The Glamourous Life (excerpt Chapter 14) Inspiration

Inspiration. Respiration. Aspiration. Spirit. Breath.
What makes your breath alter? Catching it, holding it, breath it, in awe.
This is what is worth your wild in painting.

And worth someone else's while to see. Energy like love on the canvas is the Irresistible stuff.


Sometimes Sometimes?! All the time it is good to have fun... work with other toys...let the pencil wander about the ...CAT!

Marcello.. the Siamese cat... is a very
veritable cartoon. He looks so elegant- as he burps, sneezes, toots, and gobbles up anything.... and uuak... barfs.. Saunter.

Still.........inspiring respiring aspiring spirit.

Today's music
Andrea Griminelli
Cinema Italiano

ABBA

and
Shostakovich


and
Poulenc- Organ Concerto

How is that for variety? I'm dizzy!

Which brings to mind... Today's very veritably inspiring Book Breathe Deep, Laugh Loudly -Judith Kravitz If you feel you need more energy this is a way to it.

The Glamourous Life. - The Practice, Practice, Practise

(excerpt from CHAPTER 11 in What to BE?...AN ARTIST!)

Whether you choose flowers, vegetables, pets, sweeping majestic landscapes... practice, that pesky repetition, is the only way that the magic of your subject will reveal itself to you. Seduction is a necessary art ....within art... well, in so very many aspects of life. (it is simply a coincidence that this is the image going along with these words, I haven't been working on lemons recently...)
These sketches are references for sketches in other mediums. For these I used washes in oil paints. But I can use them for the pose and gesture, add clothes, add different props. That is why it is good to have the original drawing from the model.
I have included this one because I really like it and... it has a contribution by the creative or is it just curious, CAT...

3 (continued from the previous post) Libido. Like an appetite. Like you are starving, suffocating, dying of thirst without it.

This is a very important part of the practice. Whetting the appetite of desire to create. Finding that ironic, paradoxically exquisite balance -on the edge of hunger and satiation. Knowing...

What does that for you?

The Glamourous Life. -Dress Rehearsal

Dress Rehearsal 12" x 12" Original Acrylic on Canvas

'Because Art is not a careless thing.' - Beata Kurpinski

(excerpts from Chapter eight? of...)

What to be... an Artist.

You actually only have to know how to draw one thing… pick it… a lemon, a body.. a cat.
Draw this two thousand times and you will find that you can draw pretty much anything.

Although I have heard of artists that work more with form and color, I am very fond of using Renoir's wry line...'First learn your craft. It won't prevent you from becoming a genius later.'
Learn to draw something. Because this is how you learn to really see…everything that is there as well as everything that is not there which, paradoxically, is equally important.


You will need

1 Nerves of Steel
Live like you mean it. No one will give you approval, support, large quantities of money, with the possible exception of your mother… and any therapist will tell you that, anyway, at some point it becomes your job.

There are a few exercises one can do for this. Quite a lot really. You will find them coming to you daily! Is that abundance or what? Think of something to do that terrifies you beyond the capacity for rational thought and do it. Fearlessness is an essential quality of the great artist.
Although the whine and snivel has been a far too overdone stance, the great artist is much too busy with the experience that translates to marketing to really spend too much time on this. And that’s good for the world. Be good for the world.

Finding that you are totally absolutely in love with yourself is great for the nerves.
There are a few exercises for this as well, of course. Books of them really. Sometimes, I have noticed, people get really hung up on the exercises and pass the point of it, let’s say about 93 times a day. This is really as simple as breathing. Which can be another place that the self evident is missed. Breathe.

Great … got those two things? Now you can Be yourself. This is the point. How YOU see it, what YOU think, how YOU got to this moment what is YOU? This is what you are expressing…kinda like those little machines do for coffee. Fffffffffffffffftttttttttttttttttttttt!!


2 An Astounding Ability to Sit Still in a Cramped Position (AATSSIACP)

so then you have to take up Yoga or stretches ... I am just telling you. I didn't. So this really is the voice of experience.

3...

tomorrow!

stay tuned... it is pretty interesting stuff.


As always I look forward to your comments, thoughts and ideas!

Toodles for now.

E

On the weekend, as a guest of the wonderful Michelle Gabriel I absorbed the How to Write Publish and become a Best Seller seminar by Teresa De Grosbois and Micheal Drew, check them out! Inspiring!

The Glamourous Life- Chapter One -Straw Hat

Straw Hat 12"x12" Acrylic on Canvas

Are we not living in the most magical time? We can create and destroy worlds. We can have the awareness that we make this choice moment to moment, if we choose to.
I am sure, absolutely certain in fact, that everyone has the manifestation moment, when a thought gently surfaces in the mind, and voila! in a short time it is the current experience.
The person phones, the Chinese food is delivered to your door, the perfect chair is just given to you... a manifestation moment.
Painting, for me, is that place of non thinking gentle surfacing. It is a good place to imagine those experiences that I have had or look forward to having... and share them with you.

This Straw Hat is a rendition of Anna Shoub's Daisy Rose twisted straw hat. (http://www.hatjunkie.com/) The swish of a turquoise linen dress. And bare feet laughter in the elegant doorway of a brick house in southern France, Spain, Nova Scotia...
Good Imagining...

Ah...Stéphane Grappelli 's Django can dance you right to the place in this picture.

Thanks to Kaylyn Munro for the music... and LoML for knowing and finding it.

The Glamourous Life- Bravery and Wednesday night drawing class.

BRAVERY medicine wheel -7 Grandfather teachings

I have been reading books, as research, by Thomas King...Green Grass, Running Water and The Truth about Stories.
Reading about Windigo. This is very allegorical information.

The polarity of light and dark. How wonderfully they play on with as each other.



and... every once in a while... the ten minute sketch comes up great.

Yay... the Wednesday night figure drawing class!

The Glamourous Life- Truth, and Picking Your Gods

The medicine wheel of Truth- one of the 7 Grandfather teachings. The Medicine Wheel is an allegory of the journey that each of us take in this time/space that we call life.
These paintings of the teachings are a type of meditation in the landscapes. How the landscape of the earth reflects as the landscapes of our minds.
Each one of them has a real leaf.. a gigantic leaf from the trembling aspen- poplar tree. The first year saplings have these enormous leaves.




These paintings, all seven of them! are acrylic and mixed mediums on canvas. 36"x24" They are currently framed in black shadow box frames.




More artist wisdom from the workshop...
Pick your Gods.
As a visual artist one has the moments of being awestruck by the work of another artist. In studying, replicating, immersing oneself in the all of the work of that artist is a way to understanding one's own abilities and talents.

There is a tremendous merit in this exercise as a study, I have found. It is another way of training the eye and developing the co ordination between the hand and eye. One always finds in this an even more profound respect and admiration for the life and spirit of the person.


Sherry! Thank you for your comment on my lack of clarity! I see your point completely. This blog is like the studio diary.... random thoughts not being caught in the paper cup! or Perhaps all the no clues define a space... we will have to wait and see!


Cheeridoodles!

The Glamourous Life- Love, The Studio Diary, and other tools of the trade

My friend Bea and I took a workshop the other weekend given by Les Graff. He had an number of really great ideas for keeping track of one's professional standing .. one of which was a studio diary. A book, scribbler, binder, journal of what was done in the studio today. I use this blog like that somewhat. ...I'll have to move the computer into the studio. Then the diary would have... 2 hours looking at websites, taking really dumb quizzes on facebook... Yikes!

Today's diary has that I worked for a couple of hours on the book cover commission. The Windigo and Nanabozho.
I talked to my beautiful sister, about Nanabozho. Thomas King. We laughed out loud and long.
Then I read some of Three Day Road.Joseph Boyden, Not so funny. Then I thought about the Windigos in my life and the way the creative force, Nanabozho, by embracing them makes something .
How one is the other in the way energy transforms.



This image is not the book cover, it isn't presentable yet, but it is in the book.
This is LOVE, in the earth land series, 7 Grandfather teachings. Medicine Wheel