nanoscapes for August: 31 lost heirloom tomatoes

nanoscapes' 31 lost heirloom tomatoes

It is August, and high time that Minnesotans were able to tuck into local summer tomatoes. As a person who is ridiculously fond of all tomatoes, it is hard to pick a true "favorite." How am I supposed to decide when the choices are big ones, small ones, tiny ones, on-the-vine ones, with colors including red, yellow, orange, and wildly striped or beautifully blotched heirloom tomatoes?

While celebrating all of delicious tomatoes available today, it is also a time to lament the heirloom tomatoes whose tastes are lost to us. Although there are many seed savers and dozens, if not hundreds of vendors of heirloom tomato seeds, there are, indeed, lost tomatoes. To honor their memory,  nanoscapes celebrate 31 lost varieties of heirloom tomatoes: one for every day in August.

Banish Blank Pages With Solid Geometry Inspiration

Spaces With Stripes 1

In the beginning...

It is one thing to paint every day (which I do), but quite another thing to imagine that I might have a Great Inspiration every time I pick up a paintbrush.

Spaces With Stripes 2

Instead of gazing endlessly at a blank sheet of paper, I often pick up a pencil and begin with a doodle sparked by a memory of Solid Geometry which creates an opportunity to explore of light, intricate spaces, and color.  Solid Geometry was my only beloved area of mathematics, and I am never surprised that while filling in the spaces that I both learn and have fun. 

Spaces With Stripes 3

While starting with random spaces may not be an inspiration for plein air painters or artists who focus on pristine and precise  representational work, I find is useful for experimenting with new colors, papers, brushes and techniques. 

I learned this technique from Russ Dittmar, who also taught me how to coax brilliant colors out of watercolor when he suggested: "lots of pigment, not a lot of water." When I taught this to a group of young students at the R.H. Stafford Library in Woodbury, MN, they jumped in with enthusiasm. Leaving no blank paper in their wake, they filled in the spaces and the space around the spaces.


Spaces With Stripes 1, 2 and 3 These three paintings took me through a "break" during July 2011 when I left the search for Great Inspiration to the rest of the world.  

Each Spaces With Stripes is painted on 7-3/4 x 7-3/4 inch Arches 140# hot press paper.  Each original: $200.  A signed and numbered limited edition matted print called Three-in-a-Row is $100.  (Matt size is 36x14 inches.) Find them all at the nanoscapes' website.

Kitchen tools: a quick cure for blank canvas panic

Sushi Roosters

If you have run through your check list of artwork starters and blank canvas has induced inspiration-free panic, try looking at your kitchen tools for new beginning.

Full disclosure #1: I am a watercolorist who always travels with paints and paper. Even before the coffee, I am the early-rising house guest who will rifle through my host’s kitchen drawer for inspiration. I always find it.

Full disclosure #2: I know that there are purists who decry tracing as any sort of art activity, but in my constant search for interesting shapes and patterns, I will take my inspiration where I find it.

Potato Masher 1

Potato Masher 4

Kitchen tools come in wonderful shapes and all sorts of sizes. Use them to get past your empty-paper panic. 

Tomato Forks

Sterling Silver Cake Servers

I made the first potato masher painting at my sister Elaine's house, and I now have a world-class collection  which has inspired four Potato Masher paintings. Part of the engrossing challenge of these shapes is working out the connections between each ring and link, a theme that connects them to all of the nanoscapes' rings and links, which are hanging at FrameWorks Gallery in Saint Paul, MN until September 3, 2011.

Forest of Fondue Forks

The Sushi Roosters, which were tricky to trace and to paint, make me smile.  The cake servers were part of my 50th birthday celebration, and the Fondue Fork Forest forks belong to my cousin Theda. The Tomato Fork is my own.

While I make no claim to dictionary uniqueness -- someone else must do this, too -- I suspect that there are not many painters of Fondue Fork Forests, Tomato Forks, and Sterling Silver Cake Servers.

If kitchen tools don't inspire you, find a friend with a woodshop or wander around a hardware store. Great shapes are everywhere. 

31 Ears of corn: nanoscapes celebrate July

31 Ears of Corn for July

31 Ears of Corn for July  When I painted 31 pumpkins for October 2010, I didn't plan to keep up painting and posting an image-a-day for a year on Facebook, but here I am in July with 31 ears of corn painted on a piece of 22x33" Arches 140# paper.

Like all corn lovers, I haunt farmers' markets, looking for local sweet corn. Everyone knows that the best corn is the freshest corn and the fewest number of minutes between picking and cooking makes the best corn. Sadly, during this first week of July in Minnesota, the only corn to be found is from elsewhere. It will be here soon.

A 10-month review: pumpkins (October), leaves (November), Hanukah candles and snowflakes (December), lost left-handed gloves (January), missing socks (February), basketballs (March), raindrops (April), LLLamas (May), the whimsical creatures known as small friends (June), and corn (July).  

nanoscapes' Small Friends declare independence in new website

After working in the shadow of the geometric abstract nanoscapes for more than five years, 38 small friends have declared their independence and moved to a website all their own. Find them in individual galleries for amphibians, birds, cats, fish, LLLamas, and mammals.  31 LLLamas appeared in Facebook in May, and all but Rainbow LLLama left abruptly on the first LLLamaWorLLLd Tour. Rainbow stayed behind to represent them at this new website.

Moose on a Hill: the 1st small friend

 Their first principle is WE WERE FIRST. Before the first nanoscape kaleidoscope or molecule, the Alaskan Moose on the Hill and the the first Musk Ox appeared on post cards that I made as souvenirs of my first visit to Alaska in 2003. One copy of the Moose remains in the archives, and the all of the Musk Ox are lost. These friends were painted on Arches and Canson post cards with watercolor pencils and brushes with water reservoirs. 

In 2006, shortly after taking my first watercolor class, a few extra cats showed up in my studio for portraits. I wasn't surprised because I feed, water, and obey Flying Tackle Phil and Darwin, Felinus Emeritae. Ever since, there has been a steady stream of whimsical creatures either visiting (Mary-Anna Musk Ox) or making their home in my studio. Fortunately, they don't eat, and even the largest (Darren Dragon at 32 feet) take up no physical space. 

Their second principle is USE GOOD TOOLS. They are all proud to have been painted on Arches, Fabriano or Canson papers with Daniel Smith, Winsor Newton, Holbein, Sennelier or Dick Blick watercolors using Daniel Smith sable, Winsor Newton Series 7 or one tiny Jack Richardson brush.

Their third principle is PAINT INDOORS. In our whimsical world, we share an aversion to heat, humidity and bugs. 

Their fourth principle is SMILE. The small friends are proud to stand up for whimsy, to support smiling, and to encourage 10 belly-laughs per day.

Rhea Birds One and Two

Celebration Rhea Bird

Greater (American) Rhea Bird

My San Pedro-based California cousin Rhea graciously hosted me before and after my speaking trip at the National Association For Law Placement's 2011 Annual Education Conference in Palm Spring, CA. Was it a burden or a benefit to her role as host, that I had laryngitis, and conserved my  voice the entire time?

Rhea is a great cheerleader for nanoscapes, and I was intrigued when she told me that there was a Rhea Bird. "Really?" I checked my phone and there it was in a wikipedia listing. It is a three-toed flightless bird native to South America whose feathers are widely used for feather dusters. Identified species are the Greater (American) Rhea Bird and the Lesser (Darwin's) Rhea Bird. As yet unrecognized is the Celebration Rhea Bird, a native of New Orleans.

The two Rhea Birds take their places among nanoscapes' Small Friends.

Nanoscapes painted in March: raindrops, glass mosaics, and nano-landscapes

I paint every day whether at home or on the road. After making 9 Pass the Baton presentations at 8 law schools in 6 states, March 2011 had some elements of blur, but paints, brushes, and paper travel well, and nanoscapes stayed with me.  

The Raindrops of April
Original Watercolor NFS

The day-by-day nanoscapes' series that I have posted to Facebook since the Pumpkins of October 2010 (individual post cards) continued with the Raindrops of April. Since January 2011, I painted each month's images directly onto a single sheet of watercolor paper, and PhotoShopped the individual images for Facebook. Lugging a large watercolor block around the country is out of the question, so I paint them all at home. Some of the drops had their travel adventures in April when they breezed through airport security on a flash drive to be posted from Moscow and Boise Idaho where I spoke at both campuses of the University of Idaho College of Law. Two campuses and two time zones.  

Glass Mosaic #2
6x18
Original NFS
Prints available

Glass Mosaic #1
2-1/2x8
Original NFS
Prints available

The Glass Mosaics are gleeful explorations of a very traditional watercolor technique called "wet in wet." I gridded the paper with a #6 HD pencil, and then added a blob of clean water to each box -- one at a time, the old fashioned way. Then I dripped in between one and three colors,  manipulating the drips to fill out the rectangles. Daniel Smith's Primatek and Duochrome colors, which create metallic, shiny and granulating effects, make the rectangles look like glass tiles. A very pale green/gray mix hints at grout.

As much as I admire glass and tile, working with the real thing is off my life list, which is now limited to activities which require neither safety equipment nor liability waivers. One more of the Privileges of Chronological Enrichment.

Nebraska Fields From the Air.
140# Arches Paper Watercolor 12x16
Original $300

Illinois Fields From The Air
140# Arches Paper Watercolor 12x16
Original $300

As Washington DC suburban native and a confirmed urban dweller who gets nervous out of sight of tall buildings, my direct farming references are limited. My own gardening efforts culminated in an Obsessed Gardener's 26x92 foot garden in Baltimore that had crocuses in the lawn, 40 rose bushes, dozens of daylilies, and a lawn that could be cut in 30 minutes with a well-sharpened hand mower. My garden philosophy, focused on flowers, herbs, and garden treats (grape tomatoes) was "Start with wretched excess, and scale up." No fields. No crops. No plowing. No worries about terrain or runoff. 

My eyes are now wide open. On my travels in large and tiny planes, I often take the window seat. Flying over Nebraska with no reference point or vocabulary word for "contour farming," I started muttering "nanoscapes! nanoscapes!" and grabbed my pencil and drew like a madwoman. I began painting Nebraska Fields From The Air in November 2010, and it is a true nano landscape, focused on bright colors and shapes. Illinois Fields From The Air benefited from the Glass Mosaics' wet-in-wet experiences, and my field notes from the air say "shades of brown, tan, green and gold! Make it shiny!"