Day 117: Tuesday, July 26 - The Conversation

The Conversation for the Sketchbook Project that I'm working on with Nancie Johnson of New Jersey continues.  I received Nan's latest addition to our project: The Angry Bird!!

Why is he so angry? He's heard that he's the star of an addictive game called Angry Birds and he just realized he's not getting any royalties!!

This is attached to my painting of last week:

Yielding:

So now I connect something to the sleeping brown cat, the blue z's from the cat's mouth and the floating orange balls.  Suggestions? Ideas? Email me!!

Day 111: Tuesday, July 12

Painted off and on all weekend. Twas fun to have "projects" that needed doing. Needed to finish a Conversation that I'm working on with my teacher Peggy Reid, needed to finish the Conversation with Nancie Johnson for the Sketchbook Project........and then in the middle of it all, I decided I wanted to start a new portrait.

I'd had a photograph of a darling baby, Dylan, whose mother is my daughter's best friend since they were three.....darling little girls.

And then Allison, the blonde, got married and had Dylan, who's almost two:

 I had cropped the original photograph to this version - wish I still had the original photo.  But I started up with a painting and was so excited about how it was looking, that I put my brushes away for fear I'd "wreck it".  I'll take up the brushes again tomorrow and see what I can add to it.  But I sure love how I started out and that's a rare sensation!!

Day 89: Monday, June 6 - Sketchbook Project

Painted all weekend on the starting page for the Sketchbook Project that I'm going to be working on with Nancie Johnson of New Jersey. (Love that the initials match her state)....and then there's Polsby of Pasadena? Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. 

I painted four possible starting pages for our "conversation" which is going to take place across the United States over the next several months.  Nancie's going to have to choose one or two to work from and she's doing the same thing on her end (painting a couple of choices for me).  We agreed to get our paperwork into the mail no later than Saturday night at midnight, picturing ourselves driving frantically to the post office in our jammies and slippers.....She got it done, I was calling post offices to see if anyone was still open (fedex? ups?) at 6:30 p.m.............Obviously I fell through on my end of the deal but the package will go out on Monday morning.  Sorry Nancy.

The final project has to be postmarked January 31, 2012 so we've agreed to try to swap paintings every two weeks which should be enough time to create about a 10-page conversation two times over.

Here are my four opening choices for her:

I've persuaded my friend Elle Gould of Arizona/Colorado to enter the Sketchbook Project as well.  It takes $25 and your application and by return mail you receive a special Moleskine Sketchbook to be filled using a generalized theme that you choose from the Sketchbook's long list of themes.


Nancie chose the theme "Time Traveler" since that's what our pages will be doing as they travel across the United States.  I met Nancie via the original Sketchbook Project. I had commented on this blog about my project and she commented on my work. She also submitted a Sketchbook in 2010. We started internet conversing and decided to do a joint project having never met! I just think life is fantastically wonderful sometimes because of the really special things that happen.

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 51, Wednesday, March 30

Another set of "Conversations" has been going on between Gail and AnnMarie.  They have completed both of their Conversations and brought them to class yesterday.  Here is the first one. It started with someone in a patterned sweater painting a picture. There's an apple on the desk.  The final frame has the woman with the patterned sweater reappearing with a baked apple pie in her hands and a completed painting hanging on the wall. Clever!

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 41: Wednesday, March 2

There's a wonderful multi-talented artist out there, Suzanne McDermott, who I mentioned very early on in this blog.  She is a songwriter, singer, painter of merit, loves cats..........Her blog(s) were always so interesting to read: there was music to listen to (my favorite being "Les Choristes"), books to read (my favorite being "Falling Through Space" by Ellen Gilchrist, a former NPR commentator, thoughts for the day.

Today I was looking at her blog, commiserating with her (she took a fall from her "loft" studio which had no safety railing) and smashed her foot to smithereens....My heart goes out to her.  But, and this is where I was going with this.....

In my Tuesday painting class that I've been talking about, where combinations of people are painting panels from "The Conversation" - or at least in the manner of The Conversation......Lo and behold Suzanne posted a fabulous music video which is one man's version of a conversation with himself and some music.

Enjoy!!

I've emailed her telling her thank you for this wonderful youtube video.

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 34: Monday, February 21

Wow, have I been quiet or what. Re-entering the land of the living after what was supposed to be "drop by" surgery. 

There's an interesting new challenge site out there, a woman who gives full credit for her idea to Carol Marine and her Daily Paintworks Challenge. The latest site is the Rookie Painter, run by Jen Smith.  She posts a picture every 3 weeks, asks you to paint it however you want, and then upload it to her.  This challenge, due tonight at midnight: apples and their reflections.

I had a wonderful time yesterday painting away on this challenge and on The Conversation challenges from our Tuesday painting class. Felt good to paint for hours!  Above is my entry to the Rookie Painter Challenge.

Here's the photo that was posted.

    

Here's the panel I painted for the class "Conversation". AnnMarie Thomas gave me a skateboarder and some clouds. My job was to continue the right hand edge of her panel.....ergo: her clouds became the tails of my fish.

Here is the sequence of paintings. I've put 2 panels together to show the continuation from panel to panel.