Blue

I'm not sure exactly where this one came from. Let's walk through the process: I've been listening to music on Spotify while I work, and I've been indulging in all the music from my teen years. I was looking at the four colors of blue Daler Rowney FW acrylic ink that I now own, and I thought, Blue! as in, I want to do something monochromatic, and then that made me think of the Blue album by Joni Mitchell, one of my favorites in my middle teen years, and I went looking for photos. I didn't want to do the photo that appears on the album, but I wanted to do one that was recognizably Joni. The hardest part, frankly, was finding one where she wasn't smoking a cigarette—it's a wonder the woman could sing at all. I finally found a rare one in which she was holding it far from her face, and simply cropped out the hand.

Even though I was going to do a monochromatic, I couldn't resist putting in some Deb Weiers luscious red lips for the one contrast, and that (along with the beret) led to the association with the quote. Somewhere in this house I have a SWAK rubber stamp that I was also going to add to the mix, but the chances of my finding one 1/2-inch rubber stamp in the bowels of my studio was next to nil. When I eventually come across it, I'll add it if I still have this piece of art.

Gesso, pencil, gray gel pen, Daler Rowney inks, watercolors, LuminArté sparkly paint, Uniball pen, white gel pen, on 140-lb. Strathmore. The lettering is based on the Athens Condensed alphabet from the Solotype Typographers Catalog, designed by Dan X. Solo.