Beginning of Fall

I've changed my profile back to myself - N is back in school and too busy to blog, and after 2500 miles of driving in three weeks, I am finally into a routine that allows me to blog again. First, the only mandala I managed all summer:
It is canvas, 24x24. It gave me great pleasure in the creation, and now both this and my original painted mandala are hanging in the front hall. I'd hoped for many more this summer, obviously, but only made this one, plus a couple of small paper ones that I did manage to mail out to people I hadn't contacted in a couple of years. I broke a lot of conventions I had felt constrained by when I made this particular mandala, so I was rather pleased with myself - it is freer and more open than most of my mandalas have been in the past. Happy days!

I also have some of C's lovely artwork to show this morning, from his theater classes. Here are some character sketches he did in marker. I'm sorry most of them are sideways, but I can't find a way to turn them. The first is, of course, loosely N, while the rest are fictional characters:

And then we have another of N's wonderful square mandalas:
And a beautiful mandala done first in pencil on paper by my niece S, and then stunningly in paint on an 18" round canvas:

Nice, eh? I know they LOOK like they're the same size, but the canvas is much larger than the paper. Know that she is a 13-yr-old Goth, and that the outer portion is waves of blood, and you will have a clearer idea of the design elements.

It was a tough summer, and not nearly long enough. I spent the first six weeks or so of it sick, and the rest of it trying to catch up on everything I'd fallen behind on. We had some good visits with and from friends/family, but there was always something else going on at the same time, and let me tell you, I am tired of multiplexing.

At the end of the summer was a positive storm of activity: driving Z to Chatham in Pittsburgh (very emotional), then returning for N's synchronized swimming show, which was wonderful. Driving down to Newport News, VA with N & C for W's wedding (great fun and also very emotional), then returning for two and a half days of teaching and frantic packing. And finally, driving to Savannah, GA to take C to SCAD (again with the emotion!)

I felt all wrung out last week, but am finally settling down to peace and quiet now and an easy-going routine of having just three schedules in the house. N is thriving in her only-child status, and while I miss C & Z tremendously and cannot wait for Thanksgiving when I will see them again, I am enjoying the one-on-one time with N. She loves to sing, and has a lovely voice. She's already able to sing rounds and is learning to sing harmonies, which is highly gratifying! Her favorite songs are "American songs" (i.e. rousing patriotic anthems she can sing at the top of her lungs or slowly and lugubriously) and "Jewish songs" (i.e. sung in Yiddish or Hebrew so she can roll her r's lavishly). She learns them so fast that the other day she said, "Even though I wasn't born Jewish, I think I was meant to be, because I learn these so fast," and her comment gave me goosebumps because it was what I had just that moment been thinking: these songs come so naturally to her . . . .

R's back is in terrible shape from one end to the other. He goes for another MRI, this time of the top of the spine, later this week. He had another three injections of cortisone last week and while they helped almost immediately, they've already worn off. Not A Good Sign. We're not mentioning the S(urgery) word yet, but I do suspect it will come to that eventually. Later rather than sooner, I hope.

And that's the news for now. More artwork soon, I hope!

~Cheers

Movies and Mandalas

Yes, we have Gotham fever here. C has seen "The Dark Knight" four times in the past three days, and the rest of us (N excepted) have each seen it once. I thought it was tremendous, as did Z; R was underwhelmed, but I think he missed the point. He isn't a Batman fan, which is part of the problem. His back hurts, too, so sitting in a movie theatre is painful - another part of the problem.

Heath Ledger was amazing. I thought I would find it painful to watch his last performance, but I was so mesmerized by his acting that I completely forgot about the role having put him over the edge.

C&I also saw "Hellboy II," which I enjoyed, though it wasn't nearly the movie "Dark Knight" was. The creatures of Faerie were pretty darned cool - it was a beautiful, eerie film.

In other news, Z is now officially graduated, and has her diploma (misspelled) in hand. Her party was fun, and the house is, temporarily, cleaner and neater than usual. I spent yesterday and today patching her two quilts - this took hours, literally, but they are now ready to accompany her to college in a month (boo hoo!).

And today I finally began painting again. The mandala started out as planned, but rapidly took on a life of its own. The background became all Monet-y, and then the flower petals, which I had thought would be stark white, turned into waterlily-colored ones, though they're not shaped like waterlilies. So the whole thing is evolving into something altogether different from what I'd originally envisioned, which is fine, just surprising. I'm enjoying it tremendously, but I really need to call the rheumatologist tomorrow, because after painting for a while I could hardly straighten up, and am now typing this while flat on my back on the heating pad. Not good.

Hope I can work on it again tomorrow. I'll try to upload a picture soon.

~Cheers

Slightly Hampered

I cannot find the cable that connects my camera to my pc. This would be more of a concern if my house weren't such a wreck; however, I feel there is still hope, so long as I get some serious cleaning done. Which NEEDS to be done soon anyway, given the imminence of Z's graduation party and several sets of houseguests.

In the meantime, I can run to CVS when my camera card fills up and have the machine make me a cd for $3, which I can then upload to the pc. Not too annoying, and a lot faster than cleaning up. ;-)

Here's N's mandala:
And the one I referred to much earlier, of mine:
At the Jepson Museum of Art in Savannah, there were some really cool photographic displays we played with. Here are Z & N in two of them:

Cool, eh?

And here is ONE of C's artworks from this past year, his pointillism project, which is just amazing, as far as I am concerned:
That's it for now - we're off to see "Wanted" (C & me) and "Wall-E" (Z&N). Happy 4th! Poor R is working. :-(

~Cheers

Suplise! and a wee bit o' panic

This evening I went ahead and ordered about $150 worth of painting supplies - brushes and paints from Jerry's Artarama (see link above) and canvases from Cheap Joe's. The nice thing about Cheap Joe's is that you don't have to order 36 canvases at a time; Jerry's has a HUGE minimum order, and I was not prepared to store that many, let alone to spend that much on canvases alone. But Jerry's had a fabulous sale on some of their brushes (BOGO), so I got a set of 12 "mini micro" brushes for doing some small mandalas, and two huge fan brushes (one each for Z & me) as well as two huge flat-end brushes (one each for Z & me) for scumbling- we've always used cheapo brushes for that, but that is a pain, because the hairs always come off, which means we have to pick the hairs out of the paint surface, and it's very annoying & messy, as well as inefficient.

And then Jerry's also had their liquitex acrylic paint on sale, too, so we got ten colors we were out of or almost out of. As soon as all this stuff comes, we'll be in business!

In the meantime, I have SIX (6) mandalas planned out in my head. Well, the miniature one (which I will do on an 8" round canvas) is already done in colored pencil on vellum, and I mentioned it in my first post of the summer, but have not yet posted it. I think it will be nice as a small, finely-detailed painting. I have a square canvas that has been sitting waiting patiently for a concept since last summer, and now I have it designed to the last detail in my imagination - I also have all the necessary paints and brushes. What I need now is the time to create it in miniature with pencils and markers, so I can work out all the rough spots, and then I can start painting.

Then I have four other ideas: one is already started on my biiiig sketch pad, and just needs to have the sketch finished before I paint. The other three need some geometry help from R - how to measure to get seven equal points around a circle, that sort of thing. All four of these will be painted on 20" diameter circular canvases. One will be called "Maha Chakra," or "Great Chakra," combining all seven chakras. The other two will be sort of mirror images of each other, and I need to work on the center they will share, which is a stylized version of - I won't say, but will hope you can tell once I've drawn it. I'll have to draw all three of these as smallish mandalas before I paint them.

So, at least six paintings before the end of the summer, as well as a ton of small mandalas to make 50 in all.

And yes, Ker and Mom, you will each get a letter & mandala from me, I promise.

Meanwhile, I am pulling together N's birthday party. She is having ONE close friend from school for a day of festivities: meeting at Bounce U to frolic from 1:30-3, then coming home for cake, then painting t-shirts to commemorate the day, then (weather permitting) swimming for an hour or so, then coming home for supper, then playing till dark, then setting off (legal) fireworks, then we'll take Jenna home and all come back to fall into bed with utter exhaustion. But I think this will be nicer than the usual bunch of kids for 2 hrs. of pandemonium, and N & Jenna are very excited about it. Btw, those fireworks were purchased at a stand which was located at a gas station - can you think of a worse venue?

I have GOT to go bed. I've been suffering from terrible insomnia ever since I started taking a sleeping pill (trazodone). I am not impressed with it. It takes forever to get to sleep, and then I sleep so soundly that I sleep till 10 am or later & am groggy all day. Bah.

Tomorrow is yet another big day. The Sears repairperson is coming to fix our washing machine, which no longer spins at the end of the cycle, so all the clothes are sopping wet and take forever to dry unless we wring them out. Z has a library reading to do at N's school in the morning, so C is taking them in order for me to be home in case Sears comes. But I have a meeting to complain about Angel's poor performance in my 6-week class (which is now over, huzzah!) at 2 pm, so the kids have to stay home in case Sears hasn't yet come by then. We've been told they're coming "between 8 & 5" - very specific, ain't it?

~Cheers
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Student Mandalas

No, these aren't the promised art works by C. I haven't photographed those yet! I had a wonderful weekend getaway with my family at Oglebay Park in West Virginia (you know, where you leave your teeth and shoes at the border). Then came home and had a three-day migraine.

So I'm a bit behind in things, including mandala-creating. I have written my first letter, at least!

Anyway, here are the best mandalas from my first summer class, the 6-week one. I've really enjoyed this group of students; usually I lose about half of the class, but in this case I've only lost 2 or 3 out of 30, and the rest have done quite well. This despite two ending up in the hospital, too!

On to the mandalas.
I think this is my favorite one - at least, I wish I had painted it!:
This one was done in chalk on the driveway, and then erased. Very clever.


I like that this one is off-center a bit:
This was done in the sand on the beach, then allowed to be washed away by the tide:
My other favorite one from this class - try zooming in to see how great the detail is! I think of it as a Montana mandala.
~Cheers

Bragging

Today I want to post some of Z's work from this past semester. She took ceramics, and every week when she came home she was simply covered in clay. And very discouraged. My romantic illusion of the smoothly humming pottery wheel was shattered by her tales of woe - she'd start to get her blob of clay to look like something, and then it would suddenly all go to smush inexplicably. She found the pottery wheel extremely frustrating.

Nevertheless, she managed to turn out two cute little mugs by the end of the semester.
Aren't they nice? She's pretty happy with them, particularly since her professor was a very hands-off teacher and she received little in the way of guidance throughout the semester. So she was basically self-taught.

Her favorite piece, however, was a "built" project (i.e. not thrown on the wheel), a replica of an ancient statue of a hawk.
She was happy with every phase, from the building to the glazing, and I think it's quite handsome, too.

My favorite of her works is a pair of vases with tiny ocean creatures. Z isn't pleased with the way the glazes came out; many of the glazing powders were mislabeled in the studio, so she didn't get what she'd expected. But I love them, and she gave them to me for Mothers' Day.
I particularly like the little sea creatures. Aren't they dear?

Two other pieces she did are also quite nice. The glaze on this one is pretty cool, and I love the multiple holes in the top:
Another view of it, from the side:
And this one she plans to take with her to college in the fall to hold her paintbrushes (she's also taking the little mugs):
Finally, here is the chocolate mandala she and her cousins made for our Passover Seder this past April. At the end of the Seder we dismantled it and every guest took some of the chocolates home with them - similar to the sweeping away of a Tibetan sand mandala and dispersing of the sands in the waters of a river. Yum!
Tomorrow, another showcase.

~Cheers

First Summer Post

I've finally decompressed from one of the roughest semesters yet, and I'm 2/3 of the way through my six-week summer online course. I'm also teaching a 12-week course, but it's a breeze compared to the six-week course; there are 10 students in the 12-week course and 30 in the 6-week course, and the 6-week course is also in the new LMS (platform, or format, or whatever you want to call it), so there've been a lot of bugs to work out. But I have a really good bunch of students, so it's been a pleasure, despite the workload.

We had a family art night this evening, and I made the first mandala in months, not counting our Seder mandala - what a pleasure! I'll try to post it soon, along with last term's student mandalas and some artwork that C, Z & N did last term. There just hasn't been time to post till now.

And I know what this summer's mandala project will be. 50 mandalas, to commemorate my 50th birthday (I am still shaken by that), by the end of the summer, at least half of which I plan to send with letters (SNAIL MAIL) to people I haven't written to in a long time. I'm sure I can come up with at least 25 people who qualify, and it will be nice to make connections with people again. I miss snail mail; I used to write at least ten substantive letters a month, and now I hardly ever write letters to anyone. It's all email . . . .

~Cheers