After the past month of making art every day I was inspired to paint painting scenes from Carpenter Flats on the Ausable River.
I saw people fishing early one morning and the mist was intriguing seeing it from the iron bridge. It provides a great view is the rock flats. Different ends of the bridge provide unique backgrounds.
The driftwood frames really make the rustic feel for the paintings.
I saw a guy fly fishing in the Ausable river near carpenter flats when it was misty. Having fished there many times I wanted to capture that feeling.
I made a driftwood frame to accent the finished painting and It helps to capture the mood.
I feel a series common on, and I will get to do more fishing while scouting locations. I haven’t painted fast flowing rivers much yet, so I see many challenges ahead.
Once again whimsy strikes when least expected.
First piece – I found a small pine knot hole in the bottom of my driftwood bin. When i picked it up i could see my palm highlighted thought the hole. A scrap of Arches watercolor board a couple of minutes painting 4 geese with my finest brush and the result is a odd little piece that brings a smile to my face.
The second piece came from an off-cut of watercolor board from one of my driftwood paintings. I picked it up and it looked just like mount Mansfield in the Green mountains of Vermont that I see every day across the lake. Once I saw it, I couldn’t let it go to waste so I painted it, grabbed a scrap of black walnut wood that I cut out for my rock crystal lamps, shaped and finished it to serve as a stand and now I have another odd piece in my stash.
Undecided if I will to post these in the gallery.
On to part 2 of my week of driftwood frenzy – Lamps. I was able to spend some time on the beach collections more driftwood for my drying bin. It takes weeks to prepare driftwood for working into art.
These lamps are special, they were claimed by my wife even as i was making them, and are now in our bedroom on the night stands. With these lamps the I didn’t use normal beach stones, instead I used some of my stash of rock crystal to make the pieces special. The base is a slab of rock crystal on black walnut. The top of the lamp body glows with a large rock crystal ball.
These lamps are the only ones like it I can build, I have no more rock crystal bases. I don’t have a current resource for more.
Still sheltering in place … and not upset about it.
My most recent endeavor is making lamps. I have a barrel of odd looking driftwood and a couple of pails of nice stones from the beach and decided to combine them. I have a large stump and root-ball on the beach with rocks caught up in the wood. I have used stones from the beach for some of my sculptures, so coming up with a way to add them to the driftwood lamp was a natural fit. So now I have a lamp with stacked stones, it’s kind of like and stuff happens and then Lamps. This is the first in a whole series of lamp, more in future blogs.
Spoiler alert, the natural edge slab-table you see will be the subject of my next post.
In the future, I plan to offer some instructional information about how I make these lamps along with materials and tools I used.