Jocelyn Curry

For well over a year, my husband Rick has been remodeling our downstairs room. Once a studio apartment we rented out to make our mortgage payment while raising our children, the room later became the playroom. When the children grew up, the room gradually became the exercise room. In early 2009, I started Soft Shelter Hats, my online hatshop, so my sewing machine and a lot of fabric moved in alongside the exercise equipment. When the time came to earthquake-retrofit our home, Rick emptied the big room and launched into this gritty job. Over a year later, the room is completely done: retrofitted, insulated, newly-windowed, painted, floor-leveled, floored (cork), new-ceilinged (coffered – huge job), painted, and equipped with all new lighting and electrical. It's fabulous. Celebration time!

My sewing corner is vastly improved. A new glass-topped table, tidy shelves, bright lights, and general beautification all around create a lovely workspace. Before it really starts looking like I know it will soon look, here it is at this moment, shelves stocked with beautiful new Polartec fleece. Thank you, Rick, for this exceptional labor of love and determination!! Now, let the sewing of hats begin.

I've had my little travel watercolor paintbox for years. It's an old Prang box originally belonging to my kids, re-purposed into a Winsor & Newton art-quality paintbox (something I'm careful to point out to students, especially, when they assume I'm using Prang paint). That is, the old Prang paint was cleaned out, and W&N paint squirted in.

But the reason I'm featuring my messy old paintbox here is because prior to last Tuesday, I had never opened it and seen a face looking out at me. I was with my little drawing group when I lifted the lid. When I exclaimed over the apparition and held up the box for them to see, my drawing chums immediately saw him, too. One of them took a photo at my request, and called him Shroud of Paintbox:

I wonder: what mishap or birth defect caused him to have to wear an eye patch?

It has been such a summer pleasure, throughout my life, to spend time friends who have cabins on the waters of Puget Sound. One such friend has a small complex of cabins and a shed up on Samish Island, north of La Conner, WA. As a novice oil painter, I decided to pack up my paints and a canvas board to find something to paint at this marvelous place. Here you see my efforts, begun on site and completed at home with the aid of a photo I took that day.

After being an artist for most of my life, I finally decided it was time to take oil painting lessons. What stimulated this? Seeing two specific groups of breathtaking oil paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Lofty, I know. It took two years to start lessons. The course I just finished consisted of four sessions of "alla prima" painting instruction with Ursula Stocke of Everett, WA. Alla prima loosely translates to "all at once." The painting is often completed in one session, with wet-into-wet paint applied quite impressionistically.

At our third session, a still life featuring a Chianti bottle (what could be more classic?) and olive oil bottle was first sketched directly on the canvas with burnt sienna paint. Hmm. Those bottles look a bit wobbly. A second similar value study sketch was made below the first (less wobbly the second time), after which I applied the color over the sketch. We focused on using only primary colors and a few earth tones, plus white, in order to practice mixing colors.

Below is a painting I did at home. While at the market I was very taken by the beautiful bunch of spring onions, so they became my subject. As a backdrop I used black ikat-woven fabric and took a deep breath before launching into trying to capture it all on canvas. Last week I started my first plein air painting up at a friend's cabin.

Oil painting, at last.