MY PROCESS
polk county history museum

polk county history museum

in an effort to get to know my new surroundings i volunteer at the polk county history museum. there i found, hidden in the back store room a leather bound photo album from the mid 1800s. reminding me of the velvet photo album. i could not help but wonder, who this...

we thought we would live in ireland

we thought we would live in ireland

it's been a year since i have posted and a lot has happened. we sold our house in phoenix, planned on living in ireland, that did not work out, we came back to the states, lived in denver with my daughter for a few months and traveled across the country twice looking...

brushes

brushes

experimenting with different brushes in procreate to create these "fragment paintings". starting with a canvas of 4000 px square, i bring in a photo, add a layer and paint on some color, then close the photo layer. this used the wet acrylic brush.... not sure if i...

strangers

strangers

nothing really new here, just making more drawings of people i don't know from my archive of old photographs. drawn on the ipad with procreate, usually 4000 pixels square.

“on the block”

“on the block”

anthony sylvestry, joey manopella, veto montalto, michael marachia,  ... these were some boys on the block back in the early 1960s.  not sure if i am spelling their names correctly, i hung out with veto (and his sister vita) more that the other boys, they were a...

ghosts of the past

ghosts of the past

when i paint pictures of absolute strangers, i don't know if they are gone or just forgotten.  this, though, is my family. my two aunts and my father. they are all gone but not forgotten. 

lost at coney island

lost at coney island

so the story goes that my brother got lost at coney island and here is the photo showing him looking for us, late 1950s. i am assuming the shot was taken by my dad, because he was the always the camera person. i have no idea who that man is, could he have been a...

my mother was here

my mother was here

my mother lives in NY, but she was transitioning from her apartment to my sister's apartment, so she came out to AZ while all the details were done. that took four and a half months. so to entertain my mom and keep my hand in doing some work myself, i took out some...

family revisited

family revisited

using the same style and method of the original family photo paintings, these are more of the same. i did change my style a little by adding some moody backgrounds and a little freer interpretations of the faces. 

grandpa

grandpa

breaking away from my two layered style with "fragments" i was totally experimenting with this one. i made 4 layers of color and worked over each after removing the original photo.  this is a cherished photo of my grandpa playing with me and my cousin michael, on the...

making bracelets

making bracelets

after making some bracelets and crafty things to sell for my local central phoenix • inez casiano NOW chapter i thought it would be fun to make more bracelets to sell. i had made crocheted earrings before and wanted to use a lot of the beads that i had, and also that...

fragments revisited

fragments revisited

fragments revisited is a continuation of fragments of women in america. i usually just do the parts of the image that is the body without the clothes, but i also like the clothes themselves and in this case “painted” the clothes on separate layers in procreate so that...

words escape me

words escape me

getting back to using acrylic paints i printed some close ups from another set of photos, painted over and covered with matte gel medium. because i could not come up with a name for these, i called the set “words escape me”. small 3 x 3 inch paintings are matted in...

misfits

misfits

again using some vintage 1950s magazine pages, i painted over with watercolor, added tissue paper and some greek decorative elements. these are very tiny in various sizes.

the odyssey continues

the odyssey continues

in the continued story of the odyssey drawings i decided to put them into collage form, printed directly on the ancient greek text of the odyssey by homer. i gave them some names of the characters of the epic poem, but i don’t feel like they are justified in this...

husbands and wives

husbands and wives

well, i have been busy. i took on two new web design jobs, one was something i worked on before for NOW (national organization for women) and one for a great organization called “phoenix jazz girls rising”. Phoenix Jazz Girls Rising is designed to teach young female...

making stuff

making stuff

i got a call from the local NOW (National Organization for Women) chapter that i used to belong to and they asked if i could help create some new product for them to sell at events. so i decided that i would join back in and help again. i am making string bracelets to...

lately

i have been working with the era task force az on some campaigns to promote interest in the equal rights amendment. i designed a post card, flyer, valentine, and more. it is frustrating at times to keep up the fight for equality for all. next year will mark 100 years...

delete

delete

today i decided to delete my blog called “this is what i think”. because who really cares? but i really love the drawings and will probably continue to draw from movies, tv shows and books. i am putting all the drawings here on the website instead, i hope you enjoy them.

telephone museum

telephone museum

since the weather is cooler and my studio is still a disaster area, last saturday we decided to take a ride up north to the pioneer living history museum, which also now houses the telephone museum. it was a lot of fun going through the telephone museum and we took a...

unplanned parenthood

unplanned parenthood

my friend, olga, sent me this link to unplanned parenthood, a project by michelle hartney. she is asking people to re-write, by hand, letters from women that were sent to margaret sanger asking for help about birth control. i wrote out my script here. now, in this time, with the threat to overturn roe v wade i had to participate.

my yiayia

my yiayia

portrait done in procreate with turpentine brush i really love this photo of my grandmother, i think it's her passport photo when she came to the united states in 1969, which would have made her around 62 years old. i'd like to do another portrait with actual paint...

rounder

rounder

i made a few collages using paper and real pages, real magazine cut outs and real paint. but i don't have access to the supplies and i really wanted to experiment with some more of the same style. i downloaded images from life magazine covers, and book pages from...

dresses

dresses

since the studio is still off limits, i am working on the ipad a lot, keeping busy while recuperating. i am not sure if i like this layered dress idea and abstracted faces. i'll have to do some more to see where this goes. i also like this direction, so let's see...

round two

round two

sept. 7, 2021, second surgery to reconstruct my breasts after cancer. this time the results gave me a more round shape, which is good. the doctor said she would do a bit of liposuction to get some fat to fill in some crater area and wrinkles from the mesh. i had no...

while my studio is still closed

while my studio is still closed

so the roof leak is fixed, but we'll need a new roof... getting an estimate is taking a long time, so until then i will not have access to the studio.  instead, i am trying some water color "painting" on the ipad in procreate. i really like the feel of this and will...

odyssey

odyssey

i am done with drawing the images that i want to use in my odyssey series. now it's time to refresh my memory of homer's epic story, and take it to the mid 20th century. i have some work to do. will keep you posted. 

the studio

the studio

my studio is out of commission, everything is covered up with sheets while we are stressing about the leak in the roof. it's been there for a long time i fear. but jake tore down the ceiling so we could see what's up there. now we are waiting for roofing estimates....

old is new again

old is new again

using CMYK and white water based oil paints i wanted to revisit an old format that i did in acrylics. i am not very happy with the background results on this first image as the photo paper does not break down as well with the oils as it did with acrylics. but i like...

abstract portraits

abstract portraits

i painted a small work and had left over paint that i wanted to use up before it dried. so i decided to use some photos to paint over making them mostly abstracted. i took photos of them then brought them into procreate on the ipad and cropped and enhanced them a bit...

better homes…

better homes…

better homes and gardens 1927. my friend gave me a bunch of magazines to use in my collage work. some are from 1927, coincidentally, the year my mom was born. here's what they were pushing on women then: lots of ways to take care you your garden, where to buy roses,...

comic book for a friend

comic book for a friend

a friend wanted to gift her friend with a short 12 page "comic book" of her life and asked me if i could help with it. i was happy to oblige. since it's very personal i am only going to post one image here of the raw drawing. for about half of the book i had photos to...

july/august 2021

july/august 2021

this month i am happy to be showing my art at my friend julia's shop, the bee's knees, located at the hive on 16th street in phoenix. stop in and check out her lovely vintage shop, that includes clothes, household items, jewelry and more. she is open fridays and...

personal

personal

how do you express something that you are going through? i don't have words that mean as much to me as images, so this is a start.

the saga

the saga

homer, the odyssey, odysseus... ulysses. i like to take characters out of reference and give them new costumes. by that i mean, i like to take an old letter and match them up with old photos. they have nothing to do with each other, but i make them my actors. so now i...

words you don’t want to hear

words you don’t want to hear

“you have cancer.” no matter where it is, or how treatable it is, it’s just a scary statement. at the end of 2019 i had my first encounter, a mild one, a ductal carcinoma in situ in my right breast. surgery was required, but no chemo or radiation and i felt lucky. in...

loss

loss

so far my family has been very lucky that no one has gotten severely ill from covid 19. but i do know a good number of people who have lost friends and loved ones to this terrible virus. my friend kristin asked me to do a portrait of her friend who died. this is it.

thank you, debra

thank you, debra

it's great to have an artist friend, debra, who sent me an artist's care package. it was filled with old post cards, and stamps from indonesia, greece and ireland, among other tidbits, like some really tasty chewing gum. today i used the stamps from indonesia to make...

new printer works

new printer works

i bought the HP Tango so that I could print my own images and embellishments that i create on the collages in procreate. it works. this is the work around. i use an 8.5 x 11 sheet of plain printer paper paste my collage materials onto it take a photo of the page bring...

painting only faces

painting only faces

today i decided to try out my new tango printer. i bought it with the hope that i can print on my collages... but today i did a different kind of test.  i photographed old images, printed them on the tango, then painted the faces with acrylic paint. i have done this...

i started a new blog

i started a new blog

it's called this is what i think, i decided to put up comments about books, movies, documentaries i am interested in. part critique, part keeping track of my own self, part fun. i will include a line drawing that i take from a film still. in the case of a book, a...

holidays

holidays

don't ask me what i was thinking this year. i am not sure. with covid and quarantines and masks and no traveling, it just doesn't feel right. so here's a card that isn't right either. i made 61 individual collages. this is a sampling.  to a better year ahead.

international stamps

international stamps

using pages of text in different languages where available, stamps from all over the world and miscellaneous papers i collaged these backgrounds. then photographed them to place in procreate and add flowers and plants and postmarks. again i will send them to moo for...

homeless family

homeless family

derivative of "Caguas, Puerto Rico. Homeless people sleeping in the hallway of an apartment house", from the library of congress, modified in procreate. still working on some kind of art of the depression era/past. i don't really know why. 

titanic

titanic

another collage done completely in procreate. This was an image from the LOC and backgrounds from archive.org. Since they were reading the paper, i thought it would be good to have a big story. i found the titanic front page and then got a map of ireland. 

mississippi 1935

mississippi 1935

while looking through depression era photos at the library of congress online, i came across this image of two poor boys in mississippi. i drew them in layers in procreate. i almost was going to add more color to the background to eliminate some of the white, but then...

torn paper edges

torn paper edges

will i ever need a studio again? today i found brushes for procreate that make torn edges. on sunday jake and i went to the heard museum to see a new exhibit, while there i took some more photos of cacti. i made a new drawing, and instead of taking the drawing to...

how far can i push the ipad

how far can i push the ipad

it is election day and i am trying to keep my mind off all the hoopla so i made some collages. i wanted to use up some stamps and created "bases" on paper. i took photos of them and brought them into the ipad, where i added roller marks, stencils and vintage flowers. ...

first class mail

first class mail

once in a while things really veer off from where i thought i was going. in this series i was going to pretend that my "actors" were part of a mystery plot. but as i began to think about the real story that i am going to base my fiction on, i decided that had to wait....

letter to earl revisited

letter to earl revisited

some years ago i used a letter addressed to earl pontius with a series of paintings. now i decided to use another letter as the backdrop for a different set of painting, electronically. the letter contains this message from mother ida pontius to her son in the...

hooked on murder

hooked on murder

i watch way too many murder mysteries and have just completed poirot and miss marple on britbox. agatha christie was the most prolific writer selling more books than any other author of all time. it is amazing. so i guess i am not alone in my fascination for the...

creating actors

creating actors

relying on my well used edition of USA, i decided to create the main characters that appear throughout the trilogy. dos passos interspersed these fictional characters with his stream of consciousness writing and headlines pulled from the time (1930s). i used mostly...

hallelujah

hallelujah

ripped from the story in USA: the 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos: pages content: two drifters on the move selling pamphlets and racy material to make a dime, traveling through america. U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. […] U.S.A. is the world’s greatest...

more stamps

more stamps

i made a series of children with stamp heads, randomly adding the stamps to the images. afterwards i think about the stamp and the message and what it might say, some surprise me. here i used old pages from a children's reader, cancelled stamps and origami papers. 

cactus for carol

cactus for carol

when carol asked me why i don't draw cacti, i really couldn't say much else than, i'm not really attracted to them as a source of inspiration, or something of that nature. well, since then shari has sent me an inspired cactus drawing and now i must respond to them...

building materials

building materials

using materials that were given to me by a friend, all from her father's building of their house in paradise valley in the 1960s i built the bases of these collages. there were contracts, appliance books, specs, hand written notes, blue prints and invoices. there are...

100 years and still not equal

100 years and still not equal

in 1920 white women got the right to vote. it would take the civil rights movement to give black women this right. one hundred years later, we are still waiting for constitutional equality for all people. the 28th amendment, the equal rights amendment (ERA) was...

lest we forget

lest we forget

tuesday: i worked on these over sunday and monday, using a group of letters to vera d. bruestle in pennsylvania from 1936 to 1945. i included parts of the envelopes and parts of the letters, so that i printed an image on both to see how i wanted to use them. then i...

alice paul, suffragist

alice paul, suffragist

ipad painting on image of alice paul from the library of congress. Alice Stokes Paul was an American suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the main leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,...

rose winslow, suffragist 1916

rose winslow, suffragist 1916

ipad painting on image of rose winslow from the library of congress. Born in Poland, daughter of Polish miner and steel worker in Pennsylvania. She worked in textile mills from the age of eleven to nineteen, until tuberculosis forced her to cease work altogether for...

flopsie revisited

flopsie revisited

friday: so i was feeling like i was doing my collage of flopsie's letter a disservice to use elements that were not of the period and i made four new designs using only period based ephemera. for the text i used a book that was published in 1888, from a story called...

george and flopsie

george and flopsie

thursday: while i was thinking of a new idea to use up some of the ephemeria, i thought about all these letters that i have. i hesitantly took one out of the mix and ripped it up. i am now sad that i did this because it's from a collection of 95 handwritten letters...

søket etter nancy drew

søket etter nancy drew

thursday: søket etter nancy drew, the search for nancy drew. yesterday i found i had an old nancy drew mystery, but in norwegian. i thought of what nancy might have been like as a girl, and dug through my photos to find some old images. i drew these from the photos,...

as it is written

as it is written

monday: i spent most of the day working on these collages. i did a series of 12 drawings on the ipad, based on collected photos. then i pulled pages from an old handwriting analysis course book and printed the images onto the pages. i added wallpaper swatches for...

drawn to food

drawn to food

jacob and i have been doing a food blog, we draw ingredients and finished dishes of foods we make to help us keep track of our recipes and calories. jacob started the drawings, so i continued mine in his style. we have invited kyria, my granddaughter,  to join in, and...

national parks

national parks

wednesday: after talking to my sister-in-law about ken burns new series "the national parks" i knew i had some maps of them. i put these together with some text from an old children's reader that talks about birds and dogs and bears. i added the wildlife conservation...

abbreviated

abbreviated

wednesday: i spent most of the day making collages. i could have stopped earlier, but i was motivated by the fact that i wanted to finish listening to my book on audio, the eighth detective. A thrilling, wildly inventive nesting doll of a mystery, in which a young...

ivanhoe and dagwood

ivanhoe and dagwood

wednesday: an american icon vs a very english one. in our american tale of hero we have dagwood bumstead, disowned by his wealthy family because he fell in love with blondie, a flapper. Protagonist Wilfred of Ivanhoe is disinherited by his father Cedric of Rotherwood...

glass negative

glass negative

sunday: while i was on the library of congress website i also came across this woman, from the collection of c. m. bell, late 1800s. i will need to start a digital portrait collection soon. 

images

images

sunday: today i wanted to represent an asian woman in the fragments collection, but i don't have any in my old photos box. so i went online to library of congress. i also painted this woman.

a strange story

a strange story

friday: how do you make things out of all disparate parts? i have so much paper, old books, magazines and ephemera. it would be nice to use them up. but of course before i do that, i have to look at images on the internet (really i am making an excuse to waste some...

bullish

bullish

monday: what does a bunch of bulls and a few cocks represent? my goal was to depict greed, corporate power, a liar for a president and the downfall of democracy. i used these vintage images and printed them on a deed that was given to me by mary leto. there were about...

magda part two

magda part two

friday: this is the second series that i have done using documents that were given to me about a woman named magdolna ven, who was born in hungary. this time i wanted to repeat the use of roses, but instead of adding maps as previously, i used european paintings from...

fragments

fragments

thursday: using vintage photos i started to paint the image of a women and worked only on her skin and hair. i used procreate on the ipad and the gouache brush. i had experimented before with layering two separate drawings onto one to enhance and give depth to the...

put up your dukes

put up your dukes

wednesday: we keep hearing about russian interference in the media. i wonder why can't something be done about this? if we knew this was happening in the last election, why is it still an issue? here's my response. old russian language book, a couple of old stamps...

selling perfection

selling perfection

monday: using an ad from the stanley brush company of the 1930s we can see what was being sold to women and how they were made to feel they needed all these products. i used blue card stock as the background and mod podge glue for these. i need more glue sticks. 

mind handlers

mind handlers

monday: i worked on this series last week, starting with found magazine article on mental illness in the 1950s. it made me think how women were portrayed in that era and how behind the scenes, at home, in treatment and in hospitals there was so much abuse. If a woman...

experimenting with brushes

experimenting with brushes

using procreate on the ipad i am trying different brushes to see which ones i like, also trying to see how different layers look on each other. here's my work for today. first animated gif from procreate. very easy to use. 

yiayia and grandma

yiayia and grandma

thursday: i used the same portrait that i did the cross stitch over to make this ipad painting of my yiayia. i can see some of my cousins' features in this face. but not mine. maybe i should start a family portrait section. the ipad is fun. 1  hour later... i couldn't...

karlsplatz couple

karlsplatz couple

my granddaughter gave me some photos for my birthday last year, most of which came from germany. this was a photo of a couple, it looks like they are in love and out for a day at the park. there are three photos with the woman in them. i will make this a series. my...

mabel

mabel

tuesday: working with the ipad to get to know the brushes. i used this photo, one that i have used a few times before, to try out the turpentine brush. i am very happy with the results. i used four layers. one for the photo, one for all the background and for "mabel"...

eastern block

eastern block

saturday: collected photos that i think are from somewhere in eastern europe since the text on the back is in roman alphabet and not cyrillic. it was all scotch taped up like this when i got it. there is a stamp on it, but i don’t want to remove the tape which is now...

comb

comb

i just read about the artist sonya clark's combs in the NY times. they are so very pretty. i wanted to make one. here it is. 

children in the summerland

children in the summerland

wednesday: yesterday i spent the afternoon cutting up this old book from new zealand published in 1932 called children in the summerland. it's by a psychic who believes that you don't have to worry about your dead children's clothes in summerland because they will be...

plymouth lies

plymouth lies

friday: thumbing though old history text books, this one from 1958, you find a lot of lies. stories told from the patriarchal, racist and misogynistic point of view. i used a story of the first thanksgiving, that in itself a myth, using painting of ships from england,...

what give you the right?

what give you the right?

thursday: so thinking of periods, i have always been weirdly drawn to medical illustrations. i found these gynecological ones on archive.org and printed them over layers of old italian lesson books, italianite design and maps of rome. i wanted to express the control...

unclean

unclean

wednesday: looking for collage elements, i came across these period chairs, which made me think of menstruation. then i was wondering what goes with that? i have this old book from norway about catholic churches. i was telling my daughter about my thought process and...

little children

little children

friday: last night i collected a few pages from an old child's primer from 1938. i looked at them over and over for ideas to come to me about how i could make them tell some kind of story. it came to me today to take away their eyes and mouths. i collaged them with...

anatomy of a letter: from denver to wolf creek

anatomy of a letter: from denver to wolf creek

thursday: corona virus still keeping us isolated. rummaging through my resources i came across some envelopes from 1938: a correspondence to Mr. Harry Jepson in Wolf Creek Montana, from CT Peterson c/o Alexander Pearson in Chicago Illinois, and an unknown person from...

channeling JR

channeling JR

when we redid the laundry room there was a weird area over the sink where the paint did not stick. it bubbled up and peeled off. today jake and i created some heads from an old photo that i had collected and we pasted it up in the spot. now i love it.

stamps

stamps

i found this artist's work today and i love it, molly rausch. she extends the boundaries of stamps to create more of the world they are found in. i wanted to try my hand at it: using watercolors i only extended one small side. i will try more later.

inspector lestrade…

I am experimenting with an app that can make photos talk called my talking pet. i put a painting into the app and then played the dialogue from a sherlock holmes movie from the 1950s. it features inspector lestrade and the husband of the murderer. i recorded each line...

a dos negros

a dos negros

tuesday: i have a room full of paper, ephemera, photographs and i need to keep working with them. so today i took a book off the shelf called A Dos Negros and decided to use the pages, both text and images, for a new series of collages. it's all in portuguese, and so...

stamp people

stamp people

monday: randomly selected photographs with applied stamps.  funny thing, the image with queen elizabeth and a group of other people, well, believe it or not, i did not look at the captions before placing this stamp on her head, and it turns out her name is "ellie"....

loosen up

loosen up

sunday: spent the time painting and listening/watching pbs "and she could be next" about women of color and ethnic backgrounds running for office.  trying to become looser and more abstract with my brush. 

what they want

what they want

wednesday: i used my water base oils for this set, using only cyan, yellow, magenta, black and white, and also wanted to loosen up on my brush as i got to the last two, i think i succeeded with him.

look alikes

look alikes

tuesday: today i wanted to just directly paint on my old photographs. why am i saving them? i sorted a  large lot of them into a group of professional photos. as i was coloring them i thought they looked either like people i know or people from tv. this one reminded...

comfort in your age

comfort in your age

saturday: i spent a day sorting my old photos and as i observed them i realized how the older women seemed so comfortable in their age. i really admire that and so i think i will render some portraits of these women. here is the first. 

dear book fairy

dear book fairy

dear book fairy, i don't know who you are. i wish i did because i want to thank you for being so nice to drop off this book at my front table. i was in the backyard with a friend who is helping us with electrician stuff.  it looks like it will be a great read. and...

MY PROCESS
polk county history museum

polk county history museum

in an effort to get to know my new surroundings i volunteer at the polk county history museum. there i found, hidden in the back store room a leather bound photo album from the mid 1800s. reminding me of the velvet photo album. i could not help but wonder, who this...

we thought we would live in ireland

we thought we would live in ireland

it's been a year since i have posted and a lot has happened. we sold our house in phoenix, planned on living in ireland, that did not work out, we came back to the states, lived in denver with my daughter for a few months and traveled across the country twice looking...

brushes

brushes

experimenting with different brushes in procreate to create these "fragment paintings". starting with a canvas of 4000 px square, i bring in a photo, add a layer and paint on some color, then close the photo layer. this used the wet acrylic brush.... not sure if i...

“on the block”

“on the block”

anthony sylvestry, joey manopella, veto montalto, michael marachia,  ... these were some boys on the block back in the early 1960s.  not sure if i am spelling their names correctly, i hung out with veto (and his sister vita) more that the other boys, they were a...

ghosts of the past

ghosts of the past

when i paint pictures of absolute strangers, i don't know if they are gone or just forgotten.  this, though, is my family. my two aunts and my father. they are all gone but not forgotten. 

lost at coney island

lost at coney island

so the story goes that my brother got lost at coney island and here is the photo showing him looking for us, late 1950s. i am assuming the shot was taken by my dad, because he was the always the camera person. i have no idea who that man is, could he have been a...

my mother was here

my mother was here

my mother lives in NY, but she was transitioning from her apartment to my sister's apartment, so she came out to AZ while all the details were done. that took four and a half months. so to entertain my mom and keep my hand in doing some work myself, i took out some...

grandpa

grandpa

breaking away from my two layered style with "fragments" i was totally experimenting with this one. i made 4 layers of color and worked over each after removing the original photo.  this is a cherished photo of my grandpa playing with me and my cousin michael, on the...

fragments revisited

fragments revisited

fragments revisited is a continuation of fragments of women in america. i usually just do the parts of the image that is the body without the clothes, but i also like the clothes themselves and in this case “painted” the clothes on separate layers in procreate so that...

words escape me

words escape me

getting back to using acrylic paints i printed some close ups from another set of photos, painted over and covered with matte gel medium. because i could not come up with a name for these, i called the set “words escape me”. small 3 x 3 inch paintings are matted in...

misfits

misfits

again using some vintage 1950s magazine pages, i painted over with watercolor, added tissue paper and some greek decorative elements. these are very tiny in various sizes.

the odyssey continues

the odyssey continues

in the continued story of the odyssey drawings i decided to put them into collage form, printed directly on the ancient greek text of the odyssey by homer. i gave them some names of the characters of the epic poem, but i don’t feel like they are justified in this...