Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Stenciled Poetry: Love in Nontraditional Colors


Greetings and Salutations!

Carol Baxter looking up from a book of poetry waving at you! Do stories and poems you read and songs you hear inspire your art? They often do mine.

"Ditty of First Desire" inspired this art journal spread. The idea of love and soul in nontraditional colors of green and orange intrigued me.




I started out with a page I'd previously painted on an excess of Payne's Grey, Navy, and Powder Blue.

I scattered and glued my gelli printed stash paper scraps.



I used Lemonade, Salty Ocean, Chipped Sapphire, and Lucky Clover Distress Crayons to color in and draw a heart, then I painted each color individually starting with the yellow accents.



Next up I used Kristie Taylor's hand-mixed Sparkle Spirits Ink in Helios Orange to draw around the heart. It's pretty dry with the heater on in my office so I was not quite as quick as I might have liked spritzing it and getting it to drip. But I did turn it upside down and I like the subtlety of the drips. (And you know sparkles make me happy.)


 

The stencil on the lower right is Dancing Lights by Daniella Woolf from the public collection -- I used it for the little paper rhombus elements. Above it is the small stencil from the exclusive StencilClub set: Borderlines by Seth Apter. You'll see below it is from the previously gelli printed paper I used to fussy-cut the bird. The bird is the mini from another club set, Boho Collection by Cathy Taylor. Black Birds in Trees & the Reverse are stencils in the public collection by Kimberly Baxter Packwood.



I highlighted the birds with PaperArtsy's White Fire and then used black and brown pens to give them a little detail. I wrote the poet's name over and over to create the branches. I think it makes them look thorny. (If I wanted a thicker branch, I could write two lines next to each other in opposite directions... a technique I shall remember.)



Adding lines from the poem and gluing down the heart and the bird. I thought about writing them on the orange heart but ultimately, decided not.




Watching Andy Garcia portray Federico García Lorca in the film "Death in Granada" prompted me to seek his poetry.

Theatre director, playwright, and poet, Federico García Lorca brought surrealism, symbolism, and futurism into his work. A rebel on many levels, outspoken and often anguished, he thrived in the 1920s art community in Spain and is presumed assassinated at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

This poem has been in my head for a bit.




Ditty of First Desire 
by Federico García Lorca

  In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
A heart.
  And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.
  (Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.)
  In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.
  And at the evening's end
I wanted to be my voice.
A nightingale.
  Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.





Is it morning or night in your life? What color(s) will you paint & stencil your soul?







2 comments:

  1. Lovely inspiration. Thanks for sharing how you did this beautiful piece.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your sweet remarks, Terry!

    ReplyDelete

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