A Brief History of my Art Life

The Sunday Scribblings prompt is "Art".

Yes, computer doodling is what I now often substitute for the other art forms of my lifetime. I usually do not bother to save it, but I kind of liked this one.

It is a far cry from the landscapes and portraits of my years at Stanford University as an art major. I loved the scent of the art building, predominately of turpentine, probably unhealthy, but associated in my mind with the pleasures of smoothing my moistened watercolor paper on the wooden board, securing it with brown mailing tape, then later returning for it and my watercolor palette, number twenty red sable brush, an assortment of Windsor and Newton watercolor tubes in various squeezed and flattened states, mayonnaise jar of water, portable easel. With these I could venture forth into the nearby landscape for an afternoon of intense pleasure, albeit with considerable sneezing and watering of my eyes, since I was allergic to the wild oats that carpeted the foothills.

I've posted the following watercolor before, but I will show it again as the only example I own of those Stanford afternoons. The others have made their way into various households - one still hangs on the living room wall of a friend whose ninetieth birthday we celebrated two years ago.


And above is one that Granddaughter Josie sent me to show me how she had had it reframed. That bright white spot is the reflection in the glass of her flash. I know that with the magic of my computer I could get rid of it, but I'd rather continue this blurb. Just for fun I had made a tiny copy of the original (by hand and watercolor, long before the age of computers) which she included in the frame. The painting is of the patio of the Menlo Park Arts Guild in a neighboring small town.

After I married Otto I continued to paint, mostly in watercolors, feeling that I was increasing in skill. All of those paintings have fled to other places. But then we moved to Berkeley where there were wonderful stores selling all manner of art supplies, and, out of homage to my elementary school days, I bought a box of Crayola crayons with 64 colors (as compared to the eight colors that I had when young). For almost the first time, I decided to draw some abstracts. This next picture will be one that I have posted before, but I am avoiding the temptation to spend the afternoon happily rummaging through the house for new examples, thus putting off the end of this tale.

Of Moons and Springs and Dragon Wings

I am excluding all my adventures into crafts, such as macrame, stained glass, colored Easter eggs, ornaments of all kinds, fimo necklaces (see a few in side bar), simple pottery, etc.

And now we come down (or up) to the age of computers and my preoccupation with dragons. The dragon phase had started quite a while back, but mostly I collected them. With a computer waiting I could get out my pencil and draw a dragon...
...as in the smallest sketch above, which has as its model one of my wooden Balinese dragon sculptures. The brown one to the left is an actual photo of the sculpture. Then follow variations accomplished on the computer. I have never drawn anything from a photo or other two-dimensional picture. My drawing was of the actual carving. I have become very adept at using my mouse to draw directly on the monitor image.

I became good at drawing imaginary dragons to illustrate my stories. I don't know whether illustration should be included under art, but whatever I call it, it's fun. Sometimes I would integrate - by the magic of computer - one of my fictional dragons with one of my crayon abstracts, as in the next picture.

Also under the heading of illustration, I occasionally use oil pastels, as in the illustration below that I drew for a poem of mine called "Celebration", a fantasy of bears celebrating the winter solstice.

Back in my college days I thought that art would become a major part of my life. That hasn't happened. It didn't take too long to realize that I might become, at most, a very minor artist. Writing has been more rewarding than drawing, and then there was all the rest of life (meaning 98% of it).

So should I end this with another computer generated abstract? I consider these amusement, not real art, but this one can support my opening picture like a bookend. And a message perhaps?