Kabul Beauty School

I just finished reading Deborah Rodriguez's stunning book Kabul Beauty School. If it weren't for Elle Magazine, I might have missed this one, and I would be the poorer for it. Rodriguez's stories of the women - and men - she worked with in Afghanistan, as well as her own transformative journey, are so compelling that I resented anything that took me away from my reading. I honestly never thought I'd be particularly interested in anything related to cosmetics or hair styling, but I have a completely different attitude toward the subject as a result of reading this book. Buy it, read it, support her work.

Z & I went this evening to hear Anna Quindlen speak. She was wonderful, of course. She spoke about reading. She mentioned (in passing) her friendship with Calvin Trillin, and afterwards someone asked her if he was as funny in person as in print. She said yes, absolutely, but that more than anything, he is the kindest person she has ever known. Which pretty much tallies with what my father has said about him. Anyway, it was great, and Z & I were both very glad we had gone.

This is a short post because I am very tired. Another seven hours (or so) in interrupted sessions have resulted in the following expansion of The Mandala, as I have come to think of it.
~Namaste

Not quite giving up just yet . . .

. . . but darned close to it. I've been working on this:
which, in case you've forgotten (I sure haven't) is 30" x 30". Here's a close-up of what took me five hours to complete, and that doesn't count the underpainting of the entire canvas (which was actually fairly quick, about 1/2 hour).
Nor does it count the measuring. Either time. I could not find our yardstick anywhere, so I did one of my usual convoluted measurings which always work when I'm sewing. I've been sewing since I was a teenager, which is what - about 33 years now? - so I've gotten pretty good at sloppy-eyeballing-seatofthepantsing. Unfortunately, this doesn't work very well with geometry (a subject I never actually took in high school and just sort of fake my way around). I have been known to use whatever comes to hand, and it seemed at the time that the raggedy little measuring tape ought to be just fine . . . .

Yet after I'd done a lovely crescent moon, silver and lavendar highlights & all, I discovered that it was nowhere near the center of the canvas.

And okay, my estimate of five hours doesn't count the time I spent saying all sorts of bad words, which it was okay for me to say because only C, who is 20 and has heard lots worse from his friends (well, maybe not), was in the room at the time. The girls were elsewhere (not that they haven't heard at least a few of those words from me in other times of stress, alas).

So you see, sometimes making mandalas is not quite as stress-busting as it's cracked up to be.

Anyway, I remeasured, this time using the measuring tape to mark off distance on a rigid wooden rod I'd found in R's lab. I measured FOUR TIMES just to make sure, and came out around the same place each time, so I decided that was close enough. I painted a new moon, and then made dinner.

This morning when I came downstairs, R had very cleverly used two long pieces of string stretched diagonally to show me where the center was . . . about a centimeter away from where I'd measured it. Conveniently, no one else was around, so I chanted a few more choice mantras and then traced the strings as guidelines before removing them. I did not repaint the moon this time; I think I can fudge things enough to make it all come out all right.

I simply remind myself that this is still a learning process. Life itself is a learning process. If I'd wanted this to be geometrically perfect, I'd be learning computer art rather than painting by hand, right?

I should mention that next to the moon, in the center, it will eventually be dark purply-blue with silver stars, but not till the rest of the thing is done, because I have to see the center dot so I can draw the rest of the circles. Why not draw the circles now? Because I am still revising/redesigning as I go. Anyway, I'll show you more as I paint more.

Given the other things I had to do today, and the fact that I still need to feed everyone and leave for class soon, I don't see how I can keep doing mandalas every day. I will either need to count my daily work on this mondo-dala as one of my mandalas, or I'll need to extend the 49-day period. I'd appreciate comments/votes/suggestions, please!!!

Tomorrow morning Z&I are heading over to Cedar Crest College to find out about their art therapy program, so I won't be painting till the afternoon. But maybe I will paint more tonight. This must be finished by next Thurs. night's class. Ack!

~Namaste

Painting

I finished my landscape painting today, with help from Z and no help from Ro. I guess Ro feels landscapes are so simple to do that she doesn't need to give us many pointers, because she pretty much left us on our own with this. I did my best with it, and I did tackle a very difficult scene; but I am definitely ready to move on! Here it is:
I worked up two more mandalas today, after taking N&Z to the pool. I had no idea where I was going with this one - I took out some pale pink paper (because I am running out of the other colors - pink isn't usually a favorite color of mine to work with) and just started in on it. The end result was a surprise, and I like it.
Then I did some back stretches, and while doing them I got the idea for this mandala. What I pictured was grass around the outer rim, a circle of little animals and plants, and the inner circle just sky. It came out almost precisely the way I'd envisioned it, although the rabbits were hard to execute. I'm not very good at rabbits. It makes me think of spring, so that's what I called it.

Just one more mandala today, and I will be caught up at last. Which is good, because I have a lot of other things that need my attention as well!

~Namaste

Look Me In The Eye

How wonderful it is to be a reader for Elle magazine! I got my advance reader's copy of Look Me In The Eye! my life with asperger's by John Elder Robison two days ago, and devoured it at once. It was touted as "darkly funny," but what it actually was was highly informative and extremely touching. The chapters on struggling to handle small talk and finding a way to have a successful marriage were the absolute best.

In case you didn't know, Asperger's is a form of autism. I know a couple of people with Asperger's, and interpersonal relations is the toughest part of the syndrome. My view is that autism is a wide spectrum, and there are many people who are viewed as "normal but weird" who have a touch of it.

Of course, none of us is simply the product of our DNA. How much of Robison's personality may be chalked up to his Asperger's and how much to his abusive, dysfunctional parents is something I wondered about as I read his memoir. Some elements were obvious, others less so.

I feel positively privileged to have read this book. Now I want to read Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs - Robison's brother. For a little more insight into Robison, you can click on the above link and read his blog.

In addition to reading today, and working on my landscape (about which I don't feel too good right now, alas), I spent time on mandalas, hurray! I mostly played with media again. I did a slightly better flower mandala, beginning with carnation petals from N's flower cake. I need to find that website with flower art that my mother sent me a while ago, though - surely there are more interesting things to do with these dried petals? I tried making little rabbits in the outer ring; I think I was marginally successful.
The second mandala is one of Julie Keefe's Mandala Mondays designs, again on vellum. I liked the filigree pattern, and I am trying to color more yantras in the hope of some day getting the hang of them enough to recreate one myself. (I tried making one from scratch yesterday, but after three attempts I gave up in frustration.)
The third and fourth mandalas were practice using a white pencil to add "light" to a design. My cousin E just had surgery, so I wanted to make her a mandala card to wish her a good healing. Adding to the blues I tried white, and I was really pleased at how the white brought a sort of luminous quality to the vellum, much as it does to the black paper in Judith Cornell's lessons.
Then I worked one more mandala on vellum using the same principle, but this time playing with shapes and color changes, just for fun. I used a lot of white - if you click on it and open it in another window to enlarge it, you can see just how much.
And now I'm really tired, and I'm heading for bed. Maybe tomorrow I can get caught up as well as finish my landscape. And then I will begin my huge mandala, which will take a couple of weeks to finish!

This, I believe, makes 33, and this is day 36. So I am gradually catching up.

~Namaste

Book 15 at Last

It's taken me some time, but I have finally caught up to everyone else and, thanks to the Parkland Community Library, I have finished The Harlequin, book 15 in Laurell K. Hamilton's vampire series. Some of the books were more enjoyable than others (the covers were all uniformly awful), but I stuck to the series doggedly because the universe she created was so fascinating. I'm glad I did stick with it, because with The Harlequin, she seems to have returned to her earlier story-telling mode, and the story is a good one. I haven't yet spent any money on the books, as all the others have come from paperbackswap, and I don't intend to buy any in the future, but I will probably continue to read them as she writes them.

Two other books I want to mention this morning are indy graphic novels. The first, by Scott Mills (of Little Clay Pot, which I reviewed in an earlier post), is Trenches.
It's the story of two brothers in WWI. A bit formulaic, the book is nevertheless a good introduction to the horrors of WWI for those unfamiliar with it, and I am a fan of Mills' artwork. I liked Clay Pot much better, though. It's another offering from Top Shelf Productions.

Far more impressive is Jane Irwin's Vogelein: Clockwork Faerie, to which I understand there will be a MOST welcome sequel this summer! The heroine of the book is a tiny, 300-year-old clockwork fairy, whose latest master has just died. She is searching for a new master, since she must be wound up every day in order to continue to survive. Yet there is a spark of magic about her, as you will discover if you read the book.
This is one of the most original, magical graphic novels I have read in a very long time, and I recommend it highly. Irwin poses the Frankenstein question in a new light, and her addition of the Fay creature Ezrael, trapped in the human world and unable to return to Tir na nog, enriches the story even more.

~Namaste

Revealing Oneself in Mandalas

Jung, as I may have mentioned in an earlier post, believed that our mandalas reveal a great deal about our feelings at the time we draw them. (Click on the title link for more information on Jung and mandalas.)

When I sat down yesterday late afternoon to make a mandala, I was tired and I had no idea where I wanted to go with one. All I knew was that it had been two days since my last mandala & I craved some mandala time. I pulled out the new pencils I'd bought (more on those, below) and shifted quickly and completely into my right brain. No music, no audio books, and no one else around - just the media and my subconscious. Perhaps that sounds a little flaky, but that's what it was, because I wasn't thinking about anything consciously at all.

I immediately went for the red and orange pencils, and after drawing a swirling bindu with a few sparks of yellow, I picked up the black pencil. I found myself pulling out some random swirls around it until I got to the edge of the circle. Then I grabbed the red pencils again and worked my way outward. But - how terribly frustrating! Every time I really got going with the red pencil, I hit one of the black marks, and had to detour around it, or even got stopped completely by one and had to turn around and go back again.
It was like a maze with a lot of obstacles, and it was THE most annoying mandala I have ever drawn. To top it all off, I then had to go back and rework those same passages with the orange and yellow, and I almost didn't make it through.

When I finished, trailing my way out, I was exhausted. The whole thing only took about 15-20 minutes to complete, but it was very draining. I had a long drink of water and sat back to think about it.

That was when I discovered what it was all about. For the past week I've felt frustrated at every turn. I have several projects going, and I haven't had the time to devote to any of them because of all the other daily aggravations that have intruded. Sleep deprivation has exacerbated the situation, and yesterday afternoon it all came to a head. I felt like a volcano about to blow its top.

So I decided to stay home from painting class last night. C&Z promised to help me finish the landscape that we'd be working on in class, and R said he'd take N to the pool and then put her to bed. I fell asleep about 6:30 pm, roused enough at 8:30 to cuddle N a bit, and did not get up till 7 this morning. I feel like a new person.

Let's hear it for the insight of mandalas.

As to the new pencils: they are conte crayon pencils, which I found at Dick Blick the other day. I'd never heard of them & thought I'd get a few to try. Z draws in conte crayon a lot. They are quite soft, and almost like drawing with chalk, producing a lot of dust - well, I suppose they are like conte crayons only with a fine point. Interesting. They'll take a lot of getting used to. I'll have to get Z to teach me to use them, I think.

~Namaste

Mostly pictures

I've been pressed for time this past week, what with the still-life to tackle on my own, and trying to get a handle on the many other projects of the summer. To be quite honest, I am feeling pretty discouraged about how little of the summer is left and how many things people are depending on me to do, and this is making it very hard for me to maintain my resolve to complete both the painting course and the 49 Project - because, after all, those are just for me, which means there's a little voice somewhere slyly suggesting that that makes them far less vital than all the other things on my plate.

I'm trying my best to ignore that voice.

Anyway, from most recent (last night) working backwards, here are some pictures. I've got my very rough study done for the final painting project. It will be a mandala 30"x30" - monumentally scary in size (to create, not, I hope, to view!). Pay no attention to the stuff around the outside of the circle; the outer edges will be some neutral color, probably pale blue. I already don't like most of the colors I played around with, & will change them:
but anyway, this gives you the basic idea.

Next up is a funny little robotic face - that wasn't what it started out as, but that's just how it ended up. Just for fun.
And this is the still life I set up:
And this is how it turned out:
I chose things that, for the most part, I had brought home from my travels, with the exception of the little black pot (though I brought that from Kentucky) and the blue vase, which I think my brother gave me. The egg is an ostrich egg, which is why it's so huge. N kept rearranging things, which made it a bit difficult, and I ended up doing a marathon painting session on Saturday to keep from having the whole thing changed completely out from under me. :-/ (She didn't like the composition.)

The last thing I painted was the pot, and somehow it went all van Gogh on me, but I really like it. Some day I'd like to do a whole van Gogh-ish painting just because.

I'm going to finish up for tonight with some of Z's latest drawings. They're quite good. I have to get N to bed and get to bed early myself, so I will just post them and sign off. Enjoy.


Just FYI: she did the drawings in art class, and they're of a model, not of me. In case you were wondering. I am neither that young nor that shapely!

~Namaste