Fuzzy details

The upclose of first marks on a canvas can be kind of exciting.  When everything is possible still…

[Top of the post:  detail of a Koi picture (see Anne Sophie Mutter and her Opposite) by Aletha Kuschan]

Stream of Consciousness

And this is the stream of consciousness!

Pixel With Colors

Pixel swims into so many of my pictures.  Here he is all colored with crayon.  He usually lives and swims in this painting.  “Il faut refaire la meme chose, dix fois, cents fois ….” Degas said.  I took it very much to heart.  I’ve lost count how many times I’ve drawn Pixel.  (“You must redraw the same thing, ten times, a hundred times….”)

[Top of the post:  Pixel with Colors, by Aletha Kuschan, pencil and crayon]

Leaping Fish

This fish is all line and light, blue and white with a grid to keep him from leaping off the page and out of sight.  He looks at you.  The world is mostly water, you know.
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[Top of the post:  Pen drawing of a Fish, by Aletha Kuschan, ballpoint pen]

I am in full fish-mode

A very pencil-y fish here, where lines wiggle like waves of motion in the stream of ideas.  This one has lovely dots, too.  When my daughter was a baby and got her first lessons in art, they consisted of me dotting a paper over which she crawled, which I did while saying, “dot, dot, dot, dot” as I watched her laugh and squeal with delight.

[Top of the post:  Drawing of a Fish I named Pixel, by Aletha Kuschan, pencil]

Alice Drew a Maze

Alice the Cat drew a maze (on her favorite tool, the Magic Doodle), and it amazed everyone who looked at it. 

You start at the bottom right and finish at the upper left.  (I think you’re supposed to print it out and color it too — if you choose — if it pleases you — Alice would be pleased!)

How is it that when we are amazed we get momentarily lost?  But then we find what we were looking for too, after thoughts wandered.  It is magic!

[Top of the post:  Alice's Maze, by Alice the Cat, Magic Doodle]

Collage as “Environment” and Ideas

To make this photo, I took two collages and set them at 90 degree angles, one lying flat on the floor, the other propped on the wall, and I photographed them from the center.  The result is the dimensional blending of the two. 

The wonderful thing for artists living today is that modern technology offers up so many new avenues for getting ideas.  I take things like this and paint them.  I still pursue my thought in direct and traditional tools, but I use the new gadgets to produce ideas.

When I look at something like this, it’s like trying to enter a dream.  This is my way of looking for the doorway that opens onto thought.

[Top of the post:  Two collages photographed together, by Aletha Kuschan]

Collage of apples, close up

Here’s another shot of the “Heirloom Apples” collage, a detail of two apples first posted June 22.  This kind of collage is similar in character to what Henri Matisse made in the latter part of his career.  The paper is painted with tempera and then cut into shapes.  Streaks from the application of the paint show in the cuttings and become accidental elements of the work, giving it additional texture and interest.

This is like drawing with scissors.

[Top of the post:  Detail of a Study of Apples, by Aletha Kuschan, collage]

Tree Cartoon, the School of Fish

Every once in a while here, I post a collage or a “cartoon.”  This cartoon (large compositional study for a painting) belongs to the Big Tree idea that I posted in mid-June.

Other collages I’ve posted include this abstract image, this idea for a child’s mural, and this study of a detail of a painting.  It’s fun to organize them so that they can be compared.  I’ve never seen them together except here on line.

For almost every subject I undertake, I do studies.  Some of these studies take the form of collage. Collage is such a free and expressive media.  You can organize large areas of a picture in one swoop.

I like to explore the possibilities and details of the images I design.  Often these studies vary enough from the original to suggest new projects.  This particular collage was supposed to help me figure out the tree idea, but became more about the fish.  It takes on a new interest for me now as I embark on a new round of paintings of fish swimming.  Meanwhile the fish in this collage have found themselves quite a nice little pond where they bob up and down like corks.

[Top of the post: Cartoon for the painting "Big Tree," by Aletha Kuschan, Xeroxed pictures glued to paper with crayon drawing]

Dream Fishing

When artists go fishing, it’s a little different sort of thing than when most people fish.  I’ve begun a series of koi paintings that occupy most my time.   Of course, the fish in the drawing are obviously not koi.  They are just fish.  They’re friends.   My generic fish that swim in the notebook in search of a fine blue stream.   They are rambling fish of imagination and dreams.  They come to cheer me on in my larger project that I’m just now beginning.Come visit my store on CafePress!

[Top of the post:  Swift Swimming Fish of Dreams, by Aletha Kuschan, drawing in a notebook]