New Work Monday #22

Siren's Song Beguiling a Stalemate Between Night and Day
Pen & Ink on Watercolour Paper
18 cm x 26 cm

I wanted to do a companion piece to The Mermaid's Dilemma and happily Ms No Regrets sparked the idea of the Siren.

Interestingly enough, in the French dictionary, la Sirène (which is typically thought to be a mermaid), isn't just. It also means a woman who has characteristics of a bird.

I'm not sure where the night and day thing came from. It just seemed right. Siren's are supposed to be seductresses. Night and day could be construed as metaphors for Evil and Good.

Though if you look closer, the moon is held up slightly higher.

Thoughts?

Here We Go Again

"So, Jennifer. Your kids are bilingual right?"

"Nope."

"Ohhhhh...... Jennifer......" And then I get that moo face that means that I have disappointed that person so much that it may well be permanent. It's sort of like the face that your parents gave you when they found out that you were no longer a virgin. It's the cop face when you've been caught shoplifting something dumb like sniffy stickers.

"What?"

"You have no idea how crippling it'll be for your children later on."

Fantastic. Another guilt trip.

I am royally sick of these people.

I need a way to tell these people, delicately, what they can do with their disappointment. I am tired of explaining why I don't speak English to my children consistently enough for them to be bilingual because in a way, these gung-hoers cannot handle the truth. After all, I am a "mother tongue". It should be "natural" for me to speak English to them.

Natural? Really? Do these people even realise how children "naturally" learn to speak any language?

Take your kid for example (if you've got one). And in particular, swear words. Did you say those words to your kid? OF COURSE NOT! But they still picked those words up and if not their meaning, their connotation and when they should use those naughty words.

NEWS FLASH: Young children learn language by eavesdropping.

In other words, even if I did speak 100% English to my children, I really doubt that they would be bilingual with phrases like:

"Did you brush your teeth?"

"Did you clean your room?"

"There's a stain on that shirt, go change."

"Get moving or we're going to be late for school!"

"Leave your sister alone!"

Really. That's about the extent of my repertoire with these kids because surprise! I am not with them MOST OF THE TIME. Evenings and weekends. The children that are bilingual are generally the children who have a Stay at Home Parent who also happens to be the "expat". All my colleague "expats" with children? NOT ONE of them has bilingual children. UNLESS they spent their child's formative years at home (ie, they USED TO BE a SAH Parent).

What the people who think that my children should be bilingual forget is that it takes "a village" to raise a child. And when that village is 99.9% French and speaks French while in the kids' presence, how the heck do they even believe that I can make my kids bilingual all by myself?

Do I fucking look like Superwoman?

The only thing that we may possibly have in common is the hair and only if I let it grow out that long.

What these people also don't realise is that my kids were OPPOSED to speaking English when they were small.

And when I say OPPOSED, I mean HIROSHIMA.

Brenna, naturally truculent (and I know full well what that word means because I just looked it up AND IT IS PERFECT), would start SCREAMING, would throw her little body onto the ground and THRASH around while holding her hands OVER HER EARS if I even got partway through a sentence that was in English.

Dude. After having spent 7 hours in an office, and the better part of 2.5 hours in public transportation, I have to admit that I FOLDED.

I GAVE UP.

I CAPITULATED.

SO WHAT? I tried. They aren't bilingual. I really do not think that this means that their futures are washed up. I do not believe that this is the first step to misdemeanors and drug dealing.

After all, though they may technically be Canadian, they are also, primarily, French. They live in a French household. Where it is "natural" for their parents to speak French to each other.

That being said, my mom will be pleased to know that my children are learning English in school. In fact, it is no longer an embarrassment to them to have a foreigner for a mother. I am now cool. I give status. My daughter's teacher wants me to correct her English and when I made up a pronounciation chart of the alphabet for Brenna, Brenna's teacher photocopied it.

Brenna no longer rolls on the ground when I speak English to her. However, she still stomps away from me in a huff and yells at me for indignities against nature (meaning that I have no idea why) when I repeat words from her notebook to her (though pronounced correctly). I don't fight it. I close the book and leave the room. She generally follows me so that she can keep ranting.

I ignore her.

Adolescence should be a scream.

Now if only I could figure out how to ignore the people who are so concerned about the fact that my children might never become fully bilingual.

Because I am tired of justifying myself.

New Work Monday #21

Hi. Sorry for not posting. I sort of fell off the planet.

But I'm back now!

Last week was sort of hellish. I did about 20 hours of overtime in three days (one all-nighter) and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt. Though I did get a "thank you for your implication in putting the tender offer together on time. If you like you can recuperate your hours by taking time off" (I said no. Show me the money.)

Also? When I was still a bit loupy on Friday from fatigue, I was told that I was a big baby.

I. Am. Not. Even. Kidding

So. When I think about how my uncomplaining "implication" (which saved their proverbial whatsits) will line the pockets of others and garner those others, who were completely condescending to me, praise for a job well done and possibly awards and stuff? I'll admit that that makes me a little crazy.

OK. Bitter.

Mr C was furious. Practically incandescent. I won't tell you what he insinuated but it sounded mighty uncomfortable.

All that to say that I didn't get any new work done this week. So HELLO ARCHIVES!

Here is the other piece that I did in Ravenna, Italy. You know. When I had a life:

Lady Bug
Mosaic
20cm x 20cm

Detail:

I rather think the polka dots on the frame were inspired...

New Work Monday #20

Fingerpainting
Watercolour
21cm x 30cm

Finally! I am pleased to present to you the commission (with his Papa's permission) that I've been joyfully wrestling with for the past month or so.

I loved the challenge of the mess of little Boy Z's hand. I swear that I could keep doing this painting, finding little things to adjust and check and fiddle with, but I had that mystic moment where after one particular brush stroke I heard the voices say, "It's finished."

Yes.

I should mention that I was alone at the time.

I think the hardest part of this portrait was the last little bit. Eyebrows are hard. It's really difficult to not get all heavy handed à la Groucho Marx or Frida Khalo.

Also? Eyelashes on boys. The first couple of tries sort of went all Clockwork Orangy on me. Thank goodness I use a forgiving paper.

So if this boy's Papa Bear thinks that the image resembles that of his son, the painting will be out the door and on its way within the week. I'm particularily curious as to whether the eyebrows are ok. I'm apt to think that they're too dark.

Fingers crossed that this boy's Mama sees her little boy's mischief in these painted eyes...

Secrets

Artists have trade secrets. Apparently.

The origins of such secrets goes, I'm guessing, way back to when the practice of Masters and Apprentices was quite common. Less common today, I seem to remember one of my instructors telling us how frustrated he was when he was apprenticing in metalsmithing because his "Master" wouldn't tell him anything! That Master didn't want the competition later on, so he chose to keep his student in the dark.

WTH?

Did this make my instructor want to be a different kind of Master to us goobers in his class?

Maybe. Maybe not. To me he seemed relatively forthcoming. Others may disagree.

Whatever the case, in an effort in being completely transparent (as the French like to say) I would like to reveal to you one of my "secrets" (I just did that air quote thing. It was awesome).

I hope that you will still respect me in the morning because it's kind of "cheating" (again the air quotes. I'm on a role).

Now. As far as drawing goes, I'm a very good copier. I can, if given the time, copy anything and enlarge it (or make it smaller) at whim without grids and stuff.

I kicked ass in figure drawing class in college.

In high school I collected Disney videos and spent my spare time drawing images either off a paused television screen or off the plastic casing the video came in onto my bedroom walls. I even started drawing these huge images on other people's walls. Ariel the Mermaid was a big hit with little girls.

Seriously? I had it going on.

Still do.

However, these days, I'm much less interested in getting the proportions right. I just want to get to the business of painting but that's hard to do if you don't have a drawn skeleton to hang your colours on.

Which is where the cheating comes into place.

It occured to me one day, as I was working on an illustration, that maybe I could "cheat" with portraits because, though I liked doing them, they invariably had that one thing that made the loved one say "WTF? That isn't my kid!" And I would look at the kid (or the photo of the kid) and look at the drawing, but I couldn't see what was missing (and believe me when I say that I have an eye for detail).

It drove me crazy.

For example: I did a portrait of my son and my MIL didn't like it because it didn't look like her grandson... but for me, it totally looked like MY son.... so whatever.

When I explain the technique, you'll know why I can't decide if it's an ethical technique or not. And I'm letting the "secret" out of the bag so that you can decide if my portraits are "real" or not and that gives you the power to better judge my work as my potential clients (Honestly, when I explained the technique to my MIL, she said that my portraits weren't "real." ISwearToGod).

So here we go:

When I do an illustration, I usually fuss and fumble over it on a piece of drawing paper. I erase, I redraw, I start over by erasing all of it, over and over until I'm sure that I like what I've got.

Then I photocopy it.

Then I take the photocopy, take a pencil and rub graphite all over the back of the sheet of paper.

Then I take that piece of paper and... face up over the bristol board, or watercolour paper, or whatever else my final illustration will be on and trace the image so that it shows up on the paper underneath it.

Then I paint or stipple or cross hatch or whatever until my eyes bleed. Or the piece is finally finished. Whichever comes first.

Simple really.

But then I started to wonder.... if I'm already doing portraits from photos and I'm secure in my knowledge of knowing how to judge proportions, couldn't I just graphite up the back of photographs and hang my portrait skeleton on paper so I can get down to the nitty gritty of colouring painting?...

Is that wrong? Is that unpurist? Are there rules for this sort of thing?

So that's my secret cheat (perhaps not that secret really). When I do a portrait, I trace the eyes, the end of the nose (the nostrils), the shape of the face and any other major element in the image and then take it from there. Erasing elements as I no longer need them and making adjustments here and there if the pencil jumped during the tracing.

I don't, for the most part, put in areas that need to be shaded because that can mark the paper and marking the paper is bad.

I also refuse to work with pictures that were done by a professional photographer.

Meh. Maybe I just need a colouring book and be done with the guilt.

Any suggestions? But no Disney Princesses. I'm so done with them.

New Work Monday #19

Ooo la la la! We are going deep deep deep into the archives...

All the way back to when I was crazy about mosaics. So crazy that I took a week off work to go to Ravenna, Italy to do a mosaic class. This is one of the things I came home with:


Detail:

Mosaic bird
Copy from the Galla Placidia Masoleum
25cm x 40cm

The technique that we used was the "ancient" technique using smalti tesserae (smalti is a sort of glass pancake that is thereafter cut into rectangle-like pieces with a cutting hammer. Smalti comes in all kinds of colours, including real gold hereabove). This technique was worked in the studio, being pressed into your design that has been drawn on a kind of limestone silly putty.

When your design is complete, you glue (I think we used rabbit bone glue) a cheesecloth to your design. While waiting for the cheesecloth to dry, mix your plaster (where you want to set your final piece, we used a wooden tray frame). When the cheesecloth is dry, pull the terreraes away from the limestone and lay it down (with cheesecloth facing up) into the wet plaster. Let it dry.

When the plaster is completely dry (count 24 hours), wet the glued down cheesecloth and pull it gently away from the mosaic. Some of the tesserae may be loose or have disappeared. Don't panic. Prepare a little cement glue and stick them (or replacements) back into place.

Clean off the glue.

You may find that the white space between the tesseraes on your final space annoy your eye. No worries. A little gouache of the mosaic's primary colour in water and a paintbrush can dampen down the glaring white when the paint solution is passed over it.

Voilà.

This little fellow has been in my studio since we moved (in 2005). I think it's time to put him in a place of honour in my entranceway.

Freedom Cries: A Navel-Gazery

A couple of weeks ago, I had a mini altercation with a "friend" at a little dinner party at a mutual friend's house.

I've put "friend" in quotation marks because really, I just don't get her. It is a friendship of obligation because our husbands have been best friends since primary school. Neither one of us is really interested in the other except on a superficial level and as such, conversation usually withers.

It's dire. It's especially bad when there's no booze around.

I don't "get" Mr C's friend either. We always argue about strikes (he works for the RATP - public transportation system) and politics. And there's this impression I have of being thought of as an eejit because I'm a foreigner and can't possibly understand the complicated dance that is French politics or French socialism.

The last time I saw him? It got ugly. It could have been my meds but at the same time, I think even off meds I would have been insulted by the way he talked slow to me as though I had difficulty grasping what he meant. I told him off. He later apologised and said that we wouldn't talk politics. I agreed and said that we could change the topic to abortion.

The French have no sense of humour sometimes.

So anyway.... Because I have digressed even before starting. Again. ... I had a mini-altercation (a separate one, same evening) with this fellow's wife. This woman is an Assistante maternelle (sort of a nanny) and though she did work in a pharmacy for 18 months in the middle of her career as a nanny, she has been at home taking care of other people's children and her own for the better part of 10 years.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with that. It's a tough job that I wouldn't be able to do.

That being said, the argument wasn't about what we did to get food on our tables (though perhaps it could give an indication of character. BTW this "friend" is 5 years younger than me), it was about having a driver's license.

She emphatically REFUSED to get one.

The hostess of the party and I tried to impart how wonderful it was to have a driver's license. About how we would die without our driver's licenses. That our driver's licenses were our ticket to FREEDOM because we could haul our kids all over the place and get all sorts of awesome things done. We could go wild and drive to the coast if we felt like it. Wouldn't this "friend" like the same freedom? Wouldn't she like to be more independent?

"I'm perfectly happy with public transportation."

I felt, clearly, that this woman had been the victim of a lobotomy. "What? Wait a minute. What if you want to go buy something bulky? You'd have to wait for your husband to be available to take you. Also? You like to participate in a lot of flea markets (brocantes). How can you do these things if you don't have wheels?"

"I have a lot of friends who are happy to do these brocantes with me."

"So you're dependent on these friends?"

"I'm not dependent on anyone. I do things for them too."

"What if you can't find a friend to take you to a brocante that you want to do?"

"That's what my husband is for."

WTF?

"What if, god forbid, he dies?"

"I'll remarry. Until then, if that ever happens, I'll take public transportation."

I was absolutely baffled. She thinks she is not dependent? I looked at the ceiling for a second and then said, "I think we'll have to agree to disagree and call it a day on this conversation." Then I wandered away. I didn't speak to her much for the rest of the evening.

So why the hell am I bringing it up now? Well, I've been thinking about independence and freedom and what it means to me lately.

I was reminded of this conversation with my "friend" when Mr C and I had gone to Lyon for the Ascension long weekend in May. Mr C's dad had just retired and so now, with both of his parents at home, Mr C asked if they would be selling one of their cars. Mr C's Dad said No. Way. Neither one of us wants to be constantly together and neither one of us wants to be constantly bargaining over who gets to use the car.

Knowing Mr C's parents, I think that Mrs C Senior would win. Often. So Mr C Senior bought a new car. Smart fellow.

I remember saying that I would die without a car. I think Mr C Junior rolled his eyes. "You hardly use the one we've got!"

"Dude, if I were shut up with your children on the weekend without wheels, you could expect Kill Bill chapel mayhem when you get home from work on Saturday afternoon..."

He said nothing. More eye rolling.

No. I don't necessarily use the car, but it is important for me to have it. To have the freedom to use it if I want to. When the car was out of commission, the very thought of it drove me absolutely stark raving mad.

Thinking about this has led me to realise that a lot of what I do is because of this deep need for "Freedom". I hate public transportation because I hate that I'm dependent on it because of where my job is located and I hate that if there's a problem, that problem FUBARs my life. I hate that I'm so tired because of the anxiety or boredom of actually using that stupid system and for the moment, I just have to suck it up.

On speaking to another blogger (Ksam), I realised that I became skeered of breastfeeding because I didn't like the idea of being depended upon 100%. Pregnancy aside, once that pregnancy was over, I wanted my body and my freedom to move around unfettered back. My rational self interest said that children need both parents to thrive, so here; I need some alone time. Later skater.

Which probably explains why... and I'm sorry if this bothers some people or makes anyone question themselves in terms of my issues... I'm not crazy about the idea that some mothers BF their children really late. Like up to the child is in their 20s or something. You know what I mean.

I remember once after Kilian was born, when my Dad came to France for a visit, he mentioned that he was surprised that I had decided to procreate. I asked him if he had expected me to become an old maid with lots of cats and a house smelling of mildew. "No. Just never thought that you'd tie yourself down with kids."

Even Mr C sometimes moans that he wonders why I don't live alone. The moaning is usually when I'm trying to read.

Funnily enough, I've never lived alone. Sometimes I have sordid fantasies about living alone and lazing about with cartons of melting ice cream surrounding me as the telly blasts out episodes of House, Desperate Housewives, Lost and all the other serials that I can only watch when everyone else is out of the house otherwise all I hear is, "OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! NOT THAT SHOW AGAIN! DON'T YOU KNOW IT OFF BY HEART YET?"

Ten minutes before the end of the season finale. You know the one? With the death?

I wish that I was making that up.

All navel-gazing aside, sometimes I wonder if I'm normal at all.

Or if this need for freedom is part of some "abnormal" artsiness.

Or maybe I just should have been born an old maid's cat.

Manly B[r]east

I was walking the kids to school yesterday morning when a strange character walked by. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out that that elderly woman was a man.

After that person walked by, Brenna whispered, "Maman?"

"Yes."

"Did that man have breasts?"

"Yes. That happens sometimes. It's a horomone thing. The body makes special chemicals and sometimes a man can have too much of the chemical for girls."

"Oh."

Silence.

"So does papa have too much of that horomone too?"

__________________________


That kid.

Mr C does not have breasts. He has air cushions. They're cute.

New Work Monday #18

Claire
Pencil on Paper

Meet Claire.

Claire has issues.

Claire is ten years old and she's got a problem...

__________________________


Ages and ages ago, when I had this idea for a YA story, it occurred to me that I didn't know what the heck my lead character looked like, so I thought: "Hey! I wonder what I'll come up with if I just start fooling around a little?"

This is what happened.

I imagine that writers experience this sort of thing all the time. You just start writing (or drawing) and your character is excavated.