anika mari

I just got back from a wonderful week spent in North Carolina with my mom, 2 of my brothers and their families. We rented a house right on the ocean in North Topsail Beach. It couldn’t have been a better vacation. It was beautiful and relaxing and everyone was happy.

One of my favorite things to do, besides swimming in the ocean, was wandering along the shore to collect lovely, ocean rounded pebbles. There were so many pretty ones that I must admit I got a little addicted to collecting them. I went on at least 1 walk a day to search for pebbles. It was slow, painful work (not used to crouching down to pick things up repeatedly), but I couldn’t get enough.

At this point, I probably have way too many stones to know what to do with, but I had a lot of fun gathering them up, and I’m looking forward to sorting through them and thinking of fun things to do with them. My brother wants me to fill a mason jar with a selection of translucent stones. I filled one with random stones as a handy way to transport them, and he liked the way it looked.

Besides that, I’ve already done two artsy things with some of the stones, and I know there are more ideas waiting to be discovered.

One quiet afternoon at the beach house, I sat at the kitchen table and started fiddling with a few stones. Arranging them on some bristol, I traced them. Then I painted a light blue-green background, followed by the gray of the stones. When it was dry I finished by adding the line texture.

I cropped it into a square since the edges were a little uneven. I’m not sure which I prefer. I like how the square format makes it easier to see the detail in the stones, but I also like the uneven painted edges of the original format.

While waiting for the painting to dry, I picked up one of the stones and smooshed some watercolor onto one side, then pressed it onto the surface of a new sheet of paper, making a little “stone print”. I repeated the process and added in some lines and texture details. Finally I added the gray paint to some of the resulting shapes to give the composition a little more heft.

It’s maybe a little odd, but I’m sort of fond of this one. I really love the depth and variation of the green-blue color in each stone print.

I plan to explore the “stone printing” method a bit more.

I also have some more photos of some of the stones I collected that I’ll be sharing in the near future.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been in a creative lull. I’ve been somewhat busy with other stuff, but I just haven’t felt incredibly inspired to do anything. I’ve been working on some daily drawings in my sketchbook, but that’s about it.

However, at the tail end of my last creative burst, I did a few drawings/painting that I just now got around to photographing and uploading. I love being in Saipan, but there are a few things working against me: the humid heat which makes me prefer to swing in the hammock with a cool drink instead of working on art, and the slow internet connection which makes me want to do almost anything else than hover over uploads that can take hours. It took me almost 8 hours and a few false starts, but I eventually got the new photos uploaded.

My sister-in-law, Rachel commented that she really liked seeing photographs of my art in their environment. I started taking photos of the artworks hanging on the clothing line or carefully propped on one of the back steps because I don’t have access to a scanner here. I also zoomed in and took some closeups, but uploaded a variety of shots to give a good sense of the scale of the drawings and prints. After hearing her feedback, I embraced the idea and worked with the concept a little more deliberately. I am pretty happy with 2 of the art in environment shots in particular.

I think it’s fitting to photograph my drawings in this manner since I get so much inspiration from everything that I see around me. Not that I can pinpoint exactly where the inspiration for these works come from–they tend to be a general response to visual cues that surround me. Although the cinder blocks didn’t directly inspire either of these works, I like the visual similarity they offer to the drawings, as well as a certain amount of contrast to the surrounding plants.

Perhaps I’ll continue doing this when I’m back home, and I can use my scanner just for the details.