Desperate in Seattle

Carbon Footprint

I drove behind a car the other day, SUV style...and it was sporting a bumper sticker which read, "I offset my carbon footprint with TerraPass"...

So, I went online to check it out.

Kids and Art

My daughter needed to do a school project, decorate a t-shirt. She got out the marker pens and began. I suggested painting it with acrylics...and off we went to the studio. She mixed the color she wanted and practiced on one of my shirts that had an unfortunate stubborn stain. Here are a couple of images of the process.

Inviting kids into the studio is an excellent way to remember how easy it is to be creative.

Seeing Art

I recently took a class from Rita Natarova and it changed how I look at things. Granted, had I ever studied art formally, I would have learned this type of thinking and looking that the old masters used and students are taught, but, I'm a renegade, and have just lurched along, making art my way, and wondering why some of the things I make don't end up looking like I ha imagined.

There are edges, hard sharp edges of things, and soft edges, and shades of light to dark that I hadn't really notices before, and when artists hold out their paintbrushes and squint at things, I never really knew what they were doing. In fact, I was embarrased to ask in the class. Rita said, don't guess...everything is in front of you, just measure it. (How?)

Here are two pieces I made one before Rita's class, and one after, both worked on from the same sketch. I am improving! It's not too late to teach an old dog....

Art Class

Wow. I've been making art most of my life. My older cousin Dean threatened to hit me REALLY hard if I went outside the lines in his coloring book. I remember being quite frightened that he would notice I did get a speck out of the lines, so I outlined the entire picture with black crayon. I later decided I couldn't draw, so started making cartoons, and eventually gave up my arty self to my sister Anita, who I said was the artist of the family. I took a class about twenty years ago, based on the book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards. A local gal taught the class and he changed how I think about things. Everything we render as an artist is merely a shape...





Now, I have taken another class, at Gage Academy of Art, in Seattle, and a wonderful, talented artist named Rita Natarova, has changed how I look at things again. I learned about edges, and how to render a drawing or painting with very little on the page. Well, I must say I learned how it's done. If I practice, I hope one day to be able to do it. Wow. Learning something new every twenty years. I highly recommend it.

Polaroid Cameras

I was thinking of technology the other day as I took a Polaroid photo of a friend to make a kitchy calendar for the refrigerator, with a tiny premade calendar stuck on below it, and a magnet on the back.

I bought that camera in 1987 when I was in Real Estate and a new agent in Seattle. We would take our data (printed on dot matrix printers, and cut with a paper cutter) and glue them on to a page. Above the data about the homes that we were comparing, we would add a photograph.

If we had time, we would take the photos with a 35 mm camera, and then have them developed and glue them above the data. If we didn't have time, and were in a rush to get the information to the client, we drove through neighborhoods, taking Polaroid photos and gluing them onto the top of the page...

My daughters said, "You know, mom, they are going to stop making Polaroid film. Everything digital now." I realized I've had the camera for 21 years. It was a very good 25 dollar investment.

Holiday Traditions

Gingerbread houses? Not at my childhood home. I was born a few days after Christmas, so the birthday cake idea seemed silly after overeating from Thanksgiving through Christmas. We started making "candy houses". I think it may have started with gingerbread, but my mother didn't care for the flavor of gingerbread. It was a tradition got to help stick the candy on, with a thick fast drying icing. I got to rip the candy off and eat it on my birthday. Eventually the cardboard boxes we made the houses out of became a sturdy, wooden house, including a wooden yard, and a wooden fence, and...of course, an outhouse. (including the opening door with a crescent moon on it). One year my father brought this contraption home from his cabinet shop. It has survived all the years (40 or so) and all the candy stuck on over foil.

What is your holiday tradition that has survived?