me unless they are soliciting business.
I didn’t really appreciate the negative feedback from the admin.
I met some GREAT bloggers, new, old, proficient, just starting. And maybe even a friend or two. A sampling: donegallizdoyle, Tarosan, One Art’s Journal, The Sketchbook, Lainyrain, Brian Kasstle’s Blog
That’s all Folks — next year I have other plans for the month of April. I am going to become a fake journalist! (Check out The Official Fake Journal Page.)
The “sitting woman” and the “thinker” of Hamangia.
National History and Archaeology Museum, Constanta.
Most of my research for these two figures originally came through Marija Gimbutas (link to wiki.) I was introduced to her through the University of California, Los Angeles. She wrote two wonderful books I’ve used as references when painting my goddesses and gods, The Language of the Goddess, and The Goddess and Gods of Old Europe.
The two small figurines were found together at the site of Baia-Hamangia in 1952 alongside Lake Golovita in Romania, and if memory serves, they are the oldest male and female to be found in the same dig or burial ground. The museum calls them “the thinker” and “the sitting woman.” I can imagine them on some ancient traveling altar, or buried with a couple, small god/goddess figurines of the Neolithic period, between 4500-5200 BC.
After several small studies on paper, I painted them big, acrylic and pencil on canvas, 42×36-inches. The sketches for these wonderful figurines became the basis for several family members in My Family Series. Below, my brother Patrick and my grandmother, Lyle Genevieve, though I softened her edges from the original because she was a soft woman to curl up with. The figures feel to me to correspond with a personality type. My brother and my grandmother also had an unusually tight-knit relationship, and he idolized her.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
The “sitting woman” and the “thinker” image of Hamangia from Wikipedia,
courtesy the National History and Archaeology Museum, Constanta.
Max and Missy let us into their private world of doodles and drawings to each other. . . AWWW coming!
I can’t take credit for this wonderful money-saving idea. Jorge Royan was discussing sketchbooks versus watercolor pads, and a few of us liked pads better than sketchbooks for many reasons. They are more expensive, but Jorge makes his own!
He buys good 300lb watercolor paper, and I will do that as I get better, but for now I used the inexpensive Strathmore pads I bought on sale at Michael’s. All the corners were clamped firmly, and these were the areas where later I can get a letter opener in to peel a page off the pad. Aileen’s White Tacky Glue was spread around the edge.
I also did the edges on the Fluid pads because they just glue two edges,
so sometimes the middle lifts and puddles. Problems solved, and cheap!
For more information on the tools Jorge Royan uses to create his
wonderful sketches, below, visit Parkablogs when they interviewed him!
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
I started with an iconic view of my hometown, Laguna Beach, from the cliffs to the north. I really went for saturation this time, trying to move lots of color onto a piece. Not what I saw in my mind’s eye, but I am satisfied. Primatek colors were used: Lapis, Kyanite, Black Tourmaline, Sleeping Beauty Turquoise, Montana Pipestone, and Hematite. Gads I even love the way the names roll off my tongue — but I love the colors more. They separate and granulate. Lovely.
Being satisfied, for me, is when the piece either is what I saw in my mind’s eye, or is a happier accident. As I am learning watercolors in my fifties, I am also happy when it kinda looks like what I wanted — I have to lower the bar to resembling, not blotchy, etc.!
I played with two more wet pieces before I put my paints to bed for the night. I love them both; I finally achieved the dark color I miss in acrylics!
Lapis makes that grainy sky! Black tourmaline is in the mountain top.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
I finished up Jeannette House’s sweet bird. Realism is not my thang, but practicing watercolors in this way makes me learn the mixing and the wet/dry work of watercolor. I am still very frustrated by it — colors too dark, too light, too wet, edge lines from puddles, a brush mark doesn’t hold. The zen of it is to go with the flow of the too puddly and then work with that effect, which is what I will do tomorrow. But first, I finished English Birdie up in the style Jeanette was requesting, above. Not too bad. Also, I was able to integrate some of Daniel Smith’s Primatek colors: Lapis, Kyanite, and Hematite.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Today I played with artists from Community Thrive, painting their way. I didn’t like all that I did, but will show you the “failures” too. The thing about classes is two-fold, assuming you are pretty good at making art:
She’s not too bad. . .
I had an image I didn’t like, and had tried Mystele Kirkeeng‘s class from another day, and in desperation to save the under-drawing (my brown watercolor details came out dark as night in a blob) I just took water and a fat brush and scrubbed it. It’s not my favorite, but I don’t hate it anymore, due to the influence of Mystele and Dina Wakley (who suggested faces.) I don’t usually play with faces at all, and played with two today, both on throw-away papers.
Galloping Horses detail. . .
Then I tried Dina Wakley‘s process, changing things as I wanted. I didn’t have the supplies she suggested. This one was a lot of fun, using my hands to move the acrylic inks (I have always used my hands) and sewing on a machine (aaack!) and writing and and and: fun, lose, lines, yay! I used my beloved horses!
Rainbow Bluebird!
Then Jeannette House had a bird she wanted painted, but I still had Dina Wakley in my head, so while I will try Jeanette’s bird her way, I also did it in the spirit of loose and bright and made-up! Fun, lose, lines, yay!
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
D.Katie Powell Art 