Watercolor House Portrait

I love my dentist for several reasons.  He has taken great care of my teeth.  And he has been a big supporter of my art.  So when he contacted me recently about commissioning a watercolor house portrait for his son I immediately said yes. 

I usually like to take my own photos of a house I am going to draw.  But my dentist's son lives in another state.  His son sent me lots of images of the house and I was able to use google maps to get additional photos.  Sometimes google has old images of the house in different seasons which can be helpful.  Below you can see the black and white drawing.

For this particular portrait I shaved down the crepe myrtle just a smidge so we could see the house better.  I also drew the crepe myrtle just as it was starting to bloom even though my reference photos were either in full bloom or pre-bloom.  I almost always "tidy up" the landscaping to my liking, while keeping the bones of what is truly there.

Below is a 60 second video of me painting the house portrait.  Turn on your volume (Music by Lexin Music from Pixabay)!

 It never ceases to amaze me that as I study and draw a house and its landscaping, the character of both slowly emerges.  There is an interplay between the house and the plants that surround it.  And as I painted them I felt the straight lines and orderliness of the house was perfectly accented by the organic shapes of trees and shrubs.  Somehow the connection between the two felt joyful to me.

"The house posed in her finest spring dress of shrubs, crepe myrtle, and Japanese maple...

the smell of fresh grass and pine came to mind."  

Tomorrow my dentist is coming to pick up the portrait and will bring it to his son in an upcoming visit.  I hope they are both pleased with the  results of my efforts.  It is always a pleasure to become familiar with a house by drawing its every detail and to intimately know a bit more of this beautiful world. 

Sucker Perception

Yesterday I went to the gym and while I walked, I listened to a conversation on “Magic as Radical Embedding in our Web of Relations” between David Abram and Sophie Strand.  They were talking about a kind of magic that is completely natural and yet perhaps on a deeper level than we are normally conscious of.  They proposed that we can shift our perspective and become aware that this earthly world is constantly presenting us with opportunities to see and interact with it…  that magic can be found through inter-species collaboration and by becoming radically embedded in the ecosystems of life.

I continued listening in the car on the way home from the gym.  As I pulled into the driveway, Sophie was mentioning that even the act of walking on the body of the earth can activate unseen worlds of mycelial fungi and that our presence has the capability of being medicine to the world.  They both then told stories of their own experiences of magical encounters with the animal kingdom.

The podcast ended as I sat in the driveway and it inspired me.  When I stepped out of the car, I had the urge to walk on the earth and to visit the little Buddha statue that’s tucked in the garden.  As I approached it, I noticed something incredible.  A vine of ivy crossed the Buddha’s chest.  And coming off the vine were tiny tendrils that reached out to connect to the Buddha’s heart.  They appeared like miniature stethoscopes listening to his chest.  I paused and smiled.

Some might say, “It’s just a sucker from the ivy…no big deal.”  Some might also say, “You’re a sucker if you think that means anything.”  But I view it quite differently.  I say “I am a sucker for finding magic and joy in this world.”  Choosing this perception is a small, subtle act.  But I believe recognizing these small synchronicities in our lives is a profound way of connecting to life…a way of touching and listening to the very heart of the world.

"If we could say that perception is like the medium of the magician, much like pigments are the medium for a painter, or musical tones for a composer. But a magician is working with this very malleable texture of sensory experience itself and shifting the senses, opening, altering the feel of one's encounter with the sensuous, altering the senses.

To what end? We could ask, and well, to the end of being able to shift out of your purely human style of experience, to feel something of this other style, that of the squirrel, or of the spider as she's spinning the cosmos out of her abdomen, and maybe being able to enter into some kind of communion or communication, with that spider or with that ponderosa pine tree, or with the whole Aspen grove."

—David Abram