Jessie and Sam

Jessie and Sam:

Mere weeks before MS blew up in my lap, I’d spent an afternoon painting a landscape study outdoors by the side of a neighborhood road. A woman stopped and admired the work I had propped up beside me. We talked for only a few minutes, then in her thick German accent, she wanted to know if I could do a portrait for her from an old photo. For sure, I can, ma’am. We exchanged particulars, size, price, and then I told her I would be back at that same spot the next morning if she decided to commission a portrait.

She was waiting in the morning light when I got there. She had a black and white photo of a couple sitting on their farmhouse porch. They were her husband’s parents, now gone. Her son, their grandson, was moving into a house on the property and she wanted to gift the portrait to him at the housewarming party.

“Do you want it in color?”

“Oh? Can you do that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”… I asked what color his eyes were, and she described the shade of blue then described every other possible color in the photo. She was charming, and I commented how much I loved her accent, it reminded me of my teens in Bavaria. We were fast friends.

She paid me half then, as discussed, and then before she left, I asked “What were their names?”

Her eyes lit that I would ask, “Jessie and Sam”.

So I started like I do all of my oil paintings… sketching it in with warm sienna, a natural base for any outcome, just to get it situated in the canvas to my liking, sharpening the shadows and erasing with thinner when needed and laying white in where I know the highest areas are going to be.

sienna sketch

 Then I started adding some color and sharpening details

 The finished portrait

 

 Details

She loved the finished painting, and hung it in an unused room until the housewarming.  I saw her a few weeks later. She reported that her husband found the painting, and loved it so much that he wanted to keep it. It hangs in the formal living room. He said, "I'm keeping it, he can have it when I die"

Awww!

Fish

testing 2

Bell Haiku

Dinner Bell by Darla Vaughan

Call me what you like
Don't call me late for supper
You can ring my bell

Liberty in Low Light

This past week I have been subjected to stories and images which have dug into scars, designed specifically to tear them open, to make them fresh, to make them worse.

These stories and images aren't designed to heal, rather they are designed to make their indelible mark on the psyche of anyone within their reach. A media storm endeavoring to keep the machine in motion by preying on empathy.

Call me heartless, call me a bad American, I don't care. Our liberties have been consistently trampled on for ten years, culminating in a decaversary which has made the news media slobber all over every one of us.

You may fall for it, you may fall in line to pay your respects to the traveling chunks of wreckage, buy the books, gobble up the coverage, and, quite possibly, you may have your identity as a global citizen drawn on a backdrop of two iconic buildings, photographed with the rising sun, creating a religiously enticing image. Add an eagle and a flag, and you have an industry of bumperstickers, memorial flags and yellow ribbons.

I can't take it anymore. I am sickened by it.

A beam from the World Trade Center and a chunk of stone from the Pentagon came touring to my area this week. Of course, the news was there. Also, there was a line of people there to view these bits of wreckage. When the news reported this, several images and words disgusted me beyond anything I have seen or heard lately.

One was a woman grasping the wrist of the very small child she was holding in her arms, and making that child touch and stroke the chunk of concrete as it were a holy relic. She was speaking to the child as she did it. I have no idea what she was saying, as it was just a backdrop to the reporter's story. The image, I suppose was included to pull at someone's sense of loss. After that was a man stroking and patting the steel beam pulled from the tower's wreckage. I had to shake my head at the utter meaninglessness of the actions.

As I was digesting these images, the story went to an interview of a woman and her child. This child, as the newsperson reported, is officially the youngest survivor of the attacks. He proudly declared that he is only "alive today because god has a special purpose for me".

My heart and stomach fell to my feet. I know an adult, most likely his mother, has told him this all of his life. But that did not stop the bilious feeling I had toward that child at that moment. How utterly selfish for anyone to believe such rubbish in the wake of nearly 3000 deaths that day, and the thousands of other lives which have been lost fighting over the attacks.

Did those people not have a purpose? I think the children, wives, husbands, parents, and friends of all those lost on that day, and every day since would disagree. Was the only purpose in these poor dead people's lives to make the rest of us feel lucky? Was the only purpose in their deaths to fuel the machine?

I don't know, right now I don't know much except I am sick from all of this. I am sick of the media leading us down these paths, telling us how we should feel, asking the victims families how they feel just to make a story. Just as sick as the day I walked through Lower Manhattan and was assailed by a man trying to sell me a "Ground Zero Guide" for two bucks. There was another man on the corner across the street doing the same. Sick, I tell you.

I'm sick of the machine that makes money off of this terrible day, while spending tax dollars feeding itself, and creating images to make Americans fall in line, to create patriotism, and to bring fresh tears to the cheeks of people who are absolutely tired of cryng.

I created a few images, last year, of my days in New York. You see, though I am D.C. born, though I have been raised nearly exclusively on Army bases around the world, though I now live in a deep Dismal Swamp, New York has been my city. I love New York. I have spun dizzily while looking up between those two iconic towers, I have walked the streets and absorbed the essence of the city. I feel the loss.

I don't need to be reminded in the name of Liberty. Please, have mercy.



'Liberty in Low Light' painting by Darla Vaughan



Her

She is waiting..somewhat impatiently.
She's been around for a while. She lives in a novel I've been slowly tapping away at.

Many overlooked her as a mere woman until she allowed a portrait to be painted.
In the portrait, she displayed her prize.

Her Prize

Detail of a painting I have been working on... For three years. I never finished it.

It's a gentle reminder that Madam is knocking on my door lately.
Darla... she says... have you forgotten? You promised to spill all the gory details. Now get to it.

Possibilities -Pink Hibiscus

they are endless. Truly.

I have a body of work I have been collecting for years, I've played with web pages and sites and customized to my heart's content, and now it's coming together.

Seriously coming together...
like actually using digital techniques to play with the images more than I ever did. I would only crop or contrast or saturate. Now I'm playing with filters and smudges and stuff I never ventured to before. Designing cards and clothes around the images opens a whole new world, I never glimpsed for myself.

I don't know why I never did. There is a first time for everything, right?

So here's a hibiscus I played with. I am happy with the effect.
Different, changed, but still all mine.

I'm even keeping up this blog a bit more.

Who knows what will happen.

Coyote

Began last night, and finished this morning.

We went to the pow wow yesterday, and I finally got the burr in my paw to get that coyote out...it  has been howling inside of me for a few weeks now.

This is my very first finished oil pastel picture. I'm happy and now I need to get the turtles out. They have been much more patient. Like, years in the making.

Coyote

14' x 17'

oil pastel on heavy paper

And it can already be bought http://www.zazzle.com/coyote_poster-228803626482858529

How cool is that?!

Royalties

I have shut out.
For now... quit my steady job to take on students from the local community colleges, again.  It's okay, I love it. However, it is frightening to jump off when you have children to raise on your own.

I have to work extra hard, now. 

The students will trickle in.

My income will be constrained.

I discovered Zazzle. Well... I didn't discover it, but I was made aware. I was so excited, I forget now why I was there to begin with, or how I got there.

I have been painting and taking photographs for years with no feasible (make that free-sible) outlet to attract customers. Or at least without the knowledge of such places... for me, that is. You know... a nobody artist in a sea of nobody artists.  Mine eyes hath been opened.

Anyway, I have just plain stopped the presses of my doing for others, for the time being.

I'm working on my own repetoire.

Who knows... if everyone has been telling me the truth, and I DO have a good eye, a keen brush, and a sharp wit, I should be able to make a brilliant go at it.

I would link to the store, but as of now, the system has the storefronts whacked out, but the designs are out there.

Until then... I'm designing.

Mobile mantid

Checking my mobile settings with an 8x10 mantid work in progress.

It's eyes are a bit alien, I think, I'm not sure where that came from.  This is one part of a larger work with three canvases. It will show a food chain stalking in progress on three levels of canvas depth.

The entire work is based on my own observations. I watched a dragonfly stalk, catch and eat a fly... just a few hours later, I was watching a mantid on my front walk, suddenly, it reached out and grabbed a dragonfly clean out of the air, and gobbled it right down. It was a vicious and delicious fight.

The mantid held the dragonfly and ate it head-first, munching all the way down until it was holding nothing but wings. Wild.

My Sketching Palette

I've never kept a solid journal for longer than maybe four days.

But, now I hear that a way to stave off artist's block and procrastination is to keep an art journal. I looked over several examples, and decided to just dedicate what I have here to that end.

How about starting off with my favorite sketching palette, this is what I start every painting with, then add color as needed.

Burnt Sienna is what I sketch with and use to make black by mixing with the phtalo blue. I then make a greyscale with the white.

I like to sketch with a #4 or #5 round brush. The Burnt Sienna lends an earthy and real base for the shadows, and make a great jumping off place for the color when it comes.

Sketching with paint? Oh, yes. With oil paint, it is possible. It can be moved around in a way that pencils can't be moved, it can be erased...restarted...erased...restarted over and over again.

My first videos from the studio are coming soon. If you have EVER wanted to paint, but never tried, I want for you to try now. I don't care the plethora of reasons you can come up with to discourage your talent of self, just try it. I want to show you how.

Art is not pretentious, people make it so. Everyone is a natural artist, all that is needed is the basic set, an example to start with, and off you go.

It's the little things, like knowing you CAN erase an oil painting. Didn't you listen to what Bob Ross had to say?

'There are no mistakes in painting, only happy accidents'

Wood and Grimm

I had a flash of inspiration while I was looking at some of my older paintings. What is MY art journal for if not for recording MY quick thoughts before they slip away. From what I've seen, many people have art journals that are glorious examples of extended scrapbooking.

I hate scrapbooking. (in the new crafty sense, I used to have a scrapbook in the literal sense.)

I read the term 'art journal' when I set out to wrangle my societally induced adult ADD lifestyle and grab my potential by the horns to steer myself where I want to go. To get over my procrastinatory ways, I read I should keep a daily art journal.

I was thinking 'diary with drawings and clippings' then I searched 'art-journal' and I was instantly put off by the idea as it was presented. I kept reading it was supposed to be whatever I wanted, in whatever format.

I wanted online and digital, but I don't think my screen will take but so much paste.

So no pages of collage and decorative wordings. Mine is a diary, and some pictures. I need bones in my diet, and not so much meat. Meat I have... something to hold it up is called for now.

Inspiration flash... I make nice gnarly, woody, and dark. I love to catch expressions... In my mind I saw the expression of a Grimm style heroine peeking from behind a Black Forest tree, her wide eyes, her fingers pressing into the rough bark, the rough bark grabbing at her garb. What she sees is just barely reflected in her liquid and detailed eyes. Most viewers should not notice this until really looking at the painting's nooks and crannies.

This is what I saw when looking at one tiny detail of a completely unrelated painting.

This is what I mean by an art journal.

Ballard Peaches 16x20 oil on stretched canvas.

The peaches were picked off of the tree in my yard. A leftover from when the farm was a peach orchard and fruit stand.

Working For Me

Not too long ago, while I was lamenting on how I felt spread too thin, I was given a mantra.

You need to pick your spot, choose your moment and stick with that, but never give up variety

So, I mulled..
I do that, often, maybe too much, but that's not MY problem.

How do I offer up the best of my abilities and make a seismic ripple?
How do I feed my family without greasing someone else's wheels, as I watch mine go to bare metal?

Where do the best of my abilities lie? Is it writing? Art? Teaching?

Painting is my native language.

Teaching is an ability I am lucky to possess

I'm going to open up my studio at Quarter Moon House via web cast.

I'm recording video on painting and sketching with a brush

I'll continue to write, but I have neglected my artwork.

I can feel the dark longing from my native tongue,

crying because I have neglected

the bud of self.

Barefoot Artist

I have only begun calling myself 'an artist' rather recently. I had this silly idea that to call yourself an artist meant that you painted for a living.

I have probably made less than $100 off of art. I don't know how to sell it. I can't translate it into a price. I've been asked, "How much do you want for that?" and my answer usually is, "uh, I dunno...what do you think?"

I can calculate how much the materials cost, but I don't. I can calculate time and put a price on it, but it seems wrong. So I end up giving away many pieces as gifts along the way.

Solstice coming up, no problem...the picture you like is probably going to be along, birthday maybe.

I set up to travel with my supplies, and do go out in the field often. Sometimes just on the floor of a friends house...

I have a very modest workspace in my suite on a little butcher block table next to the window and a minifridge.

Often, a painting gets frustrated with me, and we are at odds. There is always a stack of canvases in progress, some abandoned.
Some just waiting for me to get finished with washing clothes...

Some...drawn and painted from photo shoots.

Some while I'm watching a DVD of Dave Matthews and get inspired *pause...

Some while my mind is wandering...

Some to show unforgettable moments....

Some to show forgotten spans of time...

Some to show athletic concentration...

Some to show athletic exhilaration...
Some to show encounters with nature....

And...yep...Fruit. This one is called Grapes of Wrath, and was made while I was on the phone for the last time with a woman that had called me friend and I her...She was jealous and selfish, and she was yelling at me for forty five minutes. I let her have her say, all the while silently painting...
Anyway...I love art, and I do make art works so I am an artist. I love it so much, I made another one...looks just like me...
Thank you, my friends for encouraging me, and thanks for stopping by.
Tchuss,
Darla Vaughan

King Neptune - Virginia Beach

Still just playing with the photos, wondering why they seemed bigger before. Maybe it's the template, or just that Blogspot shrinks them down more than Wordpress, and now I'm spoiled.

Ah well, won't be the first time.

This shot was taken two years ago in January. The sky doesn't look quite as blue in July at Virginia Beach.