New Drawing

So I started working on another drawing.  So far it is ballpoint ink on vintage paper with some watercolor.  It is roughly 5" x 5".  The original pencil sketch still shows through.  I am testing a new crackle medium in the meantime.  Hopefully this will yield quicker and better results.  Anyway, this piece is called, "Into thy hands, I commend my spirit."  I offer this innocent black child as an offering.  I ask, into whose hands?  Into the hands of the same God worshiped by the men who kidnapped her?  Into the hands of the same God worshiped by the men who would rape her? Into the hands of the same God worshiped by the men that would continually enslave, both physically and mentally, the fruits of her womb for generations to come?  Or is it into her own hands, by her own power?  We speak of her spirit, what of her soul?  This is going to be an interesting piece to work on.  Forgive the camera phone pictures---I will post a scanned version later.

In other news, today was the first day of school for my munchkins!  The two older ones are veterans in the second and fourth grade.  The younger ones...it was hard.  My husband and I spent a lot of time teaching them at home.  Letting them go just isn't easy.  My kindergarten baby was super excited to be in school finally.  She was all decked out in her pretty pink.  I sent her off with her school supplies and list of allergens (she's my sensitive baby) and a hug.  This school thing is going to take some getting used to.  She's really shy and sweet with gentle and humble ways.  Her teacher is great so I don't feel as uptight as I was feeling.

My pre-K baby was upset.  She saw all her siblings off to class and as we were heading out, she looked at my husband and me tearfully and asked "What about me?"  Bout near broke my heart.  We consoled her and told her that she would be there later today.  Today she had to be tested for eligibility into the pre-K program at the school.  My husband called me and said that she came bounding out of the classroom exclaiming that she told the teacher what the earth was and that she did really good. My husband said they passed my kindergarten baby on the playground and she was having a blast.  I'm happy to hear it.

Current pieces and ACEOs

I decided to work on a larger piece that's about 4" x 6" roughly.  I named it "Difficult Journey Home."  It is ballpoint ink on a torn vintage page. This is a present work in progress as it will become a watercolor piece and an experiment with the crackle texture.

I completed this ACEO over the course of Monday.  Since I actually have to work, the original pencil and ballpoint ink portions above were done on breaks and taken as best as they could be with my camera phone.  I love the crisp lines of the ballpoint ink and believe it or not they blend really well when other mediums are added.  I start all of my drawings in pencil with basic shapes to make sort of a skeleton and approximation of where the features would fall.  In my larger work I let them stay as they only add to the final piece.  I built up a foundation with colored pencil on the face and watercolor on the veil.  I then layered on more applications, alternating between colored pencil and watercolor.  Then I overlayed portions of it with crackle glaze.  Below is the completed piece and a close up of the texture.  The challenge with the scan is that it whites out some areas due to the reflective nature of the glaze so the darks aren't as dark as they are in real life.  I am going to experiment taking photographs with my 10 mp camera to see if I can get a better rendition.  This is the first in an exploratory series I have tentatively named Exotic Symbolism.  It will feature close ups of ethnic women throughout the world and feature a sort of visual commentary on their different struggles.  This obviously is a Muslim woman.  Notice how her lower face is veiled but her hair is not.  I came across this article Joan Smith:  The veil is a feminist issue and was inspired to do a portrait based on this quote from the article:

"Women don't wear the burqa in Afghanistan because they like it; they wear it because they are afraid of being killed if they don't. Women haven't suddenly gone back to wearing the veil in Iraq because they're pious; they do it because women who refuse have been murdered. I loathe the niqab and the burqa when I see them there. And I can't pretend I don't find them equally offensive on my local high street." 

The eyes were once confrontational.  The glaze took the edge off of them and yet they are still confident.  I named this piece "Without a Voice (But Still a Choice)."

I came across a sketch in an old sketchbook from 2003, the start of my natural journey.  I had drawn a shattered glass with my image in it and had titled it "Missing pieces of my identity."  Seems I still haven't gotten away from identity issues or depicting fragmentation in regards to women's issues.  I have an old print I did of a woman from India wearing a burqa back from high school and another piece of a woman wearing one in college.  That image of being covered and having no voice sticks with me and creeps into my work every couple of years or so.

This is presently up for auction on ebay!  See the auction HERE!