Plein air paintings, studio art and lessons
the kittens opened their eyes while we were away on break. this is the runt, which we can both feel and hear (he is the loudest screamer). His eyes actually had begun opening the day we packed our bags to go, and he was also the first to stand and walk.
I root for the underdog. Undercat?
The sun is panning upon the mountaintop like a crazed optimist, beaming on the last spring snowpack and the tiny sprouts of lupine that pepper the weak gray earth at the foot of the ski slope and the final week of the ski season and the velvet blacktop of the parking lot abutting the snow. A mother slides down to the foot of the slope as if on autopilot and unclamps her bindings with an aluminum pole while her four year-old son plows a serpentine stop to meet her and mimics her every move until both of them are hobbling to a parked Mazda SUV that barely looks blue beneath the ubiquitous crust of salt and sand, like the raccoon-eyed facial tans worn by every skier who has seen at least three days of this crackpot sunshine. These two are locals who don’t even need to stop at base for lunch because they will make sandwiches at home. As they pull out she rolls down the driver’s side window and hangs out to greet the next person waiting.
“You got lucky!”
Slowly the second car pulls into the empty spot, one car away from the foot of the slope, and the driver gets out smiling into the crystallized sunshine and back out across the parking lot. He pulls out of the back of his truck a long fluorescent multicolored snowboard and a beanie and a pair of reflective goggles and he locks his door and plods happily towards the resort, followed by two little boys in black snowpants and turtlenecks and three day-old bedhead and chocolate ice cream crust. Their parents watch passively as the boys meander from the parking lot to skirt the precipice of a retaining wall that stands perhaps thirty feet above ground level of the massive resort lodge while they hop from rock to rock along the wall, engrossed like young lambs with the craggy rock beneath them and oblivious to the heights from which they could easily topple, but of course they don’t; this is an upscale resort, as the family is coming to realize, that does not allow bad publicity in the form of tragic child-toppling.
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We’ve been in Lake Tahoe for the week, escaping all the seedlings and kittens and chicks and bunnies for jawdropping panoramic delights and one more ounce of snow. All along, we have missed home and those unspoken little nurturing rituals that make us innate farmers. All week we’ve flung our bodies around the sierras in pinball arcade idiocy, never really hitting the G spot but constantly ramming the bells. Tahoe, you are beautiful and all, but I have to admit: I’m just not that in love with you. You’re smokin hot, though! That’s why we keep coming back, eastbound and down without our senses. xxxo
This is how a warm-up page usually looks. Sketchbooks are great for warming up.
My hand was trying hard to translate for my eyes, so I was about on the third of six sketches of this one particular person in this one particular photo. Chas walked in.
I told him that drawing is a lot like exercise, in that you have to warm up your muscles before you can run.
I told him, also, that this person’s face was particularly difficult, so I had to keep trying to capture it until I was happy with the translation. I also explained that I was a little “out of shape.” 😉
“I’ll help you, mommy.” which he did, here and there.
He, too, was satisfied with the sixth drawing, that one in the lower right.