The Green Woman

The wild woman of the forest, the Green Woman's heart is free and her passions are fierce. She embodies the beauty of nature and her will is as strong as the roots of centuries old trees. Sometimes depicted with foliage sprouting not from her face, but between her legs, the Green Woman is a force of fertility and life.

Don't let her wild heart fool you however, for the lady can be gentle and will soothe those who require the healing touch of nature. She can make leaves catch the light just so, or create mushrooms that are too curious to ignore to help spark your creativity.

An oft forgotten or overlooked goddess, the Green Woman is the feminine force of nature who wanders the forests of all seasons, keeping the balance with her consort the Green Man.

Work in Progress Wednesday - A Day Late!

I swallowed a huge chunk of fear and summoned up my courage to join in the 2011 Sketchbook Project. When my sketchbook is complete, I'll mail it back to the Art House Co-op and it will go on a tour of art galleries around the country with thousands of other sketchbooks before being put on permanent display in the Brooklyn art library.

I tend to have a hard time letting go of artwork that I put a lot of myself into and I know when the time comes to let this book go, it will be hard. So, I picked a theme I wouldn't necessarily long to horde and one I am all too familiar with, nightmares.

I've worked on 5 pages of the book so far and thought I would share my progress. My idea is to model the book after one of my somewhat frequently nightmare plagued nights. I often wake myself from one nightmare only to fall asleep and find myself falling into a different nightmare. I'm hoping to work the book in a similar fashion, running though a few different nightmare sequences. I'll also be working in different styles and mediums throughout the book.

Tortoise Love

I saw this adorable display of tortoise affection the other day and just had to share. :) They stayed snuggled up like that for at least 20 minutes, as they were still there after seeing some of the other lovelies at the zoo.

Work in Progress Wednesday

That's right, I'm making up my own weekly meme so I can keep myself on task with my creating. Give me some time and I'll make a fancy button to go with this but in the meantime, feel free to join me and share what you've been up to on Wednesdays. It doesn't have to just be art either, it can be anything! Decorating, Home Renovations, New Recipes, Fiber Spinning, Weight Loss... skies the limit.

I'm happy to report that I finally finished my goblin painting about an hour ago. He's dry and ready for you all to gaze upon his handsome green face:

This has been my most labor intensive watercolor to date, coming in at just around 7 hours. This is also the first time I've worked on a background and been pleased as can be with the results, normally I loathe backgrounds that I've created or I just work on the figure and block in background colors. If anyone is interested, Goblin Prints are in my shop, just waiting to be adopted!

I've also sketched out my next painting. Another watercolor, possibly with some colored pencil. We'll see how it goes. My scanner loathes, hates and despises scanning pencil sketches so I'm sorry about the shoddy quality of this. You can get teh basic feel of the painting though:

Other than these, I really haven't been up to terribly too much. Coffeebucks has me working a mix of evenings and 5:30am shifts that has completely screwed up my sleep cycle, so I've been doing a lot of cleaning and reading in between painting and working to stave off the urge to nap and exacerbate things. I'm a terrible sleeper. I have difficulty falling asleep unless conditions are absolutely perfect - pillow must be just so, it has to be cool, dark and quiet and for the love of the Goddess Joe can't be having a bought of restless leg twitches. Once I manage to fall asleep, I'm generally ok. Unless I wake up during the night and happen to see a clock when I know I have to be up before the Sun. Then I panic about having to be up soon and end up being completely unable to go back to sleep.

I'm hoping my schedule settles down or Hypnos takes pity on me and pays extra attention to me soon.

Goblins and Fantasy on the Brain

Long have I been fascinated by fairies, elves, dwarves and their darker cousins the goblins. I remember watching as many fantasy movies as I could as a child and loving the artwork of Brian Froud and the creations of Jim Henson. Their work was so real to me, so detailed and full of life that I felt I could reach out and grasp a hold of any of the pixies and sprites either one created.

This past weekend I spent a lot more time in front of the television than usual, watching movies and recovering from a particularly strenuous work week. In a typical week I may only watch 2-3 hours of television, but I'd say over the past three days I've watched somewhere in the ballpark of 20 or so hours, thanks largely to a Lord of the Rings marathon on Saturday with the lovely and some of our friends. I had planned on watching the extended editions back to back (as I have yet to watch them at all and certainly not back to back!) but I had to be up at 5:30am yesterday, so there was no way we could have made it through.

In any event, while I could write an entire post about my love of Lord of the Rings I'll hold back, but watching of the trilogy put me in the mood for classic fantasy movies, wrought with epic adventure, evil, dashing heroes, chainmail and you guessed it, goblins. I started yesterday off watching Legend and drooling over a young Tom Cruise (why did he have to grow up and go crazy? *sigh*) and Tim Curry as Darkness. As cheesy as the plot is, I've always enjoyed the sets and makeup in this movie immensely. They built an entire forest to get the right feel and lighting, the unicorns were well done and don't even get me started on how amazing (and overlooked) the goblin Blix is! I also have a soft spot for the Tangerine Dream soundtrack this film is set to and can sing 'Loved by the Sun' with the best of them. Have you ever seen the director's cut of this movie? It has a different soundtrack and despite this being one of my favorite movies for 20+ years, I hate that version. It's not as good without the 80's soundtrack, trust me.

I followed that up with a viewing of Robin Hood: Men in Tights (completely devoid of Goblins) for it's jaunty humor and my adoration of all things Mel Brooks and the Lovely showed me 'Wizards' a movie from the 1970's that while animated uniquely and having a good amount of goblins and a decent fantasy storyline, was a bit too political for me to consider an awesome fantasy movie. It had all the makings of one too... epic backstory, two brother wizards one whom was pure and the other evil, peaceful fairy kingdoms, evil goblins but it lost me with the guns and nazis. Good, but definitely odd.

So last night I went to bed with visions of goblins and art ideas dancing in my head. When I woke up this morning I turned on Labyrinth (have I mentioned that I'm a huge David Bowie fan girl? No? Well, I am) and began to sketch out a goblin of my very own. He's somewhere between the grotesque goblins of Lord of the Rings and Legend and the cute goblins of Froud and the Labyrinth. After several nose shapes and lengths and a few ear tweaks, I inked him and cleaned up the pencil marks:

I typically don't ink before I watercolor, but I wanted to preserve the details of him as I worked and I have it on several authorities that micron pens don't bleed when painted over. *knocks on wood* I've saved a high resolution scan though, just in case. I have no idea what I'll do in terms of what exactly he's sitting on yet or background, but I will probably leave it relatively plain.

I'll share him again when he's gone green and is completed. I also have plans to do some sort of goblin sculpture in the future as well. In the meantime, I'll need more inspiration!

Tell me, what are your favorite fantasy movies? I don't care how cheesy they may be or if they are animated or live action, I only ask that you keep them specifically medieval/legend/fairy based fantasy. None of this science fiction or horror fantasy crossover business, please.

P.S... Princess Bride is next in que! While I normally dislike television, I'm enjoying my day off doodling and watching movies immensely!

Camp Journal Pages

July has passed by with the arrival and too swift passing of Lughnasadh, but I'm going to keep sharing pages and tips with all of you as I have them and hope you'll continue your journaling journey as well. I've had such a wonderful time stopping by and visiting all of you and seeing what you've created, everyone's journals have been unique and beautiful!

When we went camping last weekend I brought a pouch with several colored pencils, a few pens, my moleskin sketchbook and my journal. I left the paints, glue sticks, scissors, etc. at home and just did some sketching. Once I came home I added color and very few embellishments. Here they are:

This one is about the deer who visited our campsite, who appeared to be adorable and gentle but ended up being jerks. First, they stole our fruit when we had our backs turned. Then while we slept that night and had locked all of our food into our cooler and a sturdy plastic tote, they proceeded to ransack our camp site. They chewed holes in our water bladder, rendering it useless. They also scattered our dishes around in the dirt and knocked our lantern off of the picnic table denting it but blessedly not breaking the glass.

We have never, ever had issues with wildlife being pests or disturbing our campsite before so I chalk this up to campers leaving food out or feeding the deer a bit too frequently. When they thought I had food they let me get within a foot of them, but once they realized I wasn't going to give them handouts they bolted.

Anyway, the writing reads 'Deer will steal your heart and your plums. When the plums are gone they'll ransack your camp. Deer are cute - but total jerks.'

The right page features a sketch I did quickly in my moleskin while munching on appetizers at a local restaurant. I colored it and glued it and some bits of an ad for the place in once I got home.

The left page are sketches of critters we saw, but that I was unable to snap a photo of. Once again, I drew them on the island but colored them once I was home.

Lastly, I did a sketch of the Hunting Island lighthouse.

We had planned to climb the lighthouse Monday morning before heading home, but unfortunately I had developed a sizable blister and didn't think I could make it up 170 stairs. Next time we go though, it'll be the first thing I do!