Day 105: Monday, July 4

My watercolor painting teacher, Peggy Reid, sent me an email with a link to a video she wanted me to watch - DeWitt Jones - who's now a motivational speaker.  He was employed by National Geographic as a photographer for most of his life and was given the instruction to go out and "celebrate what is good in this life" by the them.  I enjoyed the video and started clicking on other videos on YouTube by DeWitt.  This one in particular is a stunning compilation of thoughts and images.  Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLhTJMJ8_8&NR=1

Day 76: Tuesday, May 3

I've talked about the topic/project of "The Conversation" before in the month of March posts.  Our watercolor class taught by Peggy Reid had a "conversation". The idea is based on the book "The Conversation" by Milton Glaser and Jean-Michel Folon.

Now that that introductory statement is out of the way......

A woman we paint with, Gail Green, also paints with a wonderfully talented group of women in Santa Barbara. The group is called Women with Paint and its ten members are Heidi Bratt, Claudia Cook, Marcia Engelmann, Chris Flannery, Gail Green, Anna Lohse, Dorothy Nalls, Gail McBride-Kenny, Cathy Quiel, Martha Shilliday. They all met in Cathy Quiel's art classes in Santa Barbara some years ago.

Over a year ago, completely unrelated to anything our Glendale class is doing, they (the Santa Barbara group) decided to "Converse" via a painting dialogue.  Each woman of the 10 painted a 4x4 square with colors? abstract? realism? whatever she wanted to paint in whichever colors she wanted to use.  That was square number 1.  Square number 1 was then handed to another painter in the group and, following the same rules as Peggy's class did, the second painter created a painting on a 4x4 square that picked up the colors and lines coming off of square number 1.

This is Gail's 4x4 square. In Gail's group, the next woman chose to paint off of the bottom as we're looking at it and she saw a woman in Gail's painting.  She picked up shapes and colors off of the bottom edge and painted this:

Joined together?

I think the 4x4 size is interesting because you have 4 sides to choose to paint from. If woman number 2 had painted off of another side of the painting?

If she had connected to this colorful chrysanthemum-y thing......

Here she would have connected to the green with perhaps a bit of pink showing

Here a lot of pink, some green, no eye, no nose.............

The two paintings are joined together with bookbinding tape and handed to painter number 3.  Here is the progression of paintings that formed Gail's Conversation. Each of the women ended up with her own totally finished 10-panel Conversation.



Think this horn player is fantastic



Followed by a piano keyboard
taking you off of the page



I just think the connections are fabulous between the paintings
From a keyboard to an actual piano



Day 50: Tuesday, March 29

My painting class has had a two week hiatus. People came back to class this a.m. with all kinds of works in progress, works finished, works with questions. 

The projects that came back to class that were of the most interest to me were the "Conversations" - those sequential paintings that pairs of people have been working on these past 6-8 weeks. 

There's a conversation between Gail Storti and AnnMarie Thomas that came to a conclusion today. I'll post their incredible "conversation tomorrow". 

I've been working on a "Conversation" (see earlier posts for what/where this term came from) with the teacher, Peggy Reid, and it just gets more and more exciting to see where we're both going with this.  It's a sequential book - I've photographed two "pages" at a time to show the sequence of the "conversation":

 jill left - peggy right

 peggy left - jill right

 jill left - peggy right

 peggy left - jill right

jill left - peggy right

And we decided today that we're not quite done........a few more panels to be painted before we call and end to "This Conversation".

Day 36: Wednesday, February 23

To continue all these various and sundry "conversations:

 Conversation #1
between Jill and Patty Smith:

and Patty painted a darling clown as the third panel, holding some daisies.

I had also given her a possible other middle panel:

so Peggy Reid, our teacher, took the goldfish panel and is going to start a new conversation.  More on that next week.

and then the other half of Jill and Patty's conversation:

Conversation #2

between Gail Storti and AnnMarie Thomas



and then the other half of Gail and AnnMarie's conversation:
 (and then for some reason the format changes on the blog - white background, different size type..........what gives!!!!!)

Conversation #3:

Peggy Reid and Jill

Jill painted her son with a fancy hat and lots of patterns. Peggy took the fancy patterns and slowed and gentled the patterns down.  I had given her a hard challenge with the extremely patterned hat on the right hand margin. She took the hat pattern and turned it into a cupcake wrapper. Clever that teacher!!

 



Day 25, Wednesday, February 2

In my watercolor class our teacher Peggy Reid brought in a book "The Conversation" by Milton Glaser.  An incredibly interesting art project: the two watercolor artists involved, Milton Glaser and Jean Michel Folon, neither of whom spoke the other man's language, decided to converse via paintings. One of the men drew the first page, kind of a watercolory sunset.

The next man took all the lines and shapes from the right hand edge of the sunset painting and started a second page/second painting. I wish I had photos of the pages. I found a copy, used, but it hasn't arrived yet.

Peggy decided to make this a class project. She painted a first page with a coffee cup and a bagel and the class drew numbers to see which page of the conversation we would be painting. The 2nd painter took the edge of the bagel and created a two wheel bicycle using the same colors of paint. The 3rd painter is now working off of the lines of the bicycle. We'll see her results next Tuesday in class.

Here is Peggy's starting painting:
 

Here is the 1st addition to Peggy's painting (the 2nd page of the book). The edge of the bagel had to be carried over onto the next page, ergo the wheel of the bicycle.

Some of us, since the project sounded so interesting, paired up on our own. I'm painting opposite a friend. We both painted a first/cover page and swapped it. This week I'm to paint a second page.  This is the cover page I painted for the swap.  The painting is supposed to have shapes and colors going off of the right edge so that the painting may be "continued" on the following page. So I tried to put a lot of shapes/colors/designs on that right edge.

I had painted 3 paintings so that my partner could choose and then the teacher, Peggy, came by and chose one and offered to paint a "conversation" with me. I was thrilled. This is what she chose to work from this first week:

Here is the painting I received from my partner:

I am supposed to attach my painting to any shapes, lines, etc on that right hand edge so my only connection will be the portion of that red ball that's missing.

I made a couple of sketches of possibilities last night. Been thinking all day about it. Possibility of a bottle of bubbles being blown? Or turning the whole thing into a caterpillar in a forest of grass could be possibility.