Lilac Window

I have been trying my hand at illustration.

Its exciting.

I am so inspired by kids books these days. Particularly by vintage books. I cant hold it in, I had to give it a whirl. Though, I truly appreciate the skill that illustrators have, and feel rather daunted by the task. Its one thing to make a painting of one image that you have in your head, that can take its own life and form. Its another thing to make a series of images that work with a story, that work together,  and are rich and exciting.

Not to intimidate myself or anything…

So I wrote out a little story from the history of the Bahai faith. Belonging to a relatively new religion means that there are fewer books for kids, and its so lovely to have these stories for them. The story is about a puppet show.

The process of drafting the images and figuring out what to put in each of them took months, and covered my studio space with sketches. It is a bigger task than I expected. I thought I could just whip up a picture for each, but sitting at the drawing board I would draw a blank, and realize I have no idea what a Persian puppet might look like, or a tent in a courtyard.

Anyways, its been fun, and now I have twelve illustrations to show you…

Watercolour painting by a five year old. Inspired by nature.

I hope you all had a wonderful break.

Between Christmas and New Year, The “Emster” and I went to the Baha’i Winter School at Sylvan Lake. I did three days of watercolour painting with the participants. It was so great to paint with people of all ages and backgrounds. I LOVE introducing painting to people who haven’t painted since childhood. It brings back memories, it soothes people. They say “I never knew painting was so meditative.” Its also rewarding when people are so thrilled with the results. And so they should be, the paintings were incredible. Over the next few days I’ll show you some.

And I put more on my school website, so you can see them there. I also have a bit of a schedule for the new year up. First things first – a watercolour painting workshop January 23rd. Come join us!

Hello. I hope you are all having wonderful holidays. The weather has warmed up, and there is a lot of snow for sledding and stuff like that. Its quite beautiful really. Unfortunately, I dont take advantage as much as I should, Its hard to get out and enjoy the warm weather when in the city. I find anyways. But I need to remind myself! I am off to Sylvan Lake tomorrow to do three days of water colour painting workshops. I am so excited, to enjoy the lake and out doors, to see old friends and to paint.

We had our adult workshop last week and boy was it fun. We all loved painting together, seeing the amazing things each of us produced and just delving into color and canvas. The above painting was created spontaneously by a woman new to painting. Again. I have to say it: “What fun!”.

This Saturday we are having another painting workshop at Lilac Window Art School. I am excited to paint with some adults, though the little guys have been so much fun too. (There is still room for Saturday, just email me at angie@lilacwindow.com if you want to come…:)) This painting is half of a set of two. Painted by a four-year old, and a one-and-a-half year old. Brothers. They worked so well in collaboration!

Here is Emery standing in front of the 4 ft painting I did with my friends 2 year old. He is there for scale.

Amazing isn’t it? She is just so talented!

Hi all,

I just popped in to tell you all how excited I am about tomorrows card-making workshop!

There’s still room if you want to come!

email me: angie@lilacwindow.com and I’ll let you in on the details.

notice a difference?

I thought I would get all obvious with the literary references and stop leaving it for guess work. Also, I’m so loving all the illustration stuff I see, I can’t help myself.

“I beseech Thee … to make of my prayer a fire that will burn away the veils which have shut me out from Thy beauty, and a light that will lead me unto the ocean of Thy Presence.”

- Prayer revealed by Baha’u'llah

OK, now I guess I am getting really religious.

wow. I just lost all my readers.

But I guess, sometimes I gotta take that risk. I don’t get paid to paint, so heck, I figure if your still with me, you gotta be my kinda people.

So this little number is an illustration for the above quote. And I see it as that – an illustration. Its meant to be cliche and almost kitchy in the representation of these little symbolic vignettes that are living in this surreal and alternate universe. Im thinking Steven King meets Cormac McCarthy, and they decide to do a comic book about prayer. Yup. That’s what I am going for here. (even though I never read either writers, but I sorta got a vibe about what they do… I could be totally wrong here… but then, whose to know?)

Anyways, I don’t see this as a final piece, although I am pretty happy with it. Its fun and cheeky, while being about something so ominously powerful, I can’t even fathom approaching the subject. I also hope it gives a jumping off point for conversation. Also, since praying in front of my kids, I am aware that they may be listening, learning and have questions. That is why I thought illustrations would be nice. As reductive as that may be.

I attended a talk by painter Otto Don Rogers who is also a Baha’i and a supremely amazing painter from Canada. In his talk he showed a painting that has a moon, a tree and some water in it. He held it on the screen long enough for all of us to go “oooo, aaaah”. and then he said “this is not really a very good painting, or worth talking about – except that it was the starting point for me to create this…” and he put another slide up of a sculpture he made from rusted steel. I’m not one for sculpture, in that I don’t know much about it, and often am confused by it, but after seeing the painting, and the connection, I was really moved by the piece. His process is to carefully create an abstraction of an idea, to a point where it still resonates with the initial thought, but goes beyond it. Sometimes I wonder if we don’t have a reference point of the initial idea, though, its hard to work back to it.

Never the less, this is my first piece on the subject.

So this piece is pomegranates and a winter field. Mark says I should call it “Pomegranate Fields Forever.” yeah.

So I was listening to myself just blabber about nothing on the last podcast when I was trying to talk about my work. I realized how hard it is to talk about. I have so much to say, and then, it seems like too much. I feel like blurting out ” Just look at the picture for crying out loud!”, but then I want to talk about all the ideas I had going into the piece. But then, I just cant seem to find the right words to match those big freakin’ ideas in my head. Ya dig? This has got to be hard for all artists…and I have two university degrees in this stuff!

So, I am going to try for point-form.

Here goes nothin’:

-object vs. space

-Alberta. Oh, Alberta.

-love/hate of the winter

-wanting to paint what I see vs. what I remember

-horizontal landscapes and portrait image

-hovering between extreme detail and breezy washes

-limited pallet

-using my new favorite winter gray made from burnt umber and ultramarine blue, contrasted with crimson. Oh. Crimson.

-relishing and savoring the treasures of the season.

OK, so that wasn’t so bad. Did you get it all? Now, I’ll just go write a 1000 word essay on each theme, and then we’re about good to go.

But before I do that, I think I’ll just start painting my next one.

Still trying to figure out how this is affected by my bias. (see Monday’s post.) Lets just say, in an abstract way, its sort of like this:

…striving… mind,

heart,

…beauty,

mercy,

creation…

OK now, I’m getting carried away with myself.