CHINESE CONTEMPORARY FOLK ART

                       KUNG HEI FAT CHOI, 2019, LUNAR YEAR OF THE PIG 

IT IS TRUE: I LOVE THE UNIQUENESS, COLOR AND PRIMITIVE DRAWING FOUND IN CHINESE FOLK ART, I WANTED TO REPOST FROM MANY YEARS BACK, WHAT I SHARED THEN. PLUS SHARING TWO NEW PIECES! 

Many countries share a common love of folk art painting, sometimes known as primitive art.

 The cultures hold many similarities in their art, but also enjoy distinct differences. Generally Folk Art illustrates a specific story concerning the ordinary, every day living of the average person.

Chinese Folk Art is more theme oriented, telling a specific story or moral.

The following contemporary folk art scenes are painted by both men and women.

Embroidery is a long established art form in China.  It is mainly a female activity. The items embroidered are quite diverse and include robes, theatrical costumes, purses, shoes and alter cloths.  Some are so finely stitched that it can take 5-6 women several years to complete a piece.

 Usually a traditional Chinese medicine shop puts its medicines/ herbs in cupboards lined with tiny square drawers.  A dispenser would pull open the drawers to take out medicine according to prescriptions provided by doctors.

Floating in metal tubs the women gather the seeds of the lotus blossom. The Lotus blossom is a very common folk art symbol.

 In Asia many homes are self contained with their gardens, animals, shrines, cooking areas and living arrangements bound by walls.  These wonderful primitive paintings preserve a way of life that is slowly changing.

 A happy celebrating of a wedding in Shanghai.

The household goods are on barges to be taken to the new home.

Neighborhood gatherings watching films.  

I don't think they are selling popcorn...but perhaps fried chicken feet! A true delicacy.

I love the clean, brightly painted, flat perspective of folk art.

No shading or highlights, just flat, bold colors with lots of tiny details. Usually the work is done on paper with paint similar to our gouache.

This is my modern take on Chinese Folk Art.  

ANOTHER MORE RECENT

Heart Thought: you might enjoy sharing these images with your children or grandchildren. Let them make up their own stories, or try their hand at their own folk art incorporating their home and environment.

MAY YOUR NEW YEAR, 2019, GIFT YOU INNER PEACE, JOY IN NATURE, LOVE FOR OTHERS AND FULFILLING A LIFE LONG WISH. 
SHARON

WHEN IS QUEEN ANNE'S LACE A CARROT?

Did you know that Queen Anne's Lace is said to have been named after Queen Anne of England, who was an expert lace maker. The story goes that she pricked her finger on the blossom, a single drop of blood fell onto the lace, leaving the dark purple floret, that is found on the flower's center.  

Driving on very dusty, rural roads, when I happen to see Queen Anne's Lace gracefully dancing along the side of the road,  I pull over, cut bouquets of this favorite delicate flower. Hmmmm many think of it as a weed. I beg to differ.  More recently 

I ran across an article claiming that Queen Anne's Lace is related to the carrot.

I like to imagine, if I had plucked out the roots along with the flower and its stem, I would have found a plump carrot dangling from its end!

(a blue and cream Swedish Dalarna Horse pitcher)

In our smallish town of Matthews, we have a great Saturday Market.  Loads of fun stuff: French pastries to pottery;  starter plants to bouquets of fresh cut flowers in Mason jars half filled with water; every day, ordinary veggies, to the "exotic" varieties.  

 The Matthew's Market is where I saw my first colorful, rainbow hued carrots.  I was quite smitten.

Not too concerned as to how they would taste, I was eager to whisk them off to take photos. 

Spending several days photographing, the poor things grew quite limp and soft.

I was quite curious about carrots that looked like they had tumbled from a rainbow, must taste! 
Due to the hours of photography, the carrots became a bit pale and limp! Nevertheless, I scrubbed them and cut some up for tasting.  Yuck! first bites, I wasn't immediately sure what I thought.  They didn't taste ORANGE.  They were.......Well, I decided I better buy fresh ones before I came to any hasty conclusions.

I  decided to brush up on the history of today's "modern" carrot...you know, as in, Carrot-Genealogy? I headed for Google: I quickly learned that these colorful carrots are NOW officially known as
Heirloom Carrots. 

Further rummaging around Google, I discovered the WORLD CARROT MUSEUM.

 You got to be kidding, a real museum....dedicated to carrots.  Who knew?
Pretty interesting where a bit of curiosity and reading can take you.  Soon I had a new found respect for carrots of all stripes, colors and sizes, limp or not. 

The Carrot Museum is located in  
the UK, but a smaller museum, just for fun, in Belgium.

If you are really curious about the emergence of ORANGE carrots, well any color carrot, 

here is a link.  

Just to give you a heads up, the article is quiet interesting and colorful but it is also LONG and detailed. 

Grab a few facts, invite guests to dinner, prepare carrot soup and carrot-nut-raisin muffins and casually insert a bit of genealogy to impress your guests. 

Hey you might even entertain writing a cookbook...
Carrots One Thousand Ways or Less.  

           

Thanks for visiting and may you never look at the lowly carrot the same way again.  Sharon

A TIME TO FORAGE

The sun slants earlier and rises later, sending slivers of golden orange and red

across the horizon.

 settling-in 

mellowing

reminiscing

The last cuttings of hydrangeas are drying in baskets 

along side pods, acorns, fading roses and sunflowers.

The joy is in the finding, the foraging, the digging. 

 Berries are my favorite to find...purples, brown, red, green. They dry beautifully. I use inexpensive baskets, line with dish towel or paper towels. Cut off the really large or decaying leaves. Lay gently in basket, allow air to circulate. Then the fun begins: photographing, sketching or using in still life arrangements.  

Have you ever held Magnolia branches with their glossy-green leaves with velvety brown undersides, in your hands? Honestly they are the texture of, well, velvet!

We are fortunate to have two trees at the back of our yard.  Year long they give us offerings of beauty.

Elena Nuez, from Spain, paints amazing designs on leaves, stones, paper. Click here to visit her website. Bicocacolors.com  She does amazing, diverse paintings on foraged and found objects in nature, as pictured below. 

Bi

Have been on a roll painting in gouache. LOVE IT ! Filling sketchbooks and pads of watercolor paper. 

In the South, BBQ is a BIG DEAL.  We went to a nifty BBQ restaurant with our daughter, husband and three Funny Bunnies.  While others had Barbie ribs, etc. I opted for BBQ tacos...yep, tacos. 

They were fabulous!

We ate outside enjoying the sweater weather temperatures, blue skies and grass for the kids to play on.

Kayla, who had been exploring, ran up to me with a handful of HUGE acorns. Wow, what a find.

We wrapped them in a paper napkin to take home.  But that wasn't good enough, she led me to a magnificent old Oak tree, laden, totally laden with thousands of acorns.  Shaking a branch they rained down on us.  Hard knocks on the head! 

Okay, this was serious foraging. 

  I left adults and tacos, to get plastic bags from the car, to fill up, of course. You would think we had found gold!  Cheers for exploring. 

Are these not amazing?  This is a sampling. We filled jars and bowls with their nutty brown goodness.

And not once did we see a squirrel...they don't know what they are missing.

Did you see the HUNTER MOON a week or so ago? We were pretty excited to see it, the Funny Bunnies and I.  Unfortunately the the kids had to go to bed before it was really high enough to see. 

I kept running outside with my camera.  This particular night was a bit cloudy, my camera couldn't focus the distance, but did get one shot.  The entire bright spot is the moon.

This morning, at 5:30 AM,  I was driving to a church to help serve breakfast to some women.

I drove STRAIGHT into sight of an enormous Crescent Moon, stark and brilliantly shining.

A perfect way to start the day...gifts from the heavens and sharing a meal with some lovely southern ladies, in need of a hands up.

This is the season of wanderlust.  A time to be in touch with nature as she settles into a new season.

I hope that you are finding some moments in your day to fill your senses with Mother Nature's free gifts to all.

Smiles: Sharon

Back to Sketches and One Big Mistake

 Making choices in how one will use their time can be a bit perplexing and daunting.

For instance:  the sketches inspired by 

Danny Gregory's A Sketch A Day,

love the concept, have tried to do 1/3 of them then find I get distracted by............

1.   Painting my new line of Lolli-Pop Colors and Lolli-Pop Kids.

2.  Playing with the Funny Bunnies and attempting to capture photos of their antics.

3. Having a "love affair" with i Phoneography...which is slowly being shared on my photography blog.

4.  Falling behind in e-line courses...apologies to the instructors...and trying to rid myself of guilt.

I won't bore you with the rest of the list.  Yours is probably longer than mine!  

Let's get back to sketching.  I actually did four but two I simply can't share they are pretty awful.

Purely experimental and bombed.

Here are two "okay" attempts.  I don't recall the theme we had for sketching so I will call these "wild cards."

I started with an OLD ledger, you can see how the watercolor wrinkles the paper.  Rather adds to the charm.  The left page I scribbled on, then attempted to be more serious on the right side.

Through the magic of scanning:

Transparent watercolor and Micron pen.  

I think the following piece should count for at least THREE SKETCHES as it was much more time intensive.  Do you agree?

Heavy black illustration board. Gouache

********************************************

Back story to this piece:  I store my gouache in a Pan Maker Water Color palette with its handy little cubby squares for paint, sponge for moisture and tight lid.  I have had two such boxes fully filled with gorgeous colors.   When not in use I store it in the refrigerator.

BIG MISTAKE: forgot about it for way too many months.

Pulled it out, lift the lid and DRIED sponge and stared at the  beautiful colors  covered with spreading MOLD!! 

It was not a pretty sight. Nor my best moment.

 I had to remove all of that wonderful gouache and watch the dollars float away in spent paint.  Lesson learned.

I also keep my acrylics in the refrigerator. And my oils in the freezer.

If you are wondering if there is any food in there, the answer is, very little. But it surely is colorful.

Lest you wonder. I do have everything tightly sealed.  Oil can go in freezer but acrylic can not, frig best.  I also spritz with water and touch of bleach the water based paints.  

My next post I am going to share a few of my favorite illustration/sketching books.  See you then.

Heart Thought:  sometimes it takes a big boo-boo embedded  in our minds to not repeat past mistakes.

Capturing the figure

Capturing an image of a person is an illusive challenge for me.


Over many years I have worked at capturing the essence, the body posture of a person. 
I am not interested in rendering a person realistically...each hair, eyelash, lip in perfect formation.
Rather it is the essence, the persona, the posture of what is going on in front of me that I find intriguing. 
The following sketches are in various mediums, differing amount of time spent, some finished many not finished. Hopefully each image will set your mind at wondering who they are, what they are doing and can you feel some personality peeking through.

An exercise in capturing the body movement of a model. We studied her for a few minutes. Then she broke pose. We sketched (oil on paper). Then she returned and we had a few minutes to complete.

Working from a photograph, watching for values and the bare minimum of sketch. 
The idea is not to duplicate the photograph.
Oil on canvas.

Three distinct personalities, but all waiting.
Red wash over the canvas before painting.

Brown paper sketchbook. Very pale washes of watercolor
with fine pen sketching. Captures a moment....

Working  with multiple photographs taken in Cambodia, designs were sketched on watercolor paper. Each has collage paper from their country.  All express what I saw and felt without being specific.
Gouache on watercolor paper.
Most outlining done in thick gouache.


Sketching is fun and one can only get better with practice.
Time for me to spend a little more time with my sketches on paper.