Sumi-e Bird

Back to painting...

I'm out of practice and loving the feel of the brush in my hand, travelling over the lumps and bumps of hand made paper. It grabs and drinks in volumes of liquid in thirsty unforgiving gulps so I must remember to load the brush real good. Unless I want a dry brush effect and then that is like riding a bucking bronco over the lumps and bumps and valleys but what a ride. Must remember to breathe. I am never in control but love every second of the process. The results are always a surprise. Especially when I haven't done it for months at a time. Well, here's my sumi-e painted bird.

The first thing I do is grind the ink stick with a tiny bit of water in the stone well. See that tiny dipper? It allows a literal drop at a time.

The ink well is missing as I rinse it immediately after using. I've got many different colours of ink stick. Is it possible to be in love with art materials? Paper? Colour of inks? I think so.

Well, back to the drawing board. Thanks for popping in. See you soon, I hope, N, x

Queen of Heaven

THE QUEEN DOWAGER KEPT BEES
so they called her the "Queen of Heaven."


As I'd mentioned in my previous post, I was going to paint the 2-fold accordion style little book (with the woman on the front and the title 'feeling mauve') again in a better rendition. I did this and of course I should have guessed that the muse would step in quite quickly. This happened, and the little book turned into a Queen Dowager who kept bees. Because of this, because of the glorious heavenly honey available to everyone, they called her the 'Queen of Heaven.'

Thanks for dropping in today and I hope I'll see you soon, N. xo

Still the pain of a wound.

dc98: beauty



Beauty sometimes comes by surprise, totally unexpected, and always a gift when it arrives. Thus it was for me when I began this drawing challenge. I'd chosen a haiku to illustrate, using watercolour paints on a beautiful sample of Saint Armand paper from Montreal. I decided to cut and paste small size words from an English-Chinese dictionary which is in my stash of books that I cut up to use for art. The first word of the haiku was 'still' and so I hunted for that word and then when I found it I started reading the translation of it and came across this phrase 'still the pain of a wound' as an example of how to use the word 'still.' THAT was beautiful to me and that is what launched me into what I would offer for this drawing challenge with the theme BEAUTY.

So above you see the front cover of a little book which has two folds in an accordion style book. The dimensions are: 2 1/4" wide X 3 1/2" tall when closed. The book is tied closed with linen or flax or hemp [some unknown natural fibre] string, threaded with gold seed beads. Here is the back of the book closed:

I'm playing with sumi-e style painting using non sumi-e brushes which is not as easy as it would be with proper brushes, and my red ink for my stone stamps has dried up considerably since I last used it, and there are a number of issues but oh how I enjoyed making this book! Here it is opened [strings untied] with a view of both sides:


Our illustrious host Nadine chose the theme of BEAUTY and if you want to see more delicious and beautiful offerings with this theme, drop by to Nadine's blog to view many more sights. Thank you for dropping by today and I hope to see you again soon. May all of you, friends, have the pain of your wounds stilled. Norma, x