A sad day

It's always a sad day in the neighborhood when you lose a tree to bugs or rot or just sheer age. But today is an especially hard one—we on Bassett Street are losing the "World Tree."

Back when these houses were built in 1948, the city put in Ash trees in the median strip on both sides of my block, and by the time I moved into my house in 1981, they were at maximum height and glory, and every summer our street was a green bower of shade. For some reason our street was the only one out of the surrounding five or six between Vanowen and Sherman Way to have a full complement of street trees, and it made our block special.

The weird thing was, apparently when the city planted the trees there were a few cuckoos in the nest, so to speak—along with the regular Ash trees, they had half a dozen Shamel Ash, which grow to about five times the height and girth that the regular ones do. They planted them randomly, one per block, across the whole neighborhood, and once they reached maturity they towered over everything else—you could look out diagonally across the neighborhood and see the tops of those from anywhere.

Ours was about four doors down on the opposite side of the street from me, and I always loved looking at it, because it just seemed so primal amidst the more conventional pack of trees. It was full of birds and animals, and its exuberant roots burst out of the ground to buckle the sidewalk up two full feet, and then invaded the street as well. Because of that, which didn't bother the residents but did bother the city (and perhaps the plumbing), we all figured it was just a matter of time; but lack of funding for street tree maintenance these past few decades has preserved it long after I expected it to be gone.

Today, however, is the day. I don't know if it has succumbed to the rot that infected most of the rest of the under-watered street trees (which are not really a good choice for droughty Southern California) and took them out one by one over the years, or whether the city just decided to finally do something about the sidewalk, street, and DWP main lines. But five trucks and a dozen guys showed up this morning, beep-beeped themselves into position and started up the chainsaw. By the time I realized what must be happening and ran out to see, half the tree's branches were down. It will probably take them a full two days to get it out of here, and it's heartbreaking, especially because all that's left on our street are five half-grown replacement trees and maybe three of the original trees, elderly and fragile.

Above is a picture I drew of it a couple of years ago, and this doesn't nearly encompass the height (I ran out of room on the page) or magnificence of this tree. But it's the only memento I have.

There is a program through "City Plants" and the DWP where you can sign up to be a block captain and then go house to house to sign up all your neighbors for a new street tree. Once you have surveyed the whole neighborhood, you turn in your order for the correct number of trees, plus your top three choices for what kind of tree you would like, and the city will deliver them. I meant to do that this past year, but when the pandemic hit so many plans changed. But there's no reason I can't mask up, maintain distance, and go talk to the neighbors—I could use the exercise. Perhaps this will be my winter project.

Just because...

 Sometimes I have a clear reason to paint someone, whether it's because I want to draw attention to them, or fangirl them, or I am inspired by a thought or someone's comment or a quote...and then sometimes I can't really see the motivator, and I have to chalk it up to impulse. I was watching MSNBC last night; something Rachel Maddow said stuck with me, and today I decided she was my next subject, just because. (Also, I was in the mood for quirky, and she's kind of a quirky-looking gal, with her big black glasses, long neck, and spiky hair.)

I did find a quote from her that I liked, so I added that in. And I decided I wanted to go a little crazy—throw some spatter and some squiggles into the mix, and use some less orthodox colors. So here is Rachel, with mostly purple hair and splotches of turquoise and pink scattered freely on her skin, but hopefully still recognizable as the redoubtable newswoman that she is. (The pinstripe suit ought to help....)

Daler Rowney inks, pencil, white gesso, India ink, black Uniball pen, white Signo gel pen, on 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Wild ambitions

 Here's someone I've been wanting to paint for a while, but I couldn't find the exact right quote to go with her until today. I love this—"anchored only by plans and not by doubts." Stacey Abrams has certainly acted decisively and with aggressive and wild ambition to turn the state of Georgia blue and get two venal, unworthy politicians out of office. In January, we will see if the organization she has built with the help of others dedicated to this purpose has been engaging and persuasive enough to pull it off and we are able to add Ossoff and Warnock to our major governing body. Since the fate of the Senate depends on it, I certainly hope so; but if for some reason it doesn't work, we can fall back on another saying of Stacey's, which is "Do not allow setbacks to set you back."

Daler Rowney inks, pencil, Uniball pen, white gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

Experiments

 Yesterday I had my back tooth pulled and the hole plugged, under anesthesia, and although it was a short procedure and I wasn't as zonked as I was the time I had a more major dental surgery while knocked out (seven filling replacements and a crown!), I didn't expect to feel good today. Surprisingly, despite a broken night's sleep and the obvious after-effects of the dental work (soreness, slight headache), I woke up feeling energetic (which is rare, even without dentistry!). I decided I would take that energy and put it to good use doing some long-neglected chores—between finishing out my class at UCLA and my tooth trauma, I haven't been doing much.

Then there was a conjunction of events: 1. I received an order from Dick Blick with some new artist materials; 2. I received some stencils I had sent for and completely forgotten about until they arrived; and 3. I went on Facebook.

I had a message there from a long-distance friend saying she wanted to buy one of my paintings, which was a thrill, so we completed the transaction and then chatted for an hour about various and sundry. I then scrolled through my feed a bit and saw this comment posted by another long-distance friend, Jeffrey Scot:

"This morning I watered my plants, prepared a nice cup of tea, read some lovely poetry, and wondered when my inner child had turned into a little old British lady."

I joked with him that he would only have to worry when he donned a pillbox hat to do his reading, and wham! inspiration struck. So much for dishes, clothes sorting, and paperwork. I had a portrait to paint!

This is the first time I have used either stencils or rubber stamps in one of my portraits, and I discovered that although you can use watercolors or inks with stencils, they're not so great on rubber stamps (they bead up). I usually use Tombow markers to color my stamps, but was afraid to do that here because they are water soluble, and if I decided at any point that I wanted to do another wash over the top of things, they would run. So I worked hard to get the watercolors to work with the stamps, and ended up with some mushy, indefinite images. I'll have to figure this out and try again. I ended up using a Tombow for the lettering, because it had to be readable, and made sure not to get any water on it.

One of the advantages of living alone (as long as you have no guests, which is a foregone conclusion during the pandemic) is that you can live in squalor a few days (or weeks or months) longer with no one the wiser (unless you tell them, duh) and do your painting instead.

Pencil, stencils, rubber stamps, watercolor, Daler Rowney ink, India ink, Micron pen, collage, white gel pen, on Fluid 9x12-inch 140-lb. watercolor paper.

Oh, and in case anyone wondered, that's Sonnet 14 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning on his shirt, in my seldom-used and rusty cursive!

Hiatus between posts

 I'm afraid there won't be much new here for a while; although I am painting, most of it is for Christmas gifts, and I don't want to share them with anyone else until the recipient has had their surprise. So I will have more things to show when I get done with gifts and go back to impulse painting, which will hopefully be long before Dec. 25, especially for those that have yet to be mailed!

And of course, there will be the Christmas gift paintings, which I can show after Dec. 25.

Jolene

 I commented recently on my Facebook page that I wouldn't have been able to get through this extended period of isolation if it weren't for my friends on social media (specifically Facebook). In a time when you can't get together in person with anyone, it really helps to multiply your friend base, even if it's by accumulating a bunch of people with whom you may never congregate, since their location is so remote (Canada, upstate New York, New Zealand) that it seems unlikely you will travel there to see them. Perhaps, in fact, it is especially necessary to have those friends, since the fact that it is impossible to meet them means you don't sit around regretting that, you just make the best of what you CAN have, which is a pretty full relationship if it consists of frequent interaction, the exchange of views, dislikes, hobbies, or whatever.

My friend Jolene Oldham is one of these. We met through a mutual friend, one who had previously been an in-person friend of mine for many years. We initially shared with that bridge person a concern for animal rescue, but began later on to find multiple similarities in outlook, philosophy and, let's face it in these days, politics. 

One unique thing about Jolene is that she is a mermaid. Yes, you read that right. She dresses in a long tail and goes swimming with her similarly attired friends, and she also hand-crafts some of those tails, for herself and others. She has an alter-ego name and title for these activities, so I chose to depict her as such when I decided to paint her. I looked at and combined attributes from three different photos.

Here is Pearlie Mae, Empress of the Sea.

Pencil, Daler Rowney inks, black Uniball, white gel pen, on Fluid watercolor paper, approx. 9x12 inches.

Wonky Friends

 A friend from Deb Weiers's class suggested we have a Wonky Friends Challenge for the month of December. I'm not sure I'll participate for a good part of it—I have paintings to make that are actual gifts for people and not just for fun—but I got a timely boost on this one from my cousin Kirsten, who took our Zoom photo from Thanksgiving and, for December 1st, added hats, bows, antlers, and other adornments to all of us in preparation for the holidays.

This is my cousin Harley (first cousin thrice removed? I think that's right) and his sweet girlfriend, Kim. Since Harley is in his 20s, he obviously doesn't have white hair, but he does have all that facial fluff, so I took advantage. Here are my pair of Christmas Elves for the first day of the Wonky Friends Challenge.

Pencil, Daler Rowney inks, watercolors, India ink, Uniball pen, white gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper, about 9x8 inches.