I remember taking a workshop in Taos with Rob Wilder. He took us in groups into the log cabin at Mabel Dodge Luhan House and had us write down everything we could think of related to certain adjectives. He stood at the front of the room like an army sergeant monitoring our progress. “Don’t stop,” he barked now and then. For the word “yellow,” I wrote lemon, sour, pee, urine, yellow snow, yellow fur, fox fur, yellow mellow, yellow polka dot bikini…and so on. When yellow was done he threw out another word.
I’ve been painting these past three weeks, mixing colors with my Pelikan 12-color paint set. Colors are like words. Maybe there are finite shades of green, but I’ll never know all of them in my lifetime. I used Paint to make a collage of the various greens I’ve dreamed up of late with my real paints. I’m green when it comes to green, I realized.
Olive green and army green, sage and the color of money. Quinces and pears, Granny Smith apples, celery, cucumber skin, canvas (tents and sleeping bags), seafoam green, emeralds. Lime green, Kelly green, yellow-green snot.
I’m not anywhere done with green, but I figured I’d better get started.
-from Topic post, Greening.
I like this collage a lot! And this exercise of thinking of everything you can to do with green. I recently did this in my journal with blue and red (using the appropriately colored pens, of course) and found it really satisfying. The results of listing out blue things and thought associations to do with blue seemed like a poem.
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ybonesy,
Your painting is vibrant and alive. And that’s how it makes me feel. I needed that today. It’s like pausing to breathe in spring.
I love the Pelikan site you linked to. Do you have the Water Colour Paint Box, too? All you have to do is say “art supplies” and I’m there.
They have an exquisite section on High Quality Writing Instruments, too, including flash drive graphics. Check out the Niagara Falls fountain pen.
My favorite link was to their Pen Exchange website. And the How much would my Grandmothers Fountain Pen be worth? section.
Thanks for inspiring me tonight. I wanted to ask about the painting – is it all paint? Or is there mixed media woven into it? It kind of reminds me of a graphic quilt. I wondered if there were sheets of colored paper or anything mixed in.
QM
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I thought a lot about blue as I worked on green, so funny you should mention, Elizabeth, how blue seemed like a poem. Blue’s the color I usually think of when I animate color, when I give it a soul. Yes, red is passion and fire and temper. And green is rebirth and growth and spring and newness. But blue…blue is deep. You can get lost in blue.
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Yes, QM, I have the paint box. I bought it in Taos. I’m like you–I should have opened an art supplies store. If you think about it, art supplies stores predate all the other cool stores that are around these days–all the paper and fancy Italian fountainpen stores, which I also love.
I’ll have to check out the Pen Exchange. Thanks for pointing it out. I hadn’t noticed.
Oh, and the collage is made of mostly scanned watercolors, one photographed oil, and one drawing I did with the kids in Paint. That last one is the very vibrant lime green, which would be hard to replicate with watercolors.
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I like how you are mixing electronic capabilities and scanning into your layering and compositions. There is a different quality of light in electronic media than we see on the solid page. I notice it in my digital photographs all the time. They have a different quality of transparency and light than my film prints that I have copied to disc.
Glad you have the paint box. I think it’s kind of cool. 8)
QM
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It is cool. It has a tray that comes out–you can mix your colors in it. And store your paintbrushes there when you’re not using them. So it’s easy for traveling.
I should have bought the 24-color one, but they didn’t have it at the art store in Taos. Also, if you buy one of these, the cheapest approach is to order them via an art supply catalog, although then you wouldn’t get to go see all the cool stuff in the store.
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