07.01.10

Anatomical Heart. Watercolor. 

I had this idea for a painting/mixed media thing. I had painted something using the e.e.cummings poem i carry your heart. But I wanted to use an anatomical heart, antique it after watercoloring it, then hiding it behind kite paper and pinning it to a canvas, so it looks like it was dissected out of a body and covered, inside one of the veins, I was going to hide a little drawn cartoon-y heart. I wanted to cut the lines of the poem out and use them in the paint of the underneath canvas. I found some medical books of my husbands and began sketching and painting. This is the first anatomical heart I did. You will see the second later. This just was not good enough for what I wanted and too detailed to be interesting in a graphic way. TOO LITERAL. I did this earlier in the week.

Trying again, I made quicker sketch and used marker to color it in so it would be very graphic. Then I gessoed some foam core board that I had laying around and painted it with a combo of black, grey and blues, with red in there. It looked awful. Ditched that idea without putting the poem into the paint.

This morning, I let my daughter paint on my grey background and she did some cool bright colors on there. And I pinned my heart onto it.

Anatomical Heart. 17"x20". Acrylic and marker.


Not exactly what I was going for in the beginning, but I love doing art with my daughter and it was fun for her to pin it in there and do a piece together. Plus, it is pretty big for a three year old.

From art journal. Audrey and Bea Swim. Watercolor.

I carry your heart. ATC. Mixed media.





I love the last stanza of this poem. And so I cut it out and mixed my mod podge with gold paint and stuck in atop an anatomical drawing of a heart made by da Vinci. (Hell might as well steal from da Vinci, if you are stealing art.) This was in response to Kara's call for small. I had already done part of this painting larger, and thought of how it might look small. I love this one the best, perhaps because I drew nothing in it and I am full of self-critical words right now.