From Lady and the Chimera

How's The Lady and the Chimera coming along? Applying paint very thickly, unusual for me. Because the canvas is so small (12"x9"), I'm using a tiny sable brush. Applying the paint without thinning it takes time, which I'm rather enjoying. Because the oil paint is thick it's going to take time to dry, I'd estimate 6-8 months.

The images are imaginary - meaning not based on a drawing of a photograph or model.

If you click on the picture, you'll go to the album for this painting at Picasa, and if you'd like to see the original chalk sketch click on the tag, 'The Lady and the Chimera,' and you'll get to the album itself, such as it is, with its two images of the little painting-in-progress.


Photo too dark and fuzzy, but that's ma desk, set presently for painting. The whole rest of my room is practically bed; my workspace, like the painting, very small.

I maintain that it's not free 'time' that you need to create, or 'space,' or an easy life, none of these things in abundance are the magical ingredient, no, not at all. It's allowing whatever it is, the energy, to flow. You could paint in a corner in the dark and if you were open to the energy, a painting would emerge.

                                                    

direct link: Dance of the Solar Wind

5 tracks ... 16:41

1 Dance of the Solar Wind ...  2:29
2 Light Catches Diamonds ... 4:33
3 Love Letters on Sand Mandalas ... 0:59
4 Roses and Hands ... 0:33
5 Meridians of Culture ... 8:07


Album description


Dear beautiful readers,

A Solstice card, and gift.
In this deep dark, may the light shine on you.
You are radiantly beautiful.

Wishing you the best of the season
in all ways.

Much love, Brenda ♡xo♡xo

'Dance of the Solar Wind' - a short album of poems with music that is Creative Commons licensed, free to download, with light and blessings.☼


(All these pieces are at SoundClick, so you may have heard them previously. Hope you enjoy!)




                                                    

From Lifedrawings

Album Cover for Dance of the Solar Wind, a short collection of prosepoems (lightened and brightened a bit on the smaller Jamendo version, posted below - the album is not published yet, will add link when the album is publicly available).

I haven't painted The Lady and the Chimera because I've been working on a short album of prosepoems for uploading to Jamendo. It's been a challenging process. After my first upload of the poems, before the album had been moderated, so not public, I realized I had neglected to remove the blurb at the end of my recordings with the date, my blog url, etc.

That required extensive searches through 3 hard drives looking for the original Garageband file that had the voice recording and the music so that I could remove the voice without affecting the music. Sometimes I had to re-do the voice recording and Garageband is a bit frustrating in that it doesn't allow you to have two Garageband files open simultaneously. Anyway, that was all done.

I uploaded again.

As soon as I heard the first poem and part of the second I cringed. The sound levels were too far off for comfort.

Second delete. I'm not a musician and I don't have a mixer, only Garageband, Audacity and my ear. While I attempted to line all 5 recordings in one file in Audacity and run a "Normalize" filter on it, the sound levels still were uneven.

Oh, sure I allowed clipping at the upper and lower ends of the sound wave, and then later decided that poem could be quieter but it was clipped and that entailed going back to the original and going through all the loops to get an unclipped version back in its place that then had to have its volume increased.

Eventually I did it by ear as best I could. This one up .02 decibels, that one down by -1 decibel.

Lawd, it's not perfect by any means, but it's the best I can do. Except for the beginning bit of the prosepoem, not the intro, which I quietened, of Light Catches Diamonds, and don't touch the sound because within seconds it decreases, it's listenable on earphones without changing the volume every time a new prosepoem begins.

The prosepoems span four years, hence the difficulty.

It's a short album, about 16 minutes. It contains, Dance of the Solar Wind, Light Catches Diamonds, Love Letters on Sand Mandalas, Roses and Hands, and Meridians of Culture. Not necessarily the best grouping of my work - I could have done a love poem album, and a jazzy one, rather than this mix.

Wanted to try it out, that's all. To see. These pieces in themselves were time-consuming processes. All except one half minute one, they have a music background. That's been a new development for me this year. Jamendo is a music site. I hope the moderator passes my album of prosepoems.

Anyway, besides the anxiety over the volumes, I've been having conniptions over the album cover. A friend thought the red pencil self-portrait more striking, but I liked the brown, so I upload to Twitpic and asked for feedback. The brown self-portrait was unanimous among those who responded.

Only in the middle of the night I had a vision of another album cover, and in the morning remembered this painting, Pulsing Hea(r)t, Eye of Ra. So I began working on the album cover pictured above, which took hours, and I think it more appropriate to the title and the contents.

Jamendo is not allowing me to change the cover even though the album hasn't been moderated yet and is not public.

This means re-uploading, a 4th time. Oh Jamendo, be thou patient with me.

Here's the original one I posted for voting on:

From Lifedrawings

                                                    

The Lady and the Chimera, 12"x9", 30.5x23cm, chalk drawing on bone black acrylic on canvas, 2009. Click on image for larger.

The words within the school of fish say, 'peace of the doubly confounded.'

We sewed an opened seam of my daughter's favourite stuffed bear, years old now, 'Honey.' Yesterday when I worked in the toy store a woman bought a beautiful soft bear for a 70 year old woman, a puppet actually, in which she was going to stash chocolate. My Chimera is sort of a cuddly stuffed animal, but a mystical mythic creature too.

The Chimera wears a crown.

There are flowers beneath the woman's feet.

The ocean moves behind her like her wings or a shawl.

Perhaps she's a Venus image, or a rendition. The Zephyr blow Venus to the shore where the Horae wait with a cape of magnolia blossoms among the magnolia trees. Which is slightly different to this image, so I'm not sure.

I'm going to try a Tanya Wolski technique of beginning with a black canvas and moving towards colour, the white. In Wolski's recent paintings the black outlines of the figures is the background peeping through. Sometime I will do a post on her work - I think her one of the most talented artists working today.


                                                    

It's been a busy week and I haven't much accomplished, but I did finally populate a Lifedrawings page at my website. Or, rather, found the images between two computers, and, determined to move out of Flickr, uploaded them to their own album at Picasa. The drawings are mostly from 2005-2006.




Or click on a direct link:

Lifedrawings

                                                    

This request is so well written, and his show so interesting, a paean to experimental sound artists, that I copy in as is. I'd like to promote and support Joe Halder's show on a community radio station, CFBU, at Brock University in Saint Catharine's in Ontario. He writes:



                                                    

Been working on my Art & Writings website, put up two pages: "Women in Spring, Summer, Autumn & Winter, 2008-2009," and, finally, a "Lifedrawings" page, and redid the Navigation Buttons. You can see the Navigation Buttons below every post, and they are active links to those pages at my website - and you can see which page with a mouse-rollover. I've changed a few of the images, with intention to change the last three whenever. I only put up this website last June but already it is filling up. I've been working on it for 12 hours straight today, finding images, re-sizing them, dealing with html, positioning, layout, etc. etc, and was up till 3am last night a-werking on-the-website.

☆sort of tired☆ of .( ․or perhaps high from°☆.․ ․:)♥staring at a pixelated screen♥:))))♪♫¸¸


                                                    

A sketch inked an hour ago while sitting on my bed (gingerly gripping the open ink bottle - oh those white sheets). I wanted the feather to be his spine because he is shaman of the feather. The dancing will is determination. When finished he likely won't look like this, though this is the backbone. Shaman of the Feather, 11"x15", 27.9x38.1cm, Strathmore cold press Watercolor. Click on image to view larger size.

shaman of the feather
healer of the soft touch

into the storm eye
opens

power of the dancing will

ghost rattle



                                                

I don't know why I didn't colour in her hair, probably because I liked the contrast. But her skin - rich honied earthtones, golden and chocolate - yes.

My intention was to write of the new direction my artwork is taking and to add a little sketch for interest. But the sketch became a poem painting and with the colours of the letters festive (there were letters like coloured lights strung along the bottom which I had uploaded but changed my mind on seeing in the post). Perhaps the energy of poem painting is upon me, but if you'd like the mantle for a bit, I'd be honoured to pass it on.

As I release myself from having always to draw from life, I find I am able to compose drawings and paintings from my imagination.

This makes working in visual media easier. As a homebody, nay 'recluse,' enrolling in art classes is difficult (especially since unemployed at the moment, and even when employed the salary is small). I reuse my old drawings from lifedrawing sessions over and over. I think about what I would like to do but cannot afford models or to arrange scenes as I would like them.

I think my artwork has not progressed as it might if I hadn't had this problem.

Now the possibilities open.