I’ve been working on my Bunny World ...

 Lady Arabella and Phoebe are the first in what I hope will be a several piece series.  You’ll note that a new portrait ofArabella has also been done as a relief sculpture.

 

I was playing with the digital drawing tools  and created an image of Arabella that I’m going to use as a fabric pattern. I’m trying to smooth out the edges of the 4 panel and the kalidescope design and I’m going to order a sample of each.  I’m really looking forward to seeing the finished fabrics. I’m partial to the kalidescopic first swatch myself. I’m thinking middle weight or light cotton for the fabric.  Any suggestions are welcome.

Spring Mourning Or the process of creating a series

This single black and white photo is the inspiration for the sad little picturebook Spring Mourning for which I have been gathering reference for several months.  I want to tell the story in a series of paintings with bunny people in 18th and early Regency style clothing. The story takes place over a period of a few years.

                                              

The reference I’m finding helpful are late 18th and early 19th century miniatures, and even historical costume catalogs helpful in deciding on how I want the characters
People in rabbit masks and flower symbology charts also help set the mood.

  

  I think my first experiment designing a rabbit woman and her baby turned out rather well. Although I’m still undecided about putting hairdos of any kind on the women rabbits. I like the idea of just arranging a few flowers around their ears.

  

Ghosts, Pie and Fresh Cream

The one pie my Grandma Bartlett made that I thought was strange was funeral pie. It's actually just raisin pie. Of course if you lace any dried fruit with brown sugar, eggs, cream and brandy and bake it in a good crust and top it with real cream or homemade ice cream you've got a winner. 

I think what freaked us kids out was the family story that went with it.  Tale of the black dog.... circa 1912.

The Bartletts were Irish dirt farmers from way back and kept the Irish tradition of the family wake for yrs. My Aunts Catherine and Virginia were around 8 and 10 when a cousin of theirs died by drowning. 

It took a couple of weeks to find him and the corpse was found in a seated sort of pose. So poor cousin had to be tethered inside the coffin so he wouldn't sit up. 

My aunts just wanted the grown ups to stop drinking and wailing and serve out the mountain of food (out in the yard behind the house of course.... cousin was ripe.) Grandpapa heard them fussing and sent them out with the promise of extra funeral pie if they were good . 

So escaping the stinky death house, they went to see the tethered horses in front of the barn. While they were talking to the horses, a huge black dog the size of a Great Dane appeared  on the path to the house. 

The girls walked up to see the dog and he came towards them and started circling them very slowly. As he circled he got smaller and smaller and vanished. 

They ran screaming back to the house as the body was finally being taken away in the horse drawn hearse. All the drunk adults thought it was cousin on his way to Hell. Apparently cousin was a dick. The ghost didn't seem to put a damper on the festivities and Virginia and Catherine got a whole pie and a little pot of cream to themselves because cousin scared them.

Art History in the Time of Trump

A couple of Saturdays ago Mike, my brother Ken and I went to the Getty museum. To avoid visual overload, we just went through the 13th-16th century mostly Italian and French paintings section.

As per usual the early paintings had ugly angry babies and they didn't improve with the Mannerist ones who just looked dead. But that's something for another post. Now in the later sections the Renaissance painters brought happy back to art. Well, at least for me anyway because I love Greek and Roman mythology. Mike and I have a decent background in art history so listening to the guides can be interesting. I love art lectures.  Now this lovely Italian painting of Danae that is some what new to the Getty.  

If you don't know the story, Danae, daughter of the King Acrisius was imprisoned by her father when it was prophesied that her son would kill her father. She was locked away in an underground bronze chamber. Zeus, who could never walk away from a complicated lay, impregnated her by appearing to her as a golden shower.

Now why this gets funny, at least to me, is this was the week of the Trump/Russian golden showers story. I was wandering around listening to the guide as she worked her way over to Danae. I wondered if there would be any smirks or giggles about the golden showers story.

The guide went into an elaborate look at the golden falling shapes and don't they look like coins monologue. As an art teacher by training, I was annoyed. I wanted to laugh because she was trying so hard to not say golden showers, but she was NOT telling the actual myth! Alt-history is not acceptable. It may seem a small thing in the scheme of the universe, but tiny lies add up.

Holiday Decor 1960's style..... the computer card wreath

 As I was about 9 or 10,  the image in jumped out at me in all it's silver glory. McCall's Needlework and Crafts always had the best Christmas projects.  I loved making every tacky decoration. If I found a box of computer cards at a thrift store, atheist or not, I would make one of these for my door.

1.Cut a circle out of fairly heavy piece of cardboard.
 2. Fold a computer card's 2 short ends and staple them. Flip  the card over so the stapled side is now the back.
3. When you have a big pile, you can start stapling  the cards ....pointy end out following a long the outer edge curve of the circle. Each successive row is  stapled in the open spot between the 2 points like shingles. Don't be stingy with the cards. The whole point is to make this monstrosity of Holiday gaudyness as fat and obnoxious as possible.

4. I personally prefer a gold or silver spray paint, to make a nice background for the even gaudier glitter balls, elves, candy canes and tiny glitter penguins that you arrange artistically in the center  of your wreath ....AFTER you wait a bazillion years for the 2nd or 3rd coat of spray paint to dry.  Yeah, they never say it takes a bazillion years for things to dry properly in craft magazines.

5. After the paint's dry, try a few arrangements of your glitter stuff or boring greenery. But Mom! SPARKLY IS BEST! AND THEN GLUE EVERYTHING DOWN WITH WHITE GLUE.... AND  WAIT ANOTHER BAZILLION YEARS for the GLUE to DRY!

Of course now there are GLUE guns to get burned on, but wait time is cut by a bazillion. I don't know how easy finding IBM cards is now, but I have seen them in thrift stores on occasion. I'm told big index cards will work, that seems sacrilegious.

Supplies
Cardboard
IBM computer cards
1 or 2 cans of spray paint... if you find those pink cards that need extra coats.
A bunch of little decorations for the center
Craft GLUE or a GLUE gun
Wire to make a hanger so you can hang this masterpiece up
Stapler and staples

My femme fatales

Working on a new version of my skull carrying mermaid....  Learning how to work with oil paints has been a huge learning curve.  I've been working on primed masonite and I'm really liking it. I enjoy just banging on a solid surface while painting. I thought I'd miss the bounce of a stretched canvas, but no. This surface is much better for me.

As for my horned oracle... ew what a mess. I painted her to death.  This was the painting when I liked it.

But as I look at those overlong arms, I want to just start again.   The weekday Open studio had one of the models do a sorceress for a series of quick sketch.

  I find the gestures much more interesting want to use one as an inspiration for my redo.  A 3/4 view with the snake draped over the extended arms should be more interesting.  I want to keep the circular curved horns and long red hair. I have a few other shots of the original model with a 3/4 view.

Basing out the masonite with a base color like I do when I use acrylic, really helped me focus on what I was doing.  I'm hoping it will keep me from over working my paintings.

One new piece I'm really proud of is my sleeping dryad. She's done in acrylic and wouldn't probably be considered a femme fatale, but I'd like to share a successful finished piece.