Pumpkins, Paintings, and People

It's been a bit of a while since the last update, so here's what I've been working on lately: 

Finished the underpainting and begun "dead coloring" on my Venetian canal painting.  It's based on a photo that I took during a trip to Venice.  I'm taking my time with this one.

© Oscura Photography

It's pumpkin season!  You know what that means.  Baking pumpkins, eating pumpkins, taking pictures of pumpkins and photoshopping them onto my body for ha-has.... I mean... okay, maybe not that last one.

I made this little guy in pretty harvest colors, following a free crochet pattern from Little Muggles.  It was a fun break from drawing, painting, and job searching in my new locale.  

A little drawing of an eye, with an Alda Merini quote.  Mostly I wanted to play with my inks, and mixing colors.  An unlikely combination, mixing a true violet with Antelope Brown yields some very lovely warm tones.  I'm definitely going to use this color combination in some larger projects.  

And, lastly, sketching people at the beach.  They're little because I was spending maybe twenty seconds on each doodle, since the people who go to the beach in 60 degree weather move around a lot more than the typical sunbathers.  Fun stuff!  It's also the same violet ink I used in the eye.  

Teatime Musings

© Chromeheart

I'll let you in on a little secret... half the time when I glue art paper into my sketchbook, it's covering up a drawing or something that I didn't like so much.  Some Italian blackletter that came out wrong is hiding under this one, and nobody would ever know just by looking at it.  Books are for secrets.

Flipping back through this sketchbook, which I started about eighteen months ago, I realize that I haven't been using it right.  After all this time, I'm still trying too hard to be "good."  I still want to go back and cover up everything that didn't come out so well; glue my pages together so nobody can see what's inside and paint over old mistakes until you can't tell what they were.

You can hide your mistakes, but there isn't enough paint in the world to make them go away.

Maddy Rose

© Chromeheart

I haven't done a messy pen sketch (as opposed to a not-messy pen that has the ink inside of it) outside in a public space since Italy.  When I started using fountain pens, I decided that carrying ink bottles and dip pens and a cleanup kit around is too much hassle and the potential for an ink accident is too high.  Once upon a time I accidentally dumped a bottle of acrylic ink across my hands, my pants, and my watercolor block while sketching outside in this manner.  

This is hands down my favorite drawing pen.  If there is a non-messy pen that handles anything like this, I haven't found it yet.  It's a D. Leonardt mapping nib, purchased in Italy while I was studying abroad.  It's possible to find them in the states, but a bit difficult.  

Today's supplies: HB pencil, my favorite pen, F.W. Artist's Acrylic in Red Earth, a cappuccino, my Travelogue Handbook, and a small bottle of water for cleanup.  Cappuccino is totally an art supply.

(seriously, though, don't use an open ink bottle as a paperweight ESPECIALLY if it's windy)

Ca d'Oro in Ink and Watercolor

Finished sketch

The Ca d'Oro is a famous Venetian palazzo on the Grand Canal, so named because its entire front facade was radiant gold in its heyday.  Of course, most of the gold has come off over the past few centuries, but the Ca d'Oro remains a prime example of Venetian-Gothic splendor, regally presiding over the inevitable traffic jams between gondolas, vaporetti, and assorted motor boats below.

In progress

I began this sketch with a loose layer of liquid watercolor, added detail in waterproof acrylic ink with one of my favorite D. Leonardt nibs, and finished it off with an overlay of pink to hint at the sunset.  Original photo sourced from Pinterest; I do not know who the photographer is to credit them.  No copyright infringement is intended.  This work is solely a personal enrichment exercise from which I receive no monetary benefit.  

You've probably noticed that I've been inactive for quite some time-- well, here's the story.  After a lot of stressful job-and-apartment-hunting, I have moved back to the North Shore and and am just beginning to get settled, quite happily.  I can smell the ocean in my living room, when the wind blows the right way.  It doesn't get any better than that.  

And God said: Let There Be Coffee... so I started unpacking in order of importance.

It might have been the place...

©Chromeheart (images only)

Since I've begun experimenting with fountain pen inks (which are very water-soluble once dry), I thought I might try revisiting the one wet media that I could never learn to like.  These sketches are both done in a mixture of fountain pen ink and pan watercolor, and I'm surprisingly pleased with the results.

Quotes are sourced from an ebook called Carnival for the Dead, and I am merely scribbling passages I enjoyed in my personal sketchbook for no reason other than personal enrichment.  No copyright infringement is intended and I do not stand to profit from this work.

Dispossession

© Chromeheart

Inks: J.H. Poussiere d' Lune, R&K Scabiosa
Yes, I know I spelled dispossession wrong on the page.  Whoopsie.

© Chromeheart

I have so many interests that I must rotate them due to a lack of hours in the day; which is to say that if I'm focusing on writing, I'm not drawing much.  If I'm drawing, I'm not really writing.  If I'm crocheting or taking photos, I'm probably not writing or drawing.  To be able to write a poem every day, post a drawing every week, make a blanket to keep me warm, and continue developing my photography all at the same time, I'd have to quit my day job!

Maybe in a perfect world... but in the words of a fictional character, "Nothing's perfect.  The world's not perfect... and that's what makes it so damned beautiful."

My Shadows #5: Terminus

© Chromeheart

Inks: J.H. Terre de Feu, Diamine Brown, R&K Scabiosa

Quotes:

"Take a lesson..." --Gemini Syndrome, Pay For This

"I remember..." --Nonpoint, That Day

(Yeah, I use vintage wine glasses for my paintbrush water.  Old jam jars, yogurt cups, or whatever people normally use are just plain ugly.)

I took my sketchbook to the last round of the CrossFit Open intending to draw people doing burpees and thrusters, and dropped it after the second heat to make myself useful as a cheerleader.  The unfinished page eventually became this.  

CrossFit's about realizing with every step forward that you're a stronger person than you were yesterday.  

Shadows 4: Yours, Not Mine

© Chromeheart

Inks used: J. Herbin Terre de Feu,  F.W. Sepia

While spring cleaning, I came across a box of pretty collage papers that I'd acquired for another project.  The other project didn't pan out and I've always liked the look of altered books and scrappy art journals held together by little more than glue and string.

© Chromeheart

Since I'm not trying to impress anyone, any more, it might be nice to try mixed media collage myself rather than idly admiring other artists' work.  In the world of art college, it was an unspoken rule that Professional Artists didn't do amateurish hobby crafts if they wanted to be taken seriously.  I don't think visual journals should be so easily filed in the same category as paint by humber kits or stringing beads on wire according to a pattern someone else made.

Maybe that's just me.

Shadows #3: Lost In Translation

© Chromeheart

Somehow I've accidentally made a hobby of attempting to translate the quotes on the Italian photo blogs I follow into English; this usually works by pasting phrases individually into three different online translators and combining them into whatever makes the most sense.  Sometimes it's spot on; sometimes it's... not.  Every the quote is famous enough to have an English translation out there, it's completely different from the translated meaning.

This poem is a case in point.  It was supposed to be a fragment of "Conversation with a Stone" by Wislawa Szymborska.  The official English translation is a poem about a nosy woman pestering a stone to see the inside of its house.  A few choice expressions that got lost in translation resulted in a completely different poem... a poem more meaningful to me than the original.  Maybe the Italian translation from the original Polish was faulty; who knows.

My Shadows #2

These sketches and poetry are about forgetting what I learned, and remembering what I forgot. It's easy to (for)get lost, when you've got all pins and no needles.

© Chromeheart

Someone once told me to forget everything I learned in art school.  At the time, I thought he was an imbecile.  Now, I'm not so sure.  A lot of things have changed since then.  I'm beginning to think there might have been something to it.  Might have.  Somewhere in the vein of coulda, woulda, shoulda, &etc.

I want to forget when art making evolved from an expression of myself into an expression of what I thought others wanted from me.  I want to forget how my sketchbook was depersonalized into a graded homework assignment.  Most of all, I want to forget how important it was to be good.  To be as close to the best as you can.

© Chromeheart / Oscura Photography

I stopped enjoying art when I started thinking about good.  If the professor would see how hard I tried to be a good artist, a good student, and give me a favorable mark.  If my classmates would hate my drawing and rip me a new one over too much this or not enough that.  My art wasn't mine any more; it was everyone else's except mine, in the name of good-ness.

What good is "good" if I'm not enjoying myself?
Maybe it's not so important after all.

My Shadows #1

© Chromeheart

Out of the inky 54th Massachusetts blue, the drawing bug bit me.
I'd taken an extended break from the blogosphere to write my novel--which, at my anticipated length of 95,000 words, is only 2/3 of the way done.  I'm a slow writer, but that's okay.  I write for me, not for anybody else.  Being that, I may as well savor the writing experience.  The familiar friction of pen to paper, every word a lonely fragment of a half-remembered dream.

© Chromeheart / Oscura Photography

As I've mentioned before, I mainly use facebook to follow a few dozen Italy-based photo blogs that post lovely images paired with poetic quotes for the better part of the day.  None of it's in English, but if I like the photo enough, I'll bung a functional translation and 'share' the whole shebang.  Often times, the quote pairing lends a depth of meaning to the photograph that I otherwise wouldn't have noted.  You can follow me on facebook as A Chrome Heart.

That's part of what I'm getting at here.
I know what this picture means to me, but that's a secret.  A shadow.  Oscura.  Chiaroscuro.
What does it say to you?  (you may reply in the comments, if you wish)

Black Cherry Sketchbook Spread

© Chromeheart

PR Black Cherry is quickly becoming one of my favorite inks, with just the right amount of saturation for my taste.  The sketch on the right is of an archway cut into a wall, with steps leading down directly into a canal.  Although that seems quite strange at first glance, I assume the purpose is to get on and off a boat with ease. This is the Venice you don't see in glossy, oversaturated tourism photos.

Little Luna Part I

There's one moment in Venice that I remember very clearly: I tried on a gilded mask shaped like a crescent moon with a strikingly androgynous face.  It was a beautiful mask, but it looked strange on someone with my height and build.  I bought a Tarot jester instead, but I couldn't stop thinking about the Luna mask.  Why don't I simply make a Luna mask of my own?

sculpture © Chromeheart Illustration

I began with a small scale mock-up of my Luna to get a feel for the basic process.  I'm a little nervous about this, being that I never had an interest in sculpture before recently discovering its function in mask-making.  Little Luna is made out of Roma Plastilina no. 2, an oil-based clay that is often used for mold making.  

The next step will be to pour a plaster negative of Little Luna.  I've never used Plaster of Paris before either, so this is going to be a bit of an adventure.  

© Chromeheart Illustration 

Truth be told, I'm having a blast with the Luna character.  I did this little sketch earlier today, inspired by one of the more elaborate Luna e Sole masks I came across in my research.  Ink: Private Reserve Black Cherry.  I'm already in love with the color.  

sketches © Chromeheart Illustration

These are the preliminary sketches I did for my Luna mask, and some inspiration references from the Internet.  I want my Luna's facial expression to be relaxed and dreamy, with an underlying intelligence and that slight smirk that almost seems to whisper, "I have a secret." Luna is a monarch of the night, of sleep and dreams, and the night is for secrets.  The facial expression will be more distinct when I build the full scale mask.