A New Painting for My Website Header

Well, I decided it's time to update my watercolor Website, J.B.Chicoine.com, to accommodate my upcoming novel. Uncharted won't be released until October, but it will probably take me that long to relearn my Web design software. In addition to that novel, I have others I plan to publish, so I may as well take advantage of having a Website with my name and combine my "artistic" endeavors.  Anyway, I'm going to incorporate the header I made for my writing blog (which I painted here a while back). 

I'll use the above painting for the Author half the page header... and start a new one for the Watercolorist half--something along the lines of the watercoloring arrangement to the right. But I like the oak and post setting of the Reading and Writing scene. So, below is the drawing I've come up with. I took a photo of a new arrangement, flipped it horizontally with my graphics program and messed with the perspective a little. I'll keep the background light and abut the two paintings, end-to-end; the dark contrasting with the light.

That's the plan, anyway. 

New Header Design for My Writing Blog

Okay, so I thought it would take me a few days, but I went ahead and got busy on it…
This is what I’ve come up with as the new header for my writing blog.

Now to apply it and change the background and fonts and colors too (to the blog itself—not the header)—could take another day…maybe not that long….

...and of course, I couldn't resist putting my Story for a Shipwright for the book title...

Next Project!

Okay, I’m posting this just so you all won’t think I’m plummeting into the depths of despair over my last project. I’m actually taking the mishap a whole lot better than I would have expected, which is wonderful progress at keeping perfectionism from defeating me. But mostly, I just want to say that I found a new project.

You may have noticed on my writing blog that I’ve somehow managed to secure a place in the Notes From Underground anthology, over at The Literary Lab. If I don’t use up all my 10 pages with words, I can include a bit of artwork. It would have to be black and white, but a watercolor painting will be easy enough to convert to an 8-bit gray scale. Actually, black and white will work well, since I want it to resemble a black and white photo—which means I will be shooting for ultra-realism. Why not use a black and white photo, you ask? Well, first, I don’t have one I can put my name to, and I have found the perfect photo to work from. Yes, it’s sort of a backward way to go about it, and well…I have no defense there…except I think it's supposed to be my work in the anthology.

I will post the photo and credits once I have progressed a bit…

...it also occurs to me that since this will eventually be converted to B&W, it should teach me something about the reverse process, which I would really like to master...

A Pen & Ink

This is a pen & ink I just completed—actually, it’s a redo of one I did back in the early 1980’s from a photo in an old Vermont Life magazine. My older brother liked it so much that he persuaded me to give it up for $50. That was the first—and only—original artwork I’ve ever sold, reinforcing the notion that I had some talent, and helping to sustain that idea through years of inactivity. Every time I’ve seen it hanging on his wall, when visiting his home in Vermont, I’ve been reminded how much I love the image. I finally decided to do another one for myself. I think it would be interesting to someday compare the two…
For me, it’s such an evocative image that I just couldn’t help write a little something for it…

My Consolation

Shriveled peas roll from my plate, into the pail where several crusts from morning toast await. Three escape into the sink and I chase them around the basin like piglets in a pen. I have trouble locating them as a shard of light pierces the tattered curtain, yet I can feel them, cornered. My fingers are still nimble enough to pinch and so they join the others.

On my way out, I pass her chair, pushed snug against the table. I stroke its back the way I used to caress the handrail as I stepped onto the porch of her parents’ house, my stomach twisting and turning with new love. Her barn coat still hangs from the old iron hook like dainties slung over the shower rod. Although the sight of it burns my eyes each time I come in or go out, I would die but for the yearning.

Then, the screen door slams behind me, echoing off every corner of the barnyard. On cue, they call to me like eager hatchlings waiting for their share.

Preoccupation

Okay, so I’m sitting here at a little café, with my spinach salad and a chilled stout, when this woman at the checkered-cloth table beside me pulls out a sketch pad. Well, maybe she’s just going to look over some stuff she’s already drawn, but no—she rifles through her bag and proceeds to unfold and assemble, right in front of her, a tiny field set of Windsor Newton watercolors—and not one of those plasticy new sets (like mine), but one of the old, out-of-production leather encased arrangements, with well-used pigments.

Oh, yeah, she’s serious—so serious about it that she’s oblivious to my eyes boring through the side of her head, down her neck and bare arm. The brush seems to slide between her fingers as if she held the wing of a butterfly, not cramped and controlled, like some unwieldy timber, not the way I grip mine.

She hasn’t glanced beyond her table and paints-at-hand since she sat. I want her to look at me, so that I can acknowledge what she’s doing, but at the same time, I don’t want her to see—to detect my envy. Now, she’s sipping her water glass down to half-full. She wets her brush between her pursed lips, drawing those fine sable hairs to a point. I wait, watching, knowing what comes next. She stares ahead for a moment, then plunges her brush into her sweating glass. That’s right, she means business.

All at once, I’m overcome with self-consciousness for her. I look around at the peripheral tables, at the others patrons whose eyes dart from their lunch to her and back to their main concern. She appears unaware of any of us as she dabs her brush, loading it with cadmium red and then dispersing it—with four loose strokes, flower petals spring to life from the vase onto her paper…

My Last Big Completed Project—More Than Just Painting

When I thought I had finished my first novel, Girl Running, I couldn't wait to see it in print. I worked on some cover art, and went all out with my graphics software, and at the same time came across http://nomediakings.org/doityourself/doityourself_book_press.html. That was all the inspiration I needed. (Hamish MacDonald also has a nifty website, http://www.hamishmacdonald.com/)
Here are some snippets of the art that went into the project…
I know, it looks like she's wearing a bra—I actually thought white was compositionally appropriate, but polkadots or stripes might have been a better choice.
I got out some of my art supplies, and painted them. Then did the same with an old photo of a piano keyboard that I warped in my graphics software, and came up with these two elements...

You may be wondering, 'Why paint brushes and a keyboard?" My protagonist, Leila, is impossibly talented— that's why.

Next, some interior accents—Chapter Headers and the fist letter of each chapter, sort of like illumination, but not so elaborate.

...and some of those little 'thingies' placed between sections of a book...

I put all that together, printed my signatures, sewed them together, and trimmed them (Okay, my husband did the trimming—he won't let me use sharp implements for reasons that don't require much imagination). Then I put them in the cover, and this is what I came up with...

Notice the neat little jacket sewn into the back, for the soundtrack—and yes, I know I can't distribute it without copyright permissions...

Whether or not I find a publisher for Story for a Shipwright, I plan to do the same with it, but this time I hope the manuscript will be all polished and complete before I bind it…

Writing Instead of Painting

Over the past 2 years I've worked on 3 novels. My first 2 were, shall I say, verbose—the first at 150,000 words. I pitched it as Women’s Fiction only to learn it was Young Adult—150,000 words? No takers. So what. The sequel was only 123,000.

Story for a Shipwright is a modest 89,000 words of Commercial Fiction. I’m hoping to send out queries over the summer, and then move back toward painting, which used to be my primary creative outlet. These days, I find more satisfaction in writing. Maybe if I get the stories out of my head and onto paper, then I'll be able to go back to the drawing table, pick of one of my fine-point sable brushes, and it will behave for me. For now, perhaps I'll post a few of my watercolor works in progress—maybe that will motivate me...it's worth a try... Besides, I've learned that writers need to take a long break from a story before the final edit—as if I could stay away from it that long.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to break the record for the most posted query revisions on The Public Query Slushpile—I’m not really, but I seriously think my borderline OCD has just gone full-blown! How embarrassing, once you hit the ‘POST’ button and can’t take it back…