Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 25

Agrigento

Rock wall and olives at Agrigento. Watercolor on paper, 15" x 11".

The day we spent visiting the ancient Greek temples at Agrigento, Sicily, is etched in my memory less for the temples themselves, as spectacular as they were, but for the landscape and the feeling of the long walk that leads from one building to another. It was a beautiful day, struck with that strong, bright Mediterranean sun that sets shadows in sharp relief and shows colors at their brightest; as for generations of artists before me, that light and color are compelling to my northern eyes that, once experienced, I continue to long for them. Maybe that's why I keep coming back to these scenes, trying to capture something of that feeling.

The "Sicilian wall" in my studio.

The painting at the top of this page was done over two sessions, on two days. Below is the earlier stage, at the end of the first day. I was dissatisfied with my photographs of this painting. I think the reduction in size as well as the photographic process itself results in a loss of immediacy and vibrancy -- probably that's just an inevitable limitation of sharing work online. The bottom detail below captures it best, but it also looks more accurate in the photo of my studio above.

This is after about an hour of drawing and laying in the first washes.

 

Detail of the finished painting.

 

And another detail. 

 

A niche that once housed an early Christian burial, long after the Greeks occupied this valley.

The vibrant ochre color of the rocks at Agrigento, which were full of fossils, created a stunning but entirely natural contrast with the bright blue sky and the sea beyond, and yet that was softened by the silvery olive trees, some of which were very old, with their twisted trunks and branches. At the end of the ancient temple road was the oldest olive tree I've ever seen; I made a drawing of it recently that, I'm happy to say, was bought by a dear friend, perhaps for some of the same reasons I loved it in person. That tree seemed to embody the spirit of the Greeks for me. I went up to it, laid my hand on its trunk, and stayed with it for a while.

NOTE: In a radical move, I've changed the layout of the blog slightly, putting the sidebar on the right (better for phone viewing, since the images sometimes got cut off in mobile view) and taking away the sidebar's black background. Please let me know what you think or how it works for you. Do most of you read the blog in a feed reader anyway?

 

 

 

 

 

Vessels

July flew by in a blur of trips to the U.S., and friends visiting us here in Montreal. It was also also unremittingly hot. I had less time to draw and paint than usual, but during one of those visits, we went to the Jean-Talon market with our friends TC and K. TC and I sketched for an hour or so while our spouses went off to Little Italy to buy spices. Because I almost always work by myself, I'd forgotten how much fun it is to sketch with someone else. TC set up the empty bottles and a coffee cup from our lunches, and we both got to work, on opposite sides of a table. He was using my Moonman fountain pen on smooth paper, and I was using my green Sailor fude-nib pen on rough watercolor paper.

Here's my sketch, with color added:

and here's TC working on his, a very good contour drawing. 

I liked this detail of my sketch:

But later, the bottles were what stuck in my visual imagination. Vessels in a still life arrangement always take on a slightly anthropomorphic quality, which is interesting on its own, but also made me think about the way we are all vessels, with a variety of appearances, qualities of solidity or delicacy, and larger or smaller openings to the world -- while inside, we hold very different things that we may reveal transparently, or partially, or not at all. 

Earlier that week I had done this fast sketch of the water jars and containers of brushes and tools on my drawing table:

But then, during the following week, I was inspired by the earlier bottles to paint a still life of some vessels at home, chosen for the variety of their shapes and materials, from opaque to transparent. While the fast studio sketch, above, is just a study in colors, forms, and transparency, the one below had the challenge of the glass, metal, ceramic and plastic materials, but it also seemed to take on a more psychological aspect, as vessels tend to do when organized in a group. Whether it is a family, or a temporary relationship of five, how do the individuals relate, inform, echo, or even distort each other? Can I, as the "director" of this scene, make the objects relate to each other in particular ways? And what is going on subconsciously -- what did I not even notice as I was putting the still life together?

I think about these questions somewhat when I'm choosing and arranging the objects, but composition is pretty intuitive for me, and happens quickly. The questions become much more interesting as I study the painting over the days after it was made.

Vessels with maple syrup jug. 9.5" x 7"; transparent watercolor on Fabriano cold press.

 

Drawing Our Past and Present

Last week I spent several days visiting my father in central New York State, where I grew up. He lives in a different town now, but I was staying at the house he and my mother built when I was young, mostly with their own hands, on a small lake. It was extremely quiet there, unlike the busy city where I now live. We went to sleep to the sound of bullfrogs, and woke up to songbirds at dawn. Wild rabbits grazed on the clover-filled lawn, and the woodchucks and chipmunks and squirrels paid no attention to us. I saw birds I haven't seen for a long time, like flickers, orioles, and a scarlet tanager, and whenever we drove through the fields and pastures of the surrounding area, we saw deer. At night, countless fireflies illuminated the edges of the woods, and crawled on our shirts like miniature, living flashlights.

Every day I walked along the shore, watching the fish in the still edges of the water, making a mental note of the plants in bloom. I was both in the present moment, and remembering being in these exact places at different stages of my life, alone or with people who are now gone or far away.  There's a stone wall that my father built along the shoreline, and one place in particular where I always liked to sit. I thought about fishing there with my mother, and swimming with friends and cousins; I saw myself at seventeen, filled with romantic dreams, waiting for my boyfriend to come driving around the lake to see me late at night. I thought of standing in that spot throwing stones out into the water, as far as I could, the day we buried my grandfather.

The lake was impassive, reflecting my memories back to me, and also insisting that I notice what was going on right then. A catbird hopped in the the trees behind me; a chipmunk chattered. Large fish broke the surface farther out. Ducks flew low, quacking. And I saw the reflections of swallows in the water before I raised my eyes to follow them in the sky, flying at dusk just the way they always have.

I had brought my sketchbook and watercolors, and I did several drawings inside the house, which has remained almost exactly the same way it was when my parents lived there. We'd stopped at a farmer's market outside Utica and bought some fresh peas in the pod to shell -- we ate all of them raw -- I had picked some crown vetch, which is in the pea family, and put it in one of my mother's Wedgwood vases, so the drawing became a sort of ode to legumes. 

After returning home this week, I did the two small watercolor sketches of the shore. I don't know why exactly, except that I enjoyed trying to capture the delicate quality of the evening light and the stillness of the water, and perhaps it was my way of staying there a little longer. I don't think I felt like I had the skill before to tackle this particular subject in watercolor, but the practice over the past couple of months has helped. I'm happy now to have these paintings in my sketchbook -- they take me back instantly to the place and its emotional feeling in a way a photograph somehow can't -- and maybe they'll be a step toward something else.

That's the challenge with subjects to which we're somehow attached. We may want very much to draw or paint them, but because of the familiarity as well as the emotional charge, whatever we do may always seem to miss the mark. But as we make those attempts, they reveal a lot about ourselves -- think of Van Gogh's self-portraits. About thirty years ago I did an oil painting of the same basic view of the lake as the second watercolor; it now hangs in my parents' house. It's detailed, accurate and well-painted. Most people would probably prefer it, and when I did it I was pretty pleased. However, these little watercolors come much closer to the feeling I have when I'm actually there, and if I pursued that even further, maybe I could come even closer. The difference between the two has less to do with skill, and more with years of living. The place may be much the same, but I'm not the same person I was then.

The Book of the Red King

I hope that readers of this blog will want to know about this beautiful new book of poems, written by Marly Youmans, illustrated by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, and designed and published by me. It's available as a hardcover with linen covered covers and a printed dust-jacket, and a paperback, and the pre-order pricing extends until this Friday, July 19th. All the ordering information and full book information is on the Phoenicia website.

"For those who love well-formed poems and for those who love fantasy, this is a must-read and a distinctive, evocative voice. There is no one like Marly Youmans." --Kim Bridgford 

"T he reader will be spellbound." --Kelly Cherry

"It is the territory of Yeats and Tolkien."  -- A.M. Juster

A short book description:

From Marly Youmans, author of the epic poem Thaliad (Phoenicia, 2012) comes the story of the mysterious Red King, the metamorphosing Fool, and the ethereal Precious Wentletrap, told in a series of connected poems of rare beauty. Whether read as fantasy, symbolic story, or simply poetry, the world Marly has created is a spellbinding place where we can glimpse truths about our own lives, and the world. The Book of the Red King is illustrated with drawings by the acclaimed Welsh artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

 

Departures

Palm and Agaves, National Garden, Athens.

I've left my June sketchbook behind and started on a new path, and it feels a whole lot better. Today's painting is of a subject and place that I love, and it was done on a pad of 140# Cold Press Fabriano watercolor paper that I bought in Lisbon, with which I had no trouble at all. I'm pretty happy with the result (I wasn't able to capture the subtlety of the colors when I photographed it, unfortunately); it's expressive, looks a lot more free, and like I was having a good time, which I was. This month I'm going to be doing some paper tests to see what I like best, and also to compare paper bought in sheets with the supposedly-identical papers bought in blocks or pads. So that's the first departure.

A detail, approximately life-size.

The second departure is me from Facebook. I'm doing a trial of being off the social media platform for the next two months, except for Phoenicia Publishing news and posting links to my blog, where I will be doing most of my online writing. My reasons are twofold. First is that it was adding to my unhappiness about the state of the world and contemporary society, not helping, and I don't need that. Second, in spite of the liberal views expressed by most of my online friends, if we really care about the world and society, none of us have any business being on Facebook and participating in this extremely destructive company's policies, or supporting its contemptuous founder and high-level staff. It's a moral issue. I don't think I can get off completely because it is still helpful for my publishing business, but placing ads there is a business transaction and I have a lot less of a problem with that than with being used by a company I have come to detest, and which allows society to be manipulated in terrible ways. So I feel like I have to make my own small stand, and make a significant change, just like our decision to use our car as little as possible, eat less meat, and try to stop using single-use plastics. In none of those areas am I "pure," but I'm trying to act on my beliefs rather than just talking about them. I'm sorry that this means I won't be receiving news from a few friends who only use Facebook; I'll be writing to them and asking them to stay in touch by email, but I know I'll feel more out-of-touch with some people I care about.

I'll also be using Instagram less. Although I don't find it nearly as offensive or depressing -- in fact I really enjoy its quiet method of sharing images with a community quite a lot -- the ads are proliferating, and I can't get around the fact that it's owned by Facebook. As the people I follow have increased, it takes a lot of time to scroll through their posts every day. I'm going to check in once a day or less, and instead of posting art or photography there every day, as I have been, I will post when I've written a new blog post. 

What will I do with the time that's about to be freed up? I'm actually not sure how much time that is, but certainly I can write more, do more art, play the piano, or improve my French. My husband suggested that I could take up a new instrument! I don't think we're talking about enough time for that, but it's a tempting idea. After two months, I'll re-assess and see how I feel, and I'll certainly write something about it.

My blog posts are also cross-posted to Medium, where I have a very small group of followers. I'll make a point of posting the "friend links" here, so that anyone who wants can read at Medium without having to be a member.

Thanks for your responses at any time, either here or over there! I'm curious about your opinions on this topic. 

Read at Medium: https://medium.com/@cassandrabeth/dep...

Direct Watercolor: Report on Week Three

A thicket with fence and steel planters. The city must have put these planters at the entrance to the railroad bike path -- I really like the rusty surfaces -- but they immediately became blank canvases for graffiti. Still, I like this little wild area with its vines and varied textures. 

This week I did four more sketches/paintings of the area around the tracks. I really think I'm done, unless something else calls out loudly to me to be painted -- the lack of interest I felt in the final painting told me everything I needed to know. I've learned quite a bit doing these. The greatest lesson is that while these could be illustrations for a project about life near the tracks, I need to be working on subjects that truly inspire me, sketching in a sketchbook, but painting on sheets of paper where I've got more room, more freedom, and no dividing line for the spread! On the technical side, I've discovered dagger brushes, which are extremely versatile and useful, doing the work of several other brushes of conventional shape. For me, they don't replace a pointed sable brush completely, but almost. And I've been satisfied with the palette of colors (currently 17) I'm using. I may add a lighter, brighter yellow, perhaps Lemon Yellow, and possibly a couple of additional earth tones such as Raw Sienna/Venetian Yellow Earth, and Transparent Red Oxide/Italian Burnt Sienna, and delete Indanthrone Blue. The foundational grey tones, both warm and cool, created by mixing Burnt Sienna or Quinacridone Burnt Orange with French Ultramarine Blue have made things a whole lot easier, and improved both the speed of sketching, and the color on the paper.

So here are the rest of this week's pages. 

An alley near the studio. Residential buildings from two parallel streets back up onto the same alley. Some have limited or no vehicle access; children play here, and sometimes the neighbors create collective gardens that lead to a city designation of a "ruelle vert" or "green alley."

Vetch, picked along the tracks. Part of the challenge of these direct watercolors, in addition to drawing with the brush only, is to paint fast and avoid fussing over any sections. 

And a detail.

How my sketchbook pages start. This is pretty much the same as the way I'd start an oil painting, except with oil I'd build up the values next, and in watercolor I use a series of washes, usually working light-to-dark. The brush drawing was done with one of my new Rosemary & Co. dagger brushes -- they're excellent! But painting didn't go too well today. I'm tired from singing all day yesterday, plus running a meeting, and my heart wasn't really in it. That's a recipe for lackluster work. I don't know if I can rescue it tomorrow or not. Should have left it like this! 

The tracks, looking east, in a photo that's too dark but shows the lack of unification of the two sides of the work: this is the less-than-stellar finish of the previous day's sketch. My studio is in the brick building at right. The blue bird cutout is art someone put on the fence. 

I like some of the other pages from this week, but I think they lead me toward other subjects. We'll see! It has been well worth the effort to do these.

Direct Watercolor: Report on Week Two

This week I got more deeply into the underside of life along the tracks. The old warehouses, formerly used for manufacturing, have been turned into artist's spaces and light manufacturing. They're also canvases for graffiti on the sides that face the bike path and railroad, rather than the street above the tracks. It's not very artistic graffiti, either - mostly tagging and layers on top of layers, at that. When I walk or bike on the path, I find I'm kind of grateful for the sudden bursts of color, but it's also rather grim and decayed when you get up close and really look. Within the buildings, beyond the grilled windows, I can sometimes hear music and machinery; people are working and making things. But from the "back side", this is what you see.

The week's sketches actually began with this one. There's a contentious chain link fence all along the railroad. People continually cut human-size holes so they can cross the rails on foot or bring their bikes across; the railroad patches these holes, the next night they're re-cut. Neighborhood lobbying for a grade crossing has never borne fruit. I often cross the tracks via these cuts to get to the bike path on the far side from my studio building, and they're a big part of the reality of this zone for many of us, so I thought I should paint one. 

Trees and grapevines on the edge of the tracks: a much more classic watercolor, ore typical for me -- and frankly, a relief to paint.

And, finally, the appearance of a human. This path is used all year-round, by walkers, runners, cyclists, parents with various child-conveyances, and, in the winter, cross-country skiers. It's great because it's a long, unpaved, hard dirt path, and there's no car traffic whatsoever, not even any intersections with streets. That's because it's on the level of the railroad, and all the streets run below through overpasses such as the one I sketched last week. At certain times of the day it's quiet, but usually there are quite a lot of people using the path, especially in good weather. A few of the warehouses have makeshift picnic areas in back, beyond the chain-link fence, so sometimes I'll see groups of people sitting out there for lunch or taking a break. The city has also grouped some large flat rocks in several areas along the path itself, and I'll often pass people who are seated there, talking or eating, or just sitting alone. I also see photographers quite frequently, but I've never run across anyone with a sketchbook. 

So -- how's it going? I admit to a waning of interest, mainly because the environment is just not very beautiful, no matter how hard one searches, and in the present depressing world I don't think it's healthy for me to spend too much time focused on a grim subject for my art. 

I've also found it difficult to work in my sketchbook, since these are not really sketches but paintings that require a lot of water. I can't get it as wet as I'd like, and that's a problem. The paper is good, but it does buckle with even a small amount of wet pigment, and I've had to iron the pages to flatten them again -- so, all in all, I feel like I'm hampered by the sketchbook, not helped. It would be better to be working on a watercolor block or single sheets of a heavier weight.

On the positive side, the constraint of working directly to watercolor, without pen or pencil drawing first, has not been a problem at all. Drawing with the side and tip of the dagger brush works just fine, and saves a great deal of time -- so that's been a good discovery. For a more finished painting, I would use a pencil sketch, but I'm glad to have had this chance to experiment and find out that for a lot of the work, a brush drawing is sufficient.

That's even true for perspective and architecture! (Thanks, Liz Steel!) Having overcome my reluctance to draw buildings, I'm looking forward to doing some loose sketches of Montreal architecture, which is varied and interesting, with lots of detail in roofs, cornices, and steeples, as well as those iconic spiral staircases. I like the informality and liveliness that result when  perspective is loosely, but not slavishly, conveyed. This was a problem for me before, and one of the happiest results of recent experiments in Lisbon, and now here, has been the knowledge that this is a good direction for me to take.

I feel like I've done enough with the railroad subject to be free to let it go, at this point. Perhaps I'll return to it or do a few more of these, but I think I want to turn to some other nearby places for the remainder of the pages in this book. Next week I'll be going somewhere very different, and will take another sketchbook with me.

Do let me know what you think! Your comments have been illuminating and helpful -- thank you!

A New Direction, or a Short-lived Experiment?

This was the first week of June, and the first week of my new sketchbook project. As I'd figured, I only managed to do four paintings out of seven. My idea had been to paint scenes close to my studio, which is in a sort of no-man's-land near the Canadian-Pacific railroad tracks at the top of Plateau Mont-Royal. The subjects nearby are way out of my comfort zone: industrial buildings, the railroad, the bike path past warehouses covered with graffiti, scrubby vegetation. It's not at all pretty, and yet there's something more challenging about finding something to paint here. I'm not sure I can keep it up for a whole month. Maybe I'll add some flowering trees in the ruelles to increase my enthusiasm, or maybe I'll jump ship completely. 

One thing I've found about being older is that if I've made a wrong move, I'm no longer determined to stay on that path or else. With the Lisbon sketchbook, I really wanted to finish it as I had originally planned. Here, I'm not so sure. But still, I'm pleased with the work I did this week, and glad that I no longer shy away from urban scenes because of discomfort with perspective.

Doing direct watercolor --without an underlying pen or pencil drawing -- is a good exercise, too, I'm finding. By using a dagger brush, I'm able to draw the basic shapes with the edge or tip of the brush in a light color, and thus sketch in the basic scene before committing to large areas of color. Simplification happens naturally when drawing with a brush, and that's good. This week I ordered two new, high quality dagger brushes from Rosemary & Co, in England. Working rapidly also forces me to make swift color choices. I've been glad for a pre-mixed grey I added to my palette (a combination of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue), and overall I'm happy with my new, extended range of 18 colors, though I seldom use any of them without modification.

So, I'm learning some things, and not being too hard on myself. The point of painting, after all, is to enjoy it.

 

A June Watercolor Sketchbook

Studio still life with a painting of Thingvellir by Kjarval. A recent fairly loose watercolor; I want to do more painting like this.

About a month ago, I read about an online watercolor challenge happening in the month of June. The idea is to paint 30 "direct" watercolors in 30 days -- that means painting without preliminary ink drawing, just plunging in and painting or drawing rapidly with your brush. his is the second year for this challenge, the brainchild of Marc Taro Holmes, a well-known "urban sketcher" who used to work in the video game industry, and now happens to live in Montreal, and Liz Steel, an urban-sketcher and watercolor teacher  known for her watercolors of architecture. The point of the month-long challenge is to encourage lots of painting practice and less thinking and worrying about picky details or great results; like life drawing, this is to get people loosened up and moving from one painting to the next without judging themselves. I'm totally in support of that, because what I see in so many people who tell me they'd love to paint is fear of beginning, and then a whole lot of self-criticism which boils down to "I'm no good at this." There's no way someone isn't going to learn and improve if they paint 30 sheets of paper in a month, while just one a week, or one a month, leaves a lot of room for those self-defeating thoughts.

I kept thinking about the challenge, and finally decided I wanted to participate. The experience of doing my Lisbon sketchbook has taught me a lot. I've still got two pages left to go in that book, but by eliminating the ink lines about halfway through I've ended up with sketches I liked much more. And I really liked the fact that it's a complete book.

As for the "rules" of this challenge, I'm probably going to bend them. I'm in a different position from a beginning painter; learning to draw with a brush isn't my personal challenge; it's to pursue the work on a daily basis, sometimes painting very freely, at other times with more detail. At this point what I'm interested in doing is painting better (and more) watercolors, toward a particular style. Sometimes that means I need a quick preliminary pencil under-drawing -- so while I may sometimes go directly to watercolor, I'm not going to force myself to eliminate pencil drawing on every page. However, speed is going to dictate a certain amount of looseness, and that's always good for me.

Because I wasn't satisfied with the paper in my Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, I decided to make myself a new sketchbook for June. I used a single sheet of 22" x 30" Arches cold-pressed paper given to me recently by a friend. It's the lightest watercolor weight, 90 pounds, but still substantial. I cut it into smaller sheets that were 10" x 7 1/4", which folded down into 5" x 7 1/4" pages. The one sheet of Arches yielded three signatures of 12 pages each, for a book of 36 single pages, or 18 spreads. I made a traditional sewn binding on linen tapes, with cover boards made of acid-free matboard, covered with Italian marbled paper from my paper stash, added black Canson endpapers, and a spine covered with black leather. 

I wasn't sure how it would work, because I'd never made a book with such heavy paper. The only technical problem was that I didn't sew the signatures quite tightly enough, so even after gluing there is a small gap between them when you open the book to those pages.  But otherwise, it came out well.

The big challenge, I knew, would be to actually USE it. My own inner voice was already saying, "You're going to ruin that beautiful little book!" But I told myself I could make others, and on June 1, the same day I finished the binding, I painted the opening page. 

My goal isn't to do 30 watercolors, necessarily, since I don't have a 60-page book; what I hope to do is to completely fill this sketchbook with sketches and paintings from the area around my studio, which is near the Canadian Pacific railroad tracks. (We'll see what happens -- already it's June 3 and I've only done one painting!) I was shocked when I first put my brush on the Arches paper -- even though I've used hundreds of sheets of it in the past, I had become so used to using the Moleskine paper that the extra "tooth" and receptive surface felt like a wall of resistance, when really the high-quality paper was just begging for more water and paint. I'm not sure what will happen to the book itself when I get this paper really wet -- unlike a block of watercolor paper, the pages will ripple and buckle. But as a teacher once said, "Sometimes you just have to fight with it." At the end of June, I hope I'll have an interesting book full of paintings, and that I will have learned some more things. And you know what? If it's the end of July, that's OK too.

 

So Sad, So Grateful: rest in peace, dear Patrick

Patrick Wedd during the rehearsal with our choir for his final Evensong before retirement, in June, 2018.

Patrick Wedd, consummate musician, choral director, and my dear friend, died yesterday. I was extremely fortunate to sing under his direction at Christ Church Cathedral for the past eleven years, to hear such a master play the organ, and to perform music he had written as well as the huge repertoire of Anglican liturgical music that he brought to us, week after week. He was a mentor to all of us, but especially to the young organists who were our assistant organists and organ scholars, and it was a joy to watch them grow in confidence and ability under his eye.

Patrick and I worked together on a number of projects, including educational programs, fundraising concerts, and a CD of contemporary Canadian liturgical music sung by our choir and published by Phoenicia, and during his last year, on the process for the transition to his successor. I'm especially grateful for his close and steady friendship over all these years: he was supportive, enthusiastic, and interested, and sympathetic whenever there was a problem, and I hope I returned the same kind of friendship to him and to his husband Rob.

Many people are writing today about him; I feel more like being quiet, and letting music speak for me. Last night I sat down at the keyboard and played some Bach preludes and fugues, and then a few of Patrick's own hymns from the Canadian Anglican hymnal. His music will live on, through all of us, and the person he was will continue to influence me all my life. Patrick, I'm so grateful to have known you. May you rest in peace.