Carrasco Studio

The Spinach that Ate Seattle

No, I have not abandoned the Art World.  I have not flown up on my own private rapture.

I have been waiting for the planets to align so I can get photos of this year's big mural projects.....about three of them.  However, due to Seattle's extremely wet winter, the stucco has sprung a leak  for the site of my three 5'x 9' canvases. The wine room client has had to have surgery, and the 9'x12' mural in CleElum is installed, but the furniture has to be just right before the client will set up for photos.  Sigh. Life.

So, I have been busy with my other art....gardening.  Note the size of the spinach  on the right hand  side of my raised box and other spinach slithering along at the box base.  I got the seeds from Annie's Annuals and Perennials and the combination of rain and compost  and this special seed has created acromeglic spinach. Huge, and more huge.

  Phil is getting tired of spinach dishes and the whole green thing is getting out of hand.  We've started to go to bed with a machete on the bedstand.

Also, we have put in a living room space in our basement apartment, and it has really amped up it's cuteness factor. (and we can charge more)

Got a new sleeper sofa, found the 50's TV trays at a neighbor's estate sale, and a real little Persian rug at a dry cleaners. Phil worried about the vases tipping over, but I told him that for 99 cents at Goodwill, we could deal with a little tipping.

And, I lowered my standards (and enjoyed it) by painting some Sofa Paintings. Two acrylics...sort of color fieldish with some leaf and water elements, and a gouache ala DeKooning/Carrasco for old times sake. Like when I struggled in Painting 101.

Leaf color field                                                                                    5'x 2' Acrylic on Canvas

Leaf color field                                                                                  3'x 1.5' Acrylic on canvas

Garden Frenzy                                                                 20" x 30" Gouache over watercolor

Hint: I painted the gouache over a big watercolor I screwed up....it was really fun....worked mostly with chip brushes, sharp points to scratch with and pastel pencils. I think I'll do more of these.  After 40 years, I finally got the hang of it.  Besides, I have enough messups in watercolor to keep me busy for a while.

Abstract art is a lot harder, in my opinion, because you don't have the resonance of an image to play against.

And Phil  had real challenges with making the new room watertight. Seattle basements always leak.  I thought Lynne would appreciate this, since she has an artisian well in her basement.  Note also that Phil has installed earthquake plates all around the foundation of our house.  San Francisco is not the only shaker and mover along this ring of fire!

I made the mistake of showing Phil  the levels of finish for sheet rock that Regina featured on Fauxology. Now I warrant that our renter will be the only one living in a level 5 finished apartment!  Painstaking.

Sheet rock knees.  A disease of carpenters.

And also, I've been working on a series of watercolors called, eponymously, "Clear Water"  They are quite large, some of them.....20" by 30", and so far I have about 10 I like.  Here's one.

And then.....I have developed 4 images for a children's nursery that I plan to reproduce.  But I'm keeping those under my hat until their grand opening.......

So, you see.  I haven't been lolling on the couch eating bon bons.

 

West Seattle Blog Ruins Tour and CandP Watercolor classes

Hey people...take a look at the West Seattle Blog article about my work and my classes in the March 21 !  Ellen Cedargreen wrote the article and took the photos during my tour of the Ruins and also put in a plug for my classes.  Thanks Ellen!  Thanks West Seattle Blog!  My infamy increases.

Photo by Robert Pisano            The Ruins Ballroom.  40’ by 30’ by 17’ high.

 

Here I was, ready to install after two years of work.

The Pacific Northwest Primeval cartouche ..15’ by 17’ Part of the Ruins Ballroom.

The Nez Perce Cartouche 17’ by 8’  Part of the Ruins Ball Room

J. Edgar Hoofer.  4’ by 2.5’  (in the entry) Part of a series I painted of 30’s political characters. Mr. Hoofer, here, is a cross-dressing zebra.  John Swartley designed the format for all 6 characters.

BTW, the food at the Ruins is fabulous.

And here’s a shot of my wonderful students in a class  a couple of winters ago.

(Each class unit has a different focus....this next unit (starting tonight at CandP Coffee 5612 California Ave SW Seattle, WA 98136-1515(206) 933-3125) will feature spring, animals, color theory and creation of space with values and aerial perspective.  All levels of skills welcome.

©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/17/09  All blog entries on this site, visual or intellectual, are the property of Jennifer M. Carrasco (unless stated otherwise) and cannot be reproduced or used without her written permission.

Gather Ye Rosebuds

 

We had a fine time with painting images of flowers at Susan Allemand's studio. There were ten students, from beginners to professionals, and they did great. As I tell students, everyone starts where they are at.

We worked with Golden Liquid Acrylics on Roclon canvas, and we talked about how this combination worked especially well with painting flowers.  Flower petals, for the most part, are transparent, tender forms, and watercolor paintings of flowers, because of this transparency, are especially effective.  The techniques of watercolor....glazes, transparent levels of pigment...are easily transferable to working with acrylics on canvas....especially  Golden Liquid Acrylics mixed with medium or water on Roclon canvas. 

Roclon canvas doesn't need to be stretched before painting, and because of it's unique blend of cotton and polyester and texture, washes and glazes of acrylics go on beautifully.  The artist has a choice to built texture and opaque paint if they wish.

The class tried some single blooms....roses and peonies first.....and some did bouquets later.

And some rugged individuals did palm trees! (It pleases me when I see people pushing in different directions.)  I DO NOT teach splinter skills.  These techniques are effective for many approaches and subjects...from abstract to figurative....flowers petals, water, glass and splashes of color with great marks.  Try them all.

I get depressed and irked when students strive for a perfect copy of my work, take it home and put it on their website as their originals.  First of all, they are not me and their body talks differently from my body. Secondly, it always looks like student work because....well, it does. No ifs ands or buts about it.  Also, it crosses an ethical line.

Your creativity is a precious gift. If you never use it and continue to copy and copy, it will atrophy.  If you use an age old motif, ie. an acanthus leaf border, somehow expand it to make it your own.

I also demonstrated how I created borders with acrylic metallic tube paint (more body) on Roclon. (Roclon doesn't fray) and mounted it with wallpaper paste on a rigid surface.   With the right paste, you can remove the mural if you want after a few years without doing damage to either the mural or the wall.  Another method is to attach grommets and hang the painting like a tapestry.  Lori Wilson of Golden Acrylics showed me how to do that.  Another tapestry look can be achieved by hanging the work over a painted dowel.

Transparency, layers of color, organic forms overlapping in subtle arrangements of color and shape and value.  Sounds like a rose, doesn't it? 

Name this Rose                             ©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/23/42                                                             

 

Fifi and Fo Fum. French Yaps

 
A few years ago I was requested to present a client's small dogs in panels for her living room.  They were to be portrayed "in the French manner" Perfect for Rococo.

I always like to meet the real thing when I do a job, so I drove over to meet the little creatures with some doggie treats and a camera. 

They were tiny gnat-like creatures.  Little yapping ectoplasms to one used to gallumping labradors and hunting dogs, but the client loved them....all five of the little dogs swarming  around in a bunch at my feet.......if mosquitos could bark.

I have the rest of the series....somewhere on a CD, and once I get this wretched job of getting my images and projects ready for my web guy, I should have them all together....

Days of Wine and Hedges

Meet "Pensive Bacchus".......my newest mural for a wine cellar. 

My clients love France...and they asked me to design a "sculpture" of a young Bacchus along the lines of Michelangelo's adolescent Bacchus....(not the riotous infant Bacchus or dipsomaniac paunchy Bacchus, although they would have been fun)....against a stylized " Versaille" parterre or tall trimmed hedge. 

All this against a base color of deep cobalt blue, which I pointed up with a  ceiling comet of gold leaf stars and a sprinkling of stars on the ceiling, the sky and some of the parterre. 

The wine cellar is to the left, and this mural is in a small tasting room.  The "hedge" or parterre will extend all the way around the room.  The effect I aimed for is a moonlit night, and it's surprising how the deep color and the repetitive patterns have enlarged the space visually.

I literally overlapped on two big projects.....had to place plastic over my big triptych pieces and whale away on the wine cellar mural.  It can be done.

And here are some of my steps....

I painted some of my Roclon canvas a deep cobalt blue.  I don't have to stretch this type of canvas (see [email protected] for sources) ; otherwise I couldn't have overlapped my underlying canvas as I did. 

 
I drew and cut my stencils for the leaf patterns and drew my Bacchus on tissue and pricked the lines with a pouncing tool. Then I started applying layers of stencilled leaf patterns onto the cobalt canvas.....lighter yellows and greens at the top, darker greens and black greens at the bottom.

Then I started glazing with blue, purple, and black glazes in the appropriate areas....darker at the bottom.

 I then pounced the pattern with white chalk, and then followed the pouncing points with a fine white line of paint and started filling him in with naples yellow, leaving some bluish areas for shadows or adding  and changing shadows with a mixture of paynes grey and naples yellow.

After I got the Bacchus to not look so snarky,  I applied  a glaze of cobalt blue and/or red violet to Bacchus and all of the hedge at once.  I wiped  off a few areas about the shoulders, his head, his wine glass, his fingers and left arm to create a feeling of moonlight falling on his form.

My client and I worked together on the application of the canvas to the wall, rolling claybased adhesive (Roman brand at Rodda Paint) on both the wall and the canvas...waiting for about 20 minutes to let the adhesive set up, applying the mural to the wall, smoothing it out from the center....and then, cleaning up!

I finished the mural the day before Xmas Eve, when my talented clients included Phil and me in a sit down, Oh La La,  fourteen dish, (Julia Child recipes,) 7 wine FEAST for Revillion de Noel. A work of art in itself.

Uh.  Sorry to say, after that,  we didn't end up the evening with the traditional Midnight Mass.

Today we have felt blissfully weak and wandered around all day in our pajamas.

Salut. 

Fairies, Continued

I promised my Web designer that I would collate and label my images for a new site he is setting up for me.  So groan.  I am weeding out, drifting through and discarding the slag.

Today I am in my Fairy File.  Here's the project I did for a client who wanted a fairy birthday mural in the deep woods.  She loves Victorian art and decor. I did some vignettes for ideas, and while I usually do a careful rendering before I start, this time I just Did It. 
I decided all the animals would bring presents, and be dressed up.  However, nature girl that I am, I had the animals wrap their presents in leaves and flowers instead of Hallmark, and wear costumes of the same. Some fairies and animals brought light. The deer, of course, were exquisite and brough their present to the fairy on an elegant travois.  The moles, being astimatic with severe sinus problems were mouth breathers and  pictured in too large hats of skunk cabbage (they couldn't smell them) .

As a rule, I am not fond of possums, but wanted to be democratic.  Note the rabbit with many piercings for his earrings, the garter snake with an avalanche lily hat, and the ladybugs traveling from vine to vine on a blackberry expressway.

The fox, transfixed by the event into his gentler nature,  is being observed by an elf.

This is a section of the mural, and the waterfall rushes down over the toy box opening into a blue "water" rug.  I wanted to put inserts of green lily pads rug into the "water" rug, but we didn't get around to it.  This was a project that seemed to ramble on and on...butterflies in the bathroom, constellations above the bed, morning glory borders, etc....the design shows it...a bit tacked on and discursive.

This mural was taken down and put up in five different houses.   The mural even went to Maine. My client liked to move around a lot.

©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/17/09  All blog entries on this site, visual or intellectual, are the property of Jennifer M. Carrasco (unless stated otherwise) and cannot be reproduced or used without her written permission.

Onward and Sideways

Yeah, I know...who paints a mural in a black t-shirt and jeans.  Not I, said the little red hen.

Anyhow, this is one of my 3 canvases for a client here in Seattle.  A Mediterannean scene...triptych for three arched spaces.  Just beginning.  And, of course, now I 'm tormented with the sound worm of "Lemon Tree" warbling between my ears. 

This job, if I have read my client and designer correctly, will give me option to work in a more painterly fashion, which is a boon and a blessing.  I like the chance to let 'er rip.

Here again is the drawing for the piece...we are altering a few aspects...no parrot cage, etc.

And again, lest we forget....

©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/17/09  All blog entries on this site, visual or intellectual, are the property of Jennifer M. Carrasco (unless stated otherwise) and cannot be reproduced or used without her written permission.

Night Spirit

Last week I read a wonderful tribute to marriage and art on Connie and Randy Coita's website, Studio Abbellire,  http://studioabbellire.com/blog/?p=444,  as well as a stunning post of her latest project, a trompe l'oeil Luna moth on a lichen covered panel. Connie is a gifted painter, and her husband Randy is a fine painter as well.

Randy writes that like the Luna Moth,  we artists often start our lives at night and work until dawn. Yeah, I know, it takes a very understanding partner and no other obligations (i.e. kids) to do this very often, or at all.  It's a very uneasy balance with doing art and doing the mother, wife and worker bee at the same time. I've been there, and like many women, I felt I was pulled in too many directions to be good at any role.

But, if your life has evolved into a situation where you can work into the night, it is the most peaceful and focused time to do it.  No meals to prepare, no bank accounts to balance, no kids to soccer.  Like the actual Luna moth I encountered on our screen door one humid night in Georgia, you have time and space just to be.....to  fan out your creative wings and make beauty. For an artist, it's the gift of a quiet time to create in your mind , on a canvas, or to connect the lights of  fireflies in the night.

I have loved the Luna moth since I was a little girl and my mother gave me "Girl of the Limberlost" to read by Gene Porter. Mr. Porter wrote of many lovely things, but the Luna was a repeated icon in his book.  If there is ever a tender, evanescent testimony to the beauty of the natural world, it is this exquisite moth. 

My painted image of the Luna is from a chinoiserie room I did for a client.  Here's a wall of that room.  Like Waldo, the moth is hiding with a lot of flora and fauna. Can you find her?

And thanks, Connie and Randy, for sharing your vision of "a little night music."

BAAA BAAA Jackson

I amped up my cuteness factor with this lawn ornament I did for my cousin Maggie's sheep soiree auction. I offered to paint the form made of rough pressed wood and decided it had to be done ala Jackson Pollack. Notice this lamb has a talking mustache.

And here is Maggie's event.  She trains sheep dogs and is an animal whisperer.  She is the first person who has ever told me that sheep intelligence exists on a special sheep plane.  I was humbled.

Do come to the event if you can.  After the pen and the sheep shipment (sheep have been brought in from Arizona so Maggie's sheep won't get too tired) are paid for, all the proceeds go to a special projects foundation for Vashon Island teachers.

So far, I'm bringing 6 of my peeps to come enjoy the event, hang out with dogs and sheep and have a picnic on the meadow. It's supposed to be nice.  Yawl come. Baaaaa.

A Horse of a Different Color

Since I'm ramping up for a new project ( a set of three murals,) I haven't done new work since I did the rendering for this current job.  So I thought I'd throw in a blast from the past. (You can tell by my hair color)  One of my more unusual jobs.

This was done for The Ruins, an private dining club extravaganza where nothing was ordinary. I was fortunate to be hired to do a lot of painting for The Ruins, and this was one of my projects.

My client showed me a full sized white paper mache horse that he had bought from Fredrick and Nelson department store when it went out of business, and asked me to paint it gold and then cover it with tiny flowers.  The horse had traveled with Yves St. Laurent's runway fashion show, and Seattle was the end of the line, so Mr. French Thoroughbred ended up the store basement, waiting for someone to lead him into the light.

A horse knowledgeable friend told me that the horse looked like it had too much spring grass....perhaps refering to it's round belly.  I preferred to think it was pregnant and one night would give birth to a whole litter of floral colts.  Of course it is a boy horse, but I didn't let that interfere with my story.

Horses keep turning up in my oeuvre, and in fact, were my initial drive to create art.  I lived in a small rural community and all my friends had horses and/or cattle, and I desperately wanted a horse.  However, my father, in his infinite wisdom, would not buy me one.  So I drew them, did paintings of them, rode my friend's horses and would whinny and paw the air when I came to the breakfast table.  Dad ignored my subtle hints, and I outgrew my fetish.  Well, sorta.

Later in life I painted and repainted the Spokane Loof Carrousel horses on four different occasions.  Fifty-eight of the lovely creatures.  I posted this before (see my carrousel archive), but here it is again.  GiddyUp.