Eleven Lemons

More Bunnies and a Horse

2012-02-08T00:34:00.000-08:00

Well, I suppose I could say that I was trying for a full year without a blog post but that wouldn't be true...... and I really have meant to write, so many times...... I've dashed off quickie drive-bys on Facebook and even quicker ones on Twitter even though, of course, it's not quite the same. Everyone knows what the road to Hell is paved with and while it's not as bad as all that...I do feel a bit embarrassed. At least I've been painting up a storm since I posted last.
I recently was commissioned to create a couple of designs for a fabric overshoe. This remarkably engineered object will cover anything from a flat to 4" heel and allow one to walk about in the pouring rain without insult to prized leather footwear. One of the designs was a "Bunny Toile". It was great fun for me to impersonate a copper engraving as my first love before watercolors was black and white pen and ink. I've probably spent half my life with a 4 ought Rapidograph or crow quill pen stippling, crosshatching... making tiny inky scratches, very hypnotic and relaxing! Here is the boot and the tongue which hides beneath a zipper:

Bunny Toile Boot

I'm about half way finished with two different picture books. All the drawings for both of them are finished and now I'm painting everything. I am loving painting horses...and, surprise, surprise...more snow! Here is a detail from one of them:

detail from "Over The River"

My latest quilting fabric collection , "So Many Bunnies" a soft book to sew, along with other projects has just come out from Wilmington Prints :

"So Many Bunnies" soft book panel

"So Many Bunnies" quilt and pillow patterns

Lots more happening, I'll be back sooner than later next time! Thank you.

Sweet, Silly, Snowy

2011-07-31T14:02:00.000-07:00

Lately, there's a lot of stuff happening in the World that I feel uneasy about.
I'm grateful that I find Joy in the details, in the enduring small bits that continue always like gardens and flowers, sun warmed ripe tomatoes, dogs, babies, love, color and beauty, prettiness, always....and in the Awesome Enormous, the One who has, amazingly, chosen me to be the vessel of a gift...for that I am thankful daily, everyday.
The best way I know to show my gratitude and make some sort of sense of the world, and feel at home in it, is to paint my heart out. Painting is like a prayer. I'm painting a LOT, lately.

Sweet......the first in a series of cakes and pies, coming soon

Rose Cake 2

Rose Cake

Silly....wait and see

Brush Your Teeth

Snowy.... a new collection

Happy Snowman

Chickadee

Happy Snowy Animals- Black and White


Happy Snowmen Icons- Black and White

Happy Snowman border

Happy Snowman Landscape border

Happy Snowman Landscape repeat

Mittens, mostly


Small Happy Snowmen

Scarves and Hats

Scarf

Thank You Very Much, Grazie Infinite, Merci Beaucoup, Muchisimas Gracias, Toda Raba

Blooming......Painting

2011-06-08T00:31:00.000-07:00

This year as much as I am longing for the scent of newly turned earth and the sweetness of the
tenderest of green leaves unfurling in the early morning sun, and all the loveliest joys of a garden.........
I am letting it pass me by. My garden spot here, where I'm renting right now, gets too little sun and so I've chosen to spend my energies painting gardens and all the growing and blooming and ripening instead. So far the quickly passing days and evenings are producing an explosion of paintings and it's not even Summertime yet.
A bit of what's been going on, been growing...... on the drawing board lately:

Vegetable Garden

Container Garden

Birdhouse Border 1

Birdhouse Border2

Wild Rose Border

Garden Spots


Flower Garden

"Gifts of the Season" my new Holiday fabric group for 2011 is shipping now........will post next time, soon...and, would you believe......I'm back to painting SNOW.....and snowmen, for Holiday 2012.
Enjoy the lovely weather, and if you have a garden....send my regards! Thank you!

Springtime

2011-04-01T12:19:00.000-07:00

It really is hard to believe that here it is Springtime.....April Fool's Day, in fact......and I am finally writing my first blogpost of 2011......I am certain I should be embarrassed or horrified, but I've just been busy with the business of painting and the two projects that I've been so busy with are done and dusted so I can peer out for a moment, sniff the greening air and write something...quickly, as I am about to start something new.....painting Gardens and Garden-y Stuff which are perfect to paint right now.
I've been painting about a million bunnies......which is appropriate considering it is the Year of the Rabbit.....which has nothing to do with it but is fun anyway.

One Rabbit

Two Baby Rabbits


Mommy +1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 Bunnies

and 26 dogs, here:


Mutt

Also, I am really excited and pleased to say that my second fabric collection, Alphabet Soup, is out and in shops now. I had such a blast working on this group!

Soft Book/Quilting Panel A is for Alligator and.....

Alphabet Soup group, panels, prints, stacked animals!


Alphabet Soup Quilt Project

And lastly....I am so pleased and delighted to mention that Bartholomew's Gift by Diane Dignan, one of my last picture-books was a Mom's Choice 2011 Gold Medal recipient! Thank You, Mom's Choice! Lucky book gets to go to the London Book Fair!


Bartholomew's Gift, Mom's Choice Award/Gold

Now I'm going to order some paint...Blockx Burnt Sienna Light and Deep and Burnt Umber, I LOVE these browns, they use glycerin and honey as binders, and are a joy to work with. Also Imperial Purple, Garnet Genuine and Black Tourmaline from Dan Smith...swoonworthy colors.....and new brushes ( pure heaven! ) and paper!!!! Nothing is as inspirational as new art supplies, I'm so excited.
More news soon.....W

Winter Wonderland & St. Nicholas, Snow!

2010-12-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Mysterious and Lovely Solstice, Delightful Snow and general best wishes for It's a Wonderful Life, for everyone.

New Cover for "The Baker's Dozen"

       "The Baker's Dozen: A Saint Nicholas Tale" is back in print --
just in time for Saint Nicholas Day! A paperback 15th Anniversary Edition is available in the U.S. right now at Amazon.com and BN.com, and also for special order from your favorite bookstore. Over the next few weeks, it should become available on other Amazon sites worldwide.
        The new edition has a brand new cover and the lush, vibrant colors ofthe original. You'll also find one very nice addition: a bonus cookie recipe and pattern for Saint Nicholas cookies. The pattern was
contributed by the book's illustrator, yours truly, while the recipe comes from Gene and June Wilson of HOBI Cookie Molds, as modified by Anne L. Watson, the wife of the author, Aaron Shepard, for her new book "Baking with Cookie Molds."
   I am thoroughly delighted that this book is back; alive and well in the world as, of the books that I have had the honor of illustrating, this is one of my favorites.

    Happily, there has been more praise from others for "The Baker's Dozen":

"The goodwill of legendary Saint Nick resonates in this tale about the origin of the term "baker's dozen".... Shepard's easy-to-follow retelling has an appropriate Old World flavor"- Publisher's Weekly

" A particularly nice holiday story accented by paintings full of detail"....Well-paced and a good length for groups or individuals, this is right on target for audiences. Edelson's artwork is filled with marvelously-alive characters who almost step from the pages"- Ilene Cooper, Booklist

"A lush new version of a traditional tale....A treat for the holiday season"- School Library Journal

" A story with a message to be heard during the holidays and all year long"-Children's Book Review

American Bookseller Pick of the Lists
Trumpet Book Club selection

click to see me larger

........and a Winter Woodland painting......

and

May your Holidays be beautiful and filled with Love and a sense of Wonder, love Wendy

Going to The Dogs....or It's a Dog's Life....or something about Best Friends

2010-12-02T01:32:00.000-08:00

"The dog is man's best friend,
He has a tail on one end.
Up in front he has teeth,
And four legs underneath"
Ogden Nash ' An Introduction to Dogs '

Not too terribly long ago, I was a unacquainted with dogs and had only given my heart to a series of Maine Coon cats, including my current Coon, Stella Carabella.
My heart was stolen one day in Elmore State Park in Vermont by a beautiful golden wolf hybrid who had run away from someone, somewhere and adopted me, who I grew to love and named Daisy and who's death put a sad hole in my heart. After Daisy, I adopted Baci, the iconoclastic floppy ear-ed, fluffy, tricolored Corgi, who spends his days in my studio with me and his night curled up on my bed.
I am now an official Dog Person.
Right now I am taking a break to paint bunnies, lots and lots of bunnies, Virginia Bluebells, ferns and violets and Spring mushrooms and pussy willows but I have been busy busy busy painting dogs.......and will go back to them again soon, then more bunnies, then more dogs, then bunnies

"Bulldogs are adorable, with faces like toads that have been sat on."
- Colette

Henry the Eighth and his Yorkie

Portrait of Gracie, a Chihuahua-Poodle cross


"When a dog wags her tail and barks at the same time, how do you know which end to believe?" - Anonymous

Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

Ambrose Bierce

If you think you might like a portrait of your dog, I'd be happy to hear from you and talk about what you have in mind! Please see my Pet Portrait blog Love Unleashed for more dogs......and cats.
Thank you for visiting & I'd love to hear from you, don't be shy!

Two New Books! (and a Golden Moonbeam....and more!)

2010-09-12T15:58:00.000-07:00


They've finally arrived, two boxes of books!

    What a lovely way to end the Summer, with two brand new picturebooks.....they are:
     Bartholomew's Gift
        Written by Diane Dignan
           Published by Ferne Press
   July 2010
Little Bartholomew is bestowed with a unique gift at birth - an ability that his loved ones do not possess or understand. There is excitement and wonder when, as a child, he discovers the meaning of his gift and wishes to share the joy it brings with others. Misunderstood, he withdraws and denies his experiences until the gift disappears forever. Or does it? This story is for anyone who searches for wonder in everyday life.

Purchase Bartholomew's Gift here or here

and.....I am thrilled and honored to report that I have been awarded the Gold Medal in the Best Illustrator category of the 2010 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards for my illustrations for Bartholomew's Gift!
“The Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards are intended to bring increased recognition to exemplary children’s books and their creators, and to support childhood literacy and life-long reading. The Awards recognize and reward the best of these books and bring them to the attention of parents, booksellers, librarians – and to children themselves.”

       Thank you to everyone who has been involved in honoring my work in this way, and thank you to Diane for writing this book.....without which, of course, these pictures would never have been created.
        Sometimes, working long, l o n g hours through the night, one wonders, when the project is finally finished and pushed from the nest and published, if anyone else will care about the characters and the paintings that have become ones friends and family.
      The true Gold is awarded when someone tells you the work has moved them to tears or a child decides that this book is their favorite and pours over the pages...but a shiny gold medal and golden stickers for the book cover are sweet reminders of those things in solitary hours.

   and I am humbled to add that Bartholomew's Gift was just chosen as a Finalist in the BBAs, the Best Books 2010 Awards for both Best Cover Design and Best Childrens Picture Book, Hardcover, with Audio categories !
     I am beyond grateful.

Pobble's Way

Written by Simon Van Booy
Published by Flashlight Press
July 2010
A perfect bedtime story, this gentle tale follows Pobble and her father as they stroll through the snowy woods near their home one evening and, in Pobble’s imaginative and unique way of looking at things, nature transforms: a winter mushroom becomes frog umbrella, a floating leaf turns into a butterfly boat, and a feather is a tickle stick. In the excitement of imagining worlds transformed, Pobble does not notice when her pink mitten falls from her pocket. Soon the woodland animals gather and begin to wonder whether the soft, pink addition to the forest is cotton candy, a mouse house, a wing warmer, or a fish coat. With luminous paintings and lyrical language, this picture book celebrates family, nature’s beauty, and the power of imaginative thinking.

Purchase Pobble's Way here

I hope you enjoy these books!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart to both Diane and Simon

Christmas In Summer aka My First Fabric!!!!!!

2010-07-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

Hooray Hooray Hooray...
I am so excited, I feel like a giddy schoolgirl about to go out on her first date, or the way I felt when I saw and held my first published book!
I had wanted to create fabric collections for a long time, ever since I had first learned that there was such a thing as licensing....and happily, I can now say that I am doing that very thing and I love, love, love it.
My very first collection, Cookie Jar Treats for Wilmington Prints is available now.

There are projects to make and Border Stripes and 15 different prints and color-ways
Pardon my silliness, I promise this is the only time I'll do this......but here is my very first selvage, kind of like people with new businesses frame their first dollar and hang it on the wall!

Christmas Cookie Apron Panel

I haven't quite gotten the knack of how best to shoot fabric yet, but here are some of the pictures:

Border Stripes

Various prints and colorways

I wish I still had a sewing machine and more available time to sew, it would be great fun to make a quilt or something else fun from my own fabric.......maybe that will happen, we'll see.

Finally.......my second collection, my Animal ABCs, now called "Alphabet Soup" will be available shortly ....I'll be posting that collection soon!

Pasta Al Limone for Breakfast

2010-07-16T19:15:00.000-07:00

I'm busy working on projects that I can't post about yet, artwork that I can't show yet...and while my first cherry tomato and newborn green beans, less than an inch long thrill my soul......I don't pretend that in a world of green thumbs and happy gardeners....my modest vegetal progeny would impress anyone other than myself.....
a happy coincidence however has offered me an opportunity to post a new bit of art.
Today's theme for Illustration Friday is Breakfast and my contribution to Nate Padavick's wonderfully entertaining blog They Draw and Cook, which showcases illustrated recipes by different artists, illustrators and designers has been posted today resulting in the altogether possible Pasta al Limone for Breakfast.
While likely to be eaten al fresco under a cloudless blue sky or a canopy of stars as a midday meal or later in the evening, it is perfectly lovely anytime and would make a perfectly delightful change from ordinary breakfast fare......Perchè No?

Ripple

2010-06-14T01:26:00.000-07:00

Like many people, fellow artist, Kelly Light was devastated by the recent oil spill in the Gulf but she decided to do something about it, and the especially wonderful thing about what she did...is that it gave a lot of other artists the opportunity to do something about it, as well!
Kelly started a site called Ripple. On it, she is selling sketch cards created by her and many other artists, with 100% of the proceeds going toward helping the wildlife victims affected by the spill.
The pieces of artwork below are my contributions to Ripple. They are the size of trading cards...2.5 X 3.5. I really enjoyed painting this small, there was the sense of creating a tiny treasure, a small jewel......it was really intimate and immediately gratifying to be finished with an entire watercolor in such a short time!
Visit the site to buy some great artwork and help out a good cause!

Thank you!

Sungold, First Flower!!!!!

2010-05-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

   My little garden is just outside my studio window, and several times during the day, especially when it's warm and sunny.....I am drawn, HA! seduced, compelled.... to go outside and peek at the new seedlings.
   A few minutes ago I did this and was looking at the tomato plants, still in their pots, as the evenings have been too chilly to plant them out yet and well WOW!.....there in all its optimistic, joyful Glory was the very first sweet yellow Flower, dangling from a Sungold plant! Most of the others have little buds but this was the very first valiant and darling actual flower......the promise of a tomato, of Summer, of expectations realized!
   I love portents and signs and am more than happy to see miracles around every bend.....this one put a song in my heart and made my day. It is sort of like a baby's first tooth.
See, in the upper right quadrant:
Welcome Flower!

Sparkly Saints and Lambs

2010-05-05T00:13:00.000-07:00

I promise, really I do........I will post some art soon, really soon.
I am finally working on the paintings / finishes for a book that has been in my studio far too long.
Also, two other projects ( fun!) that are firming up in comical slow motion, I am convinced that I am perfectly justified in blaming it on that astrological bugaboo, Mercury Retrograde......but it's all okay, fine as other details have taken up my attention and there is that aforementioned book that keeps being put aside while I attend to other projects, allowing me to get a good start on it which will, hopefully, create the momentum to keep it moving forward.
In the meantime, Spring here has turned fickle and chilly, windy with dark pewter glowering skies, only to suddenly break open in glorious blue and warmth, delighting the tomato plants and letting them stay outside another hour and coaxing slow seeds to finally sprout.
Everything has sprouted, white and purple scallions, Easter Egg radishes, red, orange and purple carrots, spinach, 3 varieties of arugula, lettuces and mesclun, Argento Swiss Chard and Bright Lights,
Peppermint and French and Lemon Thyme, Chives, Marjoram, Italian Parsley and Rosemary, Hot Pink and Blue Petunias, Black Eyed Susan Vine, Cream, Pink and Violet Nasturtiums, Heliotrope, Night Scented Stock, Jasmine Tobacco and 5 varieties of Cosmos and Sweet Peas and 8 Heirloom Tomato Plants...everything up and running and looking pretty darn wonderful......still to come Basil and Cucumbers......maybe tri-colored pole beans......a Mandevilla Vine, Alice DuPont which is beautiful and the glorious, intoxicatingly fragrant Datura Meteloides........then my little garden will be finished.

I came across a picture of my old garden in early Spring in Vermont, and the statue of the Goddess Flora.......I loved that garden.....this one will be a bit more modest......but still a source of great Happiness!
Speaking of Happiness, the farm across the road has a meadow full of lambs......they're about as sweet and innocent and charming as one could ask for.

Lastly......after promising myself for four years, I finally turned my old Vermont blanket chest into a Pink, Glittery, Sparkly extravaganza of religious iconography....I have a special affection for Saints, I love the imagery, along with roses, beams of celestial Light, the occasional Angel and the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus....all bedecked with brightly colored plastic gemstones and holy medals dangling from the lid and on the drawer. I did a version of this on a wall in my house in Mexico but, of course, couldn't bring it with me......so now, here it is....

Back to more painting tomorrow, will post some soon.

25 Aprile,La Festa della Liberazione ed Il Mio Compleanno!

2010-04-25T00:07:00.000-07:00

I am happy for so many reasons....I love that my birthday falls on Italian Liberation Day, someday I would love to be there, in Milano or Torino, on my birthday...and celebrate another year on this beautiful planet and also the liberation of Italy in 1945 by the Allied troops with the help of the Partigiani Antifascisti ( the Partisans in the Italian Resistance ).
Grazie a loro.

Today, the day before my birthday.......I barely painted at all...I am loving replenishing wherever, whatever it is that holds the key, the repository of dreams, daydreams and flights of fancy that are the fodder of the imagination. After four years without a day off basically.....a day without drawing or painting feels peculiar but I know that next week the deadlines begin anew so I am luxuriating in the planning/planting of the little garden.
This evening I made Vinegar Chicken, a rustica dish of a whole chicken hacked in 2" or 3" pieces, sauteed in olive oil and then, when brown, salt and pepper. Two large pans are necessary so the chicken pieces are in a single layer, and they can brown. Then scatter chopped garlic and red pepper flakes and about 2/3 cup of good red wine vinegar in each pan, scrape all the brown bits up, turn the heat down a bit and cover and cook, stirring occasionally for about 20 minutes to half an hour. Cook until the chicken is falling off the bones and a delicious vinegary, garlicky, spicy mess.
I had this with a bowl of arugula and peppery olive oil and lemon juice and salt.....heaven.
For my birthday I treated myself to a new pair of cowboy boots.......for some reason they are my absolute favorite footwear and while I didn't have the budget for these boots...YET:

I was able to put an end to my boot drought...a dog ( NOT Baci! ) chewed my last pair, tooled Old Gringos with red roses, to irreparable disasters and purchased these, on sale...at least these Lucky Stars by Tony Lama have rhinestones and pink stitching until I can splurge on something a bit more over the top, and well....pink!

They arrived today and along with the eight tomato plants that will begin spending their days outside tomorrow.....Striped Roma, Fourth of July, Sungold, Black Plum Roma, Dona, Sweet Millions, French Carmello and a new one to me, Odoriko.....I think my kitchen table looks quite festive!
Who knows what tomorrow may bring! I'm excited and looking forward to the coming year......magic is afoot, surprises too, I can feel it.

Baci appears unimpressed by this...his birthday is May 11, the same as my Dad's was, perhaps he will be more interested in that one. He will be 3. My Dad would have been 87......I miss him.

Next time........some painting.....drawing, art.
For the moment, the rest of life is what is going on. Feels good, a long time coming.
alla prossima

Happy Spring, so happy to be here!

2010-04-10T15:43:00.000-07:00

Finally.........the towering mountain of work is behind me ( for now ) and I'm allowed the luxury of dipping a toe into the pool of thoughts unrelated to the project at hand or the painting currently on the drawing board, so posting on this sadly neglected ( since December 12! ) blog or updating my even more ignored website or....reading books, working in my little garden, spending time with real human beings, painting my toenails scarlet or doing something spontaneous all become options.
The slightly spooky thing is that part of me actually likes the schedule I've been accustomed to for the past 6 months, year. couple of years, ummm, a lot.....what does that mean? Nothing probably...other than that I love painting, am a bit of a recluse...probably from being an only child and working mostly all the time makes life very simple...

Since the last time I was here, I moved.....just about 4 miles from where I was living before. I've been having fun taking some pictures while taking Baci the Fluffy Corgi on his morning walk.
I noticed several small silver metal disks, maybe 2.5 " in diameter....affixed, kind of bolted, to the paved road, before it turns to dirt.....I'd never seen anything like these before and took a photo of one. It seems as though I've truly been in a world of my own....along with some inevitable nearsightedness from a lifetime of drawing and painting small details......I thought I was seeing something curious and remarkable ( to myself ) and ironically amusing. This is what I was seeing:

"Why" I wondered to myself "why would there be a silver disk in the road reading "Perfect Control"?
Needless to say, I seriously doubt the very existence of "perfect control" in our happy, messily ordered Universe and so passing it made me giggle ( obviously, so much work made me exceedingly easily amused! ) but then also wondered about who would place, bolt these disks into the road and why would they read that? It was entertaining pondering this every morning and the whole idea of control, perfect or imperfect. Well....when I download the photos from my camera, I could easily see that actually this is what I was seeing, while believing I saw the disk above:

So, much less interesting and much less romantic and a lot more mundane....this little disk reads "Perteet Control" It seems Perteet is some sort of engineering concern that has to do with water and roads and that sort of infrastructure and nothing that would normally cause one to ponder Universal Truths.....or X File types of imaginings. In the spirit of complete transparency, I admit to altering the Perfect Control disk in PhotoShop so you could see how easily one could make this fanciful error!
Here are a few more photos of burgeoning Spring on this sweet road:

This is Lucky. He was given as a gift to the man who "owns" him for his 50th birthday by the man's wife. He is sort of the mascot of the road.......we stop and give him some carrots or an apple every morning and now Lucky comes running to meet us at the fence , licking his "lips". I never had a steer joyfully run across a field to meet me before.....

I especially love this gate.
Finally......here is some of what i have been working on:

This 28" Uber Cupcake will become a shaped jigsaw puzzle
.........and here, below, are all 12 of the finished Animal ABC illustrations. The client will add the letters to the artwork and there will be a half inch border around each one with all the words depicted in each image, that start with the letter /letters in the square. I put them all together here like this, for fun:

So there you have it.........a bit of what I've been doing.
I also finished two picturebooks and am finally getting to painting the art for a third that's been patiently,,VERY patiently, waiting to be finished.
.......Happy Spring

Nutcracker Book & Figurine

2009-12-12T19:24:00.000-08:00

How fun! There one sits hunched over ones' drawing board, often a year in advance, painting Christmas while the rest of the world goes swimming in High Summer.....and suddenly, there it is, the project one worked on, in the stores, as a " real thing"....makes me feel quite Velveteen Rabbit-ish! I never stop getting a thrill when I open the box and finally see the final, end result.
It really is gratifying to see the bits & pieces all come together as a really-o true-lio thing.....most fun is to see the Nutcracker figurine made, dressed, come to life like the one I painted for the book cover.
This was a project that was great fun to work on.....it seems the original stories in this book by E.T.A. Hoffmann and Alexandre Dumas haven't been published in years and years and years.....I read them all 20 times before painting and there is SO much more to the Nutcracker story than the one we are all familiar with!
This set includes the book and the 8" Nutcracker figurine and is available at all Barnes & Noble bookstores.

Nutcracker Book & Figurine Set, front

Nutcracker Book & Figurine Set, back

illustration

Life Imitating Art.....Wintry Woods

2009-12-11T16:38:00.000-08:00

BBBBBBBBbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.............................

It's cold outside, pretty much everywhere it seems, unless, of course, you're reading this on the beach in St Croix or Mustique.
Lately, late at night, taking Baci the Corgi out for the last time before bed...an owl hoots from deep inside a frosty wood. I get shivers, not from the cold, but from listening to the haunting call. Suddenly I am transported to a much older time, to the days of Grimm's fairy-tales, the version of my childhood illustrated by Howard Pyle...where deep dark Wintry Woods stretched for miles, dotted by little lamplit cottages, and full of wolves and badgers and owls.
I feel like we should leave a trail of breadcrumbs,

Inside, on my drawing board, I've been working on this painting. Maybe, just maybe, this is what has been going on in the Owl's Wood down the road.
I love it when life is like a picture book!

The Alphabet In No Particular Order

2009-11-30T12:24:00.000-08:00

Here is the newest Animal ABC piece, this time..... W, X, Y & Z !
wallpaper, wolf, white, woolly, warm, yellow, wood, xylophone, zebra, zither, zipper, yo-yo, window, Winter, wainscoting, zig-zag
I love jumping about, in no particular order.......I do this lots of times with picture book illustrations, too.
........ I find sometimes the end looks different ( but it wasn't meant to, designed to ) from the beginning if the project spans a long time & I just plod along in a straight line, Sometimes one just evolves as the project progresses and ones simply sees a bit differently and sometimes deadlines nip at ones heels like wild animals so one makes choices that one wouldn't make otherwise. Also, I need to keep myself entertained so I mix the sketches up and just do what's on top of the stack.......
working on K, L, M now.

Has it Really Been So Very Long?

2009-11-24T23:55:00.000-08:00

In old movies, I love the way the passage of time is shown by calender or diary pages flipping in atmospheric, gritty shades of greys.......picture that device here.
I've been working, working, working......in anything but a moody palette, here is a little of what's been keeping me busy, busy, busy lately ( see sketches a couple of posts ago ):

Animal ABC...P & Q

Queen, quail, question marks, pile of pillows, plaid, polka dots, puppets, panache, pearls, pig, puffy parka, pockets, pair, penguins, quilt!

Animal ABC...... A

Alligator, Autumn, airplane, apples, apple pie, arbor, ascot, argyle, ants

new spread from Pobble's Way/ Simon Van Booy/ Flashlight

& another one

& a little bit of Something Else.......surprise, here before we know it!
Back to work, chattier next time.
love, W

Illustration Friday - Frozen!

2009-10-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

This week's theme for Illustration Friday is "frozen".
I simply cannot resist posting illustrations featuring frosted branches, snow, Wintry themes, rosy cheeked children, woodland animals or colorful scarves and hats.......the kinder, gentler side of frozen, with dreams of hot chocolate waiting in a warm, cozy cabin just outside the picture.

Squirrely Sneak Peeks/Lavori Recenti

2009-10-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

Oh I AM buried in drawing and painting between now and the end of the year at least.....I'm really not complaining.....I just keep thinking I should have more diverse interests and get out more. It does seem as though I post here or visit a friend for a few hours and then get back to work, only to look up and find a week, or more, has gone by. I have found some Italian language CDs and am boning up on la bella lingua, I can do that at least, while I paint.......I worked so hard at becoming fluente and sadly......it seems all my conversational skills, in any language to be honest, have become a bit rusty from lack of use!
I have grand plans to get out more..... licensing shows? Bologna? La Citta Eterna, Rome, again....? surprises!.....

mi sento come questo: mi dispiace di continuare a chiacchierare incessantemente ma sto lavorando senza sosta tutti questi giorni! Punto e basta.....

lavori recenti.....new work:

and

Divertiti e ciao, have fun, bye ........

Illustration Friday : Pattern

2009-09-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted an Illustration Friday image in a few months but being that this week's topic is "Pattern" and it's also the first week of Autumn, well I could hardly resist posting this Autumnal, lavishly patterned bit of bear love.

Must get back to work.........
icing borders, Christmas cookies and cookie jars, the Animal Alphabet.........squirrels, mice, mittens and LOTS of snow........and the always omnipresent tree bark.
Then there's this, for everything, my new logo , for my brand:

have the best weekend, Wendy

So Much Fun!

2009-09-15T01:41:00.000-07:00

Well, here are some of the Animal ABC sketches that I have been working on.......I'm allowed to post these but I can't say who or what they're for.......but I CAN say that I am loving drawing these. I have 3 more to go and then I can start painting them, even MORE fun!
There will be 12 of these.
The letters will be on the drawings, of course, and the words that begin with the letters will go all around the outside of the pictures , not at the bottom.

Working on these makes me really REALLY happy!

Thank You Fanny Wherever You Are!

2009-09-05T00:32:00.000-07:00

It's such a lovely thing to be sought and found periodically....because of the fruits of ones' higher and best self. Mostly we live our lives well enough and sometimes we have memories of things we've done that, if given the chance, we'd do over differently, better, we decide. Other things, when we remember them, or they revisit us, we're pleased we did what we did, that we listened to that inner voice of goodness and inspiration and we feel we did something good.
That's how I feel about a piece of art that became a poster and a sign for the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. It has come to have a life of its' own.
Years ago the Woodland Park Zoo built an expanded Alaska habitat and the Taiga Viewing Shelter, A pond comes halfway up a glass wall so the view of kicking and swimming otters and bears as they play and fish in the water is wonderful.
An old Brown Bear walked back and forth, back and forth, wearing down a bare path in the grass. I could see that the worn patch was getting larger and larger, that the bear was widening her pacing by a few steps, a little more everyday. This bear's name was Fanny and she had spent her whole life living in a concrete grotto. The path that she was pacing, back and forth was exactly the amount of room that she had in the grotto. It was amazing to imagine that this was the first time her bear feet had felt the grass and the earth beneath them. I was so moved and happy for her, and so grateful to the Zoo for giving her a better life; a pond, otters, fish, trees and room to walk more than a few feet in any direction. I called the Zoo and offered to donate a painting. This idea took on a life of its' own......it turns out there was going to be an International Zoo Conference and it was decided that the painting, that would be printed as a poster would be done and printed in time for the Conference and the attendees from zoos all over the world would receive one and it would be sold at the Zoo Shop , as well. The Printer decided to donate the printing as well and a sign company donated the sign made from the painting. It still hangs at the entrance to the Zoo:

Time passed, the Zoo Shop sold all the posters and I sold the original painting and sent most of the posters I'd been given to clients and perspective clients, The Printer somehow misplaced the scans of the art and several years later, went out of business. Fanny had long since passed away and the project was a sweet memory. I've created another four images for the Zoo since, Mammals, Reptiles, Bugs and Birds.
Once in a while, every couple of months, someone finds me, I receive an email from someone whose child or grandchild loves that sign and they ask, "do you have a poster you could part with?"
My stack of posters is dwindling, there are perhaps only 10 left and then there are no more.
Tomorrow I am meeting someone to give them a poster for their grandson.......this makes me so happy, that this beautiful bear with the sunshine on her fur inspired an idea that became a painting that became a sign that years later still captivates the hearts of small children and inspires loving adults to seek me out and surprise their sons and grandsons, daughters and grand daughters.

All the creatures in the posters were residents of the Zoo and, of course, Fanny is there front and center!

Soon I'll post some sketches for a wonderfully fun and silly Animal ABC I'm working on. I love drawing and painting animals, The animals in this upcoming alphabet are doing things the animals above never dreamed of like sailing, making origami and painting.

Either way, it's all great fun and I'm just so tickled that I get to do this! Thank you!

Lastly, for something totally different, see the new Day of the Dead Cupcake at The Occasional Cupcake!

Finally, a new post AND a new blog

2009-08-22T22:03:00.000-07:00

Rosebud Cupcake Number One

I simply can't believe it, I just realized that it's been nearly 2 MONTHS since my last blog post!
I knew it had been a while but truly, really, I had no idea it had been that long!
The Summer has simply slipped by like syrup sliding off a spoon....my studio is piled with finished paintings, and drawings for something hugely exciting that I've wanted to do for absolute ever...even though I have, as always, that feeling that I'm simply not getting enough accomplished.

The light is thinning just a bit... some afternoons, like today, the light, the air looks/feels as though it's whole milk rather than cream, on it's journey to the thin, blue skim milk light of Winter....the occasional yellowed leaf, even a crimson one tucked amidst the others like a rare and precious ruby...it's coming.
More raccoons at dusk, and lately when I'm still up at 3 am, I see them out and about. They're hungry and I've been putting out free, just past the sell by date, donuts! And this afternoon, a pie! Raccoons are mad for pie! Who knew? Watching their elegant slender fingered hands...paws? search about, seeking out the best bits....while gazing about, ever vigilant, is great entertainment.
This evening the Mamma Raccoon and her three children, a male who shows up frequently and several new black masked visitors feasted on cherry pie.There's an apple pie for tomorrow!

So....the new blog, it's called The Occasional Cupcake.......
I am not a cupcake connoisseur, hardly, nor an expert baker or eater of pies, cakes or cookies but I love painting them.....the fanciful decoration, the luscious swirl and curve of frosting, the sweet and indulgent promise of pleasure and / or comfort.
I am painting a collection of small sweet indulgences, there are great plans for them and I am offering them, as well, for sale or license. Please inquire.
Right now there is one, Rosebud Cupcake Number One.
Hopefully there will be another soon. very soon.......I wanted to call the blog The Daily Cupcake and like those admirable artists, paint a pretty cupcake, or a shimmering slice of pie, everyday. I knew however that immediately I'd miss my self imposed deadline as other deadlines clamor and cajole, so I opted for "occasional".

Please visit The Occasional Cupcake, and once there, you can even subscribe to see new posts and new paintings as they come!
Thank you so very much, your support and kind attention are well and truly appreciated!

Snow in Summer

2009-07-01T22:48:00.001-07:00

Oh! Summer! I adore Summer!
Between now and September ( which is a whole other Wonder ) the world is so very alive and full of flowers and sunshine and shady spots and rain and thunder and lightening and perfume and glorious vegetables growing while you watch and fireflies and porches and that particular color of a slightly hazy blue sky...High Summer Blue and curtains dancing lazily at open windows and lilies and tomatoes and cherries and tanned feet and playing in the hose and happy dogs and the smell of the grill and long evenings and pasta al limone eaten al fresco as the sun dips behind the trees and the jasmine fills the air and just so much wonderfulness packed into such a short time....
AND what am I doing?
I am inside the studio painting snowy woods, woolly hats and mittens and tracks in the snow and a cold, cold pond.
Here are 3 finished paintings for Pobble's Way by Simon Van Booy to be published by Flashlight Press ,Fall 2010.
Next come the animals in the wintry wood. Fun!
Next Summer I will have a summery Summer, this Summer is snowy.

Reference Photos....aka Scrap

2009-06-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

I am painting trees right now.......so that means painting some of my favorites......tree bark and snaky, gnarly tree roots.......there is also lots of snow and a bunny, a duck, an owl, a doe, a red squirrel, a mouse and a little girl and her daddy involved but for now, everything is trees....the lines that tree branches trace against the sky, the larger branches flung out wide embracing the sky..... the grays and browns and purples and russets and umbers of tree bark, the glorious undulation of roots like a basket of snakes......I'm loving painting trees!
Lucky for me, I live on a tree covered island so I can take a million perfect photos of trees for reference to use in painting. It's wonderful to take reference photos oneself and not be a slave to someone else's photos online or in a book....luckily I am not painting Baobob trees,

as, unfortunately, they don't grow here. One of Baci the Corgi's and my favorite places to walk is a nearby property where a house was torn down so it's like a secret park.....accessible down a long, tree lined driveway, then opening up into a large grassy area where the house once stood and a huge and glorious Maple Tree.
There are some oddities there that have caught my eye......an old, no longer seaworthy, wooden boat sitting askew in a sea of lawn.......and four chairs, ceremoniously arranged by someone, that appear to be waiting for their occupants. curiously formal as though in preparation for the audience who will be watching.......something mysterious and unknown. I find these quirky leftovers of someone's life enormously appealing and touching.

Back to painting now...well maybe I'll go workout for an hour.......then paint.

Peonies and Snowmen

2009-06-10T01:52:00.000-07:00

I can hardly believe it's been nearly a month since my last post.......it appears I've been even more reclusive and swallowed up by the quotidian routine of painting a seemingly endless vista of picture-book illustrations than I had thought...sometimes I worry that one day I'll look up and find a year has passed.
Outside, a new season has arrived and amazingly, although there hasn't been a drop of rain for over two weeks, flowers are blooming their little hearts out. I adore peonies, they remind me of the girliest, most full blown prom dresses and rather like heads of butter lettuce in glorious shades of pink. Here are some perfumed pink beauties and some rather lovely and incredibly scented lavender roses found blooming on a rather sad and forlorn bush hidden away below some towering cedars......and a partially finished painting........

and then, some happy new pieces from my "let it snowman" licensing line, in progress. I'm learning how to do all sorts of things in PhotoShop and Illustrator that amaze me.......like moving lots of individual illustrations about until they become border designs and repeat patterns and just today, making type go around in a circle!
Anyone interested in learning how to make repeat borders and "toss" patterns in repeat from "icons" should go visit Tara Reed's website and order her ebooks......as one who knew virtually nothing about creating anything digitally, I have found her instructions incredibly easy to follow and wonderfully clear. Thank you again, Tara!
Maybe a plate........?

Maybe wrapping paper?

Borders
More to come, but enough of a start to begin feeling excited!

Back to what seems to be an infinity of feathers, tiny strokes of raw umber, shading angel wings. Back soon.

Illustration Friday - Contagious

2009-05-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

This week's word is contagious.
Seems as though this word has been in the media a lot lately....mostly connected to negative things and events like Fear and the Flu Du Jour.......which is/was, I guess, more fear, really.
As a perennial Optimist and a "glass half full" cheerful sort......here is my contribution.
While this tender moment might be illustrating the possible swapping of germs, I'd rather think that the sweetness and warmth of Young Love, any love, is, indeed, contagious!

Back to painting secret picture book spreads......soon, soon!

Happy Children's Book Week 2009!!!!!

2009-05-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

Jordyn

I am painting five paintings at once and once I finish these, I can launch into another five...and then. and then....until I'm finished with these books and I can't show anything I'm working on quite yet.....so I apologize for being a Very Boring Blogger.
On Saturday I signed books and showed the original art for "Saturn For My Birthday" while the very wonderful and entertaining children's book author George Shannon read the book !!!! How lucky am I?
After that Bonny Becker, read her great book " A Visitor For Bear "
George passed out home-made cookies and children and grownups alike all had a lovely time at our kick 0ff of Children's Book Week!

Illustration Friday: Hierarchy

2009-05-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

Here is my contribution for this week's Illustration Friday, the word is Hierarchy
It's not really too much of a stretch....although there really isn't any obvious top or bottom .....but this will have to do. This image was one of four panels that I painted for the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington.
This was Mammals....there are also Reptiles, Birds and Bugs. To see all of them, go here and click on Woodland Park Zoo.
okay.......back to painting picture-book spreads.......I can't wait to announce they're all finished!

Who's the Driver Here, Anyway?

2009-04-25T00:49:00.000-07:00

I just finished another Pet Portrait, this one of Richard & Duffy the Most Wonderful English Sheepdog!
The pair of them, going down the road with Duffy happily occupying this amazing replica Steib S-500 sidecar is a joy to behold!
I had a blast painting this, and was surprised to remember how much I enjoy painting chrome.
This was painted nearly completely in thin acrylic glazes as I have found that greys and blacks don't fare so well in watercolor glazes......even when completely dry when glazed with subsequent colors they tend to lift a bit and muck things up. The acrylics stay put in a lovely, well-behaved, acrylic way and one can glaze them over and over and the colors stay true and bright.
I have absolutely no idea what's what with all the motor-y bits on the motorcycle so if you know everything about motorcycles and see that I painted something that exists in my mind only and not on any real motorcycle, please be kind and don't tell.....smile instead at Duffy who happily appears to be the one driving here...... he IS larger than life, so actually it's the way it all really is!
I am offering this image as a print so if you'd like to purchase one of your very own, please see my Imagekind gallery........and if you'd like a portrait of your pet with or without yourself...or your vehicle in it, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Staffordshire Terriers, New Pet Portrait

2009-04-22T13:33:00.000-07:00

Here is the finished portrait of Chico (laughing Brindle boy ) and Sadie (Fawn colored girl) as they are now, and Giuliana and Sebastian.....when they were children!
This was a most interesting portrait to paint....they all live in Australia and Giuliana, whom I have never met and who is now a grown-up, emailed me photos of herself and her brother as children, along with photos of her Staffordshire Terriers, Chico and Sadie...who are her dogs presently......oh and wearing clothes that she imagined would be fun....not the dogs, of course!
I loved being "found" in the ethers of cyberspace and then chosen to paint something so special to someone.......a lot of time and back and forthing went on looking for photos and piecing together sketches.
I love painting paintings that look like "real life" but are really completely imagined!
Thank you Giuliana and Kismet!

Illustration Friday-Impossible

2009-04-17T18:39:00.000-07:00

Oh Hooray! Illustration Friday is such a wonderful way to post something when the reality is that one is sequestered away painting the two previously posted pet portraits...but they're not ready to show yet......I am still painting the backgrounds and may post them when they're halfway done but for now........I can post this:
while Spring is flirting with seedlings and apple blossom buds and little puffy clouds, full blown High Summer, ripe tomatoes and rampant blooming seems IMPOSSIBLE!

Looky, New Drawings....I CAN show

2009-04-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

One of the things about illustrating most picture-books and also packaging and editorial/advertising projects is agreeing to those pesky non disclosure agreements, where you promise not to show your "work in progress" prior to publication.....so, if the projects involve 16 paintings and a L O N G period of time, a hapless illustrator is busy busy busy but can't play and show and tell.
So, how nice to have other projects at the same time to share!
Here are the drawings for two Pet Portraits that I am currently working on.

This portrait is for a woman in Australia, and shows her brother and herself as they were as children, with the the two Staffordshire Terriers she has now.....this was one of the most challenging drawings I've ever done for a portrait, as the heads, the bodies, the clothing all came from separate photos so it was like putting together a puzzle! Hooray,on to painting.

This one is the sketch for a portrait of Duffy, A Most Wonderful English Sheepdog who really rides along with his Person in the sidecar of the Person's motorcycle! It is a delight to see them traveling like this on the road! I have taken the liberty of enlarging Duffy a bit here but he really does wear goggles!
On to painting this one, too!
Stretched watercolor paper is dry, so now on to applying frisket,"Cool Blue Artist's Masking Fluid" isolating the figures so I can slosh paint onto the backgrounds....that's always the next step.
I'll post these again when they're further along.

Illustration Friday: Poise!

2009-03-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

poise

[poiz] noun, verb, poised, pois⋅ing.
this is the sixth definition of the word, as a noun, from Merriam Webster
6. the state or position of hovering: the poise of a bird in the air..........
or an unseen helicopter as it delivers a fantastical gigantic blue stove with optional copper samovar to a Bakery in a forest, staffed by bears........"the anticipation was palpable as the bears watched the poise of the helicopter as the stove swung from the ropes!!"

shhhhhhh .....mice are sleeping in that mitten

2009-03-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

I am working on work I cannot show .....yet, so here is something I am also working on at the same time that I can.
I recently wrote about Pobble's Way, one of the picture books I'm working on and I have finally begun painting the art! This is definitely my absolutely Favorite part.

This is a little spot illustration......today while I am working on a full page illustration for the book, I am also working on the aforementioned currently unmentionable work.Back and forth, an hour here, 45 minutes on that, back again...an odd but curiously interesting way to work sometimes. Illustrator Cross Training?
It's cold and rainy and raw outside and I think I need to make some quickie Salsa Bolognese.
Back to work...

Illustration Friday: Legendary

2009-03-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

Well, here is another Illustration Friday piece. The theme for this round was Legendary.
I feel just slightly guilty, contributing pieces created for other purposes....but if I didn't there's simply no way I could participate, so I this will simply have to do.
It feels sort of like going to a pot luck at someone's home and bringing something from the freezer, even if it's really yummy, from because there simply weren't enough hours in the day to whip up a timballo especially for the occasion, such as this Timballo di Riso alla Romana (thanks to Mario, one of my favorite chefs, Batali).
But, as usual, I digress.
Here is my contribution to Legendary, a painting from the picture-book I illustrated, The Baker's Dozen. This book is set in the area around New Amsterdam, the 17th Century Dutch Colonial settlement that eventually became New York. The town developed outside of Fort Amsterdam in the New Netherland Territory (1614–1674).......so, for inspiration and and reference on the fashions that people may have worn, seeing that were probably few shops or dressmakers early on and people would most likely still be wearing the clothing that they brought with them from back home in the Netherlands.......who better to turn to than the most legendary of Legendary Painters, the Master Himself, Rembrandt. My painting of the Old Woman was inspired by none other than Rembrandt's Mother. The Baker's Dozen takes place around 1650 and Rembrandt's painting was done in 1639. My most sincere thanks to Rembrandt for this...and so much else.

Rembrandt's Mother

The Old Woman

Awards & Appearances

2009-03-13T02:20:00.000-07:00

In my continuing quest to "put myself out there" more, to get out of the studio more and actually see and talk with the lovely people that support my art.... it appears that our indefatigably helpful and cheeky Universe ( aka Supreme Being, minor god or goddess, Universal Life Force etc. ) who always conspires to give us a leg up or a well needed kick in the butt has joined in the fun and brought me, my last picture-book, two awards in the past two days!
The book Saturn For my Birthday, by John McGranaghan and published by Sylvan Dell Publishing
was a whole lot of fun to illustrate and I am hugely gratified that others seem to enjoy spending time reading it and looking at my pictures.
Thank you everyone , Universe , included!

The two awards are, in order of appearance, The Readers Views Second Place Award for Children's Fiction ages 6-8 and a Foreword Magazine 2008 Book of the Year Award Finalist in the Picture Book category.
Here are the cute and shiny gold stickers:

Moving right along now to Appearances.....
I will be making two....
the first one.....soon!....on Saturday, March 21 from 1-3 pm at Oil & Water. I will be chatting, showing my work, talking about technique and showing my work, both finished, in print, and in progress.
This is the blurb that Richard, the charming owner of this wonderful art supply store wrote about the event:

"The Life and Times of a Children's Book Illustrator with Wendy Edelson
Learn about the joys and challenges of working in the creative field of children's book illustration from this talented and beloved local artist. Regardless of your interest in an illustration career, this demonstration is not to be missed, if only to see some of Wendy's beautiful work! In addition to book illustration, she also does beautiful, fanciful pet portraits."

awww shucks, Richard, I am determined to do my very best to live up to these high expectations and be witty and interesting.

Appearance Number Two will be Sunday, May 16 at Eagle Harbor Books from 12 -1:00 pm.
I will be reading Saturn For My Birthday and showing some of the original art from the book.
This event will be part of the events scheduled to promote literacy in connection with Page Ahead Children's Literacy Program in celebration of National Children's Book Week, May 11 -17.
Both events will be in charming downtown Winslow, Washington, on Bainbridge Island.
okay, I think that 's that.......
next time, more art.

Illustration Friday - Intricate

2009-03-07T01:04:00.000-08:00

Okay, I keep feeling like I should Get Out More, at least put my work out there more...even if I don't get very far from my studio for very long.....very often.
So this is the first time I am participating in Illustration Friday...something I've been meaning to do forever. This week's topic was "Intricate", and for me, this was as easy as falling off a log so I finally jumped in.
I hardly just whipped this up specifically for this though. The original watercolor is about 14 X 15 and took me about 2 weeks to paint.
It's entitled Naptime and is well, obviously, really intricate. If you look closely at the bedside lamp you can see that the horse has a horn made out of bubblegum.....I guess the horse wanted to fit in with all the rhinoceri and Ceratopsidae. (If you click on it you can see it larger)
I plan to make this, if not a regular habit, at least a frequent one.

Speaking of getting out more.....I will be doing a 2 hour art demo/talk on March 21 (Happy Spring!) at a local art supply store, Oil & Water and a booksigning in early May. Some artists are great at these things, me, I'm a bit nervous. More on these events in another post, soon.

Camera!!!

2009-03-02T18:00:00.000-08:00

I am SO excited!!! I FINALLY have a little digital camera so I can join everyone else in the blogging world, sharing pictures of my pets...my fluffy, drop ear, tricolor Corgi, Baci, (seen here, having a little swim today!) ......scenery, culinary successes , gardens, clouds, beautiful or otherwise exemplary ephemera/stuff...whatever I cannot manage to fit underneath the lid of my scanner.
I can actually write about something other than finished artwork.......or work I cannot show.
So......here are a few pictures I took today on the first actually sort of warmish late morning so far this year.

Baci on the dock

Someone's hat and driftwood on the beach and wonderfully colored kayaks & a sneak peek at a picture book illustration midway...shhhh, does this count?

Now, back to work.

Flight Of Fancy

2009-02-26T01:13:00.000-08:00

Flight of Fancy
watercolor and acrylic on Fabriano watercolor paper 8.25 X 7
please enquire to purchase

quiet, quiet....I have the best intentions to write more but I'm not certain that the daily routine of dog walking on the beach and tea (Assam or Darjeeling ) making and paintingpaintingpainting, punctuated by drawing and forays into town would make for worthwhile reading......the daily routines of others, however, seem much more fascinating......like driving by houses at night and catching glimpses of the interiors of strangers.....the light spilling out so alluring.....little snapshots of domestic perfection, as seem from the outside anyway.

I am working on the projects I can't post so I painted the above kitty portrait, the way I recall Fancy, the tiger striped kitty of my childhood...... to have something to show. I've decided to offer the original for sale, so just ask.

It appears that Winter is loosening his (her?) grip a bit, although snow is forecast up in the mountains and the surrounding area.......this time of year in the Pacific Northwest is fickle, Camellias are about to bloom and the Witch Hazel is blooming her little honey scented heart out....

primroses and crocus dot the greening lawns with spots of bright color and daffodils and narcissus are pushing up out of the loosening earth......best of all.......scent has returned to the air! I LOVE that.

A Rousing Shower of Applause

2009-02-16T19:52:00.000-08:00

I've been pretty quiet blogwise recently because all the projects that I'm working on are "secret"...I've agreed to nondisclosure until publication so it just appears that I've suddenly become mute and am goofing off. Al contrario.....in reality, I'm painting, painting, painting...burning the proverbial Midnight Oil. Night Owls know this special quiet, this luxurious span of uninterrupted hours....punctuated only by nightbirds, snoring dogs and the breezy tinkle of windchimes. Oftentimes my best work is created in that span of time between midnight and 4 am .....and often, I'll finish a piece....or even a whole book. This finishing, this putting down the brush for the last time and knowing that I'm finished, finally really finished is a moment of personal deliciousness. At that moment, if I were a musician or an actor, the lights would dim and there would be ( one hopes ) rousing applause........however, for solitary illustrators with vampiric schedules...this magic moment is met with deafening silence. One expects the clouds to part and heavenly choirs to warble a small tune at least, something...but no, just that deep, velvety quiet. Everyone that might cheer and give me an upturned thumb or a pat on the back is sleeping....so this moment can be a tad anticlimactic. In response to my complaints about this, my musician husband created a loop of the enthusiastic sounds of a rapturous audience who sound like they've gotten their money's worth.
To give yourself the cheering adulation you deserve, play:

I've played this several times in the pale pre-dawn and it's always made me giggle and sigh with gratitude, able to waft off to bed with a smile of appreciation on my lips. There are other times we need a hand, during the populated hours of daylight when all sorts of things may occur...not all of them what we might wish for, or even if we finish that masterpiece during the day and no one's home.....so for all the times we need a bit adulation and/or recognition I've decided to share this instant moment of gratuitous adoration with everyone.

Have fun, play often, you deserve it!

Pet Portraits.....In Memorium

2009-02-10T14:44:00.000-08:00

Painting portraits of pets who have euphemistically crossed the "Rainbow Bridge" is something altogether different.....at least this one was.
When I was first asked to paint the portrait of this cat who is no longer "here", I thought of angel wings and cavorting amongst the clouds....but I was told "no", that this cat never loved anyone but the woman shown here holding him......and that it was very poignant how he had his paw on her arm. A border of brightly colored catnip mice was NOT going to work for this portrait!
Then I heard that the photographs that I was to use ( the portrait below was painted using two separate photos ) were taken at a gathering, a sort of farewell gathering of friends of the woman and her cat.... he was gravely ill and she was saying goodbye to him.....and he to her....before she let him go.
S and LB
I finished this portrait 3 days ago and am only now posting it. While painting it, and for a few days afterward, it haunted me.
I think I felt the way I have heard that psychics and healers feel after touching objects or visiting places that are emotionally charged with the energy of a living being traversing what we call "here" to whatever may be "there".
As I painted this portrait...I was drawn in, and a lot of something.......... energy, vibrations, emotion.....came rolling off the photos in waves. I felt like a witness to a very private and intimate moment and my best hope is that I have been even a little bit successful in honoring that. Thank you Annie for trusting me to paint this.

Some People Portraits of Authors

2009-02-05T15:25:00.000-08:00

Since I've spent so much time painting and writing about pet portraits recently, I thought I'd show a few of the people portraits I've done for authors and their book covers/web sites.
Here is the portrait I painted of Aaron Shepard, the author of the picture book
The Baker's Dozen / Atheneum Books for Young Readers / which I had the honor of illustrating, and many other award winning books for both children and adults.
Here is another one of Aaron, a few years prior, for a book he wrote on flute playing:

And this one is of Anne Watson and her cat, for a book she wrote,
Smart Soapmaking, The Simple Guide to Making Traditional Handmade Soap Quickly, Safely, and Reliably:

I am finding that painting portraits...of pets people, people with their pets is really satisfying, something I really enjoy doing.
If you would like a portrait of yourself, a loved one or several, a person or an animal, or a combination......with a plain colored background or a "real" one or one completely imagined in your dreams, please let me know........I can paint you in a tropical forest with your favorite dog and a parrot, asleep on a cloud with your baby , your child playing with a baby elephant, your Grandmother dancing beneath the stars......
now, it's your turn.......

Good Bones

2009-01-30T18:09:00.000-08:00

something a bit different.........
I think the drawings, the sketches, the Good Bones beneath a beautiful painting might be interesting.....to me, and this is simply my old fashioned, classicist opinion...a painting is only as beautiful as the drawing beneath it...otherwise it is akin to draping a sadly askew skeleton with Armani..the akimbo elbows cannot be disguised with beautiful paint.
Posting a bit about other illustrations ( other than pet portraits ), the process of book illustration..... the wonderful Uri Shulevitz in Writing With Pictures, wrote about the text and pictures in a picture book being like pearls strung into a necklace....words, pictures, words, pictures...that words needn't describe what pictures show.....and if the words are especially delicious and perfect, one needn't illustrate them. Each adds to the entire story. I love this. This is so much harder to do well than it may sound.
Neither words nor the pictures stand alone well to tell the story. In One Monday Morning by the delightful Mr Shulevitz, the book begins.....One Monday Morning......just that, and the only way we know that it is a rainy, dreary Monday morning in New York City is by the illustration. I always knew I wanted to draw and paint but Mr Shulevitz, by explaining picturebooks in this way, has influenced me more than any professor may have done. I am self taught and hope that my education as an artist and an illustrator has been serendipitous, that I have found my teachers when I need them. Thank you Mr Shulevitz......I think of your words as I work on every book, I only hope that I am slightly more successful with each book.
I am working on a story I fell in love with immediately, it has been edited and changed here and there since I first read the initial manuscript but the Good Bones remain and have been improved upon and I am about to begin painting.......the fun part. The drawing is the work, the labor! Painting, sloshing about with color is pure joy. My father, no longer with us, a philosophy professor, was also a sculptor, and a Fanatic about draughtsmanship. He instilled in me that any piece was only as good as the drawing beneath it. As a child I spent hours drawing at his feet as he carved tree trunks into horses and women and children. I would tire and let him know I was going to bed and he would look at my drawing and, on occasion, insist that I stay and fix the foreshortening, the foot, the length of the arms...until I got them right. Thank you Daddy wherever you are. I only hope that you would think well enough of my drawings that I might go to bed, finally......

The drawings here are from the picture book Pobble's Way by Simon Van Booy, to be published by Flashlight Press.
These drawings are the hopefully good bones beneath what will be paintings for this wonderful children's book.
Check back for a finished painting......soon.

Flyer and Worthy!

2009-01-29T11:26:00.000-08:00

Flyer & Worthy
Yes, another Pet Portrait! Here are two beautiful Australian Shepherds, a brother and sister from different litters.
.......I am actually working on several art projects that I can't show before publication......so I am really happy to have these little love poems to show.
Painting these Odes to Joy, I am reminded over and over of the traits that the animals with whom we share our lives bring out in us because they love us so unconditionally.
Painting them is a meditation on openness and vulnerability, fidelity, sweetness and trust, playfulness and honesty and love.
Lucky me!

As soon as I complete a portrait, I email my client who commissioned the portrait a scan, before I mail it off. I sent this one of Flyer and Worthy off late last night and this morning I received this:
"This couldn't be anymore amazing and awesome.
You do incredible work and it must bring you so
much satisfaction that your talent brings happiness to so many people.
Thanks you so, so much!
Fabulous!"
...........thank you, L.M., and yes, you're right.......your happiness, and the happiness others have expressed brings me ENORMOUS satisfaction.

Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty

2009-01-25T21:31:00.000-08:00

How fun to paint a portrait of a cat after painting 5 dogs , with another 2 dogs waiting in the wings.
Kitty, kitty.....this seems so casual, so completely lacking in a certain je ne sais qua that this particular cat has in spades...the antithesis of this literally awesome Maine Coon in the snow.....
This is Sherlock in Winter.
Not much more I can say, what a handsome CAT!..... what fun to paint!
Sherlock

"It's perfect! I opened your email at work and when I saw the portrait a huge smile came over my face. That's our Sherlock.... the look you captured on his face is classic. We will enjoy this very much."

thank you so much for that D.D.! The satisfaction that I feel when I hear that I have been successful not only in painting something pleasant to look at, or well executed...but that I have succeeded in capturing the essence of a particular animal for their human family, and in touching something intangible in a heartfelt way......that is an enormous pleasure for me.

I am longing for Spring.......cold COLD again, saw some snow flurries today.
Dreaming of Angel's Trumpets, Mandevilla vines in glorious shades of PINK,tender pale green sprouts and shoots poking their sleepy cotyledon heads up out of rich, chocolate cake earth into the new Spring sunshine.
Waiting, waiting......here kitty, kitty.

Two Journeys

2009-01-17T21:17:00.000-08:00

Here are two more portraits of well loved animal companions, two more testaments of love to four legged friends of the doggie persuasion.
With each "portrait" I paint I am allowed access to the depths of spirit and loyalty, faithfulness and love between these creatures and the humans that share their journeys here and now. I feel so fortunate to be allowed in, to share in the sweetness and unadulterated purity in these animal eyes and to do my best to render them, as they were, in that moment.

At the same time, I am experimenting with a mixed technique of watercolor and acrylic, a new medium for me. I am trying to take what I find the best in both mediums and I am finding the journey exhilarating!
Watercolors are marvelous in their transparency and well, liquidity.....but one must work, always from light to dark. Acrylics are more forgiving in that respect , one can move from dark back into light but once colored is laid, they are unable to be lifted or lightened. I am finding that one can lay down watercolor washes as under-painting, then when all the basic colors are laid in, I spray the painting with workable fixative, to prevent any colors from bleeding or lifting up. I then coat the entire painting with a thin milky layer of diluted acrylic gloss gel medium.
Once dry I can move on to finishing the painting in acrylics. I am using Golden liquid acrylics and a marvelous additive from Golden, Acrylic Flow Release......something akin to Oxgall, a wetting agent for watercolor washes, a drop of Acrylic Flow Release in 10 drops of water added to the acrylic paint loosens it so that one can paint fine detail like blades of grass or fur with sharpness and precision, similar to painting detail in watercolor but with the positive attributes of acrylic and also extended the "open" time, retarding the drying time just enough.
I can use them in transparent layers to gradually build and deepen form, or I can lighten highlights with opaque acrylic.From this point on, I never use watercolors again from this point on in the painting.
The gel eliminates the absorbency of the paper and enables the development of fine detail and hard edges, and it enhances the dark values and intensifies the hues. It also allows for the maximum opacity and value range of the acrylic. Painting on its slick, smooth surface is a delightful and mesmerizing experience!

Sophia

Shiloh

adding to my great pleasure in the experience are these comments from the human companion of these two beautiful dogs:
"These portraits. These took my breath away. Seeing these perfect renderings of my kids brings tears to my eyes, and I can't thank you enough."
In every way, painting these have brought me great happiness.

next....stay tuned, a magnificent Maine Coon cat!

Simon

2009-01-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

Here is Simon, the most recent portrait.

I had so much fun painting him, I was sorry when I was finished!

and......this brought tears to MY eyes, what Simon's human wrote me:

"Thank you so much for the puppy portrait. I was in tears after I saw it as it is so wonderful. You did capture his personality.
Take care and know that you are very good at capturing the essence of your subjects, not just replicating them...what a talent you have."

Thank you for that!

Size 5 X 7, acrylic, watercolor and colored pencil.

Pleasures of Winter

2008-12-26T14:17:00.000-08:00

How fun is this?
Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, musicians extraordinaire, have just come out with a brand new CD, Pleasures of Winter , music for Winter and the Holiday Season featuring Jay & Molly's live performances from their annual Public Radio program with a variety of great musicians making guest appearances in the house band including: Harry Aceto, David Bromberg, Peter Davis, Peter Ecklund, Laurel Massé, Brian Melick, Michael Merenda, Ruth Ungar Merenda, Steve Rust, Butch Thompson, Tony Trischka and Sam Zucchini.

I was so delighted when they decided to use a painting of mine for the cover, I think ( hope! ) the spirit of the painting matches the spirit of the music really well.
Thank you Jay & Molly.

Please go visit their site to hear sound clips from this, and all their wonderful music.

Lemonade in Winter aka Pet Portraits

2008-12-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

It is amazing, there must be 5 inches of snow outside......people in bright red Santa hats are going by on cross country skis accompanied by bounding, cavorting dogs!
It looks like Vermont out there more than a more often balmier island in the Pacific North West , but these are interesting times.....expect the unexpected!

Dogs! Yes Dogs seem to be playing a much larger role in my life than I once thought possible. I thought I was a "cat person" until my heart was stolen by a wolf dog we found wandering through a State Park in Vermont, who adopted us and whom we came to call Daisy. Daisy has gone on to where good and faithful dogs go when they leave us, and Baci, the fluffy Corgi now owns another hunk of my heart.

Now, into my life has come the opportunity to paint some wonderful dogs. I am having a terrific time doing this and thank the people these dogs live with for sharing these four legged Wonders with me.
I would love to keep painting more Pet Portraits, so if you'd like one, let me know! Oh, and I welcome cats and birds, iguanas, horses, cows and pigs, any animal you love!
Thank you!

Here are the first two finished "portraits" :

Reeses and Hershey

Pele

Snowmen and Animals in Sweaters & Jackets!

2008-12-08T20:32:00.000-08:00

I LOVE painting snow, snowmen,snowmen who always have multicolored Lifesavers for their smiles! woodland animals in sweaters and wooly hats...gingerbread men and Christmas cookies....candy canes and peppermints falling from the sky, Santas and children making snow angels, babies in wooly sweaters on toy laden reindeer, stockings filled with toys, and happily wrapped presents...... cut paper snowflakes and all the Joyful, Sparkly, and Heart Warming images of this season......

Baci, the Fluffy Floppy Eared Corgi!

2008-12-05T21:50:00.001-08:00

Here is Baci!!! my most lovable, darling, stout hearted, sweet, shy yet gregarious at home 18 month old fluffy ( long haired) Corgi whose ears have refused to go up, unless listening to something VERY interesting!
Here, he is nervously trying to decide if the camera is something to be trusted, or not.

Sunshine

2008-01-25T12:05:00.001-08:00

The weather is clear and COLD, more like Vermont but the beautiful sunshine is a blessing after what seems like an eternity of grey skies and low slate clouds.
There are pots of primroses and crocus in front of the store and plump, red buds and the sun is sticking around longer....ahh Spring, I await you with a joyful heart!
These pictures are bits of spreads from the a l m o s t nearing completion "Saturn For My Birthday" picture book that is taking longer than it should but I am pretty happy with the way it's coming along.
Back to work now....

Saints, Angels, Ascended Beings, FINISHED!

2008-01-15T21:32:00.000-08:00

The Irish Goddess Aine, Merlin and St Teresa above, a mere drop in the bucket of my new Celestial Friends.
Wow........finally after a final slog of working for 32 hours straight.......I am finished with my 100 Saints, Angels, Ascended Masters and Avatars.....I had no idea at the onset that my life would be so overly consumed with these beings..... the final batch was pushed out of the nest to the Publisher today and so tomorrow I am happily back to the realm of picture books where one illustration has to do with the following one.
This has definitely been an adventure into the nether regions of the Art Warrior, that driven and passionate secluded land that holds little room for other people and other diversions, that place of tunnel vision where what is paramount is the brush and the tube of paint directly in front of ones' myopic gaze, the illustration in front of ones' face and then the next and the next......one bribes oneself to work a few hours longer with movies, "I'll work for one more movie" then sleep at 3 am or so. Then coffee and a walk for Baci the Corgi and me by the water and then back to the studio......3 months w/o a day off and now they are finished!
Oh and Yes! The duck couple has returned to the wet marshy pond across the road....an early teasing hint of the Springtime to come. I tear up bread before Sig. Bacio and I go out for a walk and we take it out with us and I toss the bread across the still shivery cold dark water and Mr & Mrs Duck come paddling up and happily eat it up. I wonder if it's this same couple that come back year after year or are these the happy offspring? I must find someone who is fluent in Duck and find out. I understand that soon it will be "Make Way For Ducklings" and there will be baby ducks to feed as well. Sig Bacio is well behaved and doesn't bark at all, is simply very curious about these swimmy, feathered creatures.
Tomorrow morning I will tidy up the studio and perhaps buy some daffodils.......then back to work.

Working, Working, Working!!!

2007-08-10T22:56:00.000-07:00

This Summer is full of projects....I'm illustrating 4 wonderful books that are each so different from each other yet compliment each other in wonderful ways. The deadlines are a little frightening but it's okay.I picture each project living in a separate house and I imagine myself going into that house when I work on a particular book,there's only that project and those characters and that house and that world and no one and nothing else ...otherwise it becomes too overwhelming. Characters overlap and start visiting and popping into the wrong book and then everything becomes just too confusing..for me.
I LOVE what I'm doing....I've always wanted to be doing this,living a life peopled by the "real" people I love and also the book characters that I am falling in love with more each day and I'm trying different things, experimenting a little with different media, playing. Right now I'm playing with Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils, oil based rather than wax, and I'm having a blast learning how to layer them over watercolors to bump them up here and there. Paula Pertile is a terrific illustrator that is masterful with these pencils and a wonderful inspiration!

The playing is such a joy! Drawing, for me, designing storyboards and creating the characters...those first journeys into the unknown with nothing but a pencil staring into the infinite space of a blank sheet of paper, reading and rereading the manuscript...listening for the invisible people waiting to be let out.....for me, that's the work!
Then after all the drawing...and drawing, and drawing comes the eventual go ahead from Editors and Art Directors....to start painting. This is my favorite part. Sloshing around with watercolors is my best part, playing with color, watching the drawings come to life is an unbelievably satisfying process, that never feels anything less than superlatively and hugely gratifying. Special every time...like uncovering the Ice Man or seeing the first crocus after an endless, frozen Winter.
Just glorious and always a surprise. Thankfully,I never get used to it.

The illustration above is the cover for one of my projects, a picture-book, Saturn For My Birthday to be published by Sylvan Dell in the Fall of 2008. I'm thick in the painting stage of this book and I'm having so much fun with it! I'm loving painting a book that's humorous and zany and kind of silly.

I'll post more on the other projects as they evolve!
Love, Wendy

MidSummer Night's Dream

2007-08-07T23:21:00.000-07:00

When is MidSummer?
August 7 always seemed like MidSummer in Vermont, but right now, here, in the Pacific NorthWest, it feels more like Autumn. The air is cool and damp and sky is filled with dove grey eiderdown and the pale ivory grey of milkweed fluff, a palette of slate and charcoal and graphite and soot and steel, stones and the liquid silvergrey of flashing steelhead. Today the air was pungent with the scent of woodsmoke and evergreen needles, mostly cedar. The wisteria is confused, blooming again.
I do miss the heat and humidity of Vermont, great drippy tomatoes born of heat and then the tiny purple asters along the roadsides at Summer's end and the morning and evening fogs at the edges of meadows at Summer's close. And the leaves begin to change....
But now is more MidSummer....the Dog Days of August, than Summer's End.
Very mostly now I am loving that I am back in the arms of the MotherCountry, my Mexican Adventure ended a year ago and a bit more and I feel like the Phoenix, risen again... sometimes like the survivor of a hurricane or a storm that blew through my life....beginning with the terrible death of Gabriel and running its' course for three years in Michoacan and another here on this Island.
At last the Sirocco, the Mistral, the Santa Anna winds that have buffeted me have stilled and lace curtains are now ruffled gently by soft, sweet breezes....the hatches no longer need battening down and something deep and well loved is returning, a sense of Calm and Peace, along with the Passion.

I'm looking forward and not backward. Happy, so very happy to be back!

Driftwood or The Lemons of Expectation

2005-11-13T12:56:00.000-08:00

Being that this blog is called "Eleven Lemons" it stands to reason that I hold some sort of opinion regarding lemons....
I do...I am impassioned about lemons, I hold lemons up as the jewel in the shining, golden crown of gustatory delights...the hallowed position that many people give to chocolate, I present to the Lemon.
One of the loveliest sights on the winding roads of the Amalfi Coast are the lemon trees covering the terraces, the heavily laden branches propped up to support the gleaming yellow bounty.....armfuls of lemons still sporting glossy greeen leaves for sale under the outspread arms of madonnas and saints at every hairpin turn.

I am a great watcher for signs and portents.....I believe that in the details of our lives are found clues, coming attractions of future unfoldings....if we pay attention to the breadcrumbs scattered in our path, we can find the most direct route to the bakery of our desires. Certain events and synchronistic occurences are like driftwood.....sailors can tell they are approaching land before it becomes visible on the horizon.....likewise the dove with the olivebranch...signs of land...a metaphor for the approach of our dreams come true.

In the nearly two and a half years that I have spent in Michoacan I had not seen a single lemon.Lemon flavored anything really meant "limon" which was lime or simply some vague acidic citrus something or other. Lemons were sorely missed, longed for.....yearned for. "RealLemon" juice in bottles is a sad, pallid substitute for the RealDeal.....greatly appreciated when it is all one has at hand. Lemons took on a symbolic stature. They became a metaphorfor the "RealLife" that I missed.....a symbol for all the things that meant home.
Mexico is awash in limes of all sorts, with seeds and without......limes are great. I have no problem with limes and limes are wonderful in all sorts of things but they are not lemons.
A roasted chicken becomes a superlative thing when rubbed with olive oil and stuffed with lemon halves and cloves of garlic and rosemary sprigs. Young arugula and baby lettuce sprinkled with fruity green olive oil, salt and a squeezed lemon were the stars of a simple lunch on the palazzo of a hotel on the Grand Canal in Venice with a glass of Prosecco and a chunk of bread....simple perfection.
Lemons in glasses of San Pelegrino, lemons in lemon meringue and lemon curd, lemons grated into biscotti and on foccaccia and in spiced carrots, lemon brightens spinach and brussel sprouts and is the magic in Pasta al Limone...pasta and lemon zest and fresh ricotta with perhaps slivers of fresh basil. The scent of lemon is bright and happy and clean and sitting in a bright cobalt blue bowl they are an instant still life...glowing and beautiful, regardless of the setting.
Lemons meant home, lemons meant return....lemons became a symbol of all my expectations.

Then we heard that there were lemons at the Mega Commercial Mexicana store.....in anticipation, expectation I went...walked around the produce section. There were the usual limes and mangoes, onions and avocados, pitihaya and papaya and there...in a terra cotta planter, piled up like Midas' gold were lemons, LEMONS, gleeful beacons of brightness, happy portents of ships coming in and dreams coming true. All this divined fom a small and simple fruit? Yes, most certainly! In other times and places people have divined the future in the entrails of birds and the turning up of particular runes or coins or cards....they are windows into what may come, forks in the road and probabilities. Seeing these laid out before us we can say yes and ask for more..or not. Not only is appreciation, in general, a magnet for more stuff to appreciate but to extol the small glories, to see the small bits as pieces of larger puzzles or fragments as slivers of larger pictures is to live in expectation of the miraculous which simply feels damn good.
I took the largest plastic bag on offer and filled it with about 20 lemons.....feeling as though a turning point had occurred, that the lemons were a signpost on the road home.
Happily now, they always have lemons at the store, and oddly they have showed up elsewhere at another store! Proof that this is not a fluke....always lemons now in the bright cobalt blue bowl on my kitchen table.
One step closer, a sailor at the helm of my ship viewing lemons bobbing in the water all around me...a dove with a lemonbranch flying above ......yes,I welcome the Lemons of Expectation......and all the magic to follow!

Ratoncitos de Nata/ Unexpected Surprises

2005-07-03T13:46:00.000-07:00

One of the most wonderful things about being alive.....AND paying attention...is the way an unexpcted, previously unknown and unimagined kernel of happiness can pop up and delight one!
The other day on the way home from the Mercato Independencia.....a warren of stalls selling tacos de borego (sheep) and mole and rice and flower stalls selling armfuls of nearly narcotic tuberoses and gladiolas and hot pink carnations and butchers selling spooky skinned cow heads minus the eyeballs and tongues dangling on hooks and loops of intestines and hooves, and pork skins the size of half a pig still with bits of skin and a few hairs on them!!! &.....rows of freshly killed chickens with piles of their heads and bright cadmium yellow feet resting nearby.....next to stalls that sell a combination of Indian and Catholic religious items/statues and piles of dried herbs and barks and strange pods and copal incense and potions for "Buena suerte"...good luck, and happiness in love and amulets affording protection from the Evil Eye and mysterious unguents and salves...the most curious to me that made of "grassa de coyote" or coyote fat for arthritis and rheumatism. I have never seen a fat coyote...they seem pretty scrawny to me..but...it must be so! And then there are the gazpacho vendors.....here in Michoacan, gazpacho is made of chopped melons and pineapple and mango and apple...perhaps with some cucumber, served in a tall plastic cup to which pineapple juice is added and then ground chiles and even a sprinkling of parmesan (!!)...and next to THAT...the great piles of sticky dried sweet fruits attracting clouds of bees that no one seems to care about.....on and on......a Mexican Casbah, complete with a soundtrack of Mariachis and rows of high top sneakers in turquoise, hot pink and lime green and crimson for sale next to the huarraches.
So leaving this sensory smorgasbord, driving on a fairly quiet street.....my periphal vision caught a hot pink building with a wide open doorway, the walls spilling over with frothy pink and white bougeanvilla. I stopped and walked over to what I saw was a bakery. There are lots of bakeries here, many pastellerias...bakers of cakes, but this bakery, "Los Ortiz, Horno Todo El Pan" is a bakery of only artisanal breads. Walking inside, one gets the sense that the place is vast and one feels as though they have walked back in time. The walls are tiled and there is a mural painted on one wall....the floor is tiled, of course. One wall is lined with cases and the center of the room is filled with the largest wooden tables I have ever seen. HUGE. Brobdignagian! The place was quiet and smelled of years of yeast and flour.....and baking bread. It was about noon and I was told the fresh bread would be ready about 4.30....but a few things were left. A Pan de Sal....a freeform integral/whole wheat loaf with a pleasantly salty taste AND my real reason for rhapsodic hyperbole about this bakery.....the ratoncitos!!!!!! Lined up in rows on these tables for giants were batallions of bread mice. They were the size of large eggs...made of pan de nata, a sweetish bread made with cream....with small chocolate chips for eys, almond halves for ears and a bit of twine for a tail. Each ratoncito made by someone's quick hands was slightly different...giving each ratoncito its' own personality. I was immediately smitten and had to take some home.
Then it got even better! I don't remember exactly how much these twee little bread mice cost but it wasn't much, then the man at the counter reached behind him into a basket and pulled out and folded up some wonderful diecut and printed boxes...made to look like wedges of swiss cheese, complete with holes. Each ratoncito went into its'little own box. How fabulous!!!! I was utterly and completely charmed.I have painted a watercolor of the ratoncito and his box...posted above.
And....I must admit, that being a great lover of many things....but not a great eater of breads....that it has just occurred to me that I don't know if they're wonderful to eat or not. I imagine, that warm from the oven...how could they not be. My remaining ratoncito; the model for the little watercolor above( I gave his kin away) is 3 days old and I think I will not eat him.

The Cat Coyote

2005-05-23T17:09:00.000-07:00

I think I'll write about what happened, recount a bit of the zany trail of breadcrumbs that led to now, to "How We Got Where We Are".

In Intra-Border parlance, a "coyote" is not a marauding scruffy canine looking for a free meal but one who transports people clandestinely across the border....usually INTO the United States. A CAT Coyote would be one who performs that service for cats, if such a person existed, and we, being who we are, naturally had to do this in the opposite direction.....sneaking cats INTO Mexico.

So two years ago last July we left the beautiful, Green Mountains of Vermont for the dry, once volcanic mountains of Michoacan, Mexico. There were my husband and myself and our Wolf Dog Daisy in the bright red Firebird convertible, towing a homemade trailer like a bunny hutch on wheels. This trailer was divided down the middle and even carpeted in bright red berber from the Carpet Barn's remnant bin. There was room on top for a luggage carrier. Inside the carrier were 8 cats. Yes, dear one....8 cats.
Two cats were "mine"....they were the Montpelier cats, both gray, one a shelter kitty and the other a fancy pants papered long fluffy haired Maine Coone cat. The other 6 were my dear husband's cats from before we met, all but one related to each other, the hugest, fattest, black and white farm cats I've ever seen. These were the Morrisville cats.
So there we were, a happy caravan, fresh on the road, full of dreams and even higher hopes! This is not the story of everything that happened on the road but a story about the Cat Coyote and smuggling cats into Mexico.
Before we left Vermont we read up on bringing animals into Mexico and everyone we spoke with, everything we read, seemed to tell us that as long as we had documentation of the animal's clean bill of health,and records of up to date vaccinations...it didn't seem to matter. Dogs and cats...nobody cared.Sounded good and EASY! That should have waved a flag as red as the carpeting in our dream sodden eyes...but of course, it didn't.

So....several weeks later we meandered into our Texas border town to meet the BIG Moving Truck and orchestrate the MOVE. In tow were the 2 gray cats and the now pink and black cats. These cats did NOT appear to be happy to be pink....these cats are big, fat bruisers.....these are ruff-tuff macho kitty cats, who, when they jump off the kitchen counter, the floor rumbles.
The culprit was, obviously, the crimson carpet. Bowls of spilled water in the hot summer sun, through New York and Pennsylvania, Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and through the great expanse of Texas.... water that slowly seeped into the alizarin remnant, bleeding it's pigment onto the white bellies and legs and paws of black and white cats. So one hot as habaneros, dry as paper bags, sunblasted afternoon we ripped up the carpet and threw it in a dumpster behind an HEB store.We hosed out the trailer and a good thing it was too...as it must have been over a 100 degrees out. The poor cats were panting like lions on the Savannah under the shade of a lone Thorn tree......We hosed down that trailer and we hosed down those cats and drove that dripping trailer back to our motel where a kindhearted young desk clerk let us park it under the entrance portico in the shade. Kind indeed as we probably, at that point, looked like the wrong side of town come to visit. We'd watch curious people walk by, stop and nudge each other and point. It's not every day that you see a bunny hutch on wheels full of 6 sopping wet enormous pink and black cats and 2 dripping much smaller gray ones....and all meowing loudly in indignation.
So.....the next important and pertinent thing that happens is that we try to cross the border into Mexico. Now we were the greenest Gringos to come down the pike. We knew nothing. We didn't about red lights and we didn't know about green lights, which lane was which....we didn't have a clue. So.....there we were and there was a big flashing RED light and a large man with a larger mustache motioned for us to go park off to the side, where we were joined by 6 more Mexicans in fatigues with great big, visible guns who were not smiling!
They did not care about Daisy the wolf dog who was barking at them. They cared a lot about the 8 cats in the trailer.
Our Spanish is not great now....but two years ago it was not just bad, it didn't exist....we had no Spanish. Finally after about half an hour,it was finally explained to us that the regulations had been changed...that a week prior, a small circus had attempted to smuggle a sea lion and an elephant and a tiger into Mexico and since then, there were new, strictly enforced RULES. We could bring in only two animals. 2 dogs, 2 cats, a dog and a cat but not a dog and 8 cats. I wanted to ask if one could have an elephant and a tiger...2 sea lions.....a sea lion and a tiger...2 elephants....but I kept my mouth shut. Somehow I intuited that the man with the big black boots and the gun wouldn't laugh at my joke.
We were told to turn around and we drove sadly back to our Texas border town motel and our sweet young desk clerk looked a bit alarmed to see us back again but he gave us a room, and a shady spot for our cats. We headed for the bar next door to come up with Plan B.
Now I know that at least half of my dear readers will be shaking their heads in bewilderment that one could be travelling with, let alone changing their plans and their lives around for 8 cats. I know a lot of people would have booted those cats out and been down the road. That seemed awfully heartless to me. I like cats okay.....enough to have had 2 cats, but I am not mad about cats....I'm not what some people would call a "cat person", really but I especially am partial to Stella CaraBella, my fluffy gray Maine Coon cat because she's so very pretty. That cat is a joy to look at! I never lived with the Morrisville cats...they have their own story.My husband is the cat person. So I was as perplexed as anyone would be to find themselves on the Texas/Mexico border with 8 cats and a dog and no idea what to do next.

We called our moving agent, who was as surprised as we were. He thought that since we had papers on all the animals.....there would be no problems.Rules are mercurial at the Border....events like marital discord,someone being fired,a lowcut, clingy T shirt, a hangover or maybe just Mercury retrograde can all exert a powerful influence on who or what crosses the border on any given day.
One idea was to apply for some sort of "special dispensation" from the Health Department in Mexico City but that would entail boarding the cats somewhere in Texas and going to Mexico City with someone who spoke fluent Spanish and filling out a million papers and forms and making 1000 copies and then going on without the cats and waiting....someone said, probably 6 months, to hear back about if our permits were granted. No good.
Another idea was to go on with one dog and one cat to Michoacan. Then to drive all the way back up and pick up two more cats. And then do this 3 more times. No good either"
Another idea was to pay a "fee" to some guys at the border crossing. This might and might not work. The suggested "fee" was high...about $500.00 US spread amongst a few people. Problem is....we wouldn't be "paying the fee".....someone else would be meeting with them the day before...and if perhaps this person's boss appeared at the moment we were to cross over...oh well, the person couldn't very well let us cross with the supervisor there and our "fee" would be lost. Plus....perhaps there would need to be a "fee" at the 30 mile line in Mexico as well....30 miles over the border there are more checkpoints....once one passes the 30 Mile Line, they're Home Free, so to speak.
Definitely no good.

So........????
Yes, I think I'll have another tequila.

Enter the Cat Coyote!!!!!!

Of course, there is no such thing as an actual Cat Coyote. Who else but us ever even Needed a Cat Coyote?
Earlier I mentioned our moving agent. This dear, helpful person came from a family of import/exporters on the border in Mexico and now ran a business in the States. Needless to say, most people move in the other direction but there are those, like us,who swim upstream. It is a motley crew we have come to learn, people, Gringos, move to Mexico for all sorts of interesting and often curious reasons. Our dear and helpful friend had an even dearer and more helpful wife. Now, whether her charity was genuine or she was merely eager to see the back of us and our cats once and for all, is not clear....what is clear is that she volunteered to be our Cat Coyote. She had a mother and sisters and cousins all living on the other side of the border, she had a perfectly average looking white mini van and several small Mexican looking children. She did not look American, or like a jazz drummer (my husband) or an artist (me) or drive a bright red convertible or have a Wolf Dog.
On the appointed day we drove our cat filled trailer to a pre-arranged rendevous spot on the American side and handed off all 8 cats. They ALL went into the back of the mini van where they were corralled by a large net so they couldn't escape and wander about the van. The net was then covered by some blankets so that no cats were visible. Then, into the van went the 2 children and the 4 children of the sister. Finally, our Cat Coyote and her sister. The children were instructed to be as noisy as they could as they crossed the bridge, to sing at the top of their lungs, to goof around, to talk a lot...all at once......in case any suspicious meowing from the rear might be happening.
We were then instructed to meet them at a certain parking lot in a town about 10 miles into Mexico.
Everything went off without a hitch.....easy as pie...come pan comida....like bread for dinner.
We met and one by one the gray cats and the STLL pink and black cats were all returned to the trailer. We bid our fond goodbyes and thanked them profusely and drove into Mexico.We drove 20 miles until we came to the little outpost that is the Thirty Mile Line. Three men were sitting eating tacos and barely looked up at us as we sailed by the beautiful green light with our trailer full of Mexican cats.

That is the story of the Cat Coyote and how a bunch of Vermont cats made it deep into the heart of Mexico.
Now....we have to figure out how to get them out!

Jesus and The Big Bang

2005-05-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

Kickboxing is such a phenomenal way to start the day. When I have blown it off for a bit and then return to it...I can never remember why on earth I missed a day. Endorphins are a wonderful thing...... so is oxygen!

There are so many things that strike me as alien here. Things I simply cannot wrap my mind around. One is the connection between the fact that virtually everyday here is a Catholic Saint's Day, a Feast Day.... the Celebration of the Blessed Trinity, a Mass for Holy Relics, a day for Sacred Blood...and why these these events need be celebrated by pre-dawn mortar explosions is a deep and unfathomable Mystery to me.
We live in a colonia, a neighborhood, on a hill above the bowl that contains the Cathedral dotted Centro of the city. This city is ringed by once volcanic mountains and it is known as "La Zona Del Rayos"......the Zone of the Rays which sounds positively spooky to me but seems to refer to the fact that when it finally begins to rain......this area attracts amazing and powerful purpley silver lightening and incredible thunder.But...this rain has yet to arrive and the air is still and HOT, the sun blazes away and the leaves hang from the trees like bits of dry brown wrapping paper.....that's another thing....there are NO brown paper bags here! No one asks..."paper or plastic?" at the store....either you get a plastic bag or you bring your own gaily colored mesh plastic shopping bag with you. Mine is the favorite color of Mexico...Rosa Mexicana....a deep, bright PINK with the ubiquitous Frida Kahlo face on it. I digress...
So..it is Bone Dry out there....and the air is full of dust.
Lately I have been painting until about 3.00 in the morning. I find I simply snap into creative overdrive around 11.00 and suddenly it's 3.00 and I figure I better go to bed. Sleep comes quickly and last night, early this morning I was jolted awake by what sounded like mortar fire. It was nearly seven but still dark.....the pinky morning sunrise all but hidden here by the mountains and I suspect by being below the Tropic of Cancer. Around 6.30 the sound of trucks backfiring or slipping gears and motorcycles and all manner of cars and buses without mufflers fill the air with an amazing cacaphony of traffic noise and from the Seminario down the block come the roar of huge skyrockets . I understand the color and the excitement and wonder and magic of fireworks....the oohs and aahs that come from watching flowers of light bloom in the night sky but this something else entirely. This is merely a flash of momentary blue light and a huge report that shakes the house and fills the already dusty air with smoke.All the dogs in the neighborhood begin barking and car alarms are set off and beep and wail in concert with all the dogs that live on rooftops and behind garden walls.Occasionally a rooster will join in.
So this morning there must have been about 5 or 6 of these explosions.....I know that I am not in any danger but it makes me think of how people in war torn places must awaken...to this sound, but louder and more of them, coupled not with sleepy annoyance but with fear. I am grateful that this is merely religious fervor that I don't understand and not insurgents or an invading army. I do wonder what might happen if an errant sky rocket's trajectory landed it into a bone dry tree.
Daisy the Wolf Dog, however is very afraid. This morning she hid her head beneath the dust ruffle of the bed so only her back and tail were showing and trembled like a tiny puppy. There are explosions probably 5 days out of 7.......Daisy will share our happiness to be, finally, home again.

One funny thing.....up in the village is a place that makes "popsicles".....a pink and lavender box of cement on the corner that is alwys surrounded by a small crowd. I am extemely fond of the coconut ones.....basically, I think, just rough chunky shreds of fresh coconut held together with a bit of sugar water....maybe coconut milk and frozen on a stick. What's funny is the stick.....not a uniform , smooth, flat "popsicle" stick....but a piece of a shingle, square at the end....rough, whittled with a knife, each one is slighty different.....the scent of coconut oddly mingling with the scent of lumber. I imagine someone doing that....spending their time making sticks, and I wonder about that.

On Water, Actual & As Metaphor

2005-05-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening the water began flowing again.
The end of the "Dry Season" here is, supposedly, approaching. This is very good as the predominant shade of the world is now a sort of ochre. Include also umbers and sepia...all earth colors and siennas against a turquoise, a pthalo blue, sky so sharp that objects against it seem to have been cut out with scissors.
Beneath the lavanderia, the laundry patio,is the alhimbe. It is merely a cement holding tank into which the city water flows. The City Water Dept. is known as Oompas.
Next.....there is a pump, the bomba, which due to the amazingly antiquated and taped together wiring...one must turn on and off manually. This is done by flipping the on/off switch on a power strip extension cord into which the pump is plugged. The pump, when turned on, pumps water up to the tinaco, a cement water resevoir on the roof which gravity feeds the water into the pipes of the house.
In the past month, during this very hot dry time, the city water has been turned off several times, for days at a time due to low water levels, backed up pipes, corroded pipes.
As an American woman, accustomed to the under-acknowledged affluence of life in most of America.....I have underestimated the beauty and wonderfulness of seemingly unlimited fresh, abundant, clean water.
Here, even when, like today, the city water is flowing unimpeded...it is only good for flushing toilets, showering, washing dishes, laundry, watering plants. One can drink the water if one boils it for 20 minutes first. When purchasing any fruits or vegetables one must always soak them in water for 15 minutes to which has been added drops of water purifier to kill the bacteria, parasites etc.. The water trucks deliver large plastic bottles of drinking water for drinking , making ice, making coffee.

Never have I given so much thought to water.

Here, now after I wash my face, it feels a size too small....one's skin feels dry and one becomes a lover of oils and creams, coconut and avocado oils, shea and mango and cocoa butters.....one uses hair conditioners by the handful. The air is so dry that one notices the lack of moisture in ones' lungs, in ones' nasal passages, in ones' eyes.
Palettes of watercolor paints are dry in no time...I was accustomed to covering my palette and the puddles of paint would remain until I returned and uncovered the palette to find the same puddles, waiting for me. Now I need to add purified water with an eye dropper, reconstituting the evaporated paint.
Painting a wash over a large area, once is forced to act quickly, without hesitation as the window of opportunity shrinks.Frisket dries quickly, stretched paper dries in no time as well.

Without water life withers, witholds, becomes less magnanimous.
I appreciate and bless and love water with a new found wonder and depth of feeling. Water is life and water is a metaphor for flow.
Unimpeded flow, uncontaminated, crystalline, abundant flow.
There is only abundant Flow, there is only Source.....
Flow of water, flow of resources, flow of energy and creativity and flow of ideas. Free flow of heartfelt love and attention and empathy and understanding. Valves wide open with no blockages. Lack and Scarcity are merely the valves blocked, shut down, the pipes corroded. Abundance chafing against resistance.

I am picturing Life as Water today.
Filling me with happiness as the tinaco fills with water.

In Memorium

2005-05-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day 2005

At the risk of appearing maudlin, I am posting this photo of my only
child, Gabriel Merlin Edelson Kosdan who died of complications/an infection,
3 years after undergoing a double lung transplant. Gabriel was born with
Cystic Fibrosis.

Gabriel was an amazing being, an artist and I am honored to have been his
mother.

Gabe, I love you where ever you are.

Shooting off "Rockets of Desire"

2005-05-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

A Saturday unfolds in Mexico, a hot and dry morning...there has been no water for 3 days now....yesterday the muchachos at the water plant up the road said...."Manana" the universal answer for the question, "cuando??"..."when??". I have found that people here hate to say "No"...hate to disappoint..and will almost always tell you what they believe you want to hear....regardless of it's connection to what may actually occur.
A friend and I were having a conversation about my desire to return to theUnited states...my frustration at not possessing enough $$$ or an alternative so that I could leave PRONTO.
Some thoughts...

She said;
<< My thought is that you are saying, "once I am back in the states, then I will be happy with my life." And Abe would say, "first you have to be happy where you are, then you can move to the next wonderful place." >>

Okay now my thoughts about this are as follows.....Actually... I am really happy. I am incredibly happy with my talent, my choice of career...calling and feel immense joy that I am able to manifest and live my beingness 24 hours a day......that I am my work and my work is me. I am joyful that everything I do is a manifestation of my creativity and that it bubbles up like a spring in my artwork, in my writing, in gardening, in cooking , in my passion for life. I love my husband and our marriage, I love the people I have attracted into my life.... I am extremely happy with my life...I just would like it to be in another setting.
It seems very peculiar to me that one shouldn't have an opinion about where they would like to live.....that if one is an avid reader and loves everything about books and loves bookstores that if they pretend that they aren't shooting enormous "rockets of desire" towards living in a place where there are many wonderful and well stocked bookstores well that just seems silly to me.
I completely "own" that living in Morelia served a purpose and it truly served me well and I truly believe I am in alignment that where I am now would be unlikely if I hadn't followed the seemingly impulsive and "illogical" path that led me here......however I do not love that there are no bookstores here.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with tiny limes with many seeds but I am very thrilled that I will be living in a place where one can easily buy bright yellow, fragrant lemons which I love which are unheard of here.
It is quite picturesque to see burros laden and piled high with burlap bags (costales) filled with "dirt".....actually bone dry ground wood chips, leaves, pinecones etc with a small amount of pale brown dry soil ...going around the neighborhood with a man on a horse.......selling the bags AND I am hugely looking forward to being able to purchase large bags of potting soil or even ordering truckloads of it.....with the texture of crumbled chocolate cake, moist and deep, dark brown that my plants would love and thrive in, where worms would burrow and tunnel......I suppose I could SAY I adore cactus that thrive in barren soil and neglect and scarce rainfall......but I miss flowers and rain and seeds germinating and thriving and growing.
I know that it is an extreme comparison......but that is like saying a person in a prison camp could only expect freedom when they "chose to love" incarceration. So.......I do feel better when I don't dwell constantly on why I don't choose to live in Mexico any longer.....what makes me feel wonderful is to think of my new home with plenty of safe, drinkable water, a climate where gentle rains fall and the sun does not scorch tender seedlings that grow in rich, dark soil. I thrill to think of going to a large, well stocked bookstore where there are myriad books in English on every subject and on the way home I can stop at a super market where I can purchase lemons and tender, young spinach and organic produce and different varieties of things and free range chickens and good olive oil.
One decides what things are for them and what things are not for them............and shoots off rockets of desire towards the things that please them. I remember reading some "Abe' quote about not accepting "Reality" if "Reality" is not what pleases you. That's where I'm at......."reality" here is the taco stand with corn tortillas filled with "borego" barbecued sheep meat and chopped raw onions and chiles. I choose to think instead of fresh Italian bread, toasted and drizzled with fruity green olive oil and piled with tender baby arugula leaves and ripe tomatoes and fresh basil and a slice of fresh white mozzarella.
It's those small details that I am fine tuning, that I am desiring now. I have never been so totally and completely crystal clear about exactly what I am desiring.......it IS , all of it, the absolute next logical step and I am ecstatic about that. So...that is good and I can't imagine that I should pretend that I Love to eat sheep.

First Foray

2005-05-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

the canterra remains cool. the pink and gray stone walls relax in the soft overcast....one lone jacaranda bloom glows purple next to the Quinacridone coral of the pomegranates....blessed relief from the sun.....the rains are approaching.
Afternoon in Michoacan......the rustic hewn beams abovewith thin strips of wood like braids in between, the rest of the studio covered in lamina.....small birds pecking over my head.Everyday, wondering......how did I come to choose this unfamiliar place, what unseen rhythms and inarticulate voices beckoned me here?
Me...girl artist and illustrator, writer and lover of flowers and gardens, good wine, good food,moonlight, rain.....the scent of jasmine and datura in the twilight...all things truly well done and honest, admirer of passion in all things and curious always.
First foray here , this my first and maiden post.....the beginning of a chronicle from this point forward into the creation of the future.....here,shooting off the first and initial rocket of my desire that will launch mefrom the here and now of central Mexico back home to the United States.
Drawings stapled to boards, wait to be painted.....work beckons.
Toes dipped into this pool can get wet again later.