Paint animals using pastel and acrylic. Part 1

Several years ago I discovered painting animals using both chalk pastel and acrylic paint together. I had blocked in this Northern Pike using acrylic and then was in a quandary about how to paint the fish in the water. I started dragging chalk pastel over the image, became uncertain about what I was doing, and so used a kneaded eraser to lift off bands of colour.  What a surprise! A fish inside the water.

I discovered I could reverse the process and paint the creature by first working the pastel--which is pure pigment--around the paper with water, and then when satisfied with the detail, enhance the complexity by painting over the chalk with acrylic.

The under-painting of acrylic allowed me to both add pastel, and lift areas of colour with an eraser, on the already lightly painted form to create lost and found edges, which is one of my favorite visual effects.

Lost and found edges allows the viewer 's mind to fill in shapes and spaces, rather than have the artist paint every feather in the wing.

Sometimes the two media go back and forth in many layers: the pastel dragged across the white space to create irregular texture, the acrylic painted as a soft wash to suggest shapes in the texture. Next the pastel is rubbed with a paper stump to further define the detail, whites are reclaimed from the pastel with the eraser, and then the acrylic refines the forms with dramatic contrast.

 

Of course, some paintings are composed entirely of layers of painted, rubbed and erased chalk pastel

and others have the main subject painted in sharp-edged acrylic and surrounded by rubbed and blended pastel to create drama.

I am not very nice to my painting surfaces.  I can overwork an area until the surface of the illustration board breaks down.  Yet in this combination of pastel, acrylic and eraser I made a discovery.  If the surface is wet the eraser will lift up the top layer of paper holding the acrylic paint. This broken surface then catches the pastel and creates a physical as well as a visual texture.  What a surprise! A bird wing  more complex than I could possibly paint.

This combination of pastel, acrylic and eraser has become more and more compelling in their process. But what has been more of a surprise are these creatures themselves.  Who are they? Why are they in these odd relationships with each other?  Where do these images come from?

These paintings are the result of dreams I asked for when creating the Journey Oracle.  How I work with my dreams, what process originates the creatures in each image, and what they have to tell me is the subject of my next blog: Paint dream animals. Part 2.

Healing power of animals

Are you willing to trade places with animals? 

 

Our feelings of losing the dream, 

of the storm expected,

 are not shared by the other-than-human world. 

 When we truly see their burst of forces, 

We see not the red of anger 

or the tangling touch of  greed

but the truth of life still going on. 

 

After all, the goose is dancing

not cooked, 

and nobody even notices the frog.

The power needed to shift our situation

will be a sound of contentment. 

Not the smell of sex

or the taste of famine.

But the skill of recognizing that-- 

like the animals know--

we have enough.

All the italicized phrases in this blog came

from pronouncements by the Journey Oracle

about oracle card #10

whose question, received in a dream,

 inspired this painting. 

Are you willing to trade places?

Free Journey Oracle reading for 2020

JOURNEY ORACLE CARD READING  FOR 2020

       

An Oracle translates a problem or question into a language of image and symbol like that of dreams.  It changes the way you experience a situation to connect you with the inner forces that are shaping it.  An Oracle dialogues with your imagination—the creative basis of experience we call the unconscious.  

This is a picture of

THE SITUATION 

Describe your first impressions of this image using simple phrases.  Do not analyze, doubt or discard what your inner voice is saying.  When you feel inner quiet, go to the Oracle’s identity.

Identity of Oracle: Ruis  

Qualities of this Oracle: withdrawal, renewal, the threshold, the brink

Time of year associated with this Oracle: Nov 25 – Dec 22

Why this is the Oracle of your situation?

Message from the Oracle about your situation: unclear communication

Why are you receiving these message?

PRONOUNCEMENTS FROM THE ORACLE 

ABOUT YOUR SITUATION

An Oracle reveals the forces that are moving beneath your situation.  These sentences are not statements of logic or reason.  Write brief first impressions next to the statement.  If a statement draws a blank from your unconscious, move on to the next sentence

 THE  SITUATION

This situation began by coming home.

The prevailing energy of this situation is lowering sky.

The core energy pattern of this situation is looking up.

The Mother of this situation is dark with the devil.

The Father of this situation is blood-colored.

           

ALIGNMENT  TO  THE  SITUATION

Your relationship to the prevailing energy is fluttering.

Your perception of the situation is clear.
The impact of your perception is harsh.

The connection between the core energy pattern and the situation

 is felt as irritating.

The momentum of this situation is fed by no time to get ready.

This is a picture of

YOUR EXPERIENCE IN YOUR SITUATION

Describe your first impressions of this image using simple phrases.  Do not analyze, doubt or discard what your inner voice is saying.  When you feel inner quiet, go to the Oracle’s identity.

Identity of Oracle: Frogs Return (March full moon) 

Qualities of this Oracle: mysterious, restless, changing energy, fertility, rising

Time of year associated with this Oracle:  March full moon

Why this is the Oracle of your experience?

Question from the Oracle about your experience:  

Is there another way to get there?

Why are you receiving this question?

The Journey Oracle’s answers change the way you see things. Your anxieties, fears and desires emerge to be recognized and resolved, and hidden transformative energies are released.

THE  EXPERIENCE  NAMED

NEXT  STEPS

THE  SITUATION  EXPERIENCED

                       

into the matrix

journeying with vibrations

focused prayer

you’ve tapped into something from way back,

 green sprout, maturation

touch the earth, promise of spring in bleak winter

EXTERIOR  SUPPORT

An exterior or support system for the situation is scurrying.

This is a picture of

THE CHANGE CALLING YOU

Describe your first impressions of this image using simple phrases.  Do not analyze, doubt or discard what your inner voice is saying.  When you feel inner quiet, go to the Oracle’s identity.

Identity of Oracle: South

Qualities of this Oracle: the fire of will, desire, intuition action, courage  

Time of year associated with this Oracle:  all time

Why this is the Oracle of change?

Message from the Oracle about change:  an eye with two faces

Why are you receiving this message?

CHANGE

The power needed to shift this situation will be an inner sound.

Change will come by finding the way to proceed.

Your relationship to the change in this situation is floating.

The primary moment of letting go into the change will smell blocked.

The concern to be avoided within this change will taste of manna.

DIVINE  WILL

The wisdom of no one able to be here will empower the transformation.

Completed transformation will be felt as a quality of swimming in the air.

DREAM  ON  THESE  QUESTIONS

Why are you trying to get under it? 

Are you the one willing to undo it?

HOW  IS  THIS  AN  ANSWER

 Falling

This is a picture of

THE RESOLUTION

Describe your first impressions of this image using simple phrases.  Do not analyze, doubt or discard what your inner voice is saying.  When you feel inner quiet, go to the Oracle’s identity.

Identity of Oracle: Muin/Vine

Qualities of this Oracle: generosity, vision, altered states

Time of year associated with this Oracle: Sept 2 – Sept 29

Why this is the Oracle of your resolution?

Question from the Oracle about your resolution:  What key are you using to open the door

that cannot be locked?

Why are you receiving this message?

A FAIRY TALE FROM THE ORACLE

ABOUT THE RESOLUTION OF THE SITUATION

The dense weave of meaning in a fairy tale provides insight into the hidden forces behind your situation, and points to the resolution sought by your unconscious wisdom.  In this fairy tale, your unconscious wisdom knows the names of all the characters, all the connections to your situation, and what is the happy ending.  

ESCAPING  FROM  TROUBLE

“It’s a school of tiny silver fish,” the woman said, as she and the man watched the water become worried with dimples and bulges that made creative connections of patterns across the surface near their boat.

Flashes of light leapt from the water about them as the school made a change of direction in elegant and abrupt unison. Each sliver of shadow beneath the surface was a vulnerable mark; the entire—a mass of supernatural powers with one aim: escape.

The woman wondered how the fish knew to move so precisely in unison. Surely the shifts were too quick and complete to be led or signaled. Perhaps the fish moved with one mind instead of many. Perhaps the whole school was just one creature of many bodies but only one voice. She sat very still and tried to clear all the words from her mind, hoping to feel the shiver of vibration from the fish through her fingertips trailing in the water. “If I did this long enough I’d know what was being said,” the woman realized.

The man said that is some places fisherman stand in the shallow waters of bays and rivers—like disciples poised for spirit-filled awakenings—waiting to fling their gossamer nets in shimmering arcs over the larger fish chasing behind the mass of little ones.

         “I guess we can never know what is coming from behind,” the woman replied, “perhaps what is best to know—is how to escape.”

Holiday memories in an shamanic photo album

Holidays create time to explore--while looking for decorations and addresses for holiday greeting cards--and I found some old photo albums with some painted drum images dating from the 1990's when I first moved to Cortes Island. 

Who plans as a kid to become a painter on rawhide? 

But this is what has happened.  Seeing these old print images has been a revelation about what has changed, and what has stayed constant in my shamanic paintings on the drums that I make.

I began with a timid uncertainty, 

that soon reached toward the pure unusual.  

Tension emerged,

whether the creature was solitary,

or in relationship. 

Before I added an interlacement pattern 

to the back of my drums as the handhold, 

the images themselves began to interact with the cedar rings

 that have become my drum maker's signature. 

Always there is the question of what to do with the bullet hole?

The doorway of death that is the birth of voice. 

The most remarkable constant across these 30 years

is the painting of Mystery.

The story of raven catches the light

painted entirely on the reverse of the drum.

A painting of a dream journey

so vivid,

in which everything was just itself

and always something more. 

I do not know, finally, where I am going,

or why they come. 

I am only so grateful that they do. 

A different look at Hawai'i

I have visited Hawai'i 10 times, but this time was different. I was looking for something. I was not sure what:  Hawaiian history? What happened? It has always felt so odd to be there, to be on the outside of the culture, while at the same time in this delicious tropical immersion.

Hula dancers and swirling colours, ukuleles and drums filling the senses as white and Asian and East Indian people applaud enthusiastically while holding cocktail crackers and plastic cups with pineapple wedges stuck to their rims is not an Insider experience. An endlessly colonial moment.

I went on a manta ray night snorkel, a never-before-seen experience. Here was a key to the something I was looking for. It was in the movement of the manta rays, as they rose through the dark water toward the plankton shimmering in the lights beneath our canoe. Apparently they cannot really see us, see what we are, floating there in such clumsy appreciation of their ballet. They only see the plankton, shimmering. They are performing only for themselves.

So I went looking in books, as this is almost always my default setting for tracking a new direction. There is a tiny bookstore, a bookshelf really, at the National Park Information kiosk in Pu’uhonua o Honaunau: the Place of Refuge. A place in ancient times where, if a lawbreaker could make it here, rituals could be performed in this place of Asylum, and all would be forgiven. Just felt like the right place.

I was drawn to a volume by Martha Warren Beckwith, the translator and editor of Kumulipo: a Hawaiian Creation Chant. I tried several times but could not get inside the words, or maybe it was the commentary that accompanied the poetry. I love the academic. But somehow,  these pages of explanation were not the manta rays flowing and turning in the shimmering light.

And then I saw a tiny book, slightly larger then a bound collection of square postcards, by Martha H Noyes,  titled Then there were none. Based on a documentary film by Elizabeth Kapu'uwailani Lindsey Bayers, Ph. D. Page 2 begins, 

The world knows of our green mountains and blue seas. The world knows of swaying hula dancers and of Pearl Harbor. The world knows of pineapples, mai tais, Kona coffee, and macadamia nuts. The world knows of coco palms and white sand beaches, a flower leis and bright-colored mu’umu’us. But the world does not know of us. We are Hawaiian. This is our story.

Page 100 begins

In the 1970s and into the 1980s, “sovereignty” was a word spoken in whispers. Then the whispers grew and sovereignty was spoken aloud. 

In 1992, the United States returned Kaho'olawe to the people of Hawai’i. 

On January 17th, 1993, ten thousand people converged on the grounds of ‘Iolani Palace. The day marked the 100th year since the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom.  And on the 17th of January, 1993, from the steps of the Palace where our last ruling Queen had been made a prisoner in her own home, dignitaries read an official apology by the United States government for its illegal participation in the overthrow of our nation. 

Now sovereignty is on the lips of Hawaiian and non Hawaiian alike. Some utter it with a vengeance, some with hope, some with fear. Sovereignty is no longer just the dream of a few young Hawaiians.

While waiting to board our homebound plane just after midnight, all the way up the loading ramp, watching the palm trees in the arc lights outside the terminal, I kept saying “sovereignty, sovereignty.” I’m sure I heard the wind speak the word back, it’s hot breath flowing everywhere in the shimmering light.