shining egg

after the pause

have i mentioned that i love the beach?

beach inspired art

i think i might be done talking about the beach.  for now.

we're settling in.  transition is never easy for me, and this one - from vacation to home and then right into school is a doozie.  but we are settling in.

it's been cloudy, rainy, and gray here for the last five days.  perfect for some crafting.  beach inspired, of course.

three days (and counting) in a row of blair's hot rocks.  when i first saw this idea back in july, i knew it was perfect for us.  we collect SO many rocks on our beach trips.  we paint them, we glue them together to make sculpture, we sort them into jars and enjoy them as art on our shelves.  but this, this is a pure sensory delight. 

luckily, the kids like it as much as i do!

and then there's this.

sometimes an idea just calls me.  like the watermelons.  this one began knocking while we were away.  i have a treasured copy of this book, given to me by a friend of my mother's when i turned thirteen.  i couldn't appreciate it then, and i sometimes wonder why i kept it all these years.  now, it's a dear, dear favorite, read and re-read on the beach each summer.  and then there were the sketches in my moleskine, my curiosity about collage inspired by artists like these.  add into the mix an old atlas in the trunk of the car and the delicious used bookstore in our beach town, and this is what happened.

 

i'm not crazy about the collage - it needs something less, or different, as far as i'm concerned.  but i love this simple page. 

i'll be working on this idea over the next few weeks and we'll see where it goes.

now, more hot rocks.

beach art

during our long happy days at the beach there was lots of time for making art. 

we used colored pencils and oil pastels on the beach almost every day. 

and watercolor pastels sometimes too. 

we painted rocks at home on rainy days.  i sketched in my moleskine (i hemmed and hawed over the decision to switch to moleskines and i'm oh-so-happy that i did it).

i made some new napkins for our cloth-napkin family.

i knitted along on my never-ending poncho which is still not finished, but which i'm committed to finishing before october 1.

i even got to paint the ocean at the ocean - something i've been wanting to do for a very long time.

for years, i've been wishing to paint, really paint, the ocean at the ocean.  but i paint in oils, usually on paper, and i just couldn't figure it out logistically.  i considered trying acrylics, using pre-stretched canvas, but then, earlier this summer, i got some excellent advice on the subject from another artist.

i used water based oils (which i think i'll be switching to completely in order to avoid using turpentine) and i painted on birch panels.  i also used a cardboard box for transporting and storing the paintings while they dried.  there are no photos of the painting in process - too many worrisome variables - paint-y fingers and so much sand, i couldn't throw my camera into that mix.

i'm glad i did it.  but there were some challenges.  sand in the paintings.  bugs landing on the paintings (they have to be removed with fingers because, of course, once they land in the oil paint they can't fly anymore).  and the fact that my painting is very much about line, and color.  i'm not a painter who captures things photographically, i do that with my camera.  i'm a painter who interprets and expresses a moment in time.  but this was a subject that i wanted to capture rather than interpret.

once i made sense of all that, i felt better about the paintings.  i also realized that, for me, right now, oil pastel is a better way for me to "paint" the ocean.  i'll try again, it was fun and i loved doing it, but i'm content having done it, for now.

a bit of a tailspin

it's hard enough for me, coming back from the beach.  it's always hard.  every year it's hard.  very very very hard.  it's hard to leave that place that i so love.  hard to leave the days that are filled with endless being together, our little family of four and some of our most precious bigger family, too.  hard to leave a place where the horizon is far, far away and the sky is a color of blue that i can't even mix with my paints.  hard to leave the days of being outdoors morning, noon, and night; where the breeze is crisp and the sunshine warms my body and my spirit; where we eat ice cream cones whenever the mood strikes and devour bowls of watermelon and grapes that are just a bit crunchy from the sand.  it's hard to leave a place where the air tastes like possibility and the light looks like something all it's own.  it's hard enough.

we've come home to cloudy, rainy days.  i love rainy days, especially when the air is cool.  we haven't had enough rain all summer, so it's a treat, really.  but hard, after fifteen days (almost) of sunshine.

there's also the the mess.  not only the mess we make when we unload our lives from the minivan after two weeks away - the laundry and books and sand that need to be washed and put away and swept up.  this summer we came home to a mean mess left on our lawn by a disgruntled landscaper trying, i guess, to cause us a hassle.  that he did.  but it's only a hassle - no real harm was done.  my home and family are safe.  though this act of petty nastiness leaves a heavy feeling in the bottom of my stomach.  i think my kids feel that heaviness, too.  it's hard.

on top of that hard, hard, hardness, we've come home straight into the eye of the the tornado that is back-to-school.  school starts next week for one, and the following week for the other.  there are supplies to be purchased and clothes to try on and fill-in in the places where pants have grown too short (how do they do that, those pants?).  there are forms to fill out and backpacks to pack and lunches to think of making (what will they eat, my little people who don't like to eat lunch?).  and there are moments to savor, these last moments of summer and last days before both of my little ones will be off to school all day every day.  one day, surprisingly few days from now, i will kiss them both goodbye and send them off for hours upon hours, day after day.  and for the first time in eight years, i will be alone for hours upon hours, day after day - a wondrous, sometimes exciting, and oh-so-bittersweet thought that brings tears to my eyes.

the notion of sitting quietly in my living room in the middle of a morning, going off to any yoga class i choose, beginning any one of the forty-seven projects calling my name, cooking dinner start-to-finish while concentrating on the dinner i'm cooking - these possibilities are exciting.  but so sad, too.  i will miss them, my little ones.  i will miss playing and answering questions and holding little hands, i will miss seeing the world through their eyes all day, each day.  i will worry about them, too (i already do) - are they happy, having fun, are they learning there, in that school?  is it a place that is nourishing their spirits?  teaching them how to grow up into the grown-up-people i hope, one day, they will be?

so i'm off to quiet my swirling mind, put away the project plans and purging urge and desire to tie up so many loose ends until one day, two weeks from now, when the house is quiet.  i'm off to savor these days, even the tiring and trying moments - to hold little hands and smell sweet hair and answer question after question after question and cook dinner while i answer more questions and build with blocks and paint rocks and draw long squiggly purple lines while i can.