bit of fried rice

 Lots of errand running today, to Esme's school, and feed store, and grocery store et al et al...  and I work tomorrow

I have been getting a bit more sleep in the mornings, but Esme's school had texted about something needing to be picked up for all students this morning while I was still trying to sleep, then texted again, and again.. with updates to the info.  So, I pulled myself out of bed long before the alarm I had set.  And THEN- when we got there, apparently I had missed the part of one of the texts where it said 'after two o'clock', and it was noon.  *sigh*.. luckily we had other things to do as well but it required a roundabout trip back there later to get it all done.

Once we were finally and actually home, I could do laundry, and make dinner, and other things.  Esme had to fight a broody hen for the eggs.  I picked up all the rugs and put them in the wash, and then Charlotte gave me such moon-eyes and looking at the one clean one on the shelf that I gave it to her - and she immediately thanked me and curled up on it, even though her whole body didn't fit on it, it was primarily nose and paws buried in it and the rest of it shoved up under her chest.  Ten minutes later, without Mark knowing that I had given this rug to Charlotte, Sweetie asked him for 'her rug' that is usually in the kitchen and he came and told me about her 'bee dance' that she needed one for her cold butt.  I had to laugh, and told him I was currently upstairs drawing this sketch about giving Charlotte one!

I guess I do need to finish crocheting that other big one so I will have more than one spare.  I thought one spare was doing good!

Cleared out leftovers in the fridge - and used some of the still good things to make fried rice.

olive oil

frozen peppers, frozen green onions

prepared ground beef we were going to put some on a pizza

seasoning salt, soy sauce, water

raised all that to a sizzling, added some of the rice with white sesame seeds I've been making up and using in the fridge

porkchop seasoning (ginger, sugar, garlic, paprika, and a few other things, we make a big batch and then use it up)

one egg at the very end

That was some pretty good fried rice!

 

We had banana and cherry and ice cream for dessert a few hours later - which we hardly ever make a dessert.   Mark asked if it was a banana unsplit, since I had chopped the bananas.  I told him it was a kind of Sundae.  He said, what a Sunday on Tuesday?

I did some Spanish today, very little French, a couple rounds of Latvian vocabulary, a little Cyrillic children's book reading, I'm still at the 'I know that word is Dog, and that word is Milk' etc etc... stage, much like I am with Japanese - but I am recognizing more and more.  I saw the word Animal and Bird today and knew them by sight.  Will have to do something on my phone, have alternated between a lot of Portuguese and some Spanish on there lately, sometimes a bit of Russian.

I had ordered a bright purple begonia cutting for Mark to start propagating for next season - and the post office (not the one I work at, but the zip code I actually live in) has delivered it to the wrong house.  It was marked delivered here yesterday but the postmaster over there checked the GPS and said it was obviously elsewhere, and would have to be retrieved and then brought out here.  With it being a live plant, I hope they do find it tomorrow, deliver it, and it isn't dead.

I added a couple of cartoon animals to that accordion sheet of paper I was working on. 

Artist Showcase April 2nd at W.G. Rhea Library, Paris, TN

 

 

The 37th annual art show opened yesterday at the W.G. Rhea Public Library, in Paris, TN.  It is sponsored by the Paris Henry Arts Council (PHAC).  I put in a large painting 'The Concerned / Les Preoccupees' and a small colored pencil drawing of a fox 'Squeak'.  I should have put in my weaving but I always forget about the fiber category.  The community has been making large leaps and bounds with the glass and pottery categories in the past years that I have watched it. 

 

A drawing I made yesterday, with both hands, very much in the same style that created the painting of fish and rabbits shown above in the art show.

 

I told Esme I have to keep grabbing the nettle and putting my things in these shows just to get them 'out' there - because my biggest issue isn't what I do - I love what I do, and am going to keep doing it exactly as I feel the urges to make art - but that I don't take the extra energy to finish things, to put them out where people can see them, and I work in spurts, sometimes not doing anything for a few weeks and then doing a flurry of hardly connected things before dropping the line again.  That's just how life is, though, especially when you do so much else to survive day to day - like post office, and all the little tasks of the household - sometimes the art gets lost for a while, sometimes it gets loud and you really want to do more than you have time for... 

I have been experimenting with the twelve-second delay on the camera, as well, and finding a place to set the camera up where it can see me and yet still focus.  These are a few pictures I took of my hands working on the drawing above in the very first stages.

and in the first stage of drawing, before we went to go see the art show - I picked it back up (doesn't always happen) later that night and the light had changed, but still, put on Beethoven and let it walk me back into the colors and lines until it was something I could call done.  Then I counted the pencils and there were 42 different ones on the table, counting the charcoal pencil.  I'll put a layer of fixative over this one and maybe get back into drawing something else later - I've knocked out my Portuguese lessons for the day, and the Post Office hasn't called yet, so I might cook something and do some French, and then see if I feel like drawing again.

Pastel over Ink : What I Saw in the Moonlight landscape drawing

 

first time playing with pastel in a good long time, used this paper, Canson Dry Mixed Media Sand Grain natural sand colored paper.   I was trying to catch an effect I saw in the moonlight last night with the shadows of the trees that I couldn't 'see' in plain ink or colored pencil.. it felt 'smudgy'.. which to me meant pastel.

I started out with a bluish-green ink brush to get started washing in shadows - then went over with pastel

 

This is what I wish it had stayed looking like, but the pastel fixative darkens the colors and mattes out the blacks... so I went back with a little bit of brush technical pen ink and darkened back up the blacks

 

finished:

'What I Saw in the Moonlight' - Marie Lamb - November 19, 2021

sketches and drawings

 

sleeping girl with cat

hypermobility spectrum, heds

Bendy Spine with Cat

colored pencil (above), ballpoint ink pen (below)

 'The Escape' ink and colored pencil, compass work drawing

all images by artist Marie Lamb  

Instagram rhelynn26 follow along

Bright Mountains castle loosely based on Clifden Castle in Ireland

 Welcome to Bright Mountains, Clifton castle...

Bright Mountains saga world : Clifton Castle

Finished as seen from front and above, without village or docks

well, this is very (and I mean very) loosely based on Clifden Castle in Ireland.  

 If you tilt your head from just the right angle you might see some resemblance between the Escher-like drawing I made below and the original manor house seen from behind, as seen on Pinterest when I was cruising around looking at things and well laid out in this Travel page that I did not find until later.

But it was really just inspiration, in the elements of square and round towers, and multiple connected causeways that made me want to sketch it.. then later that day, begin to build it.  My husband and daughter came up to bring me out with them to see the Grand Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, and my husband looked at the drawing and said 'oh, no .. she's drawing castles again'... as in I was soon to be lost to hours of building...

 

the image below is nearly the same angle as the drawing would be

 

in progress : at the beginning

in progress - a little further on

the interior seen through the back

looking down into the cistern in the enclosed courtyard

put in some chimneys over the smith and kitchens and so forth.. because well, that is something I've proliferated through my building style and even if it wasn't in the picture if I could work it in, I will.

from above at night

The original Clifden had a terrible history of loss and failure and then disagreement and division.  The Wikipedia article lays out how it was built not too long before the Irish potato famine, and then the tenants of the surround land and the family all fell to ruin.  I guess the point would be for Minecraft to plant more than potatoes in the surrounding landscape.  The modern day ruins still contain lots of sheep, which works with this Minecraft world as there are sheep wandering everywhere.  I had to pull one sheep out of the basement level before I could put in the stairs and doors!  

 

The castle still needs a village and support gardens before I can live in it in Survival Mode.  I'd also like a really nice dock with boats aimed towards trading with the original castle to the North.  I will be looking at some other images for info on what kind of docks, houses and so forth would have been in similar items and then run with whatever seems like it will fit the landscape.

Also, I see I would have had a much easier time discerning all the elements and angles if I had seen this Travel page first - lots and lots of pictures of the original ruined building from lots of angles.  Next time?   Still, I like it and it is a good addition to Bright Mountains.  This 'Clifton' castle (as it is named in the map) is located fairly south and a little east of the original Bright Mountain castle, which I had pulled entirely out of my head and don't have a name for yet.

Since I didn't really know where anything was in the original castle, and well... mine wasn't quite like it anyway, I tucked three family chambers into different places, then added some servant and guard rooms wherever they seemed they could fit.  As the first castle was a great exercise in making the 3D structure come together, this one was good in trying to fit a plan but then make the plan do something 'realistic' inside.  That was a slightly different challenge. 

  a few interior shots.. will update later with village and etc.. and link

the courtyard cistern

A lady's chambers

an eating and cooking area

a king-sized bedchamber

 

Creative mode, Bright Mountains saga world

January Journals #15

So we are now about halfway through January.  I've kept up, mostly - the comic counted as a sketch that day.  This is my attempt again to draw the hill by Byas Road and Macedonia, near McKenzie TN.  This is a summer photograph I found via Google Maps.  It still doesn't have the same perspective that piques my interest - and maybe I'll get out there with a camera one day soon and capture just the right angle - not to mention the red grass that is so stunning right now against the black leafless bark.

Were coming further along on the remodel - hope to be done very soon.  Lots of little details and finish work. 

January Journals 14

Simba Learns a Lesson - available here

The automatic drawing style is something not a lot of artists do.  It involves putting pen to paper and scratching out a few rough lines, without any idea of what will come from them.  Then, the artist will sit back for a moment until the faces or bodies in the picture become apparent - and trace out the shapes between the lines to make a whole picture.

The drawing above is done in the automatic drawing style.  The parts that showed through in the original few lines were the mouths of the lions, the beak of the bird on the right, the curve of the rock and the wings of the bird above.

Each of these automatic drawings is truly one of a kind.

Twenty minute memory drawing - trying to remember what that scene looks like by the red grass hill near the Rolls Royce house on the way to McKenzie.. every time I pass it I wish to get a photo but the perspective I see can only be captured from a place where there is nowhere to park or stand.

January Journals #8

A plan for a wall mural.. but I'm not sure if this will be the dragon that will go there, yet.
Did a lot more today at the tile worksite on very little sleep... time to sleep tonight soon and up and run again tomorrow This is a wonderful little tool for the price - we did more than 3/4 of our cuts at the tile jobsite the past few days with this, and it was nice to not be sprayed with water in 30 to 50 degree weather for every single cut.

January Journals sketchbook #6

Ephesus Church and Hwy 77 near Paris, Tennessee
working from memory
will try to work from a photo next time, the frost on the hill and the way the sunlight came over was what I really wanted to capture, but without a color photograph it is hard to get the right colors from memory

journal today:
I want to remember t he way the sun looked over the fields coming down over the hill with the treeline dark and scattered and the sunlight over the frost in the  distance.  How the sun looked coming through red leaves and evergreen on the way to Camden this morning.  Red shining and the green soaking it in, spiky and assured.  All the little bits of rays of light coming in between.

and a challenge to see how your studio is set up at the moment...

I found it a little eerie I didn't mean to set up my paints into a color wheel, but they are.  But as always, my sense of the color wheel is not quite the same as others?  One artist tells me ROYGBIV but I see white into yellow, then of course yellows into greens and blues, and then because the purples are simply mixed, it goes to the reds, and the reds to black... and you can make brown across the table two ways - green and red or purple and yellow.. and then there is orange and blue which is usually a dark umber color or a way to mix gray if done just right.

january journals 4 sketchbook

Aladdin

automatic drawing sketch

Picked up a lot of tile, worked on a blanket, talked to customers and did a lot of writing in the morning... time to sleep!

January Journals #4

It is the fourth day of January.  Does it feel sometimes like you have lived ten days in two?  It does for me, even more the more I create.  I have some copper thread I found yesterday that I want to use in my sketchbook, and I am thinking it might be a good idea to find a magnifier loop to pull over my desk for doing small work like embroidery and tiny lines and dashes in fur and feathers.

It's the one in the middle

This is what I have in my cart to try out.   And I will give a review here when I get it how well it works.   It looks like it would be great to hold on to things and that would give me an extra hand, so to say, as well.  Even with my glasses on sometimes I find it really hard now to focus in exactly the right place close up to the project.

I am working much more in my sketchbook for the Brooklyn Art Project.  It is like these little Kraft Notebooks.  When I finish up with it I might even miss the size and need to order some more of them.

Remember you can still purchase my book 'Time in December', as well.  It is only 99 cents on Kindle, but the paper copy was larger than I thought and it turned out beautifully.  I have gotten two very nice reviews saying it 'reads so much like poetry', and that they wished to dream the poetry when they went to sleep.

 I am working a bit here and there on new short stories for 'House of Sunlight'.  I hope to have that ready to print or send out to an agent in March.  I haven't decided yet - and some of the illustrations need to come to me.  The first one came in the form of the yellow house, and I have others in mind.  The illustrations that are in Time in December did not come to me until a certain point, when I did them all in a few days.  Sometimes art is like that.

I made a ten minute sketch the other day and just really wanted to put it on this canvas.  However, I know my perspective is odd with one eye far sighted and one eye nearsighted.  I also HATE working over scratched pencil lines on my canvas.  So - last night the solution hit me.  I had done this in the past when making murals on the wall from photographs.

It is the mathematical reference to making a canvas.   All you need is a calculator (or your phone) and a ruler that measures to the eighth (1/8) of an inch.

This is the painting I am working on.  I used the mathematical technique last night to transfer bits from the original drawing.  I measured across at twelve points

in the picture from the drawing, did the mathematical ratio conversion and located them on the canvas.  Then using them as reference points, I drew the perspective in until it fit.

The drawing dimensions were 40 percent smaller than the canvas.  Because of this every measurement I made on the drawing became divided by .4 to locate where it would be on the canvas.  For example - if a point was 5.5 inches across from the left on the drawing it was located 13.75 inches from the left on the canvas and so forth.

Sometimes you have to wear your mood right out there on your chest. 

I have a shirt that says 'Be Amazing, but first Coffee' and it always gets comments. 

january journals #3

Continuing in the vein of January journals.
A few months ago I sat down and shared ghost stories with a friend, and somehow he dredged this one back up from my memory about a place we used to scare each other silly with in my youth.  I don't know if any of it is true, but this was the rumor and narrative we told around campfires and driving in the back of pickup trucks in moonlight back in the 1980s.


I am going to recount you a tale, a ghost story, from my youth.  It is not one I have found written anywhere else, and I will tell it to you exactly as I remember it.  It happened up in Northern Minnesota, on a farm out in Arbo Township.  There were two brothers, named Capeleddy, and they both lived in a two-story house down on the bend of the road just before the Civil War.  One of the brothers, the older one perhaps, went off to war, leaving his young wife alone at the house.  The younger brother was working in a logging camp, but then he came home to the family farm while the older brother was away.

It was said that the young wife and the younger brother fell in love and had an affair.  I could only wonder if they perhaps had wondered if the older brother was still alive after the war.  They were living in the house when the older brother came back from the war.  When he arrived back home he heard tales from other people of what had been going on out at the farm.  He arrived with a loaded gun, and without asking any questions, shot his younger brother out in the field behind the house.   He was supposed to have shot him through with a shotgun while the brother was defenseless.   Then he went up into the upper story of the house and shot his young wife, as well.  Then he shot himself.  The tale continues that if you go by the Capeleddy farm late at night, especially in the moonlight, you are supposed to be able to see spirits walking through the upper story of the house and in the field back behind it.

But, it was always told to me as a child not to look too hard, and never to let the spirit of the older brother see you, because he would chase after you Washington Irving style and try to pull you into their misery and you would never escape.  The building was completely abandoned in my childhood in the 1980s and falling apart.  Part of the tale could have been told simply to keep children from trying to go there and falling through the floors injuring themselves.  We talked a lot about the place but none of us ever set foot on it beyond the fenceline.

You could see through the upper stories at night that the moonlight really did shine oddly through the building.  I'm sure it was just a trick of  the light.  I don't know if the story is true and the few times I ever tried to look up the name I did not come across anything.  But, who knows?  It could have just been a tale my older siblings made up to scare the pants off of me.  But everyone did refer to it as the Capeleddy farm, and that there were gravestones somewhere on it.  I do know that nobody ever lived there during the decade plus we lived a few miles down the road.


And a sketch in my Brooklyn Art Project sketchbook

  The Alice theme continues throughout the entire book

january journals #2

again had some time to kill while I waited for a prescription

Journal (not related to the image)
It is for none of you and for all of you that the pear grows and the bird sings in the morning.  It is for all who listen, see and participate in the great circle of Nature.  It is for none of you in that it will continue to march its path when all of us are dust and your descendants cannot remember your names.  For that very reason we must do as much as we can to make sure we do not take it for granted, do not gather it all greedily in one place and set it to flame, and do not block the eyes of the children from appreciating there are wonders such as these in the world - that being in the world is precious - and a gift not given but received.


And I promised to do a sketchbook page every day - this is another one of the old farm, remembering when the skunks dug up under the house, Duke, and Mouse and the garden and the clothes on the line...

This paper was in my stack, just a few pages left, time to get some more.  It is extra-rough, which is tough on the colored pencils, but makes for a really great definition.  Take a look at the product below, and help support art!

a little automatic writing also done while waiting for the prescription -
A white soft veil of wind behind the tail of the fox that ran in front of us, its black legs hopping and uncertain to chase or be chased it ran off into the tall grasses without much more than a moment of indecision and yet it was seen by the eight year old with her hands and nose pressed up against the glass of the station wagon each patch of white on chest and stomach and tail memorized for remembering later with crayons and chalk

january journals

I had a lot of time to kill yesterday and I made a couple little journal entries in a new journal that I bought.

Here is the first one - very philosophical

The tree coming up in twisted branches, separating and reaching in two directions - then it decides as many living things do, to double back on itself, to change places. In doing so it may seem to some to lack direction but to me it is the essence of its beauty the assuredness of time spent alive, the faults and thorns and obstacles of life that make us bend with the wind and seek the light. The Beauty comes in the spaces we live in between all the certain things in life, and often, in spite of them.


And the second one - more fun, and hopeful, and silly.

The New Year has come and we all expected it but down in the cracks of my psyche I hear these words ‘twenty twenty’ and am impressed we have made it this far. It seems like such a huge numbered beast, out in its pajamas drinking champagne – something larger than we imagined with punk rock hair but still down to earth, not totally unfamiliar, as it was once described in our childhood.

We have found the monster from where the wild things are and set him down toast and juice and the morning paper, eyeglasses set upon his enormous nose as he tries to do the crossword with a tiny pencil. I imagine myself stealing glances at him through my eyelashes as I cut up my eggs and add more pepper to the tops. I am making sure I am not dreaming, and wondering about, honestly, how badly he will tear up the carpet in the rec room dancing to the Eighties Flashback or how long it will be before he puts out a knee going down the garden stairs carrying too much to the table.

Have we really gotten so old? Is it just that now we are more free to imagine these things give them names and take the risks to bring them nearer to everyday life than to the true fantasy? It is much funnier, when they are near to hand, and much more impactful, as well. In a morning still fading with the sounds of fireworks in my ears, I have let my imagination wander freely. And it is out there in the dining room fondling crystal paperweights and unfolding all of the guest towels with abandon. It is only a figurative guest, but one that brings a smile to my lips as the eggs cool and the coffee begins to sputter. And for this, I think that perhaps twenty twenty and I will get along, if we can just get past hitting our heads on the doorframes.

Jumpstart January

January begins tomorrow, and it is time to Jumpstart.  This year I have signed up for three things to do every day, although two of them might be accomplished at the same time.

1.) I will practice my Welsh
2.) I will find an art material, device or book each day that I have in my possession and give a review or demonstration of it, either with photos or with video, and post that to share.
3.) I will do some sort of art sketchbook or project every day even if it is a small one like my friend who does a single comic pane every day.

I did this sketchbook page yesterday, it reminds me a bit of the Farscape television show I had been watching.  And I did practice my Welsh, even though it isn't quite Janaury yet.

Materials :

This was done with Sakura Micron pens over colored pencil.
Micron pens are my absolute favorite for outlining and they come in several tip sizes, marked on the top of the caps.  My favorite size to do this sort of outlining is .45mm marked with a '08' on the cap.

My Absolute Favorite Pen
Buy a Package of 3 on Amazon to save and always have one on hand.

I am also reading this lovely book 'The Book of Delights', which is a collection of essays about one or many things each day that the author found 'delightful' and how he is more and more walking through the world feeling the delight in things around him and the joy of being alive.  Check it out below.

crochet and drawings

strawberry ice cream and cake.. maybe.  the two color mix I'm doing with a cone of red yarn and the shiny tan yarn is a little like a christmas sugar cookie with red sprinkles...

I couldn't find any more of the off-white yarn at either store, so now I've got to decide to break up the pattern or continue with the white and have just that one area with the off-white... I'm thinking I'm going to mix the white and the tan yarn together there and then do it again on the other side, and that will allow me to do something else 'on both sides' that is alike as well... maybe pink mixed with the tan after that.  I was roaring along did all of what you see here in one day and then I came to a standstill because I wasn't sure how to proceed or if I should rip out.

The tan yarn in the big skein is part Alpaca.. from an old cache of statsh yarn.

 study of a cat that won't sit still - slightly abstracted

 drawing a memory of the 1940s house with the barrel stove and the brick wall... I will have to do from another angle so I can get the German wooden cuckoo clock above the chair by the window to the right of all of this.

Great Snoring Rabbits

Great Snoring Rabbits in rowboats being rowed by robots.

Just a little joke I told Esme the other morning when she asked why I was 'happy' to be awake at five am.  I'm not happy to be awake so early, but its a little harder to go right back to sleep once you think of something silly :)

I've got to do my Welsh practice now and get some sleep!  It's been a long week already.  I have Friday off, and that is an anniversary I will light a candle for my Mom.

Bought some new elephant ears for the yard to plant when it warms up.  We've thought about taking the chicken house out of its yard and turning that yard into a garden this year, since the chickens are done... Gennet is running wild and eating out of the goat's food, and she doesn't lay eggs anymore... all of the rest of the chickens are gone but she is too wily so far and somehow has lived through the deep freezes we have had and whatever predators were out there that got Wicket and the others inside the yard.

Bit o sketch and walkies

Sketch of trees and fence (pic from my tablet camera)  Esme and I walked our dogs out on the road and saw two large deer. I am closing at work all this week.

Chickens were happy today, no eggs but they had eaten their food from yesterday and were glad to see more.

Old sketchbook things

I've been going through some of my old sketchbooks and portfolios and picked out a few things I liked.

double exposure photograph from my portfolio of me entering the front entry of a house I lived in Fargo and one of the campus buildings at the North  Dakota State University.

 a self-portrait drawn in 2004 at age 25

'Shoot the moon' sketch from automatic drawing in pen and ink

'I am June'  (poem by Marie Lamb)
this was a bit of poetry in one of my sketchbooks

And what is your name?  The bird asked the deer.
"I am June", the creature responded.
And where are you from?
"The Land of Spring Rain and Summer Sky."

There was a time when I was young --
A time I remember but it was long ago.
I cannot describe what it was like --
Except my mind, my body, my soul were all growing at once.

I'm not sure how much of me grows now, or when.
But the young green leaves that I had been now taste summer rain.

I wait for the flowers -- to tell me how far I've come in all this time.

Brown these leaves have not yet seen nor the cold of autumn night.

But here in June, we remember early April, the melting of the snow that kept back the sun -
We remember growing - all at once - and watch the skies clad in their Summer blue.