A Step Forward, A Step Back

It often seems like every step or two forward means a step back, and sometimes a slide down, far down. Or it could just be me and how I see things, like my pursuit of art. All the videos in the world merely show me how much I have to learn and how far away I am from adequacy. My view of my own adequacy. At least I keep plugging away, trying more things, being as daring as time allows, and often resenting the demands that being an adult make on me.

And then there is art.

Trying different media, different colors, different paper, and learning that I need to put down a shield when working with certain pencils, pastels, and charcoal. 

Quick sketches  to see if I still have it. I really should use clean paper instead of sketching (scratching) on paper (newsprint) where I've sketched other faces, body parts, interesting objects. Cropping can only eliminate so much and newsprint is especially smooth and erasing intruding lines would damage the sketch. I rather like this one, not only because it is nearly accurate, but because it didn't take me long at all. 

The photo on a new box of colored pencils. That pugnacious chin and unusual angle were all it took to interest me. Not bad for another quick sketch. 

An older drawing that I keep refining and working on. A touch here, a new technique there. I'll finish it one day . . . or maybe I'll paint this one. Yes, I know the right (left actually) eye is less vivid than the left (to the viewer), but it -- and I -- is still evolving. For now. 

Another drawing of one of my granddaughters. This one is Savannah. It is also when I began to toy with the idea that less is more. The original photo was posted on its side and I maneuvered it into a full frontal straight up and down image. Computers are wonderful and I'm getting better with PhotoShop -- barely. 

Another sketch, and the most recent in this collection, of Mahesh Jadu. The actor is currently portraying Ahmad (heavy on the ACH as if you're clearing a hairball) on Marco Polo. Mahesh is one of the villains of the show. His long, pointed nose interested me first and that is where I began the sketch, all done in sanguine hard pastel. Another not quite right sketch, but I do find his face and this sketch fascinating. 

It didn't dawn on me until I searched for the name of the actor playing Ahmad that his face was familiar because I had enjoyed his portrayal of Ophir from I, Frankenstein with Aaron Eckhardt. He does have a very interesting face and demeanor and he's from Australia. I would've thought India or the Middle East, or even the USA would be more likely. Wherever he was born, raised, or lives, I still find his face interesting and will definitely draw him again. I do that with faces that intrigue me. 

I am toying with the thought of reducing faces to basic elements to see how much of the person is recognizable. Not so much body parts, or facial features, although faces are part of the exercise, but light and shadow. Can I sketch a face and make it recognizable by just sketching the light -- or the shadow? I sketched two eyes, the hint of a nose, and the mouth but nothing of the light or shadow or rest of the face and it was instantly recognized as Sharon Stone -- which it was. I did that sketch in colored pencil more than 20 years ago on a piece of printer paper because the minimalist style intrigued me. I have it somewhere, likely in a folder in an old filing cabinet in storage in Ohio.  Asking for someone to go looking for it will be futile. Oh, well. Someday.  

There you have it, some of my recent forays into art as I exercise my artistic muscles and try new media. Some are good, some are less than good, and one or two are approaching mediocrity. Art is a process, a journey, and I am still on the path. 

That is all. Disperse. 

Teenage Shame

I've posted some of my art without shame. I'm still scrubbing off the rust so the work reflects that. It's a learning process. Even in the summer of 1970 when I attended an honors class in art in summer school I knew the painting of my youngest sister was not good. My mother kept the painting and hung it out for all to see and I cringed every time I passed it. That portrait was not my best work. It still isn't.

The portrait is done in acrylics, a brand new medium to me in 1970, and I had a lot of problems with the paint drying almost before I could apply it to the canvas. Acrylic paint turns to plastic when it dries and, while I appreciated the freedom to bring my sister to school and have her son, I didn't appreciate the lack of instruction I got from the teacher. Lack of instruction as in none at all interspersed with being told to let loose and be free with the paint and the brush. Had it been left to me I would've applied a coat of primer and started over with something else or repainted the portrait with oils or even wrestled with acrylics some more and found some way to compromise with the limitations of the acrylics.

Luckily, acrylics have improved since 1970 and so have my skills in working with them. In the meantime, I'm still learning the pros and cons of colored pencil and brushing up my technique with charcoal and pencil. It's a process and a process that may well take the rest of my life to master. I'm not worried. Erte went from drawing and designing magnificent costumes for the stage in the 1920s and in his 80s turned to ceramics with the same flair and unquenchable thirst for new ways of expressing his art.

My teenage shame,
Beanie at 5 in blue dress to match her eyes.  

It's more of a cartoon than a portrait and I have done better since -- and even before I painted this. I threatened to destroy it when Mom died so she gave it to Beanie to protect it. So much wron

g, but there are glimmers of possibilities never realized. Maybe now I can find some way to rescue the feelings of joy trampled by the realities of my own limitations and the limitations of the medium and learn. After all, life is about living and learning and life is far from over. 

That is all.  Disperse.

Chasing The Past

Last year I jumped back into art in a big way, buying supplies, and trying out new media -- new to me -- and kept coming back to where I began 50 years ago when I discovered I could draw. As with everything in my life, I went from drawing pictures out of my piano lesson books to Sunday comics in the newspaper and eventually right into painting portraits in oils with brushes and pigments and linseed oil. I didn't know all the techniques and how it all went together and I plunged ahead experimenting with canvas boards and stretched canvas and eventually buying canvas and frames and stretching canvas on my own. Good thing I had a job by then at the age of 15 and bought my own supplies. The supplies that come in a single Xmas gift of painting materials didn't last long. I got a scholarship to the Columbus College of Art and Design when I was in 9th grade at Westmoor Junior High and our first lessons were in soft pastels.

I fearlessly attacked still life and more portraits, drawing fellow classmates when I'd finished with the model posing at the front of the class. Hands a dozen different colors and scattered sheets with finished portraits and the occasional still life. I raced through everything with an ability I never questioned and didn't appreciate -- or fully understand. I was in my element, testing the waters of various artistic disciplines offered in the art classes in high school. Never enough, I experimented with sculpting clay (and plaster of Paris at home), cutting lineoleum blocks for block printing (still have the scar where I gouged out a hunk of skin over the knuckle of my right index finger), screen printing, and finally into painting again, at home with the oils and frustrated with acrylics because they dry too fast and end up looking like hunks of stretchable plastic. Watercolor was fun, but we never had enough time in class -- or in the classes at OSU where I got my first taste of live nude models on Saturdays all summer long. I never learned about using negative space or glazing or dead layer (grisaille) paintings that lie beneath the glazes.

Here I am after nearly 40 years of ignoring the artistic abilities seething just beneath the adult facade of wife, mother, and working to earn a living because it's the mature thing to do, give up dreams for the reality of making a living that I stumbled through half alive. Art won't make me a living or feed my children and neither will writing. "Wake up, girl. Get a job and make sure to marry some guy who will take care of you. You won't make it any other way."

My hands were always moving, picking up a pencil to sketch an interesting face in TV Guide or Woman's Day or evenPlaygirl.  I couldn't help myself. No matter how I ignored the pull of the pencil an interesting face and whatever pen or pencil was closest to hand, even crayons on occasion, I sketched what interested me and hid it, put it away in a book or left it laying around until someone else put it in the trash. The drawings were more mature, more refined than what I produced as a teenager. I clung to the knowledge that even as I got older the art would always be there and would get better as I matured and viewed the world from a different perspective. It would wait for me --

-- until I took another plunge into the artistic stream when there was no one to stop me, to remind me I had obligations, to tell me no and found that my drawing skills had atrophied. The art didn't wait for me and I wasn't about to let go after I got used to the idea that I'd have to start all over.

Some of the skill remains beneath the rust and dust and I scraped it all away, dusted my atrophied skills, and did what I never had to do before when I was younger. I drew the same thing over and over, taking it apart and drawing the parts that make up the portrait. An eye drawn repeatedly, first the right and then the left, until I approached something almost like the photo. Lips in colors. Lips in pencil. Lips in charcoal. Refining the technique and the anatomy one feature at a time.

A year ago I finished this drawing -- in colored pencil, a medium I am not yet completely comfortable with -- and the features are distorted. Disheartening, but it was a first effort.

Click on the pictures to ee the actual size. 

Talk about a square jaw. I got that down, but it's still wrong. The proportions aren't too far off, but they're still not right. I sketched other faces from my desk calendar, pictures of my granddaughters pulled from Facebook, pictures of my grandchildren, Sierra and Connor, whatever picture stirred my juices.  I still hadn't conquered this portrait. It took me 6 months to get up the gumption to try it again. 

I can't tell you how many times I practiced the eyes, nose, ears, lips, chin, and ear and finally ended up with this version. I erased so many time I thought I'd ended up with fuzzy almost there lines and would never get to the point where I was satisfied. I covered pages and pages of facial features, my Great Aunt Ann's facial features. Still not there.

Getting closer. Still not happy with the eye and the lips aren't quite right. I saw my mother in every line, recognized her eyes that looked liked Aunt Ann's eyes. Of course, she was Grandpa's sister and Mom looked so much like her. I didn't realize at first why the proportions were off. I figured it out when I noticed the cheeks weren't full enough and the double chin was minus the other chin. Aunt Ann's hair was just like Mom's, the same dark brown, thick and perfectly coiffed. Aunt Ann owned a chain of beauty shops and she had learned much over the years she ran those beauty shops. She knew fashion and style and how to fix hair. She was always perfectly turned out.

Yes, that is a mink coat. I still have her black ostrich feather hat, the one that still has the haute couture label in it and looks like it was worn by Betty Grable or Katharine Hepburn or even Grace Kelly. It was the height of style in the 1930s and would've been a lovely contrast with Ginger Roger's blonde locks, dramatic. 

The angle of the photo is off, shot from too far below, but the finished result is really close. Not perfect, but an improvement on the one I did 6 months ago. It's in pencil because I'm comfortable and have lots of experience with pencil. I'll give the colored pencil version a shot again now that I'm almost there or I'll break out the oils and do a painting to hang on the way. If it turns out subpar I can always paint something else over it and give acrylics another shot. Or maybe charcoal.

That is as close as I'll get on this version, and it's really close this time. I'm happy enough with it to sign my name and add the date. Still a bit rusty, but much of the rust has been gouged off and the art is still there ready to be honed. I'll jump right into the middle of the stream with one of the media I haven't tried. I even got some pastels and will eventually get a set of pastel pencils. I like control and I like pastels -- or at least I used to like pastels. 

Time to scrape off more of the rust and chase down the old enthusiasm and intrepid nature. At least I'm willing to bear the erasures and scraping off layers of paint and dive in again. There no reason not to, except the urge to write another book or finish one of the several books I've started already. Rust gets into the most surprising places. I should buy a wire brush and get to scraping.

That is all. Disperse.

Face Study

It seems I cannot put my hands correctly on the keyboard sometimes and get the most awful gobbledygook of letters and garbage spilling from the ends of my fingers onto the screen. It's not like I cannot feel the bumps on J and F, but I don't take the time to focus on the tips of my index fingers so I can settle my fingers correctly. Always in a rush -- or seemingly so. SO much to do. So little time to do it in. And it's a work night and I still haven't slept yet, unless you count the occasional doze while I watch random videos and think about the art work staring at me from my desk. And so it goe.

I can hear the thunder outside and the dead needles on the pine trees across the way are brown and drooping as the rain begins pattering on the tin chimneys that poke up like burnt out candles on the roof of the house. I have no idea why so many chimneys were needed, but maybe the restaurant that this structure once held needed all those exhaust holes because they had so many cooking areas or were venting the steam and heat from the thousands of patrons polluting the air with their talk and eating and complaints. One never knows when one lives in a converted building.

I have been working out with the colored pencils and refining my techniques, although it will take a whole lot more time and oceans of practice before my skills equal what is inside my head. I'm getting there, but slowly. Think ant crawling on giant mountain starting halfway (okay, only a quarter of the way) up the slope. At least that is how it seems to me.

In order to get better with drawing and coloring the different features of people, I thought it best to work on the ones that give me the most trouble. Noses, mouths, and noses.

I have found while reading extensively in colored pencil studies and watching videos on drawing that many artists begin with the eyes. Why not, I think? After all, the eyes are the first thing we focus on and good eye contact is what all psychiatrists focus on when interviewing patients acting disturbed in some way. People who cannot or will not maintain good eye contact are those with problems that need, and should be, addressed. Many artists begin their paintings with the eyes, whether it be people or animals. The eyes are the windows to the soul and provide a good focal point to expand upon. I've always thought that way even when drawing. The only time I didn't focus on the eyes was while doing quick study sketches in 1- and 5-minute increments. I was quite good at roughing in the figure and attitude and still managed to imbue the lines with personality. Of course that was 40 years ago, more than 20 of which I didn't draw at all. I could also draw one of my hands (usually not the one holding the pencil, pen, etc.) without moving the pencil from the paper or looking at what I was drawing. Feeling my way through the curves, angles, and details of the hand with the tip of the pencil on the paper. It was a frequent exercise in Mr. Wood's art class when I was in the 9th grade.

Don't know if I can still do it because I haven't practiced lately. I haven't practiced much of anything come to that, except for noses, two of which are drawn above. It took me a while to get the proportions and colors right, and they're still not what I would consider finished by any means. They're a beginning.

Okay, not a lot of noses, but every nose counts -- even though I picked them.

I found an old (very old) photograph my of great aunt Ann in my desk drawer and decided to give it a shot. It's a sepia toned photograph with color added later (not by me) and it seemed a good subject at the time. The jaw is too square and I haven't quite gotten the proportions just right (might as well add chins to the list of anatomy to work on), but it's a beginning.

The colors are still faint, only 4 or 5 layers at this point, but I'm getting there. I even worked on it a little more after I took this photograph. As I said before, a slow process, but a beginning.

Much of the portrait is a suggestion of color and line. The chin is too far from the lips and the lips aren't quite right. The hair is a studied mass of curls upon curls and her hair is much darker. Yes, she's wearing a sable coat with what looks like copper buttons covered in verdigris. (That would be oxidation.)  My rendering makes her look so much younger, but that is because I've not worked on for more than 4 or 5 hours.

I can see my mother in her features and in her eyes, which are hazel. The hair line, the eyebrows, and the line of the face and ears are just like my mother's, but they would since the lady in the picture is Mom's aunt, one of her father's sisters. I can see the Eastern European peasant stock in the features and the line of the jaw, as well as the thick dark hair that is so much like Mom's. Even the lips remind me of Mom's.

I have found that as I draw it's as if I can feel the lines of the face, the heaviness of the jaw, the texture of the skin. When I sketched Connor the first time, I felt the lines of my ex-husband's face and the set of his features. So much for my ex-mother-in-law'ss claims that his grandfather (my ex-husband) was probably not my son David Scott's father. Betty, my ex-mother-in-law went around telling her friends and random strangers that I was pregnant with only god knew who's child because I slept around (okay, she said whored around). Too bad David Scott was born looking just like pictures of his father when he was born and growing up. Imagine that.

And he took my virginity, something only I could know for sure and he could be fairly certain of. I had no doubt and neither did my ex-husband Dave. Only his mother lived in the land of Denial about my son's paternity and her son's culpability in the implantation of his seed in my just deflowered passages.

Anyway, I do feel the curves and lines and angles of the faces I draw, especially when I know the subjects so well. I knew my Great Aunt Ann fairly well, and she lived with us during the latter months and years of her life when Alzheimer's had her in its unrelenting, debilitating grip. She was a woman of means and creative talents (from what we could tell from her stash of artistic endeavors in stitchery) and style. She had a lot of style, and could indulge her stylish clothes and hats -- and vintage costume jewelry good enough to stand in for copies of a king's ransom of jewels and settings. She also had some pearls, but I don't know what happened to them. They likely ended up in one of the numerous plastic bags of jewelry my mother bought and carried with her everywhere.

The thing about pearls is that they lose their luster and their resilience if they are not worn next to the skin. Oh, well.

So, above are my latest forays back into the world of art and creating art. I still have a long way to go to base camp, but I am making my way forward and upward.

That is all. Disperse.

First Steps on the Road to Art

I've been spending more time drawing and a little more time working with the colored pencils. I have found that there is a lot of flex using colored pencils that makes it more like painting and not just drawing, although the drawing is also necessary. Oh, you can trace and transfer the tracing to paper and color or paint the drawing in, but I've always preferred to rely on freehand drawing. My skills, as I've said before are rusty through disuse, but they are basically intact without too much rust needing to be brushed -- or banged -- off. That at least is comforting. I had worried I had lost even that much ability. Good thing something has remained.

The following are a few preliminary sketches and some color experiments with the colored pencil. I still have so much to learn -- and relearn -- but I'm getting there.  As one friend reminded me, the only way to resurrect one's skills is to practice, practice, practice. I believe I may even have mentioned it in previous posts.

I am excited about delving into the realms of transparent objects (glass, water, etc.) and discovering how to do glazes and washes with colored pencil, which will also require the use of solvents and oils. Not oil paints, but mineral oil, like baby oil, especially where the Faber Castell colored pencils are involved. And now, on with the show -- sort of.

In one class I am taking, the assignment was to paint a couple of cherries. I'm afraid my shadows are too dark, but it was a first try. I will redo them when I get the time. It's a good start -- not great but good. Must start somewhere.

In another class, the assignment was to have fun with the circles. And I did. To me, circles mean more than just circles and spheres. Sometimes they can be olives or eyes looking through a hole in a wall or through a hole in the door. The triangular white infiltration on the left side is light from the window shining on the paper. That's actual natural sunlight streaming onto the page and not, as I first believed, a fault in the camera from when I installed new batteries. Murphy's law -- or, if you prefer, Murpy's law. They are the same thing after all.

Yes, those are my granddaughters, Addison and Victoria in one of their modern poses. The sketch below is my attempt at blocking them in colored pencil, a beige, I believe. The positions are a little off, but what would you expect for a drawing that took about 15-20 minutes? Again, beginning somewhere. I really don't like the dark colors of the photos and would have preferred something with more light, like their Easter pictures from a couple years ago, but these are recent and they were what I could download off their Mom's Facebook site and are -- yes, you guessed it -- a beginning. My focus was on trying to get their faces right, even with Tori doing the fish mouth kissy thing. Kids!

As always, if you click on the pictures you might even get a better view of the drawing. It's not bad for a first sketch, especially when considering it has been a couple of decades since I picked up a pencil to draw anything, let alone portraits. It's rough, but it's down on paper.

The debris in the picture behind and around the sketch is my cluttered desk and art supplies. I need a studio, but this will work for a start. Again, have to start somewhere -- and I'm not even finished buying what I need to draw and paint with. Yes, you do actually paint with colored pencils. You can draw with them, but the finished product is painted in a sense, so drawing with colored pencils -- as opposed to using them on a coloring book, especially when you've drawn the images -- is painting. Colored pencil is just another painting medium. Ask any artist.

The final indulgence I will ask of you is a sketch in the truest sense with graphite pencil of my grandchildren, Sierra and Connor, my son's twins. The picture is before Easter the year Connor died modeling the clothes I sent them for Easter.

Connor is the handsome little fella on the right and Sierra is obviously the drugged-out looking Pebbles-looking beauty on the left. The colored sphere in the lower right corner beneath Connor is a sphere I was working on when I decided to take these pictures. I may share it at another time when I've finished the other spheres on the page for that particular assignment.

As you can see, a rough sketch -- very rough -- of the twins. I had decided I needed more practice sketching before proceeding to paint the portrait. It's the largest photo I have of the twins that is usable for a reference. I didn't do too badly, but some of the rust is still showing. It takes me longer to sketch something like this than it used to, but more practice will mend that little hiccup.

One thing I had forgotten over the years is how much I enjoyed sketching and painting and observing the world closely the way I once did. An artist notices all kinds of details, like Sierra's drugged out appearance and the redness of her nose and upper lip where it has been repeatedly wiped and the way Connor's jaw line is so much like my sons (including his father of course), but also his grandfather, my ex-husband, Dave. I drew Dave many times when we were married and Connor has the same rounded and somewhat fat jaw, as a child of 2 years old would have. Sierra also has baby fat and the same rounded jaw line.

I'm not happy with the eyes or Connor's nose, but that is what practice is for, smoothing out the flaws and becoming better at drawing. These likenesses are fair to middling and not too awful (no, compliments are not being fished for here) and that is a step in the right direction.

Click on the photos to get a closer view. 

That is all. Disperse.

Back into the Creative Stream

I begin to think it is inevitable that I finally follow my heart -- to live a life full of creativity and art. I am not the only one in my family to choose to follow the artistic path as I found out a couple of days ago. My brother has gone back to school to become an architect, a fact which Hoity-Toity finds a bit baffling as he began his academic pursuits during the time he was fixing the home he had shared with his ex-wife and the state of which Hoity-Toity blames on their two daughters, both adults (or barely adults in the youngest's case). The house was trashed and much was left behind because it smelled bad (likely like cat urine given the evidence). I'm not willing to cut the Mushroom's ex slack because she is the parent and was living in the same foul-smelling sty and did nothing about it except decamp when it became obvious the Mushroom would no longer pay the mortgage since his obligations ended when the youngest was of age and child support ceased. Oh, well, that's a nightmare tale for another time.

At any rate, my brother, the Mushroom, has indeed gone back to school to study architecture and has completed, or is completing, his second semester, quarter, whatever, a fact which escapes Hoity. She has not decided to pursue further studies having gotten out of high school everything she needed and moved on into adulthood sufficiently equipped for life. My brother evidently feels differently since he also is pursuing another line of academic studies on his way to becoming an architect, something that would probably be just as adequately served if he had chosen engineering instead of architecture. His reason for going back to school isn't a love of art -- as it is with me -- but the need to be able to draw projects, likely building projects, in blueprint form. I know of engineers who do the same thing, but his choice and his path.

I recently discovered art classes at Craftsy.com when I was searching for some other classes on cooking and baking and a whole new world opened up for me. I began drawing in the 4th grade when I was panicked about the last day of school when our teacher told us we would be drawing the last day of school. I had never drawn anything in my life and, being the studious type, didn't know what to do? How could I fail the last day of school to produce anything? I didn't know how to draw.

Mom suggested I try drawing. I picked up the first thing with pictures -- my piano book -- and tried copying what I saw. My fears diminished as I produced nearly exactly copies of the simple drawings. I could draw.

Possibilities, endless possibilities, lay strewn before me like a king's ransom of jewels. But was my drawing ability limited to the drawings in my piano book? Could I draw other things? I ventured onward as any good scientist through more experimentation. The comic pages in the daily newspaper gave way to colored comic pages in the Sunday paper which gave way to sketching things around the house, from toys to knick-knacks and finally out into the wide world where I sketched the people around me. I've always gravitated towards people and there is where I found myself happiest -- drawing, sketching, painting people.

In later years after a gift of oil paints and an easel, which I took to the spare room behind the garage when I was 16, I labored for days over an oil painting of Mark Lindsay, the cutest guy in the band, Paul Reverd and the Raiders. The painting was done on paper for oil painting and turned out quite nicely considering I had no instruction and no idea what all the solvents, oils, etc. were used for and how to paint with oils. As with everything in my life, I followed my instincts.

I took art classes and learned to do quick 1- and 5-minute sketches with charcoal and pencil and did very well. My teachers praised my work, but did little to explain how to effectively employ oils, brushes, palette knives, etc. while bestowing praise, As, and scholarships for advanced classes in pastels at the Columbus Academy of Art and Design's Saturday classes for talented beginners. I took to pastels and soon excelled in the class, but still had no idea of what the various techniques (gesso, impasto, under painting, etc.) meant and happily floundered my way through classes, even to taking a few life classes at OSU while still in junior and high school. I worked in clay and carved tiles for block printing, earning a lovely scar I still carry when a blade scooped out a hunk of skin along with the carvable section of the tile I worked on. Blood-spattered and continuing on blindly I explored the still nebulous and mysterious world of art, taking my As and praise in stride as I strove to go as far as possible in the art world. I painted Beanie, my youngest sister, several times, and even took her to school with me during summer school (honors class) while I painted her in acrylics directly onto a 24 x 36 inch canvas, which Beanie now owns since Mom gave it to her when she died. I couldn't be trusted because I would have destroyed the canvas; it wasn't good enough, the product of an untutored artist with little or no direction from my teachers. I've done better -- and worse -- over the years, but Mom used that as one of her prize possessions where every visitor (no matter how close and familiar with the piece) must be taken to see and praise her for my meager accomplishments because she was the one who saw talent in me and supported me without question.

I continued to dabble in paints, eventually doing an oil rendering of the first (and only) school pictures my ex-husband sent me when the boys went to live with him. I gave that painting to AJ who claims he doesn't know what happened to it. I wish now I had kept it, carting it with me as I've carried my medical transcription reference books and my Andre Norton books wherever I've gone. I've sketched interesting face (interesting to me) from time to time and my skills have not exactly diminished with time, achieving a level of facility and ability conferred by time and mature years, though it wasn't until very recently that I picked up what I had put down more than 20 years ago -- the path of artist. My skills have somewhat diminished from lack of use, but my eye remains fairly good. The artistic eye, of course.

My supportive mother told me years ago I couldn't make a living as an artist -- or a writer for that matter -- and should focus on something that would ensure a stable income -- data processing, computers, IT. Anything but art or writing and in spite of my many awards and certificates of achievement, along with my meager skills. I have since turned that creative temperament and ability to hobbies, like cross stitch, but not for sale. Simply because the arts feed a need that is as much a part of my DNA as my grey eyes. And I have returned to the creative arts, specifically drawing, in the form of colored pencils. I have a set of pastels around here somewhere in the box where they were packed, but I'm exploring colored pencils for now with the same single-mindedness I have always shown when it comes to art, limping along and finding classes to help me learn the use and extent of possibilities inherent in the medium.

My work desk has become my drawing and sketching desk and I'm exploring more classes and different kinds of colored pencils to find the one that suits me and my rusty style.

I am not alone. Many people who have reached -- and passed -- their middle years have gone back to pick up where they left off or unpacked a long held dream and followed it in their twilight years as I have done with art -- and specifically portraiture. My parents are dead and I make a decent living with medical transcription, but nothing fills me with the joy or feels my soul the way art does, and I'm finally discovering the bedrock of art that I should have learned many years ago when teachers patted me on the head and sent me to honors classes on scholarships without really giving me the grounding I needed in the mechanics and uses of the media they passed quickly over. I'm really learning now and I have the tools to delve as deeply as I wish -- and all the classes I can afford to take.

I won't waste time thinking about what I've lost over the intervening decades or bemoan the unrealized abilities that could have been part of the dust of my decomposing corpse had I not reached this age (60 for those of you who prefer details to dreams) with the ability to reach back and take what was once mine. I'm not going to worry about what I can and cannot do, but simply reach for more and take to my soul all that I can as I venture back into the creative stream to capture the world as I see it without the struggle (sometimes fruitless) for the right words and constructions that will take me from the first fire of discovery in a novel or story through the doldrums of the middle and the elation of the end of the tale. At least with art, I need not worry about critics and complaining readers, but do what I will with the tools at hand and render the life around me as my hands and talent allow. I have no one to tell me no and no one to browbeat, bruise, and cudgel into a more lucrative and acceptable form of work. This I do for myself and the devil take the hindmost.

That is all. Disperse.

In Death as in Writing

Tough week and it's only Tuesday. That's what happens when the week begins with death. In this case, the death included Osama Bin Laden and my half-brother Timmy. I'm glad Osama is gone (talk about your anti-climax) and have mixed feelings about Timmy. He's been ill for a year and in the hospital for the past three months, most of which I have spent on the phone with our mother. Well, actually she's his mother and my biological mother and aunt. Figure that one out.

Death takes the wind out of my writing sails. They've been as flat as though I was becalmed in the great Sargasso Sea. It's not like I don't know where I'm going in the latest book, I do. I'm having trouble summoning up the requisite literary energy and discipline to dive back into the book, which I put off because I was launching the print version of my latest self-published work. Here it is May already and I'm stalled when I should be finishing up the first draft of my Victorian gothic tale. April showers are supposed to bring May flowers not May stalls and I am definitely stalled.

Now comes the urge to rant about all the things that are keeping me from writing and none of them are valid. It's as transparent as Cuddy's mom's lawsuit and need for a probate lawyer to change her will because Cuddy and House conspired to heal her. It's never about what you think a fight is about and always about the subtext. Another stall. Maybe I should consider a horse or two with all these stalls and, if I were flying a plane, I'd be right about to hit the hard deck really hard.

I can't concentrate. I have too much to do. I have to work and read review books and write the reviews and keep up my blogs and talk to family and pay the bills and all the little excuses I have always had that didn't stop me when I was writing my last novel or the one before. Then I could focus; now, not so much. I think there is something inherently wrong when a fully realized story with great characters, lots of history and a killer plot can't get written -- by me -- at all. I've been stalling on this one for a while and it's not making me feel any less incompetent or like a fraud and more like a failure every day. Isn't that the way, though? As if I needed an excuse to feel like a fraud. I wonder if other writers feel that way?

Letting out the insecurity without a leash is a bad idea, so scratch everything that came before, except for missing Timmy. He was only forty-eight years old and now he is gone. Finally and completely and no take backs gone. He had such a rotten time of it the past few years. No one should have to feel that way, and yet so many people do, and we're back to fraud again.

I can't seem to shake the excuses, and feeling like a fraud is one of those excuses. I should just shut up and write. It's what I did in the past, churning out mediocre stories with faint glimmers of literary goodness. It shouldn't take this long. It shouldn't be this hard. Writing isn't easy. It's hard work and balancing all the demands of the usually full and busy lifestyle and I no longer have the excuse of children taking up my time. At least then I could write. Things are too quiet. The room's too cold. The wind is coming out of the wrong direction. Anything just so I don't have to sit down and face the blank screen, cursing blink-blink-blinking at me, waiting patiently and mechanically for the next word and the one after that and the one after that . . . . That's how it goes. Some days are up and some days are down and most days the writing gets done, not great writing, but words on the page that will eventually morph into something good. At least that is how I hope it will go and hope blinks eternally in that blasted cursor.

I guess you could say I have nothing to write about, at least not here, and I should just buckle down, get up early, put my fingers on the keys and type. It's what I've always done, turning life into art and pain into tragedy and comedy and everything in between. Getting through the hard days is the trick and I'm all out of tricks, so it's back to the keyboard for something real and tangible. The next word and the next sentence and the next paragraph that leads from half-finished to ready for editing and rewriting. That's how the work gets done.

So, for Timmy, who kept telling me how proud he was that his sister was a writer, this one's for you.

Creative Stretching

Movies and books and sleeping, mostly sleeping, have been the shape of my days for a few days now, as happens infrequently when my back decides to go on a slide slip and leaves me with an acute awareness of how things work and don't work -- mostly don't work. I've been out of it for five days due to a bout of muscle spasming and a slight shift of a lower back disc. It happens.

The last time when we left our intrepid adventuring author she was touting the benefits of doing more than sleeping in bed in response to Tim's doctor's claims that a bed is to sleep as floors, counters and other furniture are to sex. That is not to say that Tim, sweet young man that he is, was in any way involved in things to do in bed other than giving me the idea. He'd be a prodigious young man indeed if his talents stretched from New Jersey all the way to Colorado. And, no, the pictures of nether parts my sister sent me were not Tim's but someone she knows very well and has known for y-e-a-r-s, so now you can stop emailing and calling for details. Some details are meant to remain hidden.

I'm in a strange mood today, bouncing from sleep to reading to trying to find a position in which my open mouth does not emit a high pitched scream of sirens bearing down on a stalled car in the middle of the main drag, although sirens were definitely screaming last evening, at least a two-alarm blaze in practice heralded by the thunderous boom of, well, thunder. At least it sounded like thunder. It was probably nothing more than hollow booming echoes from somewhere people were engaged in actual work and not lollygagging around the house in search of comfort and quiet, especially since ear plugs don't deafen the noise of your own screams. There it is, screaming again. If I keep this up, everyone will believe I'm in actual pain, which is not the case at all. As long as I breathe shallowly and don't move too much, I'm fine.

I did have one interesting few hours this weekend when I looked over a friend's novel. As I do whenever I critique a novel and don't have it in a format where I can -- as one friend would have it -- bleed all over the digital page, I keep a pad and pencil at hand to take notes. There was about a page of notes (the usual things: grammar, spelling, extra words, etc.) and a sense at the end of the book that I had been had. The book was good and I've read enough YA novels to know good when I see it -- from my perspective. Intrigue, really good red herrings, memorable characters and a satisfying ending were all there. The big flash is that during the time I read the manuscript I didn't think about my back, except when Nature forced me to rise and attend to the necessities. No doubt the author, a misguided soul who actually reads this blog, will be surprised to see his experience sandwiched between the mundane daily maunderings and sirens screaming. He shouldn't be. After all this time, he should have figured out I only mention things and people worth mentioning. He's one of them.

In the course of writing I often change the names of the guilty and the innocent just to keep things even, but the stories are all about people I actually know or have known, and I have known a lot of people. Comes with the territory when you've traveled as much as I have over the past nearly fifty-five years. I'm not shy -- never have been -- about approaching people and talking to strangers. It was one of the things that worried my parents most when I was a child. I didn't understand that stranger didn't mean potential acquaintance and possibly friend. I'm still indiscriminate that way. I talk to anyone and anyone talks to me.

For instance, this morning a young man (I say young, although I don't really know, because most people seem young to me these days) contacted me about what kind of radio he should buy starting out as a newly licensed amateur radio operator. He had some very strange ideas about power, believing that it isn't possible to reach someone across the country, let alone across the world, without a big rig -- radiowise, of course. I yanked that idea out from under him and gave him the name of a reputable ham radio operator who has proven that you can reach anywhere in the world on 5 watts of power and a long piece of wire. He's pretty amazing that way. I also explained, in my capacity as team contact, that he could talk to old and grizzled professionals at the exam session next month who would be glad to talk first radios and their attributes and drawbacks. I could practically see the glow in his words and on his face when he thanked me. That's me, a fount of trivia and information, none of which is trivial.

Since pain has a tendency to make it difficult for me to concentrate on editing and writing, I decided to take up pencil and paper and do a little sketching, stretching creative muscles I've not used in over a decade. I was surprised to find my muscles in fairly good shape once I took off the restraints and let go the worry and recognizable human features appeared on the page. I've decided, like many other creative people, that I need more than one medium in which to work in order to remain fresh and creative. Drawing and painting have always provided me with new creative energy and fueled my writing as much as watching people and researching and reading. I've occasionally considered writing a children's book and doing all the art work. Maybe one day I shall. Right now I'm in search of creative fuel and different creative muscles to flex, hence the drawing. Unfortunately, sketching with charcoal and sepia are not enough. I need color, the feel of chalk and brush between my fingers as I play with color. I'm sure there will be knives involved at some point; I can feel the handle in my grip and the joy of slashing through layers of colors to open a gash for the light to pour through. That would be a palette knife for those of you worried I might pick up a carving or butcher's knife.

Music has also been helpful in boosting creativity, and I don't mean just Mozart's brain-boosting rivers and streamlets of skirling notes, but all kinds of music. I do have to draw the line at anything with vocals because I have a tendency to begin singing and that throws off the writing. I reserve vocals for cleaning and chores because I forget how tedious bagging trash, vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing toilets and tiles and other household chores are when I sing.

There are so many creative outlets and most of us tend to choose one and ignore the rest, concentrating on getting it right. It is in the exercise of many different arts that we return refreshed and renewed to our primary art, and for me that's writing. Painting. Drawing. Singing. Dancing.

Living.

Life in three dimensions

It's a struggle whether or not to talk about the fire yesterday at the 7-Eleven just a few blocks from here and the young girl who died or find something more positive. It's always hard to deal with a young person's death, so much possibility and promise gone in a flash, but to know that I heard the sirens and was so intent on work that I didn't even blink is a little surprising to me. I don't chase ambulances or fire trucks, but they have become so commonplace since I moved to the city that it's like a callus worn over tender flesh. It's hard to feel through it. I'm sad for the girl's family and for her friends, but unfortunately -- or fortunately -- it's all part of life. To dwell on it is to miss the best part of life and that's living. Does that sound callous? It's not meant to be.

So many times I get lost in the day to day minutiae of cooking, cleaning, dishes, eating, work and the usual round of chores, so much so that I forget to step outside and just breathe, drink in the sunshine and languish to the sound of birds and children playing. Yesterday when I went out to check the mail, a group of children were sitting on the school steps, on the ground and a couple in chairs and on the short retaining wall with big sketch pads on their laps. Some faced each other, but most of them faced my cottage, sketching like mad, recording the scenes in front of them, freezing a moment or a feeling or both in time and they made me long for a sketch pad and charcoal or pencil or pastels and to just sit in the warm sunshine and feel the flow of nature in my fingers as I sketched and shaded and drew.

I miss drawing. I miss being able to pick up a pencil and catching the expression on an interesting face or feeling a brush moving across a canvas leaving a trail of color, light and shadow behind as details coalesce and become more real, more there, just more. I used to spend hours painting and drawing, lost in a world of color, light and darkness where everything made sense. A line became a curve and a curve defined a face or a momentary smile. There was a sense of order, a cause and effect that resonated. Even a chance drip of paint or a shaky line became part of the whole, a quirk of imagination that lent subtle charm and depth to what could have been a wooden, static representation, and the faces that emerged on the page or the canvas were more than just pictures, they were the essence hiding in the eyes and behind the sardonic smile. They were three-dimensional. Eyes followed and smiles changed from moment to moment. They breathed.

And I wonder if somewhere in an obligatory art class the girl who died in the fire yesterday is captured on paper or canvas where she too breathes and lives.

Building on a solid foundation

A little music, a filling brunch of boiled egg and a cinnamon roll (homemade, of course) and a pot of green tea and I feel almost human again. I found a 10 x 10 stoneware pan and yesterday baked some cinnamon rolls, iced them and had one this morning. They turned out really good, not too sweet with a soft crumb and a light vanilla glaze. In a word, perfect. The urge to bake is on me and I'm contemplating an Italian olive oil bread but the kitchen has to warm up more first or the dough won't rise sufficiently. That's where turning on the oven comes in and kills two birds with one stone by getting the oven ready for the bread and warming the room.

It's a quiet Sunday and I have taken my time reading the news, checking emails and catching up on writing. The sun shines in a pewter sky, moderating the heavy gray curtain of horizon to sky clouds bearing down from the mountains and promising more snow, hiding the hoary white rise of Pikes Peak. Whether my placid mood is due to impending snow or the slow Sunday pace isn't important, at least not as important as an essay I read by an author on Glimmer Train website about learning from the masters, something I have been contemplating for some time.

As a fledgling artist, I was set to copy the Masters, examining and learning to duplicate their brush work and layering and compounding of color. It is the way artists have learned for millennia. Musicians are taught scales, then taught how the Masters created their own work and set loose to improvise on everything they have internalized. Writers are taught rules and theory, but starting from a Master's work, beginning with the words and construction of plot and characterization, texture and theme isn't quite kosher. Oh, there are some teachers who encourage finding inspiration and experience in great works of literature, past and present, but then writers are told that such copying is beneath them, derivative, cheating and will stunt their growth as a writer, their voice lost in the process. Not true.

While da Vinci and Michelangelo's influence is obvious in Raphael's early work, there is a distinct departure in his more mature work. Each generation of artist learns from the ones who have gone before and then emerge with their own distinctive style. The same is true for writers.

While on a whaling voyage Melville meticulously copied every word of a novel by Hawthorne, getting angry if anyone touched his work or bothered him while he copied. The day he finished copying the novel he gathered all the papers so carefully written and tossed them overboard. Shocked, the sailors asked why he did that and Melville replied that he had learned what he needed to know. Melville also studied James Fenimore Cooper and other contemporary writers, going back to the types of books that he wanted to write.

Modern day writers would do well to emulate their predecessors. Start with an author's work you admire. Take one of their stories or novels and begin by copying what you read, letting the words, characters and plots carry you to a different world. At some point, your own voice will emerge along with your creative instincts with the sure hand of the Master on yours. Dissect and outline novels in every genre to find out how a writer created the effects that made his book so successful. Break down descriptive passages, minutely examine the gestures and dialogue that make characters breathe, leaving no word or phrase untouched. Most of all, read, read, read. Read widely. Read with an eye on construction and method, theme and texture. Pay attention to what arouses your senses, makes your heart beat faster, chills your blood and inflames your passions then go back and dissect them, lay the bones bare and then sit down and write the same scenes. What would you change? How would you get from point A to point B? The trail is blazed, go off the path and find your own way through the wilderness. It's not cheating; it's common sense, a time tested method to help build the sensibilities and tools needed to become a good masterful writer.

There is no sense in reinventing the wheel. Use the wheel to invent something new and different, something uniquely your own.

Tired, banal and deeply rutted roads

Do you ever look at something and misread it or put it together in a way that just comes out wrong, like being partially deaf and not hearing well?

Once my mother called and asked me what M-I-S-L-E-D meant. She pronounced it MI-ZEL'D. I told her it was MIS-LED. That finally made sense. WHOREPRESENTS becomes WHORE PRESENTS instead of WHO REPRESENTS, a web site about who represents what artist, writer, poet, actor, etc. This morning, ANGELICLOVE became ANGELI CLOVE and that didn't make sense. It's really ANGELIC LOVE. Sometimes connections misfire or your mind takes you on a different path and you come out at the wrong end. It happens with other things than just words.

When I was a teenager working at McDonald's I made a little mistake that kept co-workers chortling for a couple weeks. It was grade card time and each child got a free cheeseburger for being on the honor roll. A girl came up with her grade card, all smiles and dimples, and motioned me closer. "Can I get a cheeseburger without the cheese?" I told her yes and made a grill order on a cheeseburger without the cheese. It didn't occur to me at that moment that I had just asked for a hamburger and there were already a bunch under the lamps. Oops.

Sometimes the mistake occurs because your mind is on another track, like making a grill order when anything on the usual fare is changed. It's the truck stuck in the tunnel surrounded by police and firemen and engineers who can't see what a little girl can see -- all you need to do is let a little air out of the tires. We get stuck in a mindset or a way of doing things that is so ingrained or dominates our mental pathways we can't see what's really happening or how to change gears. Being able to change gears or go against the grain or think outside of the box (or into it in the case of the cat) is the essence of genius. That's what successful authors, playwrights and creative people do, even if the creativity is building a new electronic circuit out of found parts or throwing together an impromptu stew or hash.

Writers are especially susceptible to the mind rut. Some writers get so comfortable with a certain topic or way of writing and they end up redoing the same old thing, rewriting the same story or article over and over and over. Spread it out over enough periodicals and books and most people don't notice because they haven't read your articles before. There are, of course, different ways of saying the same thing and can be very creative, but, like lying, the product becomes parody, heavy with layers of exaggeration and schmaltz designed to play on the emotions. It's why liars always get caught; they don't know when to stop embellishing, telling the same story over and over and over until everyone has heard it and begins to see the changes, subtle at first and then more outrageous and blatant. So, too, with writing, which is always my main concern.

I've fallen prey to reworking an old idea when I didn't think I had any because the act of facing the blank page is too much to bear. Where do I start this time? How many characters can I come up with? How many times can I write "roiling river" or "lambent gaze" without emptying the contents of my intestines onto the keyboard? It's too easy to fall into that trap, to keep reworking an idea until it's threadbare and worn and you can't wring tears or smiles from the readers -- or yourself -- any more. The writing becomes stilted, a worn bromide, and goes from bad to worse. I can think of several writers who fall into this category, which is why I no longer read them. Some are still cranking out the same out story with different hair/eye colors and jobs, but still the same old-same old. Those writers have blind, sycophantic fans and friends who would applaud if they published their grocery list. Other writers finally gave up and went in a completely new direction, repudiating everything written before, as though fleeing a particularly bloody and vicious crime scene, and those writers, no matter how successful their new venture, end up denying the gift that made them good writers in the first place. Their only refuge is in faction, or what is currently known as creative nonfiction, and it is very creative.

So, where does all this lead us? I hope it leads to a good creative spring cleaning, throwing out what doesn't work and hanging on to what does and building on it. We all need to let the air out of the tires when we get stuck or simply step back, sit down and take a look from a different angle, tackle what has frightened us before and take a less well marked and traveled path. In other words, it's time to shake up the ant farm and clear out the cobwebs to get a fresh perspective and a deep, mind cleansing breath of fresh air. It's spring after all.

That is all. Disperse.

At last

I was at the post office yesterday and the line was nearly out the door. The two people at the counter didn't go anywhere for nearly 15 minutes while everyone in the line chafed and shuffled and fretted. I was a little worried since the parking meter only had 26 minutes on it.

A very pretty young blonde with skin like new cream, black mascara ringing her pale blue eyes, and wearing a sarong and flip flops and a very short older woman, eyes deep brown nested in a wreath of smile lines, with short, wavy helmet hair threaded with silver and I stood at the end of the line. A short cranky bear of a man with a beard checked his watch every 15 seconds as we three women chatted and joked. The bear finally grumped off to go to "another post office where they aren't so &*$%*#*@ slow". We three looked at each other and smiled and then encouraged the people in front of us, one by one, to go to a faster post office, providing them with directions if they hesitated. Slowly we made our way to the head of the line.

"Why are they raising postage rates?" Blonde asked.

"Because they can," I said.

Silvered-hair and Blonde laughed. "Besides,"I added, "they need to be real snails to carry the mail. It's faster than using carriers." Everyone in the post office laughed.

We came to the head of the line and Blonde frowned. "He's so slow." She was about to get Papa Smurf, the guy with the blue fingers. "He's efficient," I said. "He's sloooow."

Silvered-hair got Terry, the lady whose husband died a year ago and I got Ed who is always smiling and glad to see me. Then I was out of there and to my car in record time with one minute still on the meter. And I thought it was going to be a quick trip.

The point of all this is snail mail (now with real snails). I just received an email from my publisher. After six weeks of waiting, my contracts finally arrived. That's priority mail for you. I now have lots of instructions and information and will soon meet my editor (virtually, of course) and we will begin the process of getting my book up and ready for bookstores everywhere, and I do mean everywhere because we already have an international tie-in, which means my book will soon be available, once it's edited and packaged, in Asia and Europe. I can hardly wait. My publisher said he was sending my copy of the contract and I should have it in about 1-1/2 to 2 weeks. I think he's being overly optimistic about those snails. Of course, where he lives it's much warmer than here and the snail tend to get frozen in their slime trails from time to time.

He also said the artist has been given my suggestions for the cover art; I was pretty explicit and detailed. I have a vision. They asked if I had any ideas . . . and I did. Now, whether or not they follow it is something else again. I'll just have to wait and see. Now for a question.

Do you like characters more who are vaguely described or intricately described?

We now return you to regular programming.

That is all. Disperse.

Color studies

I have been busy reading and goofing off but I finally found enough time to download some pictures.

Every once in a while I catch the sky doing some amazingly beautiful things and I have the camera close at hand. I don't think I have ever seen the sky quite so beautiful even when it's on fire in the morning or in the fierce dying embers right before dusk.

Then there are times when I'm working and a flash of light catches my eye. Is it any wonder I keep my camera near my desk?

I may do a little research about this little tar ball and her appearance here in Colorado so far from where he landed and write an article about her. I haven't seen her for a few days and I hope the foxes haven't caught up with her or the other squirrels run her off. She is definitely a beauty.

I am no photographer but I enjoy catching a small sample of the views and happenings I see outside my windows when I'm chained to my desk. The view is never quite the same and always a beautiful surprise in color and texture and diversity.

That is all. Disperse.