The Temkin Tribune

More disembodied parts...because I dig 'em, that's why.

This dude is for Bryn.

"Eugene looked terrific in tights.  His cape was neatly pressed and he wasn't about to let a little astigmatism stand in his way.  Eugene was BORN to be a SUPER HERO and he was DETERMINED" 

Eugene is an homage to my cousin Bryn, who is a fantastic artist, even if he doesn't know it.  Anyway, when we were in high school Bryn came to live with us and he drew all over everything.  And among all of the snakes, guns, tanks, and skulls and daggers teenage boys are wont to draw, Bryn had developed this walking, talking eyeball.  I still think it is genius, though often Bryn had lots of blood and bongs and things with his eyeball dudes...Anyway, my cousin has gone through some pretty rough stuff in his life lately and I think of him as a bit of a super hero...so Eugene is for you Cousin!  I love you and I am super proud of all you have accomplished! xoxox

Doodle: The KING of the SEA.

 
Vince is one of LaVerne's friends, clearly, and a bit confused about his identity but he is ambitious.  And surely ambition,even if slightly misguided, is a positive trait?  Or not.  Vince could very well end up in the psych ward with LaVerne if he is not careful.  Elvis impersonators beware! 

More doodles - LaVerne the naughty mermaid

I don't know why I decided to electrocute LaVerne, the mermaid.  I like mermaids in general and I like to draw them a great deal.  I think it is the scales and the hair...very right-brained in a left-brain sort of a way...and that is how I roll.  My daughter said, "You know Mom, you could draw some of the scales differently, they don't have to be the same."  She is very smart.  I think changing up the scales a bit was quite effective don't you.  Thank you Bug!  Great idea, honey!

My Doodle Journal...Edwina, the Dragon

I love to draw, but lately I haven't been taking the time to practice as much as I should.  So, this December I got myself a great little notebook and some pencils and started making some time to draw a little something, anything, without trying to make each picture perfect.  I get very caught up in my own little perfection hell, it really is a creativity killer if you let it be.  I brought my doodle book along on out two week trip to California and Seattle for Christmas and New Years, respectively and I had a great deal of fun drawing with the kids.  We spent a fair amount of time at the pool in each of our hotel, or waiting at restaurants for food...The kids always draw amazing things, Catya's famous "Heart-pigs" and Benjy's dragons and robots...I am envious that they have such imaginations and can put their ideas right onto paper without even thinking that their picture might not be good and therefore,maybe they should not even attempt it.  I am posting the pictures Michael and the kids thought were the most interesting...They are my favorite and biggest fans.  I love my fans. xoxox

More Pavillion mural pictures...

In this picture you can see the unfinished tree with the fuse box which will become an overly, ornate bird house by the end of the project. This little boy is my favorite kid in the mural, he is the son of one of my dearest friends...The next picture is a close up of him.  The mural ends in the middle of a huge wall so I decided that a good way to end the mural but not have it look out of place would be to place the tree at the margin. But there was still the problem of the fusebox so I decided it should be camouflaged as a bird house and the little boy just sort of "showed up" in the space as I was working it all out.  Sometimes my characters just show up like that...and "request" that they have a certain space...I am glad I listened to him...He was right.  He needed to be hiding behind this tree, in this position.  Smart boy. 
The group of children was fun to paint.  I love that the boy with the glasses looks so much like the child I know that his father (who works with my husband) said "Oh, that is Ian alright.  You have the shape of his head just right!"  Ian doesn't ear glasses but his caricature "decided" that he wanted some round ones.  I did not resist his request. I wonder if Ian will think my painted boy looks like him?   I will have to ask. 

 

Here is the first stage of blocking in the the skin tones.  I learned a trick for this from my 5th grade teacher.  She taught us that every skin tone is really just a mix of red and yellow...Think of mixing catsup and mustard and getting peachy colored Thousand Island dressing.  You can add more red or yellow or brown  or white to modify as you like.  I usually mix up a large amount of the first skin tone and modify aliquots of this for all of the others.  The real trick is to remember WHICH skin tone you used for which person in the mural.  You don't want peachy arms with a brownish face. 

As you can see, I got a bit ahead of myself with Ian's face. You can click on any of the small pictures to get a pop-up of the full sized image.  The next picture is the finished group of children.  I loved painting the plaid shorts and the boat shoes...too much fun.  The yellow dress is one of my favorite dresses from my childhood..well not exactly, but that is what I had in mind when I painted it on the little girl who is my daughter but with several modifications.  In the last picture you can also see that I was thinking of using a second green to highlight the bubble-like bunches of leaves on the trees.  However, I abandoned this idea because it made the trees too complicated for the feeling I was going for .

Mural upstairs at the Canton Pavillion Ice Rink

I thought it might be fun to write a post about my "process" for creating a large mural...in this case it was over 33 linear feet long and I believe it is 10 feet tall.  That is quite a lot of wall space to navigate and in this case I also knew I was going to need to take a couple of fixtures and a play structure into account when considering the composition of the mural.  My goal was to brighten up the corner of this somewhat shabby space and make it inviting for kids and their parents alike.  I also thought it would be nice to give the space the impression of being warmer than a room at the local ice rink could really every be.  The playground theme was a natural and met the needs of the client..."Something with children.  Something cheerful."

Many people have asked me how I "map" out the wall...well, to be honest I do not. If there are to be figures in the painting I always start with sketches of them.  I imagine the people I am going to draw and start sketching.  I like to give my characters "personality."  Sometimes they will be a picture of a real person I know or a composite of several people.  In this mural, all of the children are kids I know.  I use my own kids too but I often give them different hair or eyes...but if you look carefully and if you know my children you will always find them in any mural I do that has children in it.   

I love to draw and paint children and I love to draw every type of child.  I really had a chance with this mural to represent a group of children from different backgrounds playing together.  You can see a little boy hiding behind the tree to the far right of the mural and on the right is his playmate, the girl with the braid, counting for their game of hide and seek.   There is a boy in a wheelchair, flying a kite...the wheel chair was a challenge because it is a very complicated chair to draw.  I simplified it quite a bit so that I was able to maintain the feeling of simplicity I was going for with the overall mural. I'll get some of my sketches scanned soon. I often work out an entire page of facial features and then I figure out who needs which expression.  I don't want to end up making someone look angry when they are supposed to be having fun in the park together.

After I have several characters worked out I go to the prepared wall and with regular chalk, I begin to work out the proportions and positioning for each figure.  I may draw a very detailed chalk picture or I may just draw a rough outline of the figure just to indicate placement.   
In this mural, I wanted to make sure everyone was the correct proportion to each other but I did not want to end up with all of their heads being at the same level in the mural. I got around this problem by having a gently rolling, grassy hill as the background.  So you can see the boy on the skateboard and the boy in the wheelchair are positioned high on the grassy hill while the girl with the ball and the boy hiding behind the tree are locate much lower on the wall.  I think it adds visual interest and movement to an otherwise, very static picture.    Another thing I did with this mural, to add movement was to add the three birds.  One is standing on the sign and the other two are flying in the direction of the birdhouse. The kite also give a sense of movement by implying that there is a bit of a breeze...see how sneaky painters can be?  I To give the eye more to follow in the bottom portion of the mural I added randomly placed daisies...I think they are quite effective in helping the eye travel over such a large space.

After the chalk outlines I start mixing my skin tones.  This is one of my favorite parts of painting people.  I block in the limbs and the head and neck.  Often I have to paint these two to three times because the background will show through.  Next I shade the ears, just under the neck, and anywhere else that needs it.  Then onto the clothing. I have no rules about how I paint the clothing except that I like a ton of detail.  I paint the basic shape of the shirt and pants or dress or skirt and then after they are dry, I go back in and paint the stitches, buttons, grommets or whatever detail that occurs to me.  The details really make the mural. 

After the children were nearly finished...I leave the shoes and socks for last, I don't know why but I always seem to do this...I start to fill in the background, the grass, the trees and any other objects or animals that have found their way into my design.  The trees in this mural are very childish, very stylized because I didn't want to take a wy from the details of the children.  I think it worked.  And the very last thing I painted was the ornate bird house in the tree.  If you look very closely, I think you can see that the birdhouse disguises a very ugly fuse box right in the middle of the wall.  I just hope the maintenance guys will be able to find it when they need to reset a fuse. OK, so I guess I cannot post anymore pics with this post...I'll get some more pictures up in the next couple of posts.

Yes MOM, I know I haven't posted enough pictures of my artworks...

Hi Mom!  Why is it that nobody is every happy with what you are doing?  My contractor's number one guy likes to tell me what to do but when I go to do it he says...why are you doing THAT now???  I wrote a couple of haiku expressing my frustration and posted them on Twitter.com...My latest obsession.  I will type them out here (for you Mom, because you don't yet Tweet:)

My contractor is...the bane of my existence...and yet my savior. #haiku #mundaneschoolofhaiku

I don't want to paint...but certainly I must paint...or live with bare walls. #haiku #mundaneschoolofhaiku

For those of you who do not partake of Twitter's numerous delights.  The "codes" starting with "#" are called Hashtags.  Hashtags are a wonderful way of providing a searchable, key word for Twitter users.  If you want to see all the haiku posted on Twitter you can search the hashtag  " #haiku "  For the clever, hashtags can be used for humor (my Twittamigo, @blogomomma is an expert at this sort of humor and is know as "The Queen of the Hashtag" in our circle of Twitterfriends.)  Alternately, the hashtag can be used to create a buzz about a particular subject, to create awareness of an organization or an issue, or to organize your own tweets.  But that may be more than you wanted to know Mom.  Also, Mom, you can read some of my tweeting on the blog because I added a Twitter-widget today...Don't be shocked though.  We can get pretty silly sometimes...it is all in good fun.

As a reward for all this unfun painting I will be posting a series of pictures from my latest mural.  I managed to document the my "process" and will be sharingjust how I go about conquering 33 feet of bare wall without making myself crazy.  I hope it will be informative and fun...you will have to let me know.  I plan to start on this next part of the blog tonight so bear with me as I relearn Typepad. By Mom...love you. xo M

Shifting my focus...again.

So much for keeping anyone updated on the renovation project here...  We are entering our tenth month without a functional kitchen.  I have just about lost interest in making dinner in the makeshift kitchen in the dining room. Please do not think I am blaming my wonderful contractor or fabulous kitchen man.  To the contrary, we had some "circumstances beyond our control" and had to take a break from the building. We are getting back on track and expect to have the rest of the interior work completed during this winter.   The kitchen cabinets are all in and they are beautiful.  I'll post some pictures soon.

But what I really wanted to write about is my creative work.  I am planning to sell some of my jewelry on Etsy.com and it is my goal to have a site up in the next several months.  I will also be selling crochet patterns I have designed myself, items I have crocheted (?) and sewn, mosaic bowling balls and anything else my twisted little mind decides it has to make.  I will be writing about my mural projects past and present and posting lots and lots of pictures.  I am very excited about getting my work out there for people to purchase.  It has been a dream of mine to have my own art studio and now that it is nearly a reality, I am planning to spend at least 5 hours or more everyday just creating beautiful objects.

My latest jewelry adventures with copper have lead me back to my biology roots.  I have been making insect pendants using hundreds of tiny glass beads and miles and miles of beautiful copper wire, some of which I am actually recycling from my renovation project.  One of the first pendants I made was a Dragon Fly (image)

The latest Butterfly Pendant is very large and reminds me of a beautiful tattoo, but without the needles and blood.  It hangs off a double leather cord complete with loop and hook clasp designed and made by me.  It is the first piece I have made with findings entirely of my own design.  I have gotten lots of compliments on it and I have become so attached I cannot sell it...so I am off to make another one and hopefully, I will be able to let it go.  If you would like me to make you any of these one of a kind pendants, send me an email with your color preferences and I will work something up for you to see.  I love doing custom designs for people...I think it is wonderful to have a personal relationship with the people who enjoy my work...Ok, so I am not going to over-do this first day back at the blog.  I'll be back soon.

She's back and still bitching!

Good afternoon Temkin Tribune fan (s?)   Today, I am feeling very bloggy today so I am thinking I may start writing again.  We are still in construction mode here at the Temkin Manse.  We have been on a 6 week hiatus but now we are ready to go.  Michael and I are priming and painting the upstairs rooms so that Paul and the crew can come in and do the tile for the upstairs bathroom.  I have to say again that priming drywall is a horribly unrewarding job.  The primer is white so you see no real progress...you are simply painting white drywall and white joint compound ...er...white...very dull. and when you are done, you still have nothing but WHITE WALLS...and you still have two coats of paint to go...ugh.  Now the paint is another story.  Paint is fun and rewarding.  You actually end up with a room that you can imagine living in.  I am hoping to get to some color today...The ceiling paint, however, it white with a slight tint of blue...This bluish white is supposed to "lift" the ceiling and give the room a more "spacious and airy feel."  We shall see...

One thing that has not changed around here is the incredible mess.  Dust is impossible to get rid of and it is entirely possible that we are just moving the dust around from one place to another in out attempts to spot clean.  I wonder if spot cleaning is like spot reducing (shrinking only one part of your anatomy) is even possible. Dietitians say that it is not possible to just reduce the size of ones posterior without reducing the rest of the body..so it follows that unless I clean out the entire house and get this incredible mess out of our lives that there is no point in simply cleaning up a single area...So basically, I need to get my whole ass in gear and shovel this dump out.