Sunday Morning Clowns and Haiku

First, I want to thank all of you who have visited my blog so far. It’s still new and I’m still trying to find my way, so please be patient with me. OK? Thanks, also, for the comments left and emails sent. I appreciate so much your taking the time to read my efforts and tell me what you think. I hope you will continue to visit often. :)

Yesterday was a gorgeous fall day here, what I call a magic light day. The air was clear and the colors gloriously intensified under a cloudless bright blue sky. One of those “it’s great to be alive” days. We finally got some much needed rain for three or four days last week, and seemingly overnight it looked like a different world. Everything is green again instead of dead and parched. The ponds and streams are full again. We won’t have to sell our little herd of cows, which are more like pets, because we can’t feed and water them. It seems like a miracle and I’m so grateful. I was so happy when it was raining that I wanted to just get out in it and dance and twirl around, but I didn’t. Another opportunity not taken advantage of. I did get soaked coming back from checking on the cows on the 4-wheeler though. That was fun, but I still should have danced in it.

This photo was made while riding the 4-wheeler through the woods to the pond to check on the cows after the rain last week. It was early morning and everything felt so clean. The sun was filtering through the remaining fog and trees. It was kind of magical.

I wrote the haiku poem three years ago while daddy was taking antibiotic treatments in the hospital. It was a gray stormy day and I watched out the window as yellow leaves fell out of a huge tree nearby every time a gust of wind came. It reminded me of golden glitter as bunches of leaves fell loose and swirled to the pavement below. I put the poem and photo together for this month's mojoart challenge "Dreaming of Fall". The poem reads:

a quick gust of wind
golden leaves fall like glitter
shaken to the ground

" A quick gust" has been changed to "sudden gust" since entering it. Much better, I think.

I had to ask for an extension on my writing assignment because it was due yesterday and I’ve barely started it. It’s the second chapter for my novel, started several weeks ago. I got sidetracked, and just yesterday started working on it again. I first studied my text book requirements for this assignment, then I just dove in and started typing stream of consciousness, my favorite way to write. I was trying to make the transition from chapter one to chapter two, but I think chapter two has now turned into chapters two and three. I’m already way over my word limit and I'm not through, so I’ll have to go back and cut a lot out and do a lot of re-writing to pull it together and try to make it interesting. A challenge and a lot of work, but also enjoyable to me once I get focused.

My art doll pattern is still glaring at me (I shouldn’t have given her a face yet), because I still haven’t found suitable body material for her, and now she’s insisting on tiny wings for her ample body. We’re still debating that one. She’s going to be as difficult to please as Mollie Be Muse was (art doll previous post). :o

Art wise, I’ve been experimenting some. I read where someone uses a piece of watercolor paper under her stamping and painting projects, which invariably gets ink, paint, and stamp images all over it. When it gets enough on it, she cuts it up and uses it for backgrounds for atc’s, altered books, etc. So, of course, I’m having to try it. Some pretty interesting effects so far.

It reminds me of once when a friend was looking at my oil paintings and she really liked the one on the easel, which wasn’t a painting at all, but a canvas board which I put behind my stretched canvases while painting. Of course, it had all sorts of paint smudges where I had painted off the sides of several canvases, cleaned the paint out of my brushes, practiced brush strokes and paint mixtures, that sort of thing. When I looked at it through her eyes, it was pretty interesting looking though.

The other day I carved an atc sized piece of linoleum and made several trial prints in my sketchbook and other papers. It is of a Pierrot clown face with a harlequin motif background. I love the painted faces of Pierrot clowns, mimes, the Cirque de Soleil and Cats characters, etc. Not as crazy about regular clowns. Anyway, I drew it right out of my head directly onto the linoleum with a pencil (not always a good idea), and then went over the places I wanted to show with a black sharpie. The rest I carved out. Since I don’t do this on a regular basis, I forgot and carved a line between the eyebrow and the iris in her eye, which of course left a blank line when I printed her off. Thus, she looks kind of frightened unless I make an adjustment with a brush and ink.

To the right is a picture of a sketchbook page with a few trial prints, which are really plainer than the photo shows. The black one is done with printer’s ink brushed onto the design, then stamped onto the page, which doesn’t leave as sharp an image as it does when it’s rolled on and a barren used. The other three are dye ink pads stamped on. I’m not real happy with the way the design wound up, but I am going to make some real prints (probably altered) with it before I toss it…or not. Now that I look at her again, she does have a unique character about her. :)

Enough rambling for now. Ya’ll have a blessed week, and a creative one.

Sharon