a January Queen of Hearts



Just a little squeeze of a last post for January.  The Queen of Hearts is coming along, and I shall put a progress shot  up soon.  I have been thinking of many ways to pursue this piece: everything from linocut to paint, but for now I think I'll continue in ink.  She has become more grand than I originally intended;  I am eager to reduce her to a more spontaneous drawing which I will do,  ironically,  with more practice as this stiff figure embodies a style of drawing I am less familiar with (but fascinated by).

Thank you again for visiting.

keeping it simple



Just a quick hello.  Maybe it's the bitter cold that has sent me into hibernation.  Lot's of ideas are incubating as one of may favourite pastimes is conceptualizing.  I am drawing lately- in pencil;  keeping it simple.

Legends relating to playing cards date to the reign of the Chinese emperor Hui Tsung, 1100-1125. They were said to have been invented to relieve the boredom of the ladies at court.

The first European cards were probably made in Italy early in the 14th century. There were four suits with numbered cards from 1 to 10 and a King, Queen, Cavalier and Knave. The suits were cups, swords, coins and staves which were said to represent the four classes of medieval society; the clergy, aristocracy, merchants and peasants. In Germany the suits were hearts, acorns, bells and leaves and in France they were hearts, pikes, paving tiles and clover.

Playing cards seem to have reached England between 1400 and 1463 and the suits were derived from French and Italian sources. The clothes worn by modern court cards are those of the reign of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Playing cards were hand decorated until 1832 when Thomas de la Rue patented a method of colour printing cards. He also began to decorate the backs thus hiding the flaws in the paper and making it harder to use secret dirt marks to cheat.

I have found my favourite period to be the French as I play with a few ideas I've been cooking on.

I send all my love out to every body. 

handsome handsun and mother earth

This  "handsome"  HandSun

surrounds the Turtle,  Native American symbol for Mother Earth,

nurturing and protecting it,

Beautiful Mother Earth,  who feeds and protects us and provides abundance for all.

I enjoyed playing today with pen and India ink,

brush painting it in with transparent coloured inks

on acid-free oatmeal coloured paper.

I have been trusting myself a lot more of late,  following a line of thought,  or should I say intuition,  not knowing where it will take me.  This has led me into unexpected territory where I hate to turn out the light at night,  and can't sleep in for all the creative ideas that begin to buzz with the slightest bit of waking in the early morning.  

So,  even though I'm a little sleep-deprived,  there's an extra spice to life as I play at the edges of my dreams.   Hearing one's own voice:  I believe that's the same  "final frontier"  as outer space has been described .   "As within, so without".   We each evolve from a zero point as does the Infinite and we are more likely to understand that,  not through intellect but through intuition,  not through feeling or sensation, but through partnering with Life itself as manifested in our very selves.  This state is most easily accessed through abandoning attachment,  especially to thought,  feeling and sensation,  most easily achieved through meditation. 

True creativity appears to come out of chaos because we invite the mind to abandon predictable patterns of thinking and challenge it to operate with hitherto unknown criteria.  You can provoke a creative response by suggesting   'what if...?',   but try playing with  even more outrageous,  "nonsensical"  suppositions without support of logic to see what frontiers you discover.   It was Albert Einstein who said,  "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

 we can  make this world a better place each with our own gratitude and joy

it only takes one grain of sand to tip the balance





Good-bye Hello

"Time the Elastic Band" strikes again.

Just because the earth revolves around the sun on an average of  365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds, we count out a year.   An earth year is specific to the measure of our little planet.  Being the creatures that we are, we tend to look at time in rather static ways as we measure our lives in years, or race off to keep that appointment or get to work "on time". 

Time is measured in the 'western world'  by the Gregorian calendar which was established only as recently as 1582,  and has become the internationally accepted civil calendar ( remembering that there are many other kinds of calendars,   the Hebrew calendar for instance,  in which the leap year 5771 started on the Gregorian calendar date of September 9, 2010.)   I  could go on.  I love this stuff.

Anyway,  this is all by way of saying good-bye to our Earth year end.  My human need for something to hang my hat on welcomes this new year, arbitrary as it is,  this new page, with a fervent prayer for the grace in our lives to make the right choices for a happier world.  I wish you  JOY.

So with that,  I open  my new sketchbook (which I was thrilled to find with acid-free oatmeal-coloured paper),  and began to play with my  new Winsor & Newton nut brown and gold/bronze (copper) ink.

Then I draw this figure in the nut brown ink and adding some violet, orange and white.

Yes, I have a New Year's resolution, though it is the same one I make every day:  I resolve to continue to explore a more personal creative expression with gratitude for the luxury of doing so knowing full well how blessed I am.

Bless us everyone.