A Weekend With Creative Folk

I've just come back from a delightful weekend with two of my most favorite artists... our grandchildren.  

We indulged in a number of activities that didn't include slogging through the rain.  Some of which was video games, either on the computer, iPad or TV, some of which involved clipping pieces of prints of Gustav Klimt paintings, pasting them into drawings that were so not what Gustav Klimt was visualizing originally, some of which involved eye-hand coordination, some involved tickling.  Some of  the creativity was mine (as you can see), with the strategic guidance of four-year-old Shyloh, who was masterful in her ability to select the perfect colored Inktense pencil color for my drawing.  She even deciphered the tiny color names printed on the pencils.  Her proclamation that she would someday be a "Real Artist", proudly, was the high point of my afternoon!

Gilded Wine Bottle Abstract

I've been tearing small squares of 140# hot press Arches Watercolor paper and taping four of them (wet) at a time on my mounting board, then swirling and tipping Daniel Smith primary (as in: red, blue, yellow) watercolors over the surface.  I liked two of the four results, which I think are pretty good odds for spontaneity.  And of course, I can't just leave them alone, so I played a bit with Sennelier soft pastels once they were dry.  Just a touch on the blue and purple edges of this one, to enhance what was already there a bit.  I found a small bottle I'd begged off of my wine-collector husband, dug up a tall, antique liquour glass (heirloom), and did their portrait together with Derwent Inktense pencils in a dark red.  Highlights on the glass were pure, undiluted gouache white, from the tube.  A dear friend had gone through her deceased mother's stuff and found a lovely pad of gold foil from the 1970s and gave it to me, so I tore a bit to adhere on the painting.  I'm glad it scanned well.  One never knows how gilding will show up in a photo on a 2D surface!  It's been years since I've worked with gilding, and I remembered how frustrating it is to use as soon as I let out my first breath while laying it down.  Suddenly, it was snowing gold snowflakes in my studio.  It's hard to see, but there is gilded floral patterns around the tiny glass, which I put on with acrylic paint (I think it was interference gold) mixed with a "bronze" powder.  I so love mixing my media recklessly!  It's like playing, rather than working.