Sue Clancy's Blog, page 32

illustrated poem aka birthday card

Some twins I’m lucky enough to know turned one year old today. So in collaboration with my wife, I wrote a poem and illustrated it for them. It was a good opportunity to practice art word combinations. And I think they’ll like it. Their parents and grandparents seemed to.  Anyway here’s a picture of the birthday card:

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I used a fountain pen to write the poem text this time.  Last time I’d illustrated one of my poems I’d used brush and ink. For this birthday poem lower case letters were used. I like the lower case style. At least for this poem…  The fountain pen was easier to control (and something I’m used to) and the neatness of the type and the softness of the lower case style are pleasing to me.

When I’d finished lettering the poem I then drew the illustration in brush and ink. After that dried I used gouache to give it color.  That method too was an experiment in using ink and gouache in combination.

I am pleased with the resulting art word combination and will likely do that again; lower case letters and all.

What do you think of this lettering style?

a scrapbook by a mouse

This year I’m participating in the tiny sketchbook project at the Brooklyn Art Library – my sketchbook will travel to London, Paris and other places in Europe along with other tiny sketchbooks in a portable library that fits in a suitcase. My book will be in the Brooklyn Art Library’s permanent collection.

I’ve titled my book “A Mouse’s Book Of Scraps”.  It’s a scrapbook from the point of view of a mouse. A Pacific Northwest Jumping Mouse to be exact.  It’s fun to think about what kinds of things a mouse would collect; cheese rinds, vegetable scraps and landscapes.

Here’s a picture of my book in progress. The mint is there to show scale. And yes – it’s hand bound…

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https://www.brooklynartlibrary.com/tinysketchbook

carried away by a book illustrated poem

I’ve decided recently to practice my poetry and short-short story writing by writing something, no matter how bad, every day. If there’s anything illustration worthy I’ll illustrate it.  Out of all I’ve done thus far this seemed worthy:

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poem and illustration by Clancy

Doing the poem text with a brush was new and different for me. It was looser and I think I like it. Typically I’ve used a dip-pen and been “tight” about it. I’ve also tended toward handwritten capital letters as you know from my illustrated recipes. It’s a text-style habit that harkens back to my years as a professional cartoonist and biological illustrator.

But for this poem when I used capital letters via ink-and-brush the text seemed too thick and shout-y.  I’m now thinking I’ll experiment with all lower case writing. And a smaller brush.  Or maybe a fountain pen rather than a dip-pen.

I’ll try a different hand-written style, and technique, if I happen to write another illustration worthy poem. We’ll see… I’ve got a lot of bad poetry to write between now and then I suspect.

What do you think about the all capital letters via brush style?

sketching the coast

Happy New Year everyone! New on newsstands is a magazine, Oregon Coast Magazine, in which is a 4 page article that I both wrote and illustrated!  It was such fun to do a “sketching the coast” article for them that I want to do more such writing plus illustrating this year. Here’s a link for Oregon Coast Magazine https://oregoncoastmagazine.com/.

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personalized portraiture pleasure

I’ve enjoyed, this season, being commissioned to create several portraits of pets which included many elements that reflected the pet owners too!  Thank you for the privilege of making something special for you and your loved ones – that was the wonderful gift you gave to me this Holiday season!

You can read juicy details about one of my commissioned portraits of two cats here.

And there is a wonderful newspaper article in my local paper, The Columbian, about commissioning a portrait from an artist and how it can become a treasured family heirloom – and how a portrait by an artist is different from a photograph.  It’s true, at least by my experience, that people really do treasure portraits of pets and people that they know. Btw: portraits can be commissioned any time of the year – not just during Holidays.

As it may still be possible that some gifts have not yet been unwrapped in 2018 here, for your amusement, are a few commissioned portraits that I did in the past (and are thus safe to post!):

You can see more about my portraits, information about how to commission one, as well as more examples of my work on this page.

Thank you also for your support and encouragement of my work throughout the year! Happy Holidays and my best wishes for a Happy New Year!

 

real life story recipes

I’ve been experimenting with the flash essay format. Creating recipe illustrations, for example, and writing a short-short story/essay to go with it. Here’s a recent one as relates to this Holiday season:

Hot Cocoa Espressoism by Sue Clancy

 – My wife and I went for a long hike in the woods on a below 40 degree day in the Pacific Northwest. We were cold when we got home. Before I shed my coat and scarf I began a pot of hot cocoa. Just after pouring the hot cocoa into mugs on the spur of the moment I added 1.5 oz Veil Double Espresso Vodka and whipped cream. I handed a mug to my wife confessing that I had been playing with ingredients again. She took a dubious sip. Oh nice! she exclaimed, adding; You can play with ingredients anytime especially when there’s alcohol involved. Since she liked the drink so much and I enjoyed the bold contrast of the hot liquid with my cold-from-the-hike self I kept the recipe – and drew it here using vigorous lines and contrasting colors in an attempt to capture my feelings.

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“Hot Cocoa Espressionism” by Clancy – https://www.theydrawandcook.com/artis...

Hope your Holiday is similarly filled with fun people, delightful things to do and good food/drink!

candied fabric peppermint flavor

In between Holiday fine art commissions I’ve been reading about the writers technique of flash fiction and flash non-fiction. And I’ve realized that this is what I’ve been doing all this time – illustrated flash. Or “illustrated shorts” as I call them.  Like the short-short story writers do I take a nugget of a thought or feeling and describe it – but using visual art instead of words.

For example: I’ve sometimes looked at bowls of peppermint candies and thought of how fun it’d be to fling the mints up in the air and let it “rain” mints for a second. I’ve never done it – probably wouldn’t ever do it – but it’s fun to imagine. So I’ve been working on a fabric pattern design with that in mind.

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I’ve done more of a red emphasis on the mints even though it’s not realistic to the mint examples in the photo because I had some mints recently that had more red on them. They aren’t in the photo because I ate them. All of them. And I’m not sorry I did either!

Anyway, after finishing the peppermint candy pattern artwork I scanned the artwork, took the digital file and set it up to become tea towels or napkins.  Here’s a picture of the tea towel.

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https://roostery.com/p/orpington-linen-tea-towels/8224417-peppermint-candies-by-sueclancy

By illustrating fabric, in flash-fiction style, I’m able to get across my fleeting “tossed mints” feeling/thought but in a way that’s succinct (like a short-short story) and it’s also of practical use.

It suits my sense of humor to combine both the fleeting and the practical…

Happy Holiday’s in advance!  Now I’ll go back to being one of Santa’s elves…

recipe illustration finished

I’ve finished the recipe illustration I’ve been working on for Chef Sebastian Carosi.  I shared it with the chef and he said “I absofuckinglutely love this!”.  So I take that as a good sign he’s happy with my illustration:

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I was curious about whether the printing/production method I typically use would allow me to post a recipe that included cannabis. So to test that I uploaded the digital file. You can see it here:  https://society6.com/product/roasted-butternut-squash-soup-with-lifted-honeyed-yogurt-with-hemp-seed-oil_framed-print?sku=s6-10148641p21a12v52a13v54#

or here:

https://society6.com/product/roasted-butternut-squash-soup-with-lifted-honeyed-yogurt-with-hemp-seed-oil_framed-print?curator=sueclancy

I did use the “mature content” designation on the Society 6 site – but it looks like it will work!

libation label list line

Around the edges of doing a cat portrait commission and Chef Carosi’s illustrated recipe I’ve done some wine label artwork to be used by Burnt Bridge Cellars for their 2018 Holiday Wine. To meet the winery’s request for art that was “festive but not religious” I used 5 writing techniques along these lines to generate visual art ideas:

Freewriting: I wrote and doodled in my sketchbook concepts that called to my mind a social festive season not attached to religion. This also meant writing down the religiously associated concepts so as to avoid them!
Listing: I wrote a list of items one would buy when planning a casual social event. I doodled some of the items too. I also looked up some event-planning websites and went to a local party store and browsed – adding to my list.
Clustering: I selected a verb/adverb from my free-write or a verb related to an item from my list and wrote further associations that came to mind when thinking of that word.
Thesaurus/Dictionary/Encyclopedia/Google: I looked up words like “party”, “festival”. I looked up historical references to past well-known holiday parties.  I read poetry that mentioned parties or was associated with the Holidays. (Twas the Night...)  I thought of, and researched, holiday fashions such as the “ugly sweater”.
Consider the Audience/Project Purpose: After I had done the above 4 techniques, in a wild free-wheeling way, I looked at what I had written/doodled from the point of view of the Burnt Bridge Cellars winery and what they wanted to accomplish with the label art during the Holiday season.

Then I created several images based on the above brainstorming sessions:

Then I sent the above artwork in for the winery owners consideration.

Here below is the artwork they chose and how it looked on the bottles:

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The winery was pleased with my work – and has said that their customers were too! (Whew!)

The Holiday Wine inside the bottles is very good (I’ve tasted it!) and I feel like I got to participate in a collective effort to add enjoyment to people’s Holiday Season! What fun!

P.S. I originally got the idea to use writing techniques when generating visual art ideas from reading a book by Umberto Eco titled “Confessions of a Young Novelist“.

recipe illustration ready for garnishing

I’ve finished the handwritten ink work and the illustration painting for the recipe I’ve been doing for Chef Sebastian Carosi. (Past blog post re here) Now I’ll begin the photography and scanning processes to get it ready for print publication and etc. projects the Chef wants to do.  The get-my-hands-messy art part is done. Now to do the keep-hands-clean graphic arts part…

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The original artwork of the recipe, the physical painted with gouache and written in ink on hot-press watercolor paper recipe, will stay in my studio in an archival sleeve in a portfolio. At least for a time. It’s the digital files of this art we’ll work with.  The artwork will stay with me just in case the Chef needs it re-scanned it for an un-foreseen-at-this-moment application.

This is a different approach from my fine art where once the artwork is finished I photograph it then frame it or otherwise make it ready for gallery exhibits – and off the physical fine artwork goes to it’s life in the galleries and then (hopefully) to a happy home with a collector.

In some ways this recipe artwork that will stay in my studio archives may likely be more widely seen by the public, because of publication, than many of my fine artworks.

It’s a curious thing this creative life. But I love it!!