Pebbles: black and white
Thanks to Irene, there was a power failure that lasted almost three days in our area. My boyfriend and I both run our business from home and live in the countryside, so alternative solutions did not come by the handful. I thought about buying the biggest computer battery out there and coupling it with a generator, but that would mean not taking an obligated break once in a while :-). Anyway, we worked on the most important stuff from a café in a nearby village who had Internet access and then went back home.
Once there, I had to take my mind off not being able to get all the “computer work” done. The pebbles ended up being the perfect outlet to my eagerness.
I felt a little insecure using the stones that my friend brought back from Gaspésie, even if there is a bagful. They feel precious and I don’t want to waste any. I took three sea pebbles but mostly tested on the stones I picked up in my area. There are a lot of nice ones but they are not as even shaped and smooth as those found in Gaspésie.
These are all stones from my area, except for the pebble at one o’clock on the photo.
I worked mostly in black and white, with ink and acrylic. Other stones were decorated with color crayons (you will see these in an upcoming post). Surprisingly, crayons work really well on the sea pebbles; the smooth grain and light porosity act as a fine textured paper. I will use this technique again over the weekend and these prehistoric fish will probably serve as an inspiration.
Carved stones from Chichen Itza (Mexico). We were there in 2007.
Painted stones on a beach by Shirô Hayami
Richard Shilling’s Robin Hood’s Bay stack
Have a good weekend!
Irene
Irene left her mark in our area this weekend.
It was really not as bad as elsewhere since the storm had lost a lot of strength before getting here but still: trees were uprooted, there was a bit of a flood and we had no electricity for almost three days. Because of that, I’m now behind schedule for a couple of projects and have to work hard to get back on tracks!
Here are some photos of Irene’s leftovers. They were taken around noon, not the best hour to get a good image, but they will give you an idea of the damages she left behind.
On the other hand, all that rain brought out lots of boletus and tons of other mushrooms that can’t be eaten but are still very pretty to look at.
Also, having no electricity, I had time to do other things like experiment on the pebbles. I will show you the tests on Friday.
Did Irene pass in your neighbourhood as well?
Pebbles
Every summer in July, my boyfriend’s family gets together in the Eastern Townships. It’s a week of swimming, frog hunting (poor creatures), berry fruits picking, wild mushrooms picking and of course, eating.
There are five nephews and nieces to entertain and all of the activities above are enough to make them happy. However, this year we added something new: rock painting. We spent an hour choosing pebbles near the pond and in the path leading to the woods plus two afternoons painting our bounty. Here are some of the artworks created by the kids…
I guess this activity will also become a classic, giving the frogs a well deserved break. But why don’t they swim far away when they see that the kids have arrived? Maybe they like the company…
I particularly like the jaded look of that last frog.
I must say I had as much fun as the kids painting rocks. Enough to hunt for more stones while hiking and enough to ask a friend who went to Gaspésie to bring me back a bag of pebbles. Which he did (thank you Marc!). There is enough to keep me going for a few months.
Pebbles from Gaspésie
Enough pebbles to experiment on for a few months!
Carefully broken pebbles by Andy Goldsworthy (one of my favourite artists).
Nightmare before Christmas
I’ve been listening to The Nightmare before Christmas for over five years, regularly. This is one of my favourite music to work on. Tim Burton’s world is spooky, crazy, funny and tender at the same time…
While trying to find out links related to this, I stumbled upon the adaptation Nightmare Revisited by various artists including… Marilyn Manson! I think I still prefer the original version.
You can see and hear some of the tracks over here: Oogie Boogie’s Song, Kidnap Sandy Claus, Town Meeting .
Stuff I recently made while listening to this:
Ink and acrylic on paper
More vortex: Vortex art home, Akiko Ikeuchi (beautiful!) and Or Project.
Have a good weekend! I’m off to paint some rocks…
Birds of a feather
I rarely know what’s going to happen when I start drawing, forms just happen. But it seems that round and fluffy feathered creatures have made their way through my work recently.
Ink on paper
Ink and acrylic on paper Ink and Japanese paper on paper
They also got to me through my camera.
This is where we pick up our eggs each week. These hens live a good life: they belong to a very nice neighbour who lets them wonder around freely and they end up their lives as old hens, never in a crockpot.
These last ones were taken a while ago:
The owls were photographed at le Refuge Pageau in Abitibi, a very special shelter for animals.
The second photo was taken during a three day eco-bike tour in Outaouais.
And last but not least is a bird that was photographed on our balcony in Montreal. We left food outside for the stray cats, but these birds ate it as much as the cats.
And since we are talking about birds in this post, here is today’s inspiration: the beautiful documentary “A falconner’s tale” by my friend Marc Girard. It’s available to watch on line!
August
I think August is one of my favourite months. I feel sad and happy at the same time since it means the end of summer, but it’s also its apotheosis: cicadas and crickets are singing, the air smells like hay and ripe raspberries, the colors seem a bit warmer.
I enjoy taking long walks at that time of the year; I leave for at least one hour, sometimes more. It helps to relax the crazy little hamster running in my head when I’ve been spending too much time in front of the computer.
This is what a part of my usual circuit looks like…
Here is another very good reason to love August:
The vegetable garden gets very generous!
My big scared monster and how inkblots saved his life
Ink on paper
The kind of monster that hides under the bed.
It looks like me when I started drawing again: paralyzed, hit by the white page syndrome. My hands – and mostly my head – did not remember how to proceed. I was wondering how to get out of that impasse when I remembered the inkblot technique. It is used in psychoanalysis but it can also give you a hand in terms of creativity!
My adapted method (or absence of it!) is simple: you wet the paper, drop big or small amounts of ink and see what happens.
I sometimes find a beast hiding somewhere: bird, bear, fish… If not, I just play around with the shape, add texture and try to give it depth by adding or subtracting ink (wet the paper in some areas and dab gently with an absorbent paper). Working white on black is also permitted!
I’ve been “inking” this way for a few months. I can now control a little part of what happens by using more or less water on the paper or by directing the brush a certain way when I drop the ink, but my subconscious still do most of the work. And that’s fine that way. For now.
Ink and acrylic on paper
I will leave you with a few pictures from around where I live (the forest at the back and the small lake in front of our house).
Have a good weekend!
Squirrels and aliens
Here are some images taken at night, mostly in our backyard in Montreal…
A prune tree stands in the middle of the garden and the squirrels seem to enjoy it very much.
These little hooligans have the habit of taking just a tiny bite of every fruit and they then drop it on the ground. It’s actually quite nice to look at, scattered though the leaves and the rocks, especially at dusk when the colors seem to be taken out of a Rembrandt painting.
Can you guess what that strange looking creature is?
I had to play around with the levels and contrast of the image since it was almost pitch black. As a result, the creature looks like an alien.
This young moose was photographed in the middle of the driveway, in the Eastern Townships (Quebec). My boyfriend took the photo and then sat in the middle of the path, waiting. This is usually not a very good idea since mothers are very protective of their youngs but there was no sign of her. The calf passed just beside him and then entered the forest.
The other creature in the picture is my father in law.
My Moo cards have arrived
La Datcha minicards
Datcha Web business cards
La Datcha greeting cards
I just received my Moo cards (business cards, greeting cards, minicards and stickers)…
I’m happy with the results even though some of the models came out a bit too dark, but that’s probably because of my laptop screen.
Some of the cards had cut lines. I wrote Moo about this and received their answer a couple of hours later. They are sending me my order again, without any charge. I wish I had that kind of after-sales service with my domain name provider, they drive me crazy each time I try to renew my domain name! I was finally able to transfer my domain name, it should be ok from now on!
Octopus
These creatures have been inspiring me lately. The transparencies, the colors and the shapes are incredible. I can see where Sci-Fi creators get their ideas!
I have been working black on white for a while, trying to render the layers and textures and never got the effect I was looking for. So I tried it the other way. The result was quite interesting, I might experiment with this technique a lot more in in the next months…
Watercolor, acrylic and watercolor pencil on paper
The texture in the top part of the octopus looks like bones, the white ink renders an almost x-ray feel to the drawing. For the first step, I tried dampening the paper and then roughly shaping the creature with watercolor. I am not too sure about that effect (too fuzzy) but I like the way the acrylic reacted on the dry surface. I added many layers, allowing each one to dry before applying the next.
Follow me on