Paper Planes And A River Of Stones

// January 3rd, 2012 // 4 Comments » // illustration, Uncategorized, writing ideas

Here we are in the new year and I’m taking a new direction in my Ephemeral Adventurer series of paintings. I’m experimenting with larger paintings on canvas and trying a few designs without the maps.

This one is called ‘Fly With Me’ and it’s the first of the new batch. I’m going to order some wooden boards as well so I can more easily get some maps collaged in there. The canvas I used has beautiful deep sides and I painted them black which looks really great.

I’m still doing the art cards and have started getting a few custom orders through my Etsy store, so I set up a button where you can purchase a custom paper plane, paper crane or paper boat flying over a map featuring the city of your choice.

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Another way I’m kicking off the New Year is by participating in the ‘River Of Stones’ event over at ‘the Writing Our way Home blog. The challenge, well it’s more of an invitation than a chellenge, is to write a small stone evry day for the month of January.

Fiona and Kaspa run the website and have some wonderful courses and a blog as well as a great community forum. Fiona has been writing small stones for years,  and they were a strong influence on my current writing practice.

What’s a small stone? It’s a beautiful form of writing meditation and people  are posting their examples at Fiona and Kaspa’s blog and forming a collective ‘River Of Stones’. You can check out everyone’s contributions here. Have a look, and you might want to have a go at writing Small Stones while you’re there!

I’ll be writing Small Stones this month and posting some of them on the blog.

Here is my Small Stone for today:

morning chill

the Blue Jay seated on a bare branch

springs away and up

one… two … three … four

back and forward … back and forward

the branch bobs good-bye.

Buenos Días Paella! … I Mean Oranges! … I Mean Valencia!!

// November 29th, 2011 // 4 Comments » // illustration, painting

Todays Ephemeral Adventurer is about to touch down in Valencia, the ‘Bright City’.

Valencia is the birth place of Paella and famous for sweet oranges, stunning beaches, Medieval churches, and for hosting America’s Cup Yacht races (yawn).

Bonus Fun Fact: Valencia oranges are delicious, and have nothing to do with Valencia. They were hybridized by some farmer in Santa Ana, California.

Mish-Mash

// November 18th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // curiosity, illustration

I got this great tweet yesterday from Barbara ( @Reptitude )

@creativechai eeeeeew. I would like to see a faceoff between the dude and the dino — in the labyrinth by candlelight. luv this series!!

*****

So, that was the inspiration for today’s Art Every Day Month offering.

It’s not so much of a face-off, the guide seems to have hopped onto the dinosaur and offered to do his guiding thing, and everyone is getting along very well.

Fact: Labyrinths are known to be very soothing to dinosaurs.

Bonus fact: Origami paper holds up surprisingly well to acrylic paint.

Back On The Labyrinth

// November 5th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // creativity, illustration, Labyrinths

Right!

I’m on it!

Back in the Art Every Day Month saddle after a bout of food poisoning ripped through our household. The only one who managed to escape it was Mr One year old. So, we dodged a bullet there because things got brutal.

*******

The night before we got sick I did a late candle-lit walk of the labyrinth while listening to some Hildegard Von Bingen chants on my ipod.

It was amazing, and beautiful.

I walked a candle into the centre of the labyrinth and left it there as I walked back out. Once I was at the entrance I stood for a while and watched the candle flickering away in the centre.

After a bit, I felt like doing the walk again, and walked all the way into the glowing labyrinth. When I arrived at the centre I bent down to pick up the candle and it went out as soon as I touched it.

I walked back out in the dark. How symbolic.

*******

Here’s another labyrinth. This one’s painted over a page from a book called ‘Little Saint’ which is a novel about a young French woman mystic.

I love painting over text and letting pieces peek through here and there, I try not to overthink it and just let my intuition pick what comes up. Makes for the occasional nice surprise.

I picked this book for playing with collage and erasure poetry (where you take a piece of text and create poems through blocking out what you don’t want). the book has lots of loaded language, plenty of mystical references, passages in French and historical stuff. Something juicy pops out on every page.

Looking forward to catching up on other people’s creations!

Sleepy Buddha

// June 18th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // creative parent, curiosity, illustration

I love to peek in at our boys when they’re asleep. Our 4 year old is having a difficult time at the moment, learning to socialise with his little brother and his friends from next door. It’s hard.

He’s navigating all this stuff and learning, but right now things are a little fraught.

So when Finn falls asleep, the day’s tension drains away from his face, and he looks so peaceful and relaxed. Like a little sleeping Buddha all twisted up in his sheets.

I love seeing him like that. It’s a reminder that even though things are a little tough for him right now, that’s all just surface movement and deep down he’s really  o.k.

*****

I was waiting for a bus the other day, and running a little late, worried that I might not get home on time.

I could feel the tension rising and there was a whole lot of mental chatter happening about the bus, about being late.

This expanded to commentary on the people crossing the road while dodging traffic (chatter), the McCain-Palin bumper sticker on a car going past (chatter-chatter), cigarette smoke hitting my face from someone else waiting for the bus (chatter-chatter-chatter).

Then I looked up at a tree across the road from the bus stop.

One branch bent slightly over the road and a handful of leaves rustled in the breeze, they looked for a moment like small green fingers beckoning me. The flash of bright green and the soft movement reached me, and brought me back to myself.

The chatter in my head calmed down. And I was just there for a moment standing quietly, at the bus stop, in my body, waiting for a bus to arrive and take me home.

Everything was soft, and alert at the same time. As if the small gesture from the tree had briefly awakened the sleepy Buddha in me, and he’d lifted his head off the pillow and looked around.

Then the bus pulled up and I got on. And I couldn’t find my ticket, and the exhaust was smelly, and my shoulders ached from carrying my laptop around, and …

The Rarest Angels

// May 27th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // creativity, illustration, poetry