Molly Hashimoto

Holiday Studio Sale

NEXT WEEKEND I will be at the Laurelhurst Community Center in Seattle at my annual holiday studio sale. Hours are Friday, December 5th from 1 to 8pm and Saturday, December 6th from 10am to 4pm. The Center was remodeled recently and is warm and light-filled.  The address is 4554 NE 41st ST in Laurelhurst.  I'll bring my Pomegranate holiday cards including BIRCHES, pictured below, plus prints and original watercolor paintings.  

MUSICIANS was a Pomegranate card some years ago, and as I love chamber music, when they let it go out of print I decided to make giclee prints of the image.  The size is 10 1/2 " by 13 1/2".  I will be selling it at the studio sale also.

Variations on a Theme

       FIRST LIGHT is a painting I finished a couple of months ago after seeing the dawn at the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center on the shores of Diablo Lake.  The calm water and the contrast of the light-bathed distant ridges and the dark trees on the lakeshore was very striking. I wasn't sure I had quite caught what I wanted in this painting, so I tried it again. 

I'm still not sure I've gotten what I wanted, but THEME AND VARIATIONS are what art is all about for me.  The theme is the beauty of nature, and variations are what we artists spend all our time doing.  First Light, version two, was painted on Winsor and Newton paper.  Nice and heavy, but it gave me a few problems with the masking fluid.  I always come back to the Arches paper--the external sizing is so helpful both for painting and masking.

 

Seattle Students' Sketches and Paintings

THE WILDLIFE IN WATERCOLOR class has created some wonderful sketches and paintings. I'm including just a few here, and I wish I could show more, but some of the photos I took in class were a little shaky.

MADELAINE RAMEY created this page of birds, including a beautiful pheasant specimen.

   

MARILYN MCGUIRE found inspiration in a photo of a great blue heron.  She surrounded the bird with a loose wash of greens and brown--a great strategy when painting lighter objects--a method known as negative painting.

 

 BILLY DYSON started the quarter by painting a raccoon skull.  Then the following week he located some great photos of raccons and completed this page of sketches.

Relief Print Hand-Tinted with Watercolor

    MOUNTAIN WINTER RELIEF PRINT shows how to start with a very strong black and white image and develop it with color. The result is not subtle, but has more of the bold impact of folk art with its intense contrast and rather primary-based palette. 

I developed this idea while creating a holiday image for a client. What I worked out for them was alot more complex and involved their logo.  I kept mine very simple. It's always fun to come up with something you enjoy doing while working on a commission.

Jane Graham George: Poet of Nature

 THE POEM AT WHAREROA BEACH is by my twin sister, Jane Graham George.  It is included in her new volume of poetry Library Land, published by Red Dragonfly Press.  She'll be reading in Northfield, Minneosta next week and in Minneapolis later in November.

AT WHAREROA BEACH

We harvest what the Tasman

carves for itself: scallops scored

like beckoning waves,

the smallest pearlescent shells

too fragile to grace any life

beyond the one the sea grants,

staffs of bleached wood strong

as the watery god's trident,

 gems all, but none so strange

 as this dead ray, washed up

 half-consumed, hollow, spine

 and body cavity revealed, but

 wings untouched, flesh cross-hatched,

 the gossamer of a delicate-fingered seamstress,

 even the tail, curled and soft, once an oar,

 a rudder to float and steer this gray

  butterfly of the depths.

Email me or Red Dragonfly Press to order a copy of the book.