The above obsessed picture inspired by the wonderful Chad Grohman's inspired illustrations in his moleskines>> He blows my mind....He is an extrordinary talent, wit and hand. Check him out>> Last night, R and our pal Bruce went down to see Eilen Jewell (a real favorite amongst all of us natives), K went to a party, A was recovering from a race and I dove into my illustration with a happy abandon as the congestion from the month had cleared. I have a few weeks until the Hartford Tribe meets again, and I wanted selfishly to have some time to craft and tweak my Vin illustration which has morphed (and to all my art directors around here, bettered) and begin to work with the figures...which my thesis advisor advised. On it. Maybe not great. But, on it. Was working on some patterny things which surprisingly felt emotionally pretty hollow compared to the pictures I have been working on. I am back on studying the Indian painting book. Am intrigued by the symmetry of their images and the simple faces and figures they have. I was going Leger on myself and reminded myself of the illustration conventions and figured I would go Indian again to see where it could go. The Indian paintings are not about personalities (though there are some remarkable portraits of Princes and well to do men) but more about the patterny rug of flora and fauna, layers of forground, foreground and foreground, and the sheer, unabashed delight in flat color. Forget the shading. So, more to study even before the pencil hits the paper.
Yesterday was rain. Today was perfect. Made a few apple crisps and slid them into the fridge. Yesterday, I cooked with everything on the edge making an impromptu, vegetarian mushroom soup, a pasta dish, a cranberry salad. Today, the impromptu began with the crisp and now I have another potato soup on the stove for the week (or better, tomorrow). We bought 2 pie pumpkins, a bag of butternut squashes, a spaghetti squash, 3 delicato squashes, and a box of fresh potatoes while we visited Sheldrake for the afternoon, the sun and the fall colors. It was perfect in Sheldrake with sapphire water, and trees on fire. The osage orange (monkey brains) has been dropping fruit so we had a nice time filling a wheel barrow with the fruit or lobbing it at Shady Grove.
This week promises a bit more sanity.