Making something new to play on

Surprise! I know it's weird to see another post so soon after the last one but I just wanted to share a quick look at what I was playing with this week. When I was shopping at Sam Flax a few weeks ago I was admiring the accordion sketchbooks, or what some call concertina sketchbooks, and I was also admiring the price! I didn't want to spend that much on a sketchbook so I decided to make my own. I certainly have enough paper lying around the studio so I didn't have to purchase anything.

I used a full sheet (22x30) of 140lb Winsor & Newton watercolor paper. I cut two 8" x 30" strips from the sheet. I measured and marked every 6" on the two strips and then folded each one accordion style. Then I attached the two strips together to make one long one and glued the two ends to pieces of mat board that I had cut to 9x7 so the covers would be slightly larger than the pages. After the pieces were assembled I gessoed both sides of the paper and both covers.

I made the sketchbook Monday and yesterday I started playing with it. Here's a bit of video of me working on it. Yep, I know the camera should've been on the other side of the drawing board but the way my studio is currently set up I don't have a lot of options for placement. If I put it on the left side, it would have to be attached to the drawing board and the motion of me working at it would have the camera wiggling all over the place. I don't post a lot to my YouTube channel for that reason and I'm not a video producer. I'm just sharing little clips for folks who want to see a bit of the process. Hopefully I'll get better with time but right now, honestly, all my focus is on the painting process itself. I'd rather be painting than dealing with a tech learning curve. Sometimes, us old schoolers have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the current century. At least I've quit putting two spaces between sentences when I type and I'm even going to learn about NFTs! That's big and it might take a while for my brain to wrap around that concept. LOL 

Anyway, have a happy hump day everyone. I hope you're doing something creative. 

When you're between projects....

Happy 4th everyone! I hope you're doing something fun today. We have pretty lousy weather right now so I don't think we're doing anything outside, hence, the reason I'm sitting at my computer. 

So this is the kind of thing I do when I'm between projects. I just finished the last nest painting. I have 2 commissions waiting in the wings. I have multiple canvases prepped and waiting for new nests and landscapes. Before starting all that I wanted to play with something a little different. It always helps to get the creative juices flowing. 

I started with a full sheet of watercolor paper, gave it a layer of gesso, and taped it down on all the edges. Then I used the tape to section off 12 squares. With a large brush I started throwing acrylic paint around - thalo blue, light green and red gold. I also scribbled a bit with graphite and colored pencils.

 

While the paint was still wet I used the handle end of the brush to scratch into the paint and make more marks. I applied the white with a big kitchen spatula. You can see here that I peeled the tape away. 

I tore the squares apart using a straight edge. Since the paper has deckled edges I didn't want to use scissors and make the inside edges too clean. Tearing against the straight edge gives a more deckled feel. 

As a last step, I used my favorite black - BLK3.0 ultra matte black, to add areas of contrast. They're fun little abstracts! Now what do I do with them? I thought about framing them but I HATE framing. The hassle and expense of framing is one of the reasons I no longer do much work on paper but sometimes the urge is too great. So what now - I realized that these little guys fit well on an 8x8 canvas so I ordered a case. I'll paint them solid black and then mount the paintings on the canvas. I like the way the black edge frames the design. 

While I'm waiting for the canvas order to come in I can start working on the commissions. This is one of the best things about being a painter. I love having multiple projects to work on. Maybe it seems like I'm all over the place or unfocused to some folks but I never get bored in the studio! And it seems to me that working with multiple subject matter and methods can influence the other work you do. Isn't that how we grow as artists? Anyway, this is definitely something I'll do again. If you're looking for a fun exercise to build your composition and design skills, this is it. 

Just some thoughts on a rainy day.

Till next time,

C

It's Experiential

The little abstract painting below was a piece I did a few years ago. I liked it then. It's where I was at the time. Looking at it again recently, along with a number of other ones, I decided it wasn't what I wanted anymore so I started putting more layers on top, sandwiched between layers of thick gloss acrylic gel. In those layers I also scribbled with graphite and colored pencil, and dribbled alcohol to lift color. If you look closely you can still see bits of the original painting peeking through so scroll down to see what happened to it. 

When the last layer of clear gloss dried I added a final touch.... accents painted with BLK3.0. This is the most matte black paint I've ever seen. It absorbs all the light so you don't even see the texture that's underneath the paint. I love the contrast between the matte black and the high shine of the gloss gel. 

One thing about this kind of work where you have layer upon layer and extreme contrasts, it's hard for all the details to come across in a photo. It's so experiential, it's best to see pieces like this in person. Below is a detail shot and then a couple of pictures at angles so you can see the difference between the shine and the black areas. 

The original painting was called Time Passage 11 so I guess I'll call it Time Passage 11 Redux. There's more experimenting to do so stay tuned for a few more of these. I just added this one and one other to my website so check out the abstract page to see more. Of course I have some new bird nest paintings in mind too, and some landscapes. So many paintings to do!

Happy Wednesday and I hope the rest of your week is spectacular.

C

A quick post holiday post

I hope ya'll had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Just a quick post with a nest update. It's been a busy couple of weeks with the holidays coming up plus I've been sick- no fun! But I'm on the mend now and ready to get back to painting and all the other stuff that goes along with it.

This is a little nest that was on top of my daughter's front porch light fixture. It's a swallow's nest. Before seeing this I had no idea some birds made their nests partially with mud. You can see the photo below. I usually prefer to have a nest in hand to paint from rather than working from photos but as you can see this one was well occupied and later there were 5 beautiful swallows.

The painting below is still a work in progress and another one I'm doing from a photo even though I have the actual nest in the studio. I found it in the hedge in my yard but before I removed it from the hedge I took pictures from different angles in case I wanted to do something that included a few surrounding leaves. Tomorrow I'm spending the day at the easel and I'll post again when it's done.

In the meantime......

After all that holiday food

Good morning Monday- painting, taxes and a little naughty :)

Remember the painting in the ugly stage?

It's done now and sold. This morning I got it wired and varnished and soon it will be going to it's new home which happens to be the same home in NV where the smaller one went. They'll be together! Yeah, I know that's silly and sappy but hey..... don't a piece of ourselves go into every painting? When a collector buys a painting they're buying a piece of us. My heart and soul go into these paintings. Each one is it's own struggle, it's own challenge and it's nurtured along through each stage of development, pushing me and it to be better than the last one. That's the hope anyway.

Since last week I've acquired another nest. Isn't it beautiful? This is a cardinal's nest that was in my brother-in-law's yard. Just the day before he brought this to me I was thinking that I'd like to find one with some Spanish moss in it and ta-da! Here it is. I not only love the moss but I love the pile of little leaves inside. This will be another challenge for sure.

Hopefully I can get back to painting tomorrow. Over the weekend I tackled doing taxes- ugh!!!! I'm almost done but not quite there yet and this afternoon I'm teaching a class at the studio. 

Until next time..... here's a little thing I found on Facebook this morning. I don't know the name of the creator so if someone out there does, please share with us. It's a little on the naughty side but makes a good point. I've often wondered about critics and their evaluation of paintings. Why do they see what they see compared to what the artist intended? Critics like to get all puffed up with their "artspeak" and sometimes it's nothing more than a simple story. Just ask the artist.

At the National Art Gallery in Dublin, a husband and wife were staring at a portrait that had them completely confused. The painting depicted three black men totally naked, sitting on a bench.

Two of the figures had black penises, but the one in the middle had a pink penis. The curator of the gallery realized that they were having trouble interpreting the painting and offered his personal assessment.

He went on for over half an hour explaining how it depicted the sexual emasculation of African Americans in a predominately white patriarchal society . "In fact", he pointed out, "some serious critics believe that the pink penis also reflects the cultural and sociological oppression experienced by gay men in contemporary society".

After the curator left, an Irishman approached the couple and said, "Would you like to know what the painting is really about?"

"Now why would you claim to be more of an expert than the curator of the gallery", asked the couple?

"Because I am the artist, who painted the picture", he replied, "In fact, there are no African Americans depicted at all.

They're just three Irish coal miners. The guy in the middle went home for lunch"

The next nest

How was your Labor Day weekend? Mine was mostly quiet. I didn't even work in the studio. What I did do was a sleepover with our 6 year old granddaughter. There is nothing in the world sweeter than a conversation with a 1st grader and nothing more fun than the games she comes up with. Bath time means word games, movie time means picnics on the bed and snuggling together, playing outside means chasing bubbles and playing tag. She kept me on my toes the whole time.

And of course at this house, getting together also means drawing and painting time. She left us with this drawing and just cracked me up with the "AKA granddaughter". 

I'm made of complimentary colors :)

After all that fun I did get back to my own painting this week and finished another nest- actually 2 nest paintings.... remember the nest I got out of the tree in my yard?

Birthplace

This is the first painting to come from that nest. It's 18x18 and this time I used copper leaf instead of gold. I'm not quite sure how I feel about the copper. It's the only copper one so far and I don't know if I'll do another. Just that little bit of color shift in the background created some color issues in the nest itself so we'll see.

And it looks like I've started something.... I was recently gifted these 2 nests to add to my collection. The little bluebird nest on the left was my reference for the most recent painting.

The Nursery

16x16

Now it's time to prep some more canvases and figure out which nest is next. See ya'll soon.

So many paintings... so little time.

Hope everyone's good. I've been busy in the studio since the last post. Finished this nest....

And then painted this one..... sold another one.....

Then for a change of pace I started this landscape with a flowering tree. I wanted to play with some different colors and shapes. I've done a couple of other pieces similar to this one and love the blue-greens against the gold leaf.

From this angle you can see the texture and shine of the gold. I'm using metallic gold acrylic to drybrush gold along the edge of the leaf. It softens the edge and makes a good transition between the 2 areas. And it shows off the texture too. Love the texture!

So right after starting this landscape I found an old nest in a tree in my yard. I got on a step stool to get some shots of it to paint from. It was well seated in between the branches so it wasn't easy to take photos.

The next day I decided to see if I could get the nest out of the tree without damaging it. It was tricky but I did it with only losing a couple of little twigs. 

Of course, now I'm dying to paint the new nest!!! It's going to take some discipline to make myself finish the landscape first. If I don't, who knows when I'll get back to it. There are so many nest paintings I want to do- bigger, smaller, different angles, doing some with copper leaf instead of gold.... 

So many paintings- so little time. LOL

Beach week and bird's nests

Beach week was amazing!! What did I do? Nothing. I went from condo to beach and back again. I took walks, listened to the waves, read and slept. I guess those things are actually something but you know what I mean- nothing that was required of me, only what I felt like doing when I felt like doing it. To me there is nothing more peaceful and rejuvenating than being near water and listening to the sounds of nature. After I got back my husband got me a white noise machine for sleeping that includes the sound of the ocean- perfect! I might be back inland but when I go to sleep I can listen to waves crashing, feel the fan blowing and pretend I'm dozing on the porch of a beach cottage as I drift off to sleep. 

 I love how these ripples ended up looking in this photo. It might end up a painting at some point.

My son and his family came out to spend a day and he brought the big bubble stuff with him. I think I enjoyed that more than the girls did. All they cared about was sand and water. :)

So beach week is over and now I'm all refreshed, excited to paint again and back to the easel. The first thing I did was prep 3 canvases. I used the heavy body gesso as usual. After letting them dry overnight I coated them with red acrylic, mapped out my design and then applied gold leaf to all 3.

One was for a landscape, one for a floral and one for a nest but I couldn't decide which one I wanted to start with. My sister-in-law said I should do the one on top first so I did the landscape...

Daybreak

12x12 

Remember the nest painting I showed you last time? It's already sold and delivered! Now I'm working on the second canvas. I said I might do something different with the next nest painting as far as the texture goes but no, I just couldn't help myself. It isn't giving me as much of a problem as it was before so that's good.

I'm not too far from being done with this one. I should finish in another day or two and then I'll move on to the third canvas- the floral. I'm sure you'll see it in the next post. So, until then, I hope you're doing something artsy. 

The "catching up" post- painting, portraits, coloring books and censorship

Wow, almost a year to the day since the last post! That is way too long!
So what have I been up to- let's see.....

Painting, painting and more painting.
Did multiple portrait commissions.
Designed and published the Masterpeace Mandala coloring books- yes, my husband and I put our skills together and jumped on that bandwagon.
Had a solo exhibition at the 567 Center for Renewal in Macon GA.
Changed a few things around on the Etsy shop
Spent a week at the beach.
Spent a week in Ohio with daughter and grandkids.
Spent the holidays in Texas with my other daughter and grandson.
Spent 3 more weeks in Texas helping my daughter when she had baby #2.
In between those trips there was more painting and working on my website.
Teaching art classes on Mondays.

I think that's it. I don't think I left out anything major. And I think the traveling will slow down this year. Of course it would be a huge help if my daughters would just move to FL!

Ok, back to the work.....

The landscapes

Golden Edge

12x12

Gold Sky Woodland

12x6

Spring Pink

12x12

These are some of the newest paintings from my studio. I'm having fun with the gold leaf again- can you tell? :) Sales at the Signature Gallery in Tallahassee and the Macon Arts Alliance in GA have been picking up- yay! My next step will be to add another gallery to the list. I'm not sure which area I want to approach so if you have any ideas about where my work would fit in, feel free to share.

The solo exhibition

BFA

48x36

This is one of the pieces from the Silent Voices series. I have 16 paintings in this series so far, all the same size. This was the group of work for my solo exhibit in GA. It caused quite a commotion and 3 of the paintings were censored from the show!! Every weekend for the duration of the show the paintings had to come down and were rehung on Mondays- not kidding! If you want to see the pieces that were censored and why, check out the post I did on my other blog. To see the rest of the pieces in the show, go to the Symbolic page on my site. 

The portraits

I've done several portrait commissions but this one I did for myself. My granddaughter was hanging out at the house with us one night. She had wrapped a blanket around herself and was just being goofy and making faces. I grabbed the camera and took a lot of shots and decided to compile some of them into the 6 Faces of Maxine. It's colored pencil on red Canson MiTeintes and let me tell you.... skin tones on red paper is a challenge!

The coloring books

Coloring books?! Yep, we made coloring books. There are actually 3 coloring books and 3 coloring journals. We thought it would be fun to make mandala designs and patterns inspired by line drawings of the masters. So far we have Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Mucha. In the journals we have pages that are lined and some unlined and some that have coloring designs or edges. Since this kind of work is not something I normally do it was quite the learning curve for me. Getting to know the programs required to do the designs took some time but once I got it down it was a lot of fun.

I think this catches us up and hopefully I can get back to posting here on a regular basis now that life is getting a little more regular again. So in the meantime, check out the links, leave comments here or there.... let me know what you think. And Happy 4th of July! Hope it's a great weekend.

Playing

So it's a couple of weeks after the workshop and I've been busy getting back into the routine of walking at the park, classes, portrait commissions and landscape painting. In between those things I get to play with little people like these 2 lovely ladies...

I mean, look at those faces- how can I resist? Sometimes I just have to put the brushes down and pick up a puppet or a book and snuggle with little girls on my lap.

Okay, back to art stuff.... while I was at the workshop in Live Oak I was introduced to a new paper (new to me anyway). It's called TerraSkin and one of the ladies taking the class was kind enough to bring a piece of it for me to play with. It intrigued me so when I got home I ordered a pad. What is TerraSkin? It's made from rocks. That alone was enough for me to try it. Here are some basics about it from their website. 

• TerraSkin is a combination of mineral powder (>75%) and a small quantity (<25%) of non-toxic resin combined to create an environmentally friendly paper.

• The production of TerraSkin requires no water, so the TerraSkin papermaking process incurs no water pollutants.

• Used TerraSkin paper will start to degrade under the proper environmental conditions of high heat, moisture and UV light.

• Most importantly, in producing TerraSkin, the harvesting of trees is unnecessary, thereby safeguarding the natural environment’s beauty and biodiversity for all living beings.

• TerraSkin also has beautiful printing capabilities and a unique texture and feel. Because the paper is fiberless, it does not absorb ink like regular paper and also uses less ink than regular paper. Images stay much crisper and cleaner because the ink doesn’t bleed.

• TerraSkin is water – resistant and inherently strong and durable.

It was originally formulated for commercial uses such as packaging, labels, banners, printing etc.... so there isn't anything about it's use for artists on the website but if you poke around online you can find info and videos about using this stone paper.

Here is my first time playing with TerraSkin.... I wanted to try mixed media with portrait work so I figured this paper would be ideal for it. It's very similar to Yupo paper but has a slight texture where Yupo is very slick. Because of the texture it accepts colored pencil pretty well. You can't build up as many layers as you can on Canson Mi-Teintes or watercolor paper but you can do some layering. I started this one by drawing the face first with colored pencils; I did a few layers of skin tones. Then I started playing with very loose washes of blue watercolor. The paper surface is slightly porous so it absorbs a little of the paint but a lot sits on the surface and takes a while to dry.

When it was dry I started playing with acrylic paint, some right from the tube and some watered down. I also sprayed it with water while the paint was still wet. I scratched into the paint with the handle end of the brush to make some marks and then I kept layering acrylic and watercolor. At one point I splattered the blue and then sprayed it to encourage it run across the face and then let the puddles dry where they were.

The background really looks a mess but it's fun to let loose and experiment. I can always go back into it and paint some more layers over it and change the look completely. I can definitely see playing with these techniques some more. If you work on paper and like playing with mixed media, give this paper a try.

Time to pick up a brush.... 

I'm Back!

Yep, I know..... it's been way too long since posting here. This last year has found me a little scattered and trying to do too many different things - not only in the studio but online also. Too many social media sites can suck you in so I'm narrowing my focus to posting here, my Facebook page and my Etsy shop. Ok, so I can't leave Pinterest out. I'll be there too. The stack of hats I've been wearing has gotten pretty tall so it's time to clear out some clutter. Maybe if I wear fewer of them I can work more on quality rather than quantity. I think the problem with a lot of us creative types is we like to do a variety of things and that can lead to overwhelming ourselves with choices and projects. So now I'm turning my focus to the things I love most. After all, why would I want to focus more on something I don't really want to do? Makes sense right?

In painting there are 2 topics I'm most passionate about - nature and adoption. My abstracts and landscapes are both about nature. The Silent Voices series is about adoption from an original mother's viewpoint.
You can tell from the tabs above that I like to work in series. I just added 7 new pieces to the abstract section and the landscapes are ongoing. In fact I'm getting ready for a new show in February '14 in Macon GA at The 567 Center for Renewal art gallery. I love working back and forth between these two series. After a long stretch of painting landscapes it's fun to loosen up with some textures and layers in the mixed media work.

Of course the Silent Voices series is near and dear to my heart. It's a very personal series about my own story so between shows I'll be adding to that group of work also. I'm constantly thinking about it, sketching and writing down lists of words that could be included on another canvas or the narrative poetry that goes with it.

This is where I am on this beautiful December day in Florida. I'm enjoying the warm weather and looking forward to a new creative year. I hope you've been well and will come back to visit, maybe leave a comment or two.

I went a little crazy

with texture.

 Passage 51, 12x12 mixed media

 Passage 51, detail

                                   

These two paintings are part of an ongoing series of textured mixed media abstracts that I've been working on for a while. Aside from landscapes and a couple of series involving social commentary, I love playing with different materials - papers, glue, paint, polished stones, texture gels, Styrofoam, tissue, whatever I can glue to a canvas. I just want to make something that's fun to run your hand over and feel the bumps, cracks and wrinkles. Fun!

 Passage 52, 12x12, mixed media

 Passage 52, detail