Ink Drawing #8, w-i-p. #InkTober

Ink Drawing #8, w-i-p. October 8, 2014. ©Brenda Clews, 11.5" x 16.5", Faber-Castell Pitt India ink pens, Moleskine sketchbook. #inktober

Eh. No idea where it will go. The oh-so short but intense flu's aftermath has settled into my lungs and deep, unbroken sleep and energy are zapped. Yah, well, so what if today's drawing is rawther unfinished. Some notches on a page. It makes me giggle. Which is needed in between coughing bouts, you understand. It's also got a rhythm of an ocean flow, a turbulence. I think it's at a dock where energy flow and land mass meet. Abstract art doesn't take me anywhere - though of course I like it when it's done well by others - whereas, the figurative is about subjectivities, ways of reading ourselves in context. So there will be a figure...

For the last two days, I've been submitting poetry. Ok, I only got two submissions out. But what a lot of work! Oiy ya. And I made an error, too, I know it. I sent out prose/poems that will be in my forthcoming book - it'll be published by Guernica Editions but not until maybe 2016 or later - and I told the editors in the accompanying letters! So those two submissions will be rejections for sure. While unpublished, the prose/poems will be published - and the journals require work unpublished in any format. This predilection for honesty sometimes slips me up. Yeah, I know I'm doing it backwards but I need to generate interest in my work before the book comes out. Who knows for sure if these places will take what I sent... but I am at a point where I would like to publish in print and on-line journals.
___

 

Ink Drawing #7 #InkTober

Ink Drawing #7. ©Brenda Clews. 10" x 7.5", FaberCastelli Pitt India ink pens, Moleskine notebook.

Yesterday's drawing with 'two women' added.

While there is a frivolous woman in a checkered hat (with perhaps a chandelier attached to her hat ribbon), the other woman fascinates me. She is the accidental woman who dominates. Her hair is slicked down black with a rhinestone barrette tucked in, there is a dot for an eye, a star earring, some feathers perhaps as the other earring, a shoulder (where my signature is) and her breast is the round circle at the base of the black irregular rectangle. The two black triangles at the bottom indicate she is wearing a slinky black dress.

We are in the world of magic.

#inktober
___

 

Ink Drawing #6 #inktober

Ink Drawing #6, w-i-p. ©Brenda Clews. 10" x 7.5", Faber-Castell Pitt India ink pens, Moleskine notebook.

The scratchy throat has turned into full-scale flu and am mostly resting from coughing and not-sleeping-last-night under a heated throw. This beginnings-of-a-drawing is all I've done. I'm posting it as my #inktober drawing for today. I'll likely add a figure and post that maybe as tomorrow's drawing. Now, more Ibuprofen and back under the heated throw!
___

 

Little untouched clip from Nuit Blanche last night

http://youtu.be/0nORDGNf1LU

Toronto tonight... a million people wandering the streets in search of art.

(Newspaper-estimated number out on the streets.)

Nuit Blanche, Gap Ecology (Still Lives with Cherry Pickers and Palms), John St and Queen St.

___

 

Ink Drawing #5 #inktober

Ink Drawing #5. October 5, 2014. ©Brenda Clews. 9" x 12", Pentel brush pen, Lamy fountain pen with Noodler's brown ink and Prismacolor Nupastels on Fabriano 100% cotton cold-pressed 140lb watercolour paper.

Ink Drawing #5, pre-colour. 

Yesterday afternoon at Portobello, a monthly poetry and music event hosted by Linda Stitt, my throat began to feel scratchy. At the first break, I went home. Rested. Normally I would have gone to bed early but it was Nuit Blanche in Toronto and I had planned to video... and so out I went, dressed warmly for the cold evening, and did get a few minutes of video that I am very pleased with, did not manage to meet up with my niece, Tara, and her boyfriend, and called it a night around 10pm. On arriving home, my son and his girlfriend were outside and they visited until midnight or so. By then, my throat was starting to rage. Because the virus is settling in for a bout, I cancelled my afternoon at Bampot Bohemian Teahouse where there is life-drawing every Sunday. Fiddlesticks. I treated myself to salmon baked on a cedar board (very yummy). Then grumpily did a quick ink self-portrait. I actually don't mind this one - perhaps because it is not laboured over. I grabbed some NuPastels and added colour - one of the reasons I am ok with this self-portrait is that it is looser, more impressionistic. Working this way was a release and I am relieved to offer an #InkTober 5th of October drawing. Whew.

#inktober
___

 

Ink Drawing #4 #inktober

Two minute gesture poses. Dr Sketchy's Anti-Art School Reloaded in Toronto, Halloween theme, Oct 3, 2014, ©Brenda Clews, InkTense black and red blocks with a water brush pen on 18" x 22" Strathmore 70lb archival drawing paper.

I've never stitched photographs before and there wasn't time to learn how to do it for this image - the first 4 are on one side, the 5th is on the back of that paper, and the 6th is on another page (and I'm thinking, with the pencil lines, it must have been a 5 min) - but they make a nice row.

#inktober
___

 

#3 Ink Drawing #inktober

Ink Drawing #3. October 3, 2014. ©Brenda Clews, 11.5" x 16.5", India ink (Pitt pens, Derwent InkTense blocks, Noodler's ink, Daler Rowney acrylic artists ink etc), Moleskine sketchbook.

Not sure what to say. Uhhh. There were moments it almost appeared to be. Might come back to this one later, or perhaps rip it out of the Moleskine, or even get used to it. I was thinking about the ways women are remain constrained in our culture and how unfortunately sometimes they seem to enjoy and even get off on those constraints (I might put the ropes around her body back in). And hey, reality is messy, and so is this drawing. Had... a busy day, rushing out now.

iPhone pic, not so good with flourescent light. I'll discreetly update all these photos when sunlight and time to photograph properly becomes available again.

#inktober

___

 

Ink Drawing #2 #inktober

Ink Drawing #2. October 2, 2014. ©Brenda Clews, 11.5" x 16.5", India ink, Moleskine sketchbook.

Sure I will not be able to keep this level of intricacy up every day the whole month, but each drawing is one that I would not have done before the InkTober initiative, and for that I am grateful.

Fishy underwater boney spiny things, carpel bones drifting, radius and ulna, phalanges.

She, found somewhere... a martial arts fashionista. An Oriental dream.

#inktober

___

 

A Gourmet Poetry Salon: photos and videos

The September Gourmet Poetry Salon at Urban Gallery was a wonderful, warm, congenial and über talented afternoon. Many thanks to Sonia Di Placido and Heather Babcock, who featured, Angel Torres, who had two photo paintings in the show, The Art of Food, and who had a cameo spot, and our open mics, Stemond Pardy, Philip Cairns, Norman Allan, Heather Cadsby and Margaret Code. I also did an open mic spot sharing some prose poems on the theme of food.

                         

Some of these photos are video snapshots and some are from my cell - not enough daylight for good photos... but a memento of a lovely afternoon.

A few of the videos (not everyone wanted theirs public, and the camera battery ran out of juice before the last two open mics, Heather and Norman, who said they didn't want video anyway).



Simply a brilliant poet, a beautiful, warm, kind and friendly woman, and an amazingly captivating reading, Sonia Elisabetta Di Placido featured at A Gourmet Poetry Salon and yes, food! Zuppolone, wine... Her stories and introductions to each of her poems are really interesting. She connects with the audience by sharing explanations, anecdotes, laughter and charm.

1:40 -Zuppolone - Italian Canadians at Table
6:06 -Wine Tasting, after Gertrude Stein's, 'Tender Buttons.' In WWR38
9:33 -Zuppolone - Exaltation in Cadmium Red
11:35 -Doe - WWR38 (Ryerson Journal)
12:16 -Camaraderie - WWR38
13:39 -This Bus Rides North - WWR38
14:39 -American Cliche - WWR38
16:09 -Cadmium Red - Exaltation in Cadmium Red
18:13 -Imaginings -Exaltation in Cadmium Red"



Angel Torres had a Cameo Spot.
An article I wrote on his Geishas in The Art of Food.


Brenda Clews on open mic. direcct link: http://youtu.be/BMZo3vJARcw


Margaret Code on open mic.

___

 

#1 Ink Drawing #inktober

Ink Drawing. October 1, 2014. ©Brenda Clews, 11.5" x 16.5", India ink, Moleskine sketchbook.

This is a large Moleskine sketchbook and the drawings are hard to photograph. While shooting in direct sun helps, they still requires finicky colour correction. I may post ones taken in cloudy foggy days like today, or with fluorescent daylight bulbs, and then re-take them and slip them into the same spots when there is sun and time to colour correct the images.

#inktober
 ___

 

My beloved doggy passed away some weeks ago...

What it is, why I haven't blogged in so long, is that my doggy, Keesha, passed away. On September 12th. I planned to do a memorial post on her but am seriously too grief-stricken to manage it. I had no idea that 15 intense dog years, including nursing her for about 11 months, could leave me so bereft. I've stopped howling in the morning when I get up because she is not there to take out, crying when I am having a roast beef sandwich because she isn't begging for some too. Sleep is returning sporadically. It is insane how much I miss her. I try to remember to fill her water bowl every day - for my little cat, Aria, who misses her doggy, I know it. I am trying to do 'our walk' when I haven't walked anywhere else and walking those streets, those blocks with all the memories I have remains hugely painful. Who'd think the love between a human and an animal could be so strong, or so difficult when death comes.

This is the last drawing I did of her... hours before she passed peacefully away in my arms.

This is the drawing I speak to often... yes, it's somewhat distorted, not 'anatomically correct' yet, for me, it is her. When I put my chin on that nose, and look into the eyes, she is there.

Canada Day, July 1, 2014 - she had had such a terribly difficult night the night before that family had gathered to say good-bye... but the next day, here, July 1st, she was almost like her young self again, happy, energetic, playful, for at least that quarter of an hour in the park... she lived another 2 1/2 months because of love, because of love, I am sure.

My shrine of drawings of her last days. That is my son, drawn the night she died.

Her 15th birthday on August 25th

Keesha's birthday cookies being inspected by her kitty, Aria

This photo is still my iPhone wallpaper.

Nov 2012

___