SUMMER !

 

Watercolor on Arches circa 1985 by SGHolland

 

My artist friend’s sister was expecting to deliver any minute!  Would she like to just snooze on the squishy pink studio foldout chair and be our model for a session, I wondered.   Why yes,  that sounded good to her.

This watercolor, done sometime in 1980 or so, is dear to me not only because  I loved this young woman and her unborn child (Colin, he turned out to be) but because the lovely mama has passed away since then at way to early an age.

Another thing I especially like about this painting is that is IS the whole essence of that studio on a forested hillside with light streaming in from all sides and the familiar books and chairs and tables there!  A place built just for me by master craftsmen from my own family.  I am no longer in that studio– life moved me along and I left a lot behind.  But there it is with its gray rug and its happy plants and the sleepiness of a summer day.

Yes, her tummy looked as if it had a large balloon hidden in it somewhere.

 

 

ARTISTS are sometimes SPORTS LOVERS!   Can you imagine a well-seasoned female artist sitting on the edge of her seat watching the Seattle Mariners play baseball?  Can you imagine that same grandma sitting on bleachers in the blazing sun watching her youngest grandson pitch and hit for his All Star Little League team?  This is that grandma.

Where’s the art in THAT?

I am smitten by the looks and body language of these athletes;  that is not a new fancy, but an appreciation that began long ago at the old stadium in Philadelphia known as Shibe Park.  That is where, from seats behind the catcher,  my father taught me the fine-tuned dance of baseball.

Right now in Seattle we have Edwin Diaz, a 23 year-old closing pitcher whose dance is so tuned and his body language so focused he is beautiful to watch  Besides that he has one of those amazing noses that is long and close to the face with an amazing flattened tip that makes arabesques around his nostrils.  And eyes that are like a predator’s eyes when trained on his work.

I’m sketching from search material about this young man found on my computer– my 3rd eye– my plug-in muse. I work at the easel and then analyze my work on the computer, making notes and additions and suggestions with my computer mouse as a pen.  Than I print out my amended image and take it back to the original painting and make my changes with paint

Here are rough sketches I’ve been making to find my way around this guy’s face.  They are very transient–changing quite freely — feeling my way into the planes and proportions of his face while keeping an eye out for the Mariners these days.

 

 

What you see above are four small works from a series I am calling Coins.  During the election cycle of 2016 I decided to do “a painting a day” for a month.  Mostly in my lovely Moleskin “Chapbook”, I used mixed media on the “all-media” quality pages.  All were experimental. Many have coin impressions made while the medium was still wet.

 

 

The image here can be clicked to read a little blurb I published on The Story Hall, one of my current involvements these Spring days, as it grows and develops on a new writers/artist’s site by that name at medium.com.  The story will tell quite new news about me and my recent months’ focus and activity.  Just getting the paints going again and, as always, the camera and the image editing programs that I love.