the basics

"Skill is how you close the gap between what you can see in your mind's eye and what you can produce; the more skill you have the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be. With absolute skill comes absolute confidence, allowing you to dare to be simple."

- Twyla Tharp

The Creative Habit

skill then...

probably the best advice I have come across in a long time... it answers all the questions, and most especially, gives me a roadmap to the simplicity I crave in my work

Rachel once commented on my quest for simplicity that one needs to understand what truly needs to be present in the work and ensure that it is, in order for it to look complete and not a half-hearted attempt... kind of like "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth"

I've thought about that a lot over the months since she wrote it and now these words from Twyla Tharp feel like a way to get there

so, literally, back to the old drawing board

as I admire Anita Lehmann's work so much I signed up for her online courses on watercolour and drawing and for the past ten days they have been the focus of my attention

lots of paint mixing and washes, learning about brushes and so on as well as pencils, true vertical and making good strokes

its early days but I am seeing progress

below is a drawing of a piece of driftwood from Lake Bennett... drawn with an "F" pencil and then given a light wash with Florence Printmakers watercolour

I could bring in the brown but I'm not going for realism and I prefer the softer grey

this piece of wood is a fragment of a plank... from a boat perhaps, or part of a cabin on the shore?

there was a ship-building yard part way down the lake and as well, several of the smaller boats built at the lake's headwaters by Stampeders sank... who's to say, but regardless of it's origins, it's a remnant of a time that has passed, events long over;  stories lost to time in the same way the wood has lost it's own substance

in the evening, just before bed I sit and copy a drawing or two out of a book by John Busby on drawing birds

I have always found I learn much from copying drawings - same idea as drawing from a photograph except I choose photos of drawings and so I see how the artist used line and shadow, noticing the expressive lines and where they work best

no eraser, no smudging tool, just one pencil and a small book

and in light of my last post detailing frustrations at trying to paint a wash with a lousy brush I bought myself a better quality flat brush and today I tried a pear with soft and hard edges

much, much better!

rather pleased with this effort although it was a big challenge - my first attempt went in the trash

paying attention to the dryness of the paper as you lay in the layers is a lot more important than I realized but try and try again

another good exercise to repeat, over and over

and over again

building skill is all about time and effort

and a big stack of paper!

slowly...

its been a quiet week

I'm slowly getting reacquainted with things I was working on before going north

a lot of fabric was painted during the spring and early summer and it was good to look through the stacks and see a few favourites with fresh eyes

I still like them though the "preciousness" of them has eased off so I'll be working with them soon

the first two images show lightweight linen cloth that was painted with watercolours

watercolour is a wonderful medium for painting fabric - the cloth seems to remain as light as ever though the watercolour adds the slightest touch of substance to it, altering the feel but not really the hand

I suppose that seems a bit contradictory but its so, at least for me

the larger piece below is my favourite - the mucky drab colour with the hint of blue-grey has me thinking of flats near a shoreline, with a late, pale, sinking light reflecting on water... I know that kind of day 

languid

desultory

a lazy half-hearted attempt at colour and light

just needs shore birds and driftwood

the next one is from the earth pigment cloth painting

a random chunk of linen

a kind of "clean-up cloth", brushes from painting other cloth were wiped on it to use up the last of the paint

splodges of colour

only at the end was anything done with intention but that still had its limitations - there is only so much you can do when using the dregs

I love the randomness of it

in between the tidying and sorting I've decided to try a focused effort at improving a few skills - watercolour painting and drawing

this week was mostly watercolour, and that was mostly spent working on paint and water ratios

I've learned a lot already about controlling the amount of water and I've learned even more about brush quality

my flat brush is not good quality

not even a little bit

not at all

I've also learned a bit about the differences between working with paint pans vs tubes

these two value scales were done with the not good brush 

(pretty obvious I think!)

and with paint pans

they're serviceable but a bit splotchy so when I do get a good quality brush I'll be re-doing them

and as the pans of colour are used up they'll be replaced with tubes

but for now I'm using what I have and figuring it out and its getting better as I go

slowly...

on being displaced

and so I came home...

after being in the Yukon for one day short of eight weeks I struggle to believe this is home but home it is

it all feels quite out of whack

to fight off the aimless feelings of disconnect,  I started the process of cataloguing all of my finds... driftwood, rocks, pressed flowers, burlap, feathers and so on

as I gathered things throughout my stay I set up a simple labelled storage system, a ziplock bag for each of Whitehorse, Dawson City, Marsh Lake and Bennett Lake and into the corresponding bag my finds went

today I began working with what I found at Bennett 

printed photos of favourite views

driftwood

(several of the pieces I found are from old boards... many boats sank on their way to the Gold Rush and it's possible some of these could be from them... things take a long time to decay in these glacier-fed lakes so you never know)

a sampling of just some of the rocks and driftwood 

texture... decaying lumber half-buried in sand

remnants of an old burlap sack that washed up on the beach at the north end, it was still gathered and tied around the neck

the sack fragments started unravelling as I carefully washed them but the twine that it was tied with has stayed intact

(untying that knot on the beach took a long time and a lot of patience!)

I plan to baste these fragments to a support, probably heavyweight paper or card to keep them safe until I'm ready to use them

it will take many days to process all I have found, longer still to make the inks and paints from the gathered plant material and pigments but I'm in no rush... something to work at as I ease back in to living here

the photo below was taken by a good friend in Whitehorse; she was walking by the Yukon River and took this photo just as our plane took off at 7:00 a.m. on Thursday

it's fitting, that as I left the land was shrouded in a mist of fog

away from me now, no longer distinct... 

shadowy forms that beckon

 out of reach

just my memories 

for now

random inspiration

 days spent in varied ways

walking on beaches, in forests

going to museums

wandering the streets and back alleys

inspiration is everywhere...

 random things catch my attention

gathered rocks, wood, flowers

scraps of burlap, twists of twine

endless photographs...

Marsh Lake on a cold and windy morning

the scattered driftwood along the shoreline, carried up by the surging waves

tossed here and there, a random calligraphic message perhaps

a curving line of peaks and valleys - water and foam... winter mountains of summer?

gull tracks on the sand, many looking remarkably like letters

back and forth and forth and back

"where are you going, and what do you see"

faded colours of a railway crossing, a portion of the old narrow-gauge railway that ran right through the Whitehorse waterfront

the rusted, weathered sides of old equipment, abandoned here and there throughout the territory

a beautiful patina, faint letters, interesting form

wood crumbling on a long-abandoned beach,

the marks, a story of its journey back to the earth

also time for sitting still, reflecting on all I've seen, how it might tie together, how it might not

there is a space between the stories these pieces of inspiration would tell and the ones I might want to... a space for me to find understanding and look for connections

a space to just be