Time for something new

So here is my first new piece of art in about 8-10 years. The paper is yellow, yes, because I couldn't find a sketchbook anywhere in the house so I used a very old doodle pad that had decently thick and coarse paper.

Why is that so important? Well, it's simply a matter of preference. Thick because I tend to erase a lot....a LOT. Coarse becuase I feel that it catches the graphite from the pencil better than something shiny. I like to blend and smudge.

Anyway...this was very (VERY) loosely based on pictures of Amy Lee. I like the top one, but I really hate the one on the bottom left..cross eyed. Sadly, becuase I couldn't leave well enough alone and it ended up crap.

So, it's a start. Nothing to write home about but at least it turned out looking like a person...a woman even...even if it looks nothing like the person it's supposed to be. It's practice and that's what really counts.

I do have another drawing that I'm working on that I'm almost finished and will post sometime after it's done.

I've got the best husband in the world!

I thank my lucky stars to be blessed with the guy I've got. At Kingsway Mall last night, Joe gave me some money to pick up some art supplies and such before he left for hockey. $40 no questions asked. I found a sketchbook but it wasn't quite what I wanted, the paper was not quite coarse enough and a little on the light side (50lb I believe--I'm used to about 80lb) but, hey it was pure white and it was a sketchbook. No luck with the pencil sharpener, which was ok becuase i found one at home. No headphones either, ran out of time to look.

Then, today, he took me to Micheals. I found a 70lb drawing book and an ultrafine black pen. As we were leaving the store, I said "Thanks for supporting my habit" in a joking manner. He just looked at me and said "It's something you enjoy and you're finally drawing again." I said, I'm trying to. He said..."No, you are and it's good. The Disney stuff you did last night was really good." (I was doodling while looking at my Snow White pocket coloring book--you could say I'm a child at heart still). He told me, you have a talent, and you might be rusty but the more you practice, the easier it will come.

Is he not the greatest guy ever? He's been so supportive of me in so many ways over the years, it just amazes me that when you think that you know all about someone and then they come out with something that just suprises you. He knows that I've been trying to work out some things lately and he's just, been there through it.

I have done a couple drawings in the last week but just not quite time to post them yet. One, I'm not sure if it's finished and has to be scanned. The other I will post soon I think.

Found Art (not in the traditional sense)

I've told you what was lost, now I will show you what is found. See what a difference a really good digital camera can make?!

This was a sunset done in oil pastel on posterboard. Was a class project. I kinda like it..it's soft and whispy. It hung on the bulletin board for a little while at school as well.


I believe this was done in Art 20. We used a lot of different mediums that year, many I hadn't tried before. It was one of my favorite classes...we did everything from just sit outside and draw what we saw, to really unconventional things...we had guest instructors and a lot of freedom to create whatever we wanted in whatever way we wanted.

This is a very large drawing...poster board it's drawn on...all in graphite. LOL The Metallica logo is in pencil crayon. My son...asked me, "You had those shiny pencils when you were a kid?" LOL the mouths of babes....LOL...

Took a really long time to finish, and a lot of pencils LOL I guess I must have been really bored. In all honesty, I'm glad that I still have this one..it's hanging in my basement now.

This was done as another school project. I think this is the second try at it though, I don't know what happened to the first one. It had been hanging on the bulletin board at school and if I remember, someone scribbled on it... That one had the word "silence" pieced together right in the middle and was painted gold...silence is golden, get it??

Anyway, I liked the idea enough to recreate it and this is now hanging in my basement with my kid's school artwork :D

Erm, can you tell who my favorite band was at the time? LOL

What can I say? It's Acrylic, my favorite medium. You can't really see it well here, but in the middle box, with the big white splotch, that is a drawing of the electric chair on the cover of "Ride the Lightning" that I was going to paint, but the guest instructor suggested that I just paint over it with clear acrylic sealer (I think) to preserve it. It's kind of striking, really...:P

I still, really really like this painting. Labour of love and a lot of fun to do. I still want to frame it, but not just any old way...I need to have built a wood frame, and then I want to stick little rubber grommets all over it, to look like rivets and paint the whole thing a tarnished silver color...Heavy Metal...get it? :P Yeah...Let's carry on, shall we??

This one had probably at least 3 other paintings underneath it...I don't quite remember what but I do think it was a lot of "hands on" art LOL handprinty stuff...can still see some of the stuff around the edge of the black...and the topmost painting was done with my hands and nails to scratch out some texture. I believe this one was done with fabric paint....LOL

Ohhh the teenage angst...LOL I did this one when I was dating my first boyfriends...one of the last few that I did during that time. I kinda don't really like it but he did kill the art in me...and the one that came after him didn't help either. Come to think of it, my last, few, best (MISSING) paintings, I created after I met my husband.

Done in Art 30, some kind of watercolor paper and watercolor paint. A watercolor artist, I am not...I use far too much paint and don't get that washy feeling...ever. I prefer nice, goopy acrylics if I paint.

One of my attempts to capture the elusive perfect sunset. My room's one window faced the..umm..west? well..the direction the sun sets in. I still remember how beautiful some of them were... I would sit on my bed and watch the sun set, trying to memorize every detail if I saw a particularily beautiful one one night....sometimes, I would draw in the glow of the setting sun. Living in the city now I don't get to see very many.

This was one of a few art 20 projects where we all had to do the same thing. We had the best teacher ever. For each unit--pencil, paint, still life, portraits--he would have us all use the same source for the first work and then we would have to submit our own creations, 8 in all, for that unit. His reasoning was that instead of comparing us to each other, he had a basic idea of our style and then use that one work as a basis to compare the rest of our work. He was bar none the best teacher anyone could ask for.

My impression of it...I like the colors. I like bright colors with lots of contrast and I like the way that the black emphasizes the colors. Again, watercolors, not that you can tell. On whatever paper Mr. Black gave us LOL

This one....acrylics... oh lord did it give me grief. I was going to paint the trees seperating the houses on the property where I grew up (you can still kind of see an outline of a painting underneath) and then I hated that so I painted over it and well..this came out. I really don't know...something celestial, as there are little stars all over the background (the gold specks).

Another Acrylic. I had a few drawings on this same theme. Our universe basically..I was reading a lot of astronomy and astrology books (did you know one of the moons of Uranus has my name? I feel so honored :P) and that influenced some of what I was creating at the time. I wanted to create something out of my own head. So here it is...all mine. LOL yet again, celestial..this time a representation of our chunk in space.

My crowning, but unfinished achievement..so far :P

I'm really lucky to have had parents that would let me use my bedroom door as the ultimate canvas...LOL Especially, the origional door, in a 75+year old farm house.

Um..yeah, I'm a disney freak. I started this after graduation and in that in between time when I really didn't know what I was doing...just painting helped me through a rough time. I worked on it through the years, including at 8 mos pregnant with my first son, at home from college over Christmas Break...LOL I want to finish it someday, but I don't know if that will be possible. They're hard to see but there are half painted characters from The Little Mermaid, and also Mufasa from The Lion King in the bottom panel. I had imagined the whole thing covered from top to bottom. And no, I did not trace or project any of them, they're all freehand. ( I got asked that a lot over the years)

So..these are the pieces of myself, my life, my work that I can physically put my hands on if I so choose to. So many of the things that I created back then were an outlet for pain. Drawing and painting, when coupled with the music that touched my soul, were my outlet and my drug... they were the cure for the things that I felt were tearing me apart inside. I could lose myself for hours just in they eyes of the model for my portrait...I could put my emotion on that canvas and it would not need to live in me any longer. I could escape. These are the last remnants of those moments and days and years.

In the years that came after, the reason I stopped drawing and painting and creating was, I have come to see, is that it just became easier not to feel anything. I didn't realize how numb I had become. Without that, there was no art. There was no need for it. Not that there was no reason... there were some hard years in between but somehow just...no drive. Not feeling the pain that was there, and no channeling it into something good.

I don't fully understand any of this myself, I'm just trying to work it all out... My best friend asked me if I'm crazy after reading my last entry (Cara, you should know better than anyone else!) and maybe...maybe not. I just am me I guess. And for this moment in time, there's just something that it's becoming clear to me needs to be dealt with, like it or not and maybe right now is the perfect time to find art again.

The More Things Change....

I have the desire to draw. I want to create something....I am going to create something.

Funny...I plugged my headphones into my computer speakers, after finding the perfect picture of Amy Lee. Headphones that worked perfectly fine up until that moment. And what did I hear? That familiar sound of a broken wire. I swear to god and on my own grave, they worked fine before this, since March. Come to think of it, I haven't had that problem since I was a teenager...you guessed it...those drawing, painting, creating years. Back then, I went through a pair of headphones at least every couple months. Don't ask me why, I don't know either...my parents figured it was from falling asleep with them on, which, they very may well be right. Anyway, I felt along the wire and not only was the wire broken, but the plastic coating was cut (or torn, who knows) in a spot.

I get the feeling that someone, or something...god, fate, the devil, who really knows... is plotting against me when it comes to this. But what that something didn't count on was I am older now, and wiser, and I can fix a pair of headphones! So...Ha. Bite me. I'm using them right now, and they work almost fine as long as I don't move around too much.


So I have a shopping list...for this weekend if I can sweet talk my hubby enough, or Monday when I have my own money

• a sketchbook...a really big thick one, with beautiful snow white page just dying to be drawn on...
• a good pair of headphones
• a pencil sharpener that actually sharpens pencils

I know that I don't have as much time as I used to, 3 young kids running around, a family and a household to take care of. But if I can make the time to sit and draw, I know I can still do it. I want to still do it. I'm lucky enough to have a supportive husband who understands what it means to me to be...me.

I stopped drawing long before I lost my portfolio...long before I had children, or got married, or even moved away from home. I let people get in the way, people that don't even matter...people that I don't know now and I don't even care that I don't know now. The people that do matter, the people around me now, care enough to support me...I know that. The only thing stopping me, is me. Ok, that and whatever is hiding my supplies and breaking my headphones.

Ahh..go figure. Racheal lost interest in the TV...I don't need the headphones now.

Some background...

I guess the best place to start is the beginning.

I remember the moment when my small part of the world realized that I had a talent. I was 8 years old and bored with toys. I took out my Childcraft, Nature's Children Book and I turned to the page with the kitten in the pussy willows. I took out my notebook and pencil and started to draw. I drew what I saw. When I was done, I showed my mom. I can still remember the look on her face when she saw it. Not that...oh honey what a cute picture you drew look. She had this look of absolute surprise on her face. There was someone else there but I don't remember who. I remember her saying something about it being really good but let's face it, I had the attention span of a Grade 2 student so that's about where my attention wandered. But I still remember the feeling of accomplishment and suprise myself..after all it was just a drawing.

If I still had that picture, I'd put a scan of it right here but I don't so you'll just have to take my word for it, it was pretty good for an 8 year old kid. Why don't I have it? That comes later on...it's not because it wasn't treasured and preserved, I'll tell you that much.

So on through the years it goes...my grampa, who was a great watercolor artist (in my eyes at least) tried to help me paint...unfortunately that was not quite so successful. I did continue drawing here and there, to varying degrees of success and failure until about Grade 7 (I think..it's been a while). I don't remember exactly when I got my first sketchbook, I think it was around that time.

My first human subject was Axl Rose. 3 times I drew him...again I'd post them but...well. My art teacher this time was the one to be surprised enough to award me a 90% mark on my 3rd attempt. I did the dog off the comic, "For Better or Worse" in Pontallism for an assignment as well, wittly named "Spot".

So on...through my teenage years, drawing became, instead of a shock to those around me, a release of the emotions and thoughts in my head. I drew mostly people, the odd request by a classmate, whatever struck my fancy at the time. But mostly, people. Especially, rock stars. Most of the members of Guns N' Roses; my grampa helped me finish a picture of Matt Sorum--he thought we were drawing a woman mind you..., 2/4 plus one of Metallica (2 of James Hetfield, Jason Newstead and Cliff Burton), Vince Neil, so on and so on and so on...plus one of my favorites: Whitfield Crane (Ugly Kid Joe) which I happen to have a really ultra crappy digital pic of:

I was so happy, yet startled when this picture was done. It was simple, really, just shadow and light and everything below the neck was so simple it was almost unfinshed...all the detail was in the face and even though you can't really see it here...it was so lifelike. ( I did say it was an ultra crappy digital pic...it was taken with an ultra cheap digital camera in bad lighting.)

To be honest this was my best portrait ever. Nothing I had done previous and none that I did after had the same...oomph as this one.

In about grade 10, I did some ink work. It didn't start out that way, it was just supposed to be a simple sketch, and it started with one small doodle.

It turned into something I could be truly proud of. I suprised myself, I didn't know I had it in me but there was that similar feeling of accomplishment. It really meant something to me, silly as it is, I loved Transformers as a kid. They're all in there..Megatron, Optimus, Hot Rod, Ironhide, Laserbeak..I think there's even a piece or two of Starscream.

I think the part that bothers me the most about this one being lost is that I know my son would love it. I had classmates offer me money for this and I hung on to it but I would have happily framed it and hung it in Eric's room just to see him give me that smile of his that makes you feel like you have given him the world.

This was one of those rare requests, by a girl in Grade 10 in my Grade 12 year. It was something she wanted a tattoo of but somehow never ended up giving it to her. Funny isn't it, I'd do things for free but wouldn't sell my artworks.

I think this was the first thing I ever did with color...yet again surprising myself with what I could do.

I don't actually know exactly when I painted this. I might have still been in high school, or possibly shortly after graduation. I'd been fooling with paint for a while but this was the first thing I painted that seemed more than childish. I don't think I could do it again especially if I tried. Scary, maybe but if you saw the real thing it's pretty striking.

And the last of the crappy digital pics that are all I have left:

This was a piece commissioned by my aunt for the cover of her book, Laughter and Tears. I don't even have the stinking book anymore...my mom might have a copy. If I can find my sketchbook, I might even still have the origional. I did more illustrations for the book but I'm not sure where those are..they might be in the missing sketchbook.

So what is all of this for?

It's for me. It's because in the last few days, my thoughts have turned to my portfolio: a grey folder that contains almost every drawing I have ever done. It's been missing for 2+ years, since my husband, me and the kids moved. I guess losing things is just part and parcel of the moving process but I don't think I've ever lost anything so precious and important to me.

Just drawings and paintings, I'm sure you're saying right now. Maybe. But they are more than that to me. There was so much more than paper or ink or paint in that folder. On every piece of paper, in every line or blob of paint, there was a little bit of me. A piece of my heart and soul. A memory, an emotion, a second in time frozen forever.

I guess maybe it's taken me a long time to come to this point. Two and a half years ago since we packed up everything we owned and moved 4 hours away, and then again 2 months later into the city. It was over a year ago I realized that, once all of our boxes were out of storage that that precious folder that I was so sure I had packed from place to place was gone. I think for a while I just hoped it would turn up. I'm not sure why, in the last few days, it has just so fully hit me that it's really gone, that the chances of it turning up are few. I just know that it's hit me finally and so now I mourn that loss. Call me silly if you want, but I'm past bottling things up and worrying about being silly.

I've gone over in my mind a thousand times, where the last place I saw it was...when the last time I looked at it was. Unfortunately those places are not available to me so it's not so simple as going back working my way forward in a physical sense. I like to think that someone out there knows where it is or has it in their hands or wonders where it belongs...but maybe doesn't know what it means. But, it's not in my hands and so, lost to me. If only I can accept that and then, move on, then over time the sting of it will fade.

So..in the end, what's the point? Am I going to just go on and mourn and that's all this is for? No...that's only the beginning. You have to start somewhere. This is what's lost. There are things that are found. And maybe sometime, there will be things that are new.