Carrasco Studio

Spring Inches Across the Land

 My tulips are up and meditating about blooming, and a male robin is patroling our spaded beds.  He looks martial and very smartly turned out.  New feathers and a bit of a black crest on his head.  Aha! A worm! He dives in triumph. (the robin) The early bird...etc., etc.

Which brings to mind.  My watercolor class at CandP starts up again on the 22nd of  March.  I wanted to let you know before it fills up.  Register soon.  The early bird...etc.etc.

Here's the facts.

Brown wrens, martial robins, timorous rabbits, fresh and radiant art loving creatures! Let's express our inchoate yearnings and renewals with splashes of paint and blooming fields of flowers.

Besides having fun, you learn skills and a way to start on your individual path in art. As a teacher, the coffee shop has been my favorite venue. Cameron and Pete, the owners of CandP Coffee have been the souls of generosity to allow us to paint in their space.  We all have bloomed.  You too, come to the meadow.

See ya. Chirp! Ribbit! Cheep!

 

 

St. Nicolas Trudges On

I've heard it on the best authority (Drudge and Celebrity News) that the old guy is on his way through the frozen North.  He's been walking a lot and dieting (Recession) and the reindeer are on strike for higher wages, so he had to start early. Tomorrow he'll be at the Canadian border and be in line at customs, but if he clears that, he'll be at your house on schedule.

Since you all have been good, I'm sure you'll get yo-yo's instead of sticks.

Happy Holidays from me and Phil.

My cards, both for holiday and events,  are available at www.Emery-Burton.com.carrasco carrasco

 

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.

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.

 

 

Green Oceans

I was raised in a small town in a valley between these hills.

And this is the ending triplet stanza for a sestina I wrote about going home for a visit.

Wind parts the grasses, revealing the lines of crumbling foundations.
A dust devil swirls and ripples the wheat, like the stir of inventions
  still turning and flashing, the green fields of my mind..

 

 When I went back this June, I  almost unnerved by the silence and the empty sweep of clouds and wind over the land. I belong in the Palouse, I was born and raised there, but at the same time...never at home in this vastness and quiet.

I want a simple life...to be able to walk in safety to the grocery and the library and to have enough land to root around in.  But not this simple. I like having real water ocean nearby, not an ocean of grain.

Russet, Ochre and Madder Brown

Last Sunday we set up an arrangement in the main room of CandP coffee house and five of us painted away for about 2 and a half hours.  Sharon and I went for the whole thing but the others found it too overwhelming and went with one object or another grouping.

I felt my composition was too busy, so I went home and tried it again and then thought it was too hard edged.  So I just said to hell with it and slathered water along all the outer edges and inbetween.  It turned out sort of 1950's illustration-ish.  I wonder if all my exposure as a kid to Lady's Home Journal and Redbook illustrations are leaking into my 2009 psyche.

CandP Watercolor Class 10/27/09 ....I Wish I Could Tell You

                                                  ©Jennifer M. Carrasco 10/30/09

.....How these peonies speak to me...before, during and after their extravagance, their blowzy, lemon scented June magnificence. From 1983 to 2002 when I finally moved into my own house , I have moved from pillar to post with lily of the valley and my grandmother's peony plant roots.

Lily of the valley because those were the first plants of my garden I started at the age of 7, and my grandmother's peonies because they are so inextricably tied in with my childhood and  family memories.

 Enough.  Here's the first lesson of the second unit of the fall watercolor classes. For those who have taken previous classes, I call you "Old Hands"...a sort of cowboy-in-the -bunk-house term.....your instructions are in italics, since you have learned to read cursive by now.   "Newbies" sounds too pewling and naked for the new students.  I'll just call you "New Students"  Your instructions are in regular type.

I have included one photo I took last June of one of my peonies.  If you have missed the first class, you can use that one for your practice.

 

CandP Watercolor classes...  Oct. 27, first lesson, second unit

Old hands.......pictures/peonies and lilies.....show lily structure...remind about positive/negative space
Look at the whites in Sorolla, lily, books    Show my peony....acrylic, but done like watercolor..  Glazes.  If you haven’t read page 20, read it now.
Lightly sketch both flowers on 1/8 piece of paper.  On lily, paint the negative space very pale blue. ... with peony, pale yellow.  (you are welcome to hang out to review with new students)

2,  Tear and tape 2 papers.  Hand out “fish” pictures.  Beginnners draw a Large Fish Very Lightly with pencil on one paper...almost touch either end of paper.  Paint your fish with a watery Azo or Aureolin Yellow.  Using only a watery pthalo or manganese blue,drop into the watery yellow.  See how the pigments move. Tip it.  Try with alizarin crimson.....try other pigments...what happens as the paint starts drying?  Leave a MOAT between fish and negative space and paint the space a pale pthalo blue or manganese blue...drop colors into that.

Old hands.......discuss initial glazes for peonies and lilies, then  the overglazes.  Have 

Explain to Daisy and any other Old Hands how to use “tabs” of color to match values of hues...Review...top to bottom, light to dark, cool to warm, soft to high contrast.  Glazes....don’t use Pthalo blue or green as an overglaze...Why?
what stainer color works for glazes IF you water it down?  Alizarin crimson works OK IF you dilute it.

Discuss my peony example.  Work back and forth on two flowers......why? (let's the areas dry)  How would you get those little dots of gravel behind the lilies (use masking fluid)

3.  Look over Pigment chart.....stains...go into paper (pthalo, quins, azos)
                opaque, sedimentary, transparent.....(cadmium, chromium, manganese,    
                        ochres, siennas, umbers, ultramarines, cobalts,etc.

Assignment: Re-read 6-15.  Try doing the same technique you learned with the fish on some fall leaves...start with a pale yellow or red or blue....bleed some other colors into them.  Wait until they dry and then glaze some colors over them.  BRING TO CLASS!!!!!

Assignment for Old Hands.  Finish at least one flower painting (both will make you expert faster!) Bring to class !    Read pages 22 to 25

.....and here's one of my all time favorite cartoons by Booth.  Too too appropriate.

Homesick for summer

Sigh.  The fog and rain and brilliant leaves.   I yearn for the meadows of summer today.