it’s friday. i’m in los angeles. it’s not hot. i’m getting ready to go plant a poopload of succulent cuttings that i brought back from carpinteria. sharron kindly let me harvest some special aloe pups from her property. while i was using my bear mitts like spades and pulling up one after the other, joyce said very delicately, “um, maybe you’d like some of these little ones.” so after my bag was nearly full i said, “good idea!” and i topped it off with lots of smaller pups. then over at joyce’s i noticed her neighbor’s giant black aeoniums. no i didn’t. yes i did. my spades turned to loppers. i had to do it. but i’m a careful harvester. i get the babies from the bottom. practically invisible. they’re begging to be adopted. that’s what joyce said.
what does any of this have to do with my gouache pictures? nothing!
holy heck! an idea just zippity zinged it’s way into my brain! paint succulents with gouache. oh wait. they aren’t orange. but i’ll still do it. greenish blue is the new orange. you heard it here first.
so about the goauche. i’m taking some to amsterdam with my watercolors. it’s very possible that i will just fill my sketchbook with easy to draw lumpy dutch fruit.
i’m going to tell you something right now. goauche is groovy. i’m going to marry it to my sketches and go on a punch drunk gouache sketching honeymoon. i am v. happy about it. and it all started when i saw that rifle paper calendar with the poms. the ones inside the cover of my new BIG journal.
i was smitten like a kitten with those orange poms. so i decided to make some of my own. and after 3 sets i decided to branch out and find more fruit. because fruit is healthy. it has antioxidants. it likes to be painted.
you might be sitting staring at this screen with a bazillion ideas in your head, or maybe not a single one. that happens to me sometimes. i’m hear to tell you. WATCH the bleep OUT. an idea could be headed your way right now! you never know where it will come from. stay alert.
Orange fizzy fab – great, now there’s yet another art supply I want to try….fiendish woman! 😉
Yummy pages! I’ve not tried gouache, and I tend to go overboard with supplies before I’ve tried them much, so I’m going to watch and read you more about them to see!
Sheila
I have only used white gouache… the Holbein/Golden gouache here is like 50-70 bucks for a 15ml tube!! Ouch, but oh…feel the lust!
i am in love with m.graham gouche . it is really yummy . give it a try sometime .
Your papaya is epic. Truly. Don’t stop painting.
seriously new levels of genius here…love love love all you’re up to! will trade one fab mid century modern chair (delivered to your door!) for some of those succulents, you clearly took enough to share! xo
Gee! I am beginning to wonder what it is that YOU have for breakfast. Your fruit is just stunning! The colors make me happy. Still wish you would have some prints made. Oh, please do.
I forgot this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12638858@N04/6809976089/
Yum! I love your paintings. And I really want to drink that orange fizzy thing.
Holbein gouache is my favorite. Are you planning on taking whole tubes of gouache to Amsterdam? If not, I have a fool/chimp-proof way to fill pans with gouache WITHOUT crumbling. Some people have problems with crumbling. I never do.
Lemme know…
🙂
Theresa I love pinterest and think getting my images pinned is FABULOUS! thanks for doing it
You are a JoY! I hope you don’t mind that I “pinned” several of your images cuz they make me happy! Credit is given to you in the pin description of course. Happy day to you MAM!
Thanks for a juicy, colorful start to the morning. It’s hard to get back to creating since we lost Sparky, so for now I am just looking and your posts always make me smile.
Wow, you seem to have hit a new level here. Love the papaya especially. I keep meaning to try gouache and not doing it. Maybe this time…
Love orange, love blood orange fizzy drinks, love the stuff you do and the stuff you make me want to do. Loretta is right! You put spells on us! And we love your witchy ways!
OH WOW….LOVE THE FRUIT!! THEY ARE BEAUTIMUS! NOW TO DIG OUT MY OLD GOUACHE AND ADD TO THE NEWLY PURCHASED BRIGHTER COLORS I GOT. I THINK I HAVE NOTICED THAT CHILDREN’S BOOK ILLUSTRATORS SEEM TO USE GOUACHE…Is IT BECAUSE IT IS MATTE AND MORE OPAQUE FOR REPRODUCTION….YA THINK? OPPS SORRY FOR THE CAPS!….succulents…? I live in an area that is much drier, maybe I should try them….they are so beautiful….will start reading up as my dirt in this new place has me baffled! My gorgeous irises I brought from the farm with black dirt are rotting here?! Love your blog, always soo fun to read what you are up to or thinking…plants, art, ideas, stuff…fun stuff…interesting what Sharron said about the Indians and the tar…for the boats.
this head here, the one on my side of this blippy conversation is always ‘over-flowering’ with ideas…um yes, ‘over-flowering’ which is when ideas germinate quickly and go instantly to seed without any further help, instruction or materials, they just go zap, zing, pop and they begin to grow. It can take me days to catch up to my ideas!!! And when I do and when I catch them, I try very hard to corral them into some kind of order, but me and order don’t always jive so that is just the way it goes. Funny you mentioned the gauche. I just returned from a trip to my local Blick and I spent a good hour in front of the Holbeins, thinking it might be a worth while investment. I couldn’t make up my mind on colors but now you’ve provided me a lovely color chart to consider and since I need to go back over there next week to pick up a print for my DD at the camera shop which is just a block from Blick…whoopy do. I’m gonna make a list now. I also brought home some aqua-boards to experiment with. Your journal pages always make me feel giddy and a little punch drunk too, think it might be all orange ‘happiness’ going on. I’m enjoyin’ every single page and word. Have an awesome and relaxing and a happy weekend getting into any kind of paper and paint mischievousness that you can. I’ll just wait here for the report back. VBG!!!!!
I think you’ve really hit your stride with this fruit and painted backgrounds – it’s all so graphic, rich in color and form. Very, very nice!!
Luv your exuberant colorful journal pages!
YOu are a witch! Get outta ma head!
First, last night you made me get out of bed at 10 after a headache evening and stay up to ONE O’CLOCK cutting paper down to size and threading hand-dyed silk ribbons through tiny awl holes (after I sopped up the blood where the awl hit my finger).
So now we are in the car on the way to the Cape, and what is packed in my art bag with the new journal – all my Holbein gouache.
You put a spell on me….