Art Expectations Day 68
Pip continues walking Miss Havisham about the frozen-in-time living room, around the table with the moldy bride-cake centerpiece. (How OLD is that cake anyway?!) Estella enters with the group from the detached house out back: Sarah Pocket, Camilla, Raymond (Camilla’s husband) and one other unnamed grave lady. Camilla goes on about how she can’t sleep at night for thinking and worrying about Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham says, “Then don’t think of me.” (I think I like Miss Havisham even though she seems to be crazy!) Raymond adds in that one of Camilla’s legs is becoming shorter than the other due to her “family feelings.” hahaha
I did an acrylic painting on canvas of a slice of moldy cake with a large beetle on top, having a feast.
Like this:
Art Expectations Day 67
Pip walks Miss Havisham excruciatingly slowly about the disheveled room. She tells him that she will be placed upon the table when she dies, for everyone to come and see. We find out that the moldy centerpiece on the table is her old bride-cake. GROSS!
Day 67: I chose to do a collage this time, using bits of painted paper and an old page from a 1902 Sears catalog as background. You can barely see the type on the wall, but I like the texture that it makes. She wears her old wedding dress and veil.
Like this:
Art Expectations Day 66
Day 66 Page 71 of the Great Expectations novel by Charles Dickens:
Miss Havisham asks Pip if he is ready to play this time. He says no. (He is still uncomfortable there plus he was just slapped by Estella.) So she asks him if he is willing to work instead. He says yes to that. She sends him across the hall to a different room to wait for her. Even though it is a different room, it is in the same state as her dressing room. This room appears to be a living room/dining room. Dust and cobwebs everywhere. Pip can hear and see beetles and other creatures (mice, spiders). In the center of a large table that also seems frozen in time is some strange centerpiece covered in speckled-legged spiders. I read ahead and found out that it is Miss Havisham’s bride-cake! YUCK!
I decided to show Estella as a wicked black widow spider on top of the moldy wedding cake. I created this piece with watercolor pencils, scanned it in and did a little more to it in Photoshop, applying a filter.
See you tomorrow!
Like this:
Art Expectations Day 65
Well, I am back from the dead! I truly have felt like a zombie for the past two weeks. I had pnuemonia, but am feeling much better, almost normal again! So now I need to catch up on my Great Expectations project.
My son has been playing a video game called MineCraft a lot lately. (http://www.minecraft.net/) Of all the games he plays, this is my favorite. It takes some strategy and planning ahead to play this game, plus the background music is very soft and relaxing. It sure beats listening to machine gun shooting! So I had that game in mind while creating this graphic. The characters are intentionally very pixelated. It brings to mind the very early video games from the 80s.
Day 65, Page 70:
This is Pip’s second visit to Miss Havisham’s. Estella stops Pip and asks him if he thinks she is pretty and insulting. He says “yes” and “not as much as last time”. She then slaps him very hard and asks why he doesn’t cry like last time. He tells her he will never cry for her again. They meet a large burly man coming down the stairs. He tells Pip to behave himself.
Like this:
Art Expectations Day 64
Finished Guitar:
I put in the last details on my Wildflower Guitar: grey gear and vines in the very center, a few other grey swirls around and added a piece of an original illustration by F.W. Pailthorpe which appears in my copy of the book. I am happy with the outcome! There are lots of things to look at and I hope it is interesting to other people.
Page 69:
We learn the names of most of the people that are talking together in the detached room behind Manor House: Camilla, Cousin Raymond, Sarah Pocket and one other unnamed woman, plus Estella is still there. Camilla is telling everyone that she begged a Mr. Tom to allow her to go buy some things for the poor children. After all her begging, he gives in and tells her to go do it. So she goes out in the rain and buys the things. (No mention of who she is talking about or what she actually bought.) A distant bell is heard and Estella says to Pip, “Now, boy!” They leave the group and the little house to go back into Manor House.
All I have left to do is put a gloss varnish over everything. I might also add some things to the back, such as this blog address and “Charles Dickens”. Yeah, almost done!
Like this:
Art Expectations Day 63
MORE Wildflower Festival Guitar!! I am getting pretty close to being finished. Yeah!
Today, I read page 68 and worked more on the little pig, Estella’s right eye (argh, can’t get it right), painted the year 1860 and pasted on text from the first page of the book, Chapter 1. Lastly I will need to coat this book paper with a varnish (matte medium) to protect it. Actually I will coat the whole front of the guitar with this varnish when I finish painting.
But on to page 68:
Pip is lead by the lovely Estella into a detached house at the back of the property. They walk through the back courtyard to get to it. She tells him to wait by a window until he is needed. I guess he is not allowed to participate in the conversation that is being held by three ladies and one gentleman. He is feeling uncomfortable, as if he is being scrutinized by the group. He stares out the window at the neglected courtyard. The people in the room are described as being “toadies and humbugs.” That doesn’t sound like a compliment!
Like this:
Art Expectations Day 62
I’ve worked on my guitar some more. I did not like how Estella’s right eye looked, so I painted over it and recreated it. I want her to have a dull, unfeeling look. I think I achieved that! For Pip I had quickly painted him in a more stylized way. I then painted an outline of Manor House, Miss Havisham’s home, right over Pip’s head. I also worked on the little piggie a bit and added some more details to the abstract shapes along the right side. So far, so good! I wish I could keep this one. Maybe I will have to go to the festival and bid on it!
Day 62, page 67:
Once home, Pip’s sister, in a rare good mood, discovers that the new shilling was wrapped in TWO one-pound notes! Thinking this a mistake, Joe runs off with the notes to the pub to return them to the stranger, who was, of course, no longer there. Back home, they hide the notes under a teapot for the time being.
Pip has a fitful night full of nightmares about the convict/stranger and the file coming at him as if to stab him!
Chapter 11 begins, still on page 67:
It’s the following Wednesday, and Pip is back at Miss Havisham’s for his second visit. Estella lets him into the yard and leads him down a different passageway in the house. Almost done with the guitar! I’ll work on it some more tomorrow and read page 68. Thanks for stopping by!
Like this:
Art Expectations Day 61
Hello, I took a week off to get my tax return done. And it is ALL DONE. Hallelujah! Hope yours wasn’t as difficult as mine.
I am back to working on my Wildflower Festival guitar to be auctioned off. It’s for a good cause – high school arts programs in the neighborhood and the Network of Community Ministries. Plus, this festival is a lot of fun. Check it out at: http://www.wildflowerfestival.com/
I moved the guitar to my easel. I was having trouble painting on the drafting table. The guitar is kind of an awkward shape to paint and my table was not big enough. l added the first line of the last paragraph in the book, “I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place”. Then I started painting Estella. I spent some time on her (even though she is not yet done) so when it came time to paint Pip, I did him really quickly. It’s a work-in-progress!
On Day 61, I read page 66:
At the Three Jolly Bargemen (local pub), the stranger stares at Pip as he stirs and sips his rum. Stirring, staring, sipping. Pip realizes the stranger is stirring his drink with the VERY SAME file that Pip took from Joe’s shop and gave to the convict in the marsh to saw off his leg iron!!! Yikes! Joe and Mr Wopsle do not see the file; the stranger slips it away. As they are all leaving the pub (rum has run out), the stranger gives Pip a bright new shilling wrapped in crumpled paper. I wonder if there is anything on that piece of paper?
Like this:
Great Expectations Day 60, Pip and Pipe
I did a collage yesterday, Easter Sunday, after I read page 65 in my Great Expectations book. The characters are taking long drags of their pipes in the Three Jolly Bargemen pub as they contemplate each other’s questions. (Well, Pip is not smoking a pipe. Joe, Mr Wopsle and the stranger are.) The stranger is asking Joe about his relation to Pip. Mr Wopsle joins in with a quote from Shakespeare. Joe tells the stranger about their hunt a year ago for a convict in the marshes. The stranger seems amused by this.
I started out with an old dictionary page which I had glued onto a piece of scrap cardboard. Then I added bits of paper, painted acrylic rust-colored ovals and drew on an old pipe with a Sharpie. It still needed “something”, so I painted on grey-blue puffs of smoke and for extra color, the lime-green flowers.
The guitar is coming along. Right now, I am waiting for it to dry a bit more before adding the next part. Hopefully I will get to it tomorrow. HOWEVER… I HAVE to finish my taxes this week!!! So I may have less posts than usual as I tend to this horrible task.
Like this:
Great Expectations Day 59 Wildflower Guitar
Happy Accidents! As my daughter was leaning over my shoulder watching me work on the guitar last night, her hair swooshed over a part that was still very wet with oil paint. It left a beautiful scratchy mark in the paint that can only be done by accident. She thought I’d be upset, but “NO!” I loved it. After making sure I got any oil paint out of her hair, I tried to replicate the look with my own hair. But it didn’t work. So I used a large course bristle brush in some of the wet areas and got a similar result as with the accident “daughter’s-hair” brush. Yeah!
Since the paint was still so very wet, I could not paint the little objects onto the area that I wanted to. Not wanting to wait until the paint was dry, I decided to try scratching (drawing) the objects into the wet paint. (see above photo) Tried a toothpick first, but it was too small of a point. The handle end of a paint brush worked just fine. I drew in images that I thought about when reading Great Expectations. (These were used in a previous sketch I did.)
Now, what I read today, on page 64:
The stranger in the Three Jolly Bargemen orders rum “all around” at his expense (just for himself, Joe and Mr Wopsle). The stranger is described as wearing a large brimmed floppy hat and under it a tied handkerchief covering all of his hair, if he has any at all. That’s it! Not much today. Probably find out who this stranger is tomorrow or Monday. Have a great weekend!
Like this:
My name is Julie and I'm reading Great Expectations one page a day and also creating one little work of art (30 minutes or less) a day relating to what I read. Thanks for looking and reading. Leave a comment to let me know what you think!
Goodreads
