Chalk Magic

Watercolor on illustration board. 20″ x 14.5″

While the city bakes in the sun, she dreams of water.

I spent too long on this painting because I kept changing my mind. Originally the city was supposed to be very grimy and dark, but as I worked on the design, it gained a sort of Middle-Eastern atmosphere: dry, sunny, and hot.

The view through “window” in the wall was supposed to show an opposite of the city. Originally this was a green forest, then a garden, then a bright ocean. After painting in the ocean, I decided that this wasn’t different enough from the lighting and mood of the city. I added some pink and darker blue, and made it a sea at sunset.

Featured Paintings – Link

My paintings have been featured over on The Artsy Craftsy, a lovely blog about creative inspiration.

It always surprises me when people tell me that they’re inspired by my work.   I find inspiration in so many things, but it never really occurs to me that I could pass that inspiration along to someone else.

Otherworld

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Pauline Baynes, 1950.

I am haunted by doors.

I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a child and since then I have never entirely given up hope (even as a grown-up person) that  someday I will open a door and find another world on the other side.

Oddly enough, the first time I read that book, I felt the strangest sense of recognition, like I already knew the story.  I’m not saying I could predict the plot– all those twists and turns were new to me.  I mean that I came upon the book and recognized it as an old friend that I happened to be meeting for the first time.

I did not read the Harry Potter series until after I graduated university.  I knew almost nothing about the books while I was growing up– other than that they were wildly popular, and involved magic.

So when I opened Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, with the idea that I would finally see what all the fuss was about, and have a few days of entertaining reading.

Within the first few pages, the same sense of recognition come crashing down on me.  I knew this book.  I had always known this book.  It was my old friend, my friend that I had never met before.

All my life I’ve wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom. I devoured those books by C.S. Lewis and William Dunthorn, Ellen Wentworth, Susan Cooper, and Alan Garner. When I could get them from the library, I read them out of order as I found them, and then in order, and then reread them all again, many times over. Because even when I was a child I knew it wasn’t simply escape that lay on the far side of the borders of fairyland…There was a knowledge―an understanding hidden in the marrow of my bones that only I can access―telling me that by crossing over, I’d be coming home. That’s the reason I’ve yearned so desperately to experience the wonder, the mystery, the beauty of that world beyond the World As It Is. It’s because I know that somewhere across the border there’s a place for me. A place of safety and strength and learning, where I can become who I’m supposed to be. I’ve tried forever to be that person here, but whatever I manage to accomplish in the World As It Is only seems to be an echo of what I could be in that other place that lies hidden somewhere beyond the borders.

-Charles de Lint

Perhaps this is the reason why I write.  I must go on building doors for others, until my own door opens.

—

Illustration by Pauline Baynes from the 1978 HarperCollins edition of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lews.

Quote by Charles de Lint from chocolateinthelibrary.tumblr.com.

Plein-Air – Racquetball Court

Watercolor sketch of a racquetball court. Hardly anyone uses this court, and it has incredible lichen and stains on the walls.

I’m trying to focus on values.   My art teacher in college used to say, “Make the darks darker and the brights brighter.”   But I think I left the shadows in the court too light and made the tree too dark.  Better luck next time.

Books

I always rummage through the “Make an Offer” boxes at the library book sale.

These boxes are full of books that are too ratty or too odd to sell in the Collector’s Corner (where the nice old books go). I feel sorry for these books. They’re beautiful. Fascinating. They deserve to go home instead of getting pitched in the rubbish heap– or bought by art students who are going to chop them up for collages.

This lovely little book still has its dust jacket. But what caught my attention it is that stamp on the jacket: “Nelson Libraries: Every post office receives books for free transmission to trench, camp, and hospital.” Inside, someone wrote: “Rw. T. Barnes. Christmas, 1918. Hilderstone (?) V.”

Hilderstone is a village in Staffordshire. No idea what “V” stands for. The book sold for 7d. (Sevenpence.) I have no idea how a book, given one Christmas nearly a century ago in a Staffordshire village, ended up in a bargain box in Florida.

This book I nearly passed over.  Its title, Ça Ira, comes from a song from the French Revolution.    As a pro-Royalist (yes, I have loyalties about that revolution), I took offense, and then I read the author’s introduction:

I dedicate this book to the WORKINGMEN, and to the memory of all who have ever suffered in their Cause, hoping that the energies of the living, and the inspiration of the dead, may unite to peacefully accomplish that Great Revolution to which all Humanitarians must look with the greatest concern, The Emancipation of Labor.

Great.  Not only is the author a Sans-Culotte, he’s a bloody Marxist.  But when I looked again at the front leaf, I realized I was holding an autographed copy:

“To Reese Crawford with the compliments of The Author.  Waverly Hall, Nov. 20th 1876.”

Now that’s cool.

Also, Reese Crawford seems to have scribbled his arithmetic homework in here. Or maybe he was calculating the expense of starting another Great Revolution.  On the pages after that, he wrote mysterious lists of authors, historical personages, and books:

“Les Misérables Victor Hugo, The Vicar of Wakefield, Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat, Tom Sawyer, Napoleon III, R E Lee.”

And the list goes on.  No idea if this was his assigned reading or if these were books he thought might inspire the Emancipation of Labor.

I doubt I’ll ever read either of these books, but I’ve rescued them from the bargain boxes, and they’ll have a safe home on my bookshelves.

More Spam

…And since I updated my Followers post this morning, I have gained three more spam followers.

Followers!

UPDATE:  Apparently lots of blogs on WordPress are getting a huge influx of spam followers.   I’ve looked at all my followers and it seems that about half of them are real, and the rest are an odd mixture of Russian, Hindi, and obvious spam blogs (used car websites, travel agents, etc.)

Getwritedowntoit has a great post on spam followers.

Anyway, thank you to my real followers!

—

Last Saturday I went to a bridal shower and came back with a sinus infection.  I’ve spent the past week sneezing, coughing, and looking at bunnies with pancakes on their heads.  Very little else has been accomplished, but for some reason I’ve picked up more followers.

So– thank you!