Grandad's Nibs

Grandad's nibsToday I sorted out my grandad's nibs and started using them for the cartooney drawings I recently got back into. Here's what I found:

Gillott's 170, 290, 303, 404

Hunt Extra Fine 22, 512, 513 Hunt Imperial 101

M. Myers & Son 6

Geo. W. Hughes 776F

Signature 6

Ross F. George (Hunt) "Speedball" A-2, B-0, B-1

Pedigree Round 3

Heintze 1, 3, 4

3 Unidentified

Sometimes when I'm drawing 'cartooney' I feel like I'm channeling the lines, as if they are coming through me and flowing ohsoperfectly...love that feeling! So, now that I've got out my grandad's nibs we'll see what happens...i did a coupla drawings of faces earlier today and am testing out papers with pen and ink but didn't like much of what I did due to the paper, although the bristol board wasn't too bad unless I want to apply more than just a light touch of gouache. To check out my newest cartoon work please click here.

Jim Simpkins

Me & Grandad

Becoming Animal

I'm sharing the words of writer, David Abram from his book "Becoming Animal An Earthly Cosmology" not only for your sake, but also for mine, so I will not forget them as they are a way of thinking and realizing our place in the world. Each day as I draw from life, outside surrounded by nature, birds, wild things and hot skies, and then later on when I paint abstractly, at home with ambiguity and passion's many flavours, I struggle to find a way to be in a world quite un-accepting of the artist's way. So it's writers like Abram who guide and encourage me with their ponderings.

The computerized mind when left to its own devices, all too easily overlooks the solid things of the earth. Skilled in the rapid manipulation of symbols, it neglects the stones and the grasses that symbolize nothing other than themselves. Dazzled by its own virtual creations, the digital self forgets its dependence upon a world that it did not create, overlooking its carnal emplacement in the very world that created it.

Bodily perception provides our most intimate entry into a primary order of reality that can be disparaged or dismissed only at our peril.

An addled and anesthetized numbness is spreading rapidly throughout our species.

There are those, however, who are not frightened of grief; dropping deep into the sorrow, they find therein a necessary elixir to the numbness. When they encounter one another, when they press their foreheads against the bark of a centuries-old tree, or their palms into the hand of yet another child who has tasted prematurely of wrenching loss, their eyes well with tears that fall easily to the ground. The soil needs this water. Grief is but a gate, and our tears a kind of key opening a place of wonder that's been locked away. Suddenly we notice the sustaining resonance between the drumming heart within our chest and the pulse rising from under the ground.

David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

Enter Goddess No. 1 or How to dream a new reality

Kathy Crabbe, Goddess No. 1, 2012, acrylic, charcoal & pastel on canvas, 48 x 48” I can feel a new series of paintings coming on and as usual, the idea came to me at a low point when I needed it the most. After a very dark conversation with a good friend I penned an equally dark blog post, then after 24 hours I realized that it didn't even sound like me so I nixed it and began to go deeper.

As I sat and stared at my current painting in progress I asked for a vision and then I meditated. Next, I found myself in a swirling, milky green crystal where I encountered a fire spirit and so I dallied a while and when I came to I had the idea for a new series to be called: The Lost Goddess Series and of course my last painting (see below) just had to Goddess No. 1

Connecting with the fire spirit reminded me of all the work I've done in the psychic realms and as a Creative Soul Guide and teacher of the eClass, Awaken Your Divine Feminine Soul and it made me wonder why I had not brought these 2 realms together in my new work. And when I asked that question, POOF everything fell into place and it made sense why this last painting had a female face within it.

I am hoping to commune further with this Goddess to see if she will tell me her name and what kind of magical qualities she has, so stay tuned!

My Facebook friends suggested these names for her: Egyptian Pagan Alien Samurai TimePiece Silent Dancer Horns of the Moon Torn Coatlicue Gently Rising Inner Currents Trip to the dentist

*This painting is available for purchase, please email Kathy Crabbe for more info*

Notes from The Seth Material

Subjectively speaking, you are everywhere surrounded by your own greater reality, but you do not look in the right places. You have been taught not to trust your feelings, your dreams, or your imagination precisely because these do not fit the accepted reality of facts.

They are the creator of facts, however. In no way do I mean to demean the intellect. It is here, however, that the tyranny of the fact world holds greatest sway. The intellect has been denied its wings. Its field of activity has been limited because you have given it only facts to go on.

Each event of your life is contained within each other event. In the same way, each lifetime is contained in each other lifetime. The feeling of reality is "truer" then in the dream state. You can become consciously aware of your own dreaming. You can also allow your "dream self" greater expression in the waking state. This can be done through techniques that are largely connected with creativity.

Creativity connects waking and dreaming reality, and is in itself a threshold in which the waking and dreaming selves merge to form constructs that belong equally to each reality. You cannot begin to understand how you form the physcial events of your lives unless you understand the connection between creativity, dreams, play, and those events that form your waking hours. In one respect dreams are a kind of structured unconsious play. Your mind dreams in joyful pleasure at using itself, freed from the concerns of practical living. Dreams are the minds' free play. The spontaneous activity, however, is at the same time training in the art of forming practical events.

From The Nature of The Psyche, A Seth Book by Jane Roberts

 

A life in art: drawing and painting from life & inner need

Kathryn V. Crabbe, My My My Precious Love, 2012, acrylic, charcoal and pastel on canvas, 48 x 48”."

To create is only to reveal what essentially is. It is the vivid recollection of the as-yet-unknown in the known. ~ Dane Rudhyar, An Astrological Mandala

Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things. ~ Georgia O'Keefe, The Poetry of Things

Unlike Georgia O'Keefe, my own still life drawings are filled with detail. Life is in the details. Details can be infinitely small, often go unnoticed and are over-looked, which is something I care about in relation to objects and to people.

My current series of nature drawings were created with the hard line of pencils, pastels and occasionally with watercolors (when I'm around water). I often choose subjects so filled with minute detail that they become a thing of abstraction. Details are confusing, which is my intention. I appreciate and value the ambiguity, metaphor and poetry that accompanies abstraction. My large paintings are also abstract, but without a lot of detail which acts as a sort of counter balance to the hyper realism of my nature drawings.

Elimination and editing is key, as it is in life. By releasing detail from my paintings I can focus on the essentials which are often spiritual and symbolic. There are hard choices to be made and discipline to be followed (not a popular concept I realize) in the building of a structure and a firm foundation for a life in art.

Kathy Crabbe, Wild Cucumber, 2012, pencil on paper, 8.5 x 11”.

The drawings in this post and on my art website capture my wild surroundings in the Southern California inland desert valleys, but so too does "My My My Precious Love" pictured at the top, but in a different way. I am at a time and a place in my life (my mid forties) where abstraction calls to me louder than anything else.

The artist must be blind to the distinction between 'recognized' or 'unrecognized' conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age. He must watch only the trend of the inner need and harken to it's words alone.

Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, published 1911.

P.S. Select drawings are now available for purchase on my website on a private page. To view these drawings please email me for the password.

How to envision a new reality: Tips from the ancient dreamers

Kathy Crabbe, Take me to your playground, 2012, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 48 x 48”. While reading the Seth Material (printed below) please be aware that this is channeled information received by Jane Roberts from Seth, “an energy personality essence no longer focused in physical form”. Many people find this kind of writing transports them creatively into other worlds and dimensions.

The text below about the ancient dreamers clicked with me instantly so I'd like to share with you how it relates to my work. When I began my current series of paintings, Journey into Intimacy I too radically slowed my pace of living; editing and simplifying, putting my painting and drawing at the forefront. My inner compass has always been guided by my dreams and I feel a natural affinity with the ancient cave painters, and with vedic scribes and medieval monks; creators of the illuminated manuscripts. I also believe that we can heal and create our reality using our thoughts, dreams and visions as a starting point. But now, with my current work I am expanding that personal vision, just as the ancient dreamers and cave painters did, into the external world. My dreams are my paintings and, like the ancient dreamers, invite you to step into a new world and envision a new reality.

My first painting on canvas from the Journey into Intimacy series is titled "Take me to your playground" (see above) which quite literally is an invitation, but an invitation to what sort of playground is unclear, leaving room for imagination - that part is up to you. Please feel free to share your thoughts, comments and visions below.

Notes from the Seth Material by Jane Roberts

There is a great underlying unity in all of man's so-called early cultures - cave drawings and religions - because they were all fed by that common source, as man tried to transpose inner knowledge into physical actuality.

The body learned to maintain its stability, its strength and agility, to achieve a state of balance in complementary response to the weather and elements, to dream computations that the conscious mind alone could not hold. The body learned to heal itself in sleep in its dreams - and at certain levels in that state even now each portion of consciousness contributes to the health and stability of all other portions. Far from the claw-and-dagger universe, you have one whose very foundation is based upon the loving cooperation of all of its parts.

These ancient dreams were shared to some extent by each consciousness that was embarked upon the earthly venture, so that creatures and environment together formed great environmental realities. Valleys and mountains, and their inhabitants, together dreamed themselves into being and coexistence.

The species - from your viewpoint - lived at a much slower pace in those terms. The blood, for example did not need to course so quickly through the veins, the heart did not need to beat so fast.

Gravity itself did not carry its all pervasive sway, so that the air was more buoyant. Man was aware of its support in a luxurious, intimate fashion. He was aware of himself in a different way, so that, for example, his identification with the self did not stop where his skin stopped: He could follow it outward into the space about his form, and feel it merge with the atmosphere with a primal sense-experience that you have forgotten.

In a fashion those ancient dreams, through their immense creativity, dreamed all of life's creatures in all of their pasts, presents, and futures - that is, their dreams opened up the doors of space and time to entities that otherwise would not have been released into actualization, even as, for example, the units of consciousness were once released from the mind of All That Is.

Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment Vol. 1, A Seth Book by Jane Roberts