Carolyn A Pappas › art inspired by nature

International Fake Journal Month, and my experience with mendhi

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Journal Cover, sepia Pitt pen on moleskine cahier, 4/1/09

I’ve been keeping a fake journal, inspired by Roz’s International Fake Journal Month. The journal itself is a private affair, but I thought the cover came out pretty nice, so I am posting it for everyone to see. I was inspired by my trip to India last year, when I had my hands done up all fancy. It was fun, but it was a huge production.

It works like this:

They rub oil into your hands and apply the henna (it comes out of a little tube like icing). Then you have to hold your hands completely still while the stuff dries (or you will ruin the design). This took about 2 hours or so and I had to have people feed me because I was starving! It was so tiring because I was sitting with my elbows on a table the whole time so I wouldn’t spoil the front or back of my hands. When it dries you rub the henna off (as if you were rubbing dried Elmer’s glue off your skin). To make the color come out you rub your skin with Vick’s VapoRub (in the picture you can see that my wrists are lighter because I didn’t rub in the Vick’s as much there). And they say you are not supposed to let your skin touch water for some more time so it stays dark.

If you are planning on doing mendhi, make sure you are using natural henna. It will fade faster, but the black dye that they put into a lot of that stuff is really toxic. Be kind to your liver.

Filed in Sketchbook | Tagged pen and ink | Comments (0)

Sketching Confidence

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Green Girl, colored pencil in moleskine, 4/13/09

I have been sketching lately in colored pencil and ballpoint, things that are not easily erased or covered. The whole idea is to develop some more confidence and to learn to live with my marks. We’ll see if the uncomfortable feeling it gives me pays off in better drawings.

Filed in Drawing, Sketchbook | Tagged colored pencil, portrait | Comments (0)

It was a good Good Friday

Sunday, April 12, 2009

At the Radio Station, ballpoint and tombow marker, 4/10/09

Coffee, ballpoint and tombow marker, 4/10/09

I had Good Friday off from work, which was a welcome break. It gave me a chance to volunteer to answer phones for the Spring Pledge Drive of the Q 99.7. They are a listener supported station and stay on the air through donations. It felt good to lend my talents and help out. I met some cool people and got a chance to get out of my comfort zone a little bit. I did this from 6-9 am (I am a morning person!) and made a few sketches while I was there. I used a black ball point pen and a gray Tombow marker.
After my radio station experience, I drove around and did some exploring in and around Suffield, CT. I got a LOT of good ideas for future landscapes that I want to do. Suffield is a picture perfect New England small town. I didn’t do any sketching though because I had to drive to my parent’s house for the weekend. I had planned on participating in the 22nd Worldwide SketchCrawl, but I forgot that it was Easter Weekend. No offense to the sketchcrawl, but Easter is way more important! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter as well.

This is one of my favorite Scripture passages relating to Easter and what it means for us today:

When you were baptized, you were buried together with him. You were raised to life together with him by believing in God’s power. God raised Jesus from the dead. At one time you were dead in your sins. Your sinful nature was not circumcised. But God gave you new life together with Christ. He forgave us all of our sins. He wiped out the written Law with its rules. The Law was against us. It opposed us. He took it away and nailed it to the cross. He took away the weapons of the powers and authorities. He made a public show of them. He won the battle over them by dying on the cross.
-Colossians 2:12-15

Filed in Sketchbook | Tagged ballpoint, marker, moleskine, public sketching | Comments (0)

In Progress

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Sketch for “The Justin”, graphite in sketchbook, 4/7/09

Yesterday, I came home from work and went immediately to bed with one of the worst migraines I’ve had in months. I was pretty bummed about this actually, because I was looking forward to doing some serious artmaking. Thankfully, I got up around 10 pm with my headache gone and I made this sketch. It’s not quite right, but it made the day count as a drawing day so I am happy with it for that reason alone. This is my friend Justin and honestly, I think he would be horrified if he knew how many times I’ve drawn this very picture. I have a version of it in every one of my sketchbooks. I’ve tried it right side up, upside down, big, small, realistic, sketchy, etc — I have been tinkering with it for months now.

Originally, I wanted to do this in ink wash, as I think the shadow across the face would look awesome this way. I’ve sketched it in graphite so many times though that I think I owe it to my pencils to use them for the final piece! I’m very comfortable with graphite and it is my medium of choice at the moment. Upon upon reading Adebanji Alade’s post on his trials with portrait commissions, I have decided that with all the other difficulties involved, the last thing I need is to use an unfamiliar medium. Even though this is not a commission and I am doing it just for myself, I might as well prepare myself for when I do get that commission.

Filed in Sketchbook, Work in Progress | Tagged graphite, portrait | Comments (2)

60 Minute Sketching

Monday, April 6, 2009

Japanese Maple, colored pencil in sketchbook, 4/5/09

I never know how long it takes me to draw something because I never do it straight through. My computer usually distracts me (facebook, email, reading blogs, etc.) so something that should be very simple takes me hours because of all the interruptions. For this sketch, I went outside and set a timer for one hour to see what I could do in a single block of time without stopping. My choice of colors was inspired by Stephen Hall, who suggested that I try limiting myself to only three: red, blue and yellow. I used Prismacolor colored pencils for this (deco yellow, magenta and ultramarine). I wasn’t trying to be too accurate – I just wanted to have fun with it and get stuff down on the paper. I felt like a kid at a restaurant coloring on the back of a placemat with those little packets of crayons that they hand out.

Filed in Sketchbook | Tagged colored pencil, nature | Comments (3)

A Minor Revelation

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Rose Sketch, colored pencil in sketchbook, 4/4/09

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!

-Henry van Dyke (sung to the melody of Ode to Joy)

Yesterday was a good day. I got a lot of sketching done and this made me feel productive. I was looking through my past sketchbooks and things I put online and I realized that for the most part, my artwork has been devoid of color. I’ve known for some time that my wardrobe needed an intervention, that I’ve been wearing too much black and gray, but I never carried the concept over to my artwork.

I’m not going to get into studying color theory right now. That is a goal for a different time (2010 maybe?), but I definitely want to incorporate more color into the things that I’m already doing. I might start drawing flowers again. It is spring after all. I’ve let some anti-flowers comments keep me from drawing flowers. I’m done with that! Flowers make me happy so I might as well make myself happy…

Regardless of what the subject matter is, I’m going to make a conscious effort to include actual colors, even if they are monochrome or very muted. I am done with looking at gray and black. The winter is over!

Filed in Colored Pencil, Sketchbook | Tagged colored pencil, floral | Comments (4)

Quarter 1 Review

Thursday, April 2, 2009

I never used to think in terms of Quarters until I started paying more attention to the financial world. Now, I tend to measure my goals in terms of quarters instead of months or weeks. In terms of my art goals, Q1 was a mixed bag. I did a lot of work (definitely more than in 2008) but I was slightly derailed by some people who distracted me from my priorities and from myself.

This distraction left me being a bit lazy in terms of doing what I actually set out to do. I did a lot of sketching, making a lot of progress in the nine sketchbooks that I want to fill up. I also worked in a series on my portraits of men. It was a good exercise – I learned a lot about working in a series and next time around I am going to do things a lot differently. I am going to have more of a plan first and pace myself more because I don’t want to get burned out. I don’t want to feel pressured to produce work because I want to keep up with something. I want it to be a pleasure! I didn’t do any of the work that I wanted to do on Christmas gifts. I really need to get cracking on this one!

Considering recent events however, I am pleased with my progress. I am trying to be gentle with myself, because I deserve it. I have always been an underachiever in life, and I think that if I make easy goals for myself, I won’t be inspired to do more than I think I can. If it hadn’t been for my artwork, I don’t know how I would have made it through all the personal trials I have been through.

If someone doesn’t add to my life, I will edit them out of it. That is my new philosophy. The course my life has taken in the past year has left me with a confidence that I never knew I would possess. I am no longer so concerned with other people’s feelings that I will sacrifice myself for them.

This is a sketch that I made about a month ago in purple ball point pen. I would tweak the composition again if I were to do it again, but it was fun and good practice.

Costa del Sol, ball point on blank card, 3/2/2009

Filed in Art Goals | Tagged ballpoint, still life | Comments (2)

Sketching and People Watching at the Jiffy Lube

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Sketching at the Jiffy Lube, ballpoint and tombow N95 in Moleskine, 3/28/09

I had to get my oil changed and it is usually the busiest on Saturday mornings because that it when a lot of people have spare time to take care of mundane things (like oil changes). They told me it was going to be a bit of a wait, but I was okay with that because I had my moleskine with me. I drew the shoes of the other customers and it was an interesting people watching/sketching experience. No one noticed or blinked an eye at the fact that I was shamelessly drawing them. I think it was because I was looking down, instead of at their faces!

The first one was a girl who was wearing flip flops. I still think it is too cold out for flip flops so this choice of footwear would not have been my first choice. She was driving a Honda Accord. The second person was a man with very grungy shoes. The shoes would have been very interesting to draw, but the guy himself used a lot of profanity and he kept fidgeting and stomping his feet. He was driving an Acura and (sorry to generalize about people, but) I have had some bad experiences with aggressive Acura drivers in the past! The next person was a woman wearing pink and grey Adidas sandals with socks. I am not the most fashionable person out there, but she needed a fashion intervention. I was then about to move onto the next shoe (of an Indian man wearing nice brown suede sneakers) but then they were finished with my car. I thought to myself that I wished that they had taken a little longer with my car because I wanted to finish my page!

Filed in Sketchbook | Tagged ballpoint, marker, moleskine, public sketching | Comments (2)

A Quick SP

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Self Portrait, graphite in sketchbook, 3/26/09

When you sit for an hour and a half in front of somebody, he or she shows about twenty faces. And so it’s this crazy chase of, Which face? Which one is the one? -Francesco Clemente

In this case, it was my own face I was drawing. The quote resonated with me because I often wonder this very thing when making self portraits. It is so easy to change expressions when looking at yourself in the mirror. In real life however, I wonder what my expressions are really like, and how the way I see myself compares to how others see me.

This past week I was having dinner with a friend. I was filling up on breadsticks and salad and I came across a thought that went as such: “It is okay that I don’t have my act together because no one else does either.” I did feel better after that, so I came home and drew this self portrait as a bit of a more confident person! I was drawing very fast as I wanted to get to bed at a decent time. I still think I look stiff though, as it is difficult for me to be draw while constantly looking up and down and maintaining the same pose.

Filed in Drawing, Personal | Tagged graphite, self portrait | Comments (0)

The Best Way Out is Through

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

“Now, son of man, take a clay tablet, put it in front of you and draw the city of Jerusalem on it. Then lay siege to it: Erect siege works against it, build a ramp up to it, set up camps against it and put battering rams around it. Then take an iron pan, place it as an iron wall between you and the city and turn your face toward it. It will be under siege, and you shall besiege it.
-Ezekiel 4:1-3

Sometimes Bible verses taken out of context seem to apply to me quite a bit. I have decided to keep working. I didn’t lose my hands for a whole year to not use them once I am pain free. When I think about how I felt back then, I was in a state of utter desperation. One of the biggest reasons why I was healed was because I started to shift my thoughts toward what I wanted in life again – making art being one of my biggest goals. I have a lot to be thankful about because for a long time I did not think that I would ever get my hands back again. Even though my life is far from perfect, having working and pain free thumbs, elbows and wrists is really amazing.

I’ve got some new things coming up to be excited about too. April 11th is the SketchCrawl and I’m going somewhere pretty awesome this time. My class at Snow Farm is at the end of April and I just got the itinerary and materials list. It is going to be a lot of hard work, but I know it will be a blast, and I know I am going to meet some amazing people there. Roz announced that April is International Fake Journal Month and I am thinking of keeping my own fake journal. Also, I have decided to work on a project that has been at the back of my mind for the past five years at least. This involves quite a bit of inking, double sided photocopies and a long neck stapler (which I already own for this purpose). It is quite an ambitious undertaking, but I think it will be worth it. In May I am going to start on a new series which will be made outdoors. If it goes as planned, it will take me until the fall to finish, but definitely worth it. I have too much to lose to give it all up now just because of my own frustrations and someone else’s insults or oversights – so I am persevering, and will try to have fun while doing so.

And because I don’t like to post without putting a picture up, I will show you what I did last night. Self portraits are the best subject when feeling introspective, and I don’t really feel that a sketchbook has been made mine until I make a self portrait in it. Now my moleskine is one of my sketchbooks! I was not upset when doing this, even though I might look like it. I was very tired, hence the blank stare and the watering eyes. I made it while sitting on my floor with a mirror on my knees – a very awkward position (notice the wonky proportions).

Self Portrait in Flannel Nightgown, graphite in moleskine, 3/23/09

Filed in Art Goals, Sketchbook | Tagged graphite, moleskine, self portrait | Comments (3)