Art Expectations Day 148
Mr Pocket received a good education, but after marrying Mrs Pocket, he took a position as a tutor. (No title still!) As this did not pay well, he gave it up and tried several different careers before settling on doing literary compilation and correction. (writing and editing?)
Pip walks the widow next door, Mrs Coiler, to dinner that first night and gets an earful of gossip about the Pockets. She feels Mrs Pocket deserves her title. Pip also learns that Drummle, one of the tenants of the Pockets, is heir to a baronetcy. AND that the book Mrs Pocket was reading in the garden was all about titles. They are all obsessed with titles!
In the 1800s, the order of precedence for titles was as follows:
Duke (Most Noble)
Marquess/Marquis (Most Honorable)
Earl (Right Honorable)
Viscount (Right Honorable also)
Baron (ditto)
Baronet (Sir)
I had fun with this mixed media collage about titles in the 1800s!
Art Expectations Day 146
Mrs Pocket asks Pip if he likes the taste of orange-flower water, a question completely out of the blue. Pip finds out that she was brought up without learning any skills of any kind, especially those pertaining to the common people. Being raised solely for the purpose of marrying a “title” (her father being a knight), she has no domestive knowledge. She’s completely useless!
I looked up orange-flower water and found that it is also known as orange-blossum water and is a clear distillation of bitter-orange blossums. It’s becoming more popular these days actually, which I find very interesting, since Dickens wrote this book so long ago! It is today being used to flavor foods such as Spanish King Cake, European madeleines, Mexican wedding cakes and Pan de Muerto and in the U.S. in scones and marshmallows. Yum, I’m getting hungry!
Enjoy my little orange-blossum painting and hope you have a great day!
Art Expectations Day 123
Miss Havisham is “taking exercise” walking around the moldy bride-cake on the long table. The room is as dark and dismal as before. Nothing has changed.
Pip tells her of his good fortune and that he is leaving for London tomorrow. He wishes to say good-bye to her. In a way, he’s just trying to thank her for the fortune, assuming she’s the one who gave it to him. She makes no acknowledgement that she is the benefactor. But she seems to know a lot about the the details of Pip’s fortune and future. Mainly that Pip has to always keep his name “Pip”.
He kneels, kisses her hand and has a vision of her as his fairy godmother. (More like evil stepmom!)
I did a collage with two kinds of wings, fairy wings and bird wings. Pip will be leaving soon for London, flying away from all he’s known!
Art Expectations
I have been neglecting my Pip lately! Sorry Mr Pip. But I have been very busy creating other things, so I thought I’d share those with you. Something overcomes me at this time of year. It’s not only the craziness of shopping for Christmas gifts, trying to find the perfect gift for everyone. But I start wanting to make and bake… a LOT. I love the smell of baking cookies mingled with the slightly burnt waxy smell of a hot glue gun heating up. So exciting! The possibilbities.
I finished up three large paintings this week, non-Great Expectations related. (Maybe I just needed a break from Pip.)
Here they are: (Well, here are two of them. For some reason my SD card reader is not cooperating at the moment for me to get the third pic off.)
Art Expectations Day 104
Hiding from the LAW
Mr Wopsle tells the stranger in The Three Jolly Bargemen that he thinks the suspect in the murder case (that he’d just read out loud from the newspaper) is “Guilty.” The stranger argues with him, making the poor flustered Mr Wopsle look like a fool.
“Innocent until proven guilty,” says the stranger. They are all too eager, sitting in their comfy, cozy warm bar, to assume that any suspect HAS to be guilty.
I’ve created a collage – no paint today! I wanted the word LAW to be kind of kidden and not easily recognizable at first.
I hope everyone has a safe and Happy Thanksgiving, here in the States. I will try to do at least one other post before Thursday, but it’s a busy week for me, so we’ll see!
Art Expectations Day 93
Nothing seems to be stolen from Pip’s home after the attack on Mrs Joe. The only thing unusual found was a convict’s leg-iron that seems to have been cut-off a while back (not recent). Pip believes his convict (the one he aided at the beginning of the story) is not responsible for this crime. In his opinion the attacker was either Orlick or the strange man at the Three Jolly Bargemen who showed him the file. Most likely not Orlick, as he was seen about town that evening on his half-holiday. Pip feels horrible as he ponders the fact that he may have helped provide the weapon used on his sister!
I created a collage using two of my favorite colors: yellow ochre and blue-gray. I glued on a bit of a photo of Poe’s grave site (just because I love this picture and it was handy when I reached out for something to use). Then I did a print of a tombstone I carved out of styrofoam, drew around that and added more yellow ochre acrylic paint. Still not sure if Mrs Joe is alive or dead!
Art Expectations Day 90!
Pip has Tea in Town
I’m back! Took a little vacation from my blog to do my Altered Book Workshop. (Not really a vacation, as such, but it was fun. I’ll post pictures soon!)
Pip leaves Miss Havisham’s feeling down as ever about his poor home life. While wandering about town, he runs into Mr Wopsle who invites him to tea with Pumblechook. During tea, the two men discuss a popular book at the time about a man who gets into lots of trouble and then is hanged (or is it hung?). Throughout the story, the two men glare at and refer to Pip as if HE is the bad man! I am sure they are just trying to warn him. But Pip is uncomfortable.
I did a pretty little painting/collage of a tea cup using a bit of old text for the “tea”. Next I painted on a noose and some swirls in PhotoShop as the cream in the tea.
I’ll be back soon! I am so ready for Fall, cooler weather, pumpkins, Halloween and caramel apples. And of course, THE STATE FAIR OF TEXAS and corn dogs!
Art Expectations Day 85
Pip flies away
I really had fun creating this altered book piece! I worked on it for about 5 days, a little every day. I trimmed out the pages to be the profile of a bird’s body. LOTS of cutting, and had to replace the knife blade once. I then did some drawing, painting and collage on the inside covers. Coated it all with matte gel medium. And… ta da… done!
Pip is still considering a visit to Miss Havisham’s. (He hasn’t seen her OR Estella in a year.) Joe seems to be talking him out of it. Or at least making sure Pip understands that she may think he is expecting something more from her. Joe suggests that Pip take a thank you gift, something that he himself has learned to make in his first year of training as a blacksmith. Joe suggests some horse shoes, a toasting-fork, screws or perhaps a gridiron. Pip does NOT want to make or take her a gift at all! He is like a little bird wanting to fly away.
Have you tried altering a book? If so, send me link to see what you’ve done!
Art Expectations 82
Pip now sees his former life as coarse and common. (Partly because Estella called him this.) He no longer sees the forge “as the glowing road to manhood and independence.” But sees it as weighing him down and holding him back from the finer things in life, of which he got a taste of at Miss Havisham’s. He never mentions this to Joe, but continues on with his blacksmithing apprenticeship. A heavy, blank curtain has dropped upon his life as he looks toward his future as a blacksmith. This is a dark time for Pip. So bleak!
I took a piece of unwanted junk mail, gessoed it and then drew and collaged on top. I really like the Dr. Suess quote at the top. I won a contest on Carla Sonheim’s blog
http://carlasonheim.wordpress.com/
for a $25 gift certificate to Joggles
http://www.joggles.com/
. With it I purchased some Derwent Inktense colored pencils. They are really great! I just recently started using my watercolor pencils, even though I have had a nice set of Derwent ones for more than 20 years. These Inktense ones are… well, more intense, of course. It’s so much fun to play around with new tools!
Art Expectations Day 79
Almost Day 80!!!
Here is a 5×5 canvas piece I have been working on, on-and-off all week. I started out painting random blobs of acrylic paint all over, letting dry, then painting more layers on top. (Had to get rid of that blank white canvas just staring at and taunting me!) I then chose 3 pieces of paper art to glue on with matte Gel Medium. I chose the bird because I bet Pip sometimes wished he was a bird to fly away from all the crazy, demanding people in his life, to be set free.
The funny little old man is from a deck of antique Old Maid cards. The character reminds me of Mr Pumblechook. The third piece of paper is a strip from an old Sears catalog, just added for some extra texture. I painted more layers on top, scratching into some areas while still wet.
On page 88, Joe is teasing Mrs Joe with the amount of money that Miss Havisham gave to them for all Pip’s hard work (play?) at her house. I am pretty sure Pip will see none of this money!
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!
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