I love sketching on my Kindle Fire while watching mindless TV.
Rich Hill a documentary not to be missed.
This afternoon i attended the film Rich Hill. It is a documentary that follows the lives of three boys in the town of Rich Hill Missouri, an impoverished town where people are hanging on by a thread. I ope all of you will see it because it is a film that deserves to be seen and we all need to know that these folks are represent just some of those who are buried in poverty in our state. DON’T MISS IT!
Once upon a time...
The lime
The salt
The tequila
Days gone by
Did I dance
on the table?
I don’t remember
A shell that is not "just a shell".
A couple of years ago the writer Deborah Wilson brought me shell that she had found on the beach while vacationing. It is one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever received. I have looked at the shell a thousand times, in wonder over its perfect design a small gift from nature, and a spectacular piece of art. Running my fingers over its smooth service, holding it up to the light, turning it over in my hand, even while making wishes I wondered if it would be possible to capture the glory of this shell as a drawing or painting. I have been much too intimidated to even try until now.
On page 64 of Mastering Composition (Ian Roberts) the author suggests that the artist do a sketch a day for a year. I have decided to take on the assignment and my subject is going to be this singular shell. The photograph below is my start point. As my attempts improve I will share them with you faithful reader. Keep your fingers crossed that they do improve.
I am a Last Tango in Halifax fan
Yes there are moments when it is too cute for words and I know that many of my friends think that this comedy/romance/drama borders on being a soap and and lacks the sophistication of Downton Abbey however they are wrong. The themes being explored in this heartfelt show include a romance between to 70 something people, a romance between two women, and a romance between a woman and her several lovers. In addition, parenting, alcoholism spouse abuse are all interwoven into the story. When season 1 aired in the USA the LA Times described it as “the best new show of the Fall.”
The last episode of season two has been the inspiration of numerous YouTube videos by a slew of artists. Watch for this series to be rebroadcast on the your local PBS Station I am just incredibly grateful that my station #KCPT carried it. We now have Season 3 and 4 to look forward to soon I hope.
Magnificent Caroline Strutting goo.gl/bVrcG2
Exploring Composition
Finally received my copy of Mastering Composition by Ian Roberts. My friend Joyce Rotondi recommended it some time ago and I have been waiting what seems forever for it to come back in stock at Amazon. Now that i have it in my hands I can see that it was well worth the wait.
I am one of those artists that never had the opportunity to be formally trained and it appears from the first couple of chapters that this book is going to fill in some of the blanks for me. I will keep you posted on how it goes the further I get into it. For now though I am going to start doing A Sketch a Day which should improve my drawing skills and my attempts at representational painting. If you would like to check out this book you can find it at : http://goo.gl/us4RaU
#elainemills #artistelaine #JoyceRotondi #MasteringComposition #IanRoberts
Almost there
My new website
is very close to completion. Dylan has been working hard pulling it all together and now we are down to finding the small errors that we knew were poking around there. It has bee quite a wild ride. I am amazed that two such similar personalities can get along so well.
Sketching on my Kindle
When I just can’t seem to get going in my studio i spend some time on my Kindle Fire sketching. I bought if for that purpose and I have a few drawing programs that range from complex (I am still trying to figure them out) and simple. The results are sometimes very surprising to me. For instance one morning at the Philomene Bennett Studio I was doing random sketches of various folks in the class. When I got home I realized i had this really fun portrait of Philomene so I printed it out, went to the shelf and selected my Crayola Crayons and this is the result.
Nothing Better than Painting with Fellow Artists
Saturday, my friend and portrait artist, Jackie Pellow invited me to paint with her at her studio in the West Bottoms of Kansas City. Jackie has a great space and tons of room. It has wonderful light and equipped with just about everything a body could want.
We had an incredible time, Jackie working on oil paintings of Venice, while I worked with pastels on my Forbidden Fruit series. When we broke for lunch we met up with two other Kansas City artists Cid Gillispie and Christy Steinberg at the Genessee Royal Bistro across the street from the Livestock Exchange Building.
Excellent food and Bacon Bloody Mary’s highlighted by stimulating conversation. Then back to the studios for more work. Jackie is working on a magnificent painting of artist and mentor, Philomene Bennett. It was a great way to spend a Saturday.
From left to right Christy, Cid, Elaine and Jackie.
Gun Madness
Gun Madness is sweeping this country. Twenty six people dead, most of them children, at an elementary school and our societal reaction to this horrific tragedy is to pass more conceal and carry laws. Those of us who do not feel that it is necessary to go shopping carrying a gun are no longer safe at stores like Nebraska Furniture Mart, a store that welcomes shoppers who carry guns. We as a nation have not taken to the streets to protest this madness; instead we sit passively by while the NRA bullies win victory after victory in statehouses across the country
I don’t think the Founding Fathers wanted us to value our guns more than our children.
Do It Now
Childhood Memories and Pineapple Upside Down Cake
Things were pretty crazy this year in May. Lots of major birthdays and a graduation and out of town guests so I never did get around to having a birthday cake. The “gamers” are coming over to my house tonight (we are not electronic gamers but play mean board games, crazy charde games and sometimes the games even include dice and or cards.
For dessert i have made a pineapple upside down cake very reminiscent of the ones my mother made when i was a little kid. We were pretty poor so this particular cake required that local stores put canned crushed pineapple and brown sugar on sale. The rest of the ingredients were pretty much house staples. What mom’s cakes did not include was the quite luxurious and expensive maraschino cherries. On y mom’s tight those cherries were just too dang expensive.
I must admit I did cheat a bit, I bought a yellow cake mix because i bake so infrequently I knew the ingredients besides eggs and butter would probably spoil before I used them. I hope the gamers aren’t disappointed in my old fashioned cake and that no one misses the cherries. I know that I will be a happy camper and it is MY birthday cake even if it is a couple of months late. LOL
#elainemills #artistelaine #MaryEMills
Completely Updated and Revised Website
So grateful to my Web Designer and summer art intern, Dylan Crow, for all of the work he has put into my newly revised and updated website. Hope you all will take a few minutes to visit to see what I have been up to in my spare time.
Would love to hear your feedback so after you have perused the pages please go to the comments page send me your comments.
www.elainemills.com
Afternoon Temptation
Afternoon Temptation
Sitting in close proximity
to her subject
This warm July afternoon
The seductive scent of
summer permeating the studio
Tempting lush rosy curves
rising into golden cleavage
Mouth watering in anticipation
of sucking the sweet sticky flesh
between her hungry lips
Juice dripping from her chin
On to the paint stained shirt
The Sweet Dream Peach
gave her all, both
subject and substance
No more to be painted
only remembered
in the poorly
rendered painting.
E. L. Mills
7/11/2014
New website design
I am very excited that sometime around August 1st my new website will be up and running www.elainemills.com. My nephew is busy redesigning it and we have been digging through what seems like thousands of photographs of art work. Keep an eye out for the big announcement.
Foreign Flags on American Soil
On the local news this week a woman touted the return of the Irish language and how lessons were being given locally to children to revive the language. Parades started on Saturday in the Kansas City metropolitan area and will go on through St. Patrick’s Day. Irish flags will fly, green beer will flow, Irish soda bread baked, in other words a culture of immigrants from generations ago will be revived for a few hours. It was just a couple of weeks ago that the French celebration of Carnival or as we call it here Mardi Gras was celebrated in New Orleans and other areas of the country. And then of course in May there will be Cinco de Mayo when the Mexican culture will be celebrated with Margaritas, tacos, and altars to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The list of countries whose descendents celebrate the heritage of their mothers, fathers, grandparents and in many cases great grandparents flight to America is long and we as a “people” embrace these celebrations within our borders providing the country being celebrated is not Mid-Eastern. Can you imagine the chaos that would be caused if the descendents of Iranians, Libyans, or Iraqis scheduled parades that shut down city streets on business days, or required extra security to keep revelers in check, or worse yet openly bragged about teaching new generations their language of origin. Why it would be considered an affront to the flag, a near act of treason. Sometimes I wonder if we are truly the home of the brave and the land of the free or if because of the hate filled hearts of old men we have lost our way. Must we always have a group of people that that we cast to the bottom in this country?
S. - How many years can it take to read a book
For Christmas I received a copy of the book S., for those of you unfamiliar with the tome I suggest you peruse the Amazon reviews here:
http://www.amazon.com/S-J-Abrams/dp/0316201642
I am not sure if my friends realized that they were throwing me down the proverbial rabbit hole without a lifeline, where a maze awaits that may take years to perhaps even decades to traverse. It is the most interesting, confounding, seductive object I have seen in years. Housed in a cardboard sleeve is what appears to be a well-worn library book, Dewey Decimal number 813.54 STR 1949. Ship of Thesus by VM Straka, with its yellowed and stained pages, margins filled with notes and all manner of items from Confidential letters to postcards to faded photographs stuffed between pages, presents its first of many puzzles to come: exactly how does one read this book?
It appears to me that J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst have said loud and clear, screw you e-readers. This is a book this is a book that must be read hands on, this is a book not for the faint of heart. This is a book that will take the reader on a chase and is probably the pages that Geeks dreams are made of.
