A super afternoon

Skype Sketch of Sam
charcoal pencil on bond paper
6 x 9 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

See! I told you life goes on being exciting after
the holidays are over. Today I was invited to eat
lunch with a friend and client. The meal was to
be English in honour of their British artist friend.
It was Shepherd's Pie -- a dish I'll confess
that I love. So I appeared at the door and was
ushered in to sit by the fire and meet the artist
Peter Maher. Peter is as delightful a person as
my friend and her husband, I discovered.

My friend immediately showed me a lovely little
black and white book of drawings illustrating the ride
around his village in France that Peter takes every
day on his bike. And I hauled out the book of my
work that I had printed to take to the Florence
Biennale. Then lunch was served. Another artist
friend dropped in. Both the meal and the conversation
were hearty, and we retired to the brilliantly sunlit
sunroom for espresso and tea with cookies,
a fitting ending to a great lunch.

At home I was joined by another friend for more
entertaining talk about 2010 plans, and after supper
did this sketch of Sam from a Skype photo I took
last fall. Yes it's a Skype Sketch by your famous --
or infamous Skype Sketcher.

Have a yes-I'd-love-to-come-to-lunch day.

Endings and beginnings

Drawing of a young woman
8 1/2 x 11 inches
black marker on bond
Barbara Muir © 2010
(Whenever I am between projects
or thinking I draw whatever
I can find in my sketchbook. This is
one of those drawings. It's always
a comfort to keep your hand moving,
creating, and soon a bunch of
new ideas form).

The trouble with holidays, if there is one, is that they
lull you into a sense of profound definition in the
daily pattern. It's false really, and helpful at the same
time to an extent. I've always known that all the hustle and
bustle of Christmas was a kind of logical trick to get us
through the first month of winter.

Families get together, presents are purchased, big feasts
happen, and it feels momentous. Then the families
go back to their regular lives, and you could think ...well.
But in truth wham, presents, big festive meals, decorations,
and celebrations are a year long happening. My sweet
son went back to school today, and I didn't stand sobbing
at the bus stop even for a minute. Because I know that
if I miss him too much, we can get in the car and go and
visit him! What a thought.

And every time our family eats together it feels like a party.
And I'll no sooner get the vacuuming
done, and maybe straighten my room up, than there
will be another day to celebrate -- Valentine's Day,
complete with gifts and romance and social whirl.

The New Year has begun. Both my son and I have
gone back to school. I start in earnest next week,
but was there today. The truth is that it is another
week, with the same level of excitement and the
same great feeling of possibility as the last one. It
just takes a rearrangement of the brain, the rooms
(taking down the tree in the studio, moving the
couch back to its place), and a tiny shift of the heart.

Let's all make that shift together. In many ways
this group of blogging artists is just that -- a heart
network. Call it corny if you will, but in my
experience, nothing could be closer to the truth.
Now I need to get painting!

Have a letting-the-great-new-day-start day.

Gilding the tondo

Portrait of a boy
acrylic and 24 karat gold leaf on canvas
6 x 6 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010
(now the painting is gilded. Next?)

Okay so I've been reading up on tondos, (round paintings)
and my little painting wouldn't qualify as a tondo. Why?
It's too small -- they're supposed to be a minimum of
two and a half feet across. Steven had the good idea of
calling mine a tondo piccolo.

Today I spent the afternoon gilding over the red outside
part with 24 karat gold leaf. Tedious but fun. I'm not
quite finished because I should perhaps make a second
inner circle and I'm debating with myself about whether
or not to decorate over the gold.

The gold leaf photographed with a flash

I did some work on the face and the hair, and may
beef up the white in his shirt tomorrow. I know that I
really don't paint anything like Botticelli, and that's
all right. I was going through old reference photos,
and this image was one I couldn't use when I did
this young boy's portrait. I'd just been looking at
a round painting of Mary with eight angels when I
found this, and the angels look like teenage boys.
In fact one of my friend's nephews looks exactly
like one of the boys who posed for angels in that
painting. And my client's son had a slightly
angelic air, but also a fantastic sense of humour.

So here's the next stage -- gilding.

Have a happily-working-on-new-projects day.

Botticelli and me

Tondo of a boy
Stage three
6 x 6 inches
(Before I'm finished I'll gild the
outside red part in gold leaf,
then refine the face a bit)
Barbara Muir © 2010

My sweet son, Christopher and his girlfriend Megan
bought me a huge art book on Botticelli, and gave
it to me on our little second Christmas yesterday.
This was especially touching because when I was
in Florence, I realized I would never be able to see
all of the amazing art there is to see there in two weeks.
So when we went to the Uffizi, I knew I had to
see the Botticellis. I have loved his work since
I first studied him in art history as a girl of 13.

Stage two
I apply black around the face,
which will eventually pop out the blue
Barbara Muir © 2010

What I couldn't know without seeing them, is that
they are delicately touched with gold -- everywhere.
Botticelli could create a line of gold leaf thinner than
the thinnest pen line. I was in awe. I love his work,
the expressions on the faces, of his Madonnas,
his Venus, the beautiful women in Prima Vera.
And add to that the fact, that many of the gardens
he depicted are still that way today.

Stage one
a rough drawing from my reference
of a great boy I painted a few years
ago, and red around the edges over
an orange ground.
Barbara Muir © 2010

So tonight I am thinking about tondos -- those lovely
round paintings he did, some of which are still
framed in the original glorious carved, gilded wood.

You know I'm a sucker for gold. I'm just trying to figure
out how to use it in my work too now. But I could
use an expert teacher.

Have a life-is-truly-as-bright-as-gold day.

The compulsion to paint

New Year's Eve Tulips
watercolour and black marker on watercolour paper
8 1/2 x 11 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

It's very late, and I've just finished a fast watercolour

sketch. I'd planned to do a quick charcoal sketch of
our table after the Christmas dinner was over. That's
right we had a second one tonight, and it was delicious.
But passing through the kitchen I saw that the
gorgeous tulips I bought for New Year's Eve are almost
finished and I had to try and capture a little of their
full blown beauty.

But now I'm heading off to bed.
I hope you had a lovely Sunday. I know I did.

Have a loving-the-first-week-of-the-New-Year day.

Celebrations and dreams

Back road lookout in San Gimignano.

Tomorrow (or today) as we're past the midnight hour
is going to be a second Christmas for us. We've bought
presents for our son Christopher and Megan, his fiancée.
So we will have another day of celebration and then
the year proper will begin.

Steven and I talked tonight about why the Florence
visit is sticking in our thoughts and hearts so deeply,
when we were in Europe for two weeks in 2006
with none of the same after shocks. I think it may
be that Italy was so sympatico. Plus he explains that
we were two whole weeks in Florence, that I had a
job to do, that we met wonderful people, and
had our own apartment, and lived in a neighbourhood.

He has just let me upload pictures from his excellent
camera. So I thought I'd post some of them over
the next few weeks. Tonight's is a view over
the Tuscan countryside from a lookout in San Gimignano.
This was a 11th century Tuscan town we visited on our
last day in Italy.

Merry Christmas times two!

Have a loving-every-chance-to-celebrate day.

A quiet start

Steven waves the glow stick arm bands and
we get a cool image with the flash off



Whenever I saw Steven today he'd made
more and more fantastic jewelry out of
the glow stick halos we gave our guests on
New Year's Eve. Of course, he was trying
to make me laugh and it worked. I
told him he was getting so arty I
probably shouldn't take him to
any more Biennales.

It seems appropriate that after at least six months
of running to meet deadlines, fill out forms,
organize what seemed like endless details for
my art business, teaching and planning the visit
to the Biennale, topped off with Christmas
and New Year's Eve, which did feel like the icing
on the cake -- we did nothing today. New Year's
Day for us a traditional slow feeling. When the
children were younger, we might head out for a
freezing walk.

But today after a 5 a.m. bedtime after the party
was over, I have been reading my novel, while
Steven pulled on layers of down vests and ski
jackets to go and putter in his workshop in the
garage while the snow fell all around.

So Happy New Year. It has been a perfect day.
The year is off to an excellent start. Our friends
have deluged us with so much food and wine, that
we feel like we need to have another party. And
we are...on Sunday we have Christmas with Christopher,
Megan and Sam again. So we're catching our breath,
and then....we're at the post, we're off!

Happy, Happy New Year.

Have a taking-it-easy-before-it-starts-again day.