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. 

No excuses, inspiration and summertime

No excuses. I saw this video on Facebook this morning and I thought- what an inspiration! I've had some issues lately with my hands due to a long time living with Rhuematoid Disease and of course the first thing that goes through my mind is.... what will happen if I'm not able to use my hands anymore? What if I can't hold a paint brush or colored pencil? Then I saw that and thought- hell, I'll just strap the brush to my arm if I have to. If you want to create or NEED to create like so many of us do, you'll find a way.

"Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway." ~Robert Henri

So.... on to painting. Remember the bird's nest from the last post? Airborne is done- 12x12, mixed media on canvas. These are fun and a challenge to do. You know how much I love texture but I can't decide if I like it with these particular paintings. I think the nest itself might be easier to paint if the canvas were smooth but I do prefer the texture behind the gold leaf. Putting the gold directly on the canvas without texture tends to show off the weave of the canvas too much for my taste. I'll do the third one with the texture but maybe I'll play with something different for future pieces.

In the meantime I received a request for a portrait from someone who loves the gold leaf that I use in the landscapes but wants it done for a baby's portrait. Here's my first foray into gold and people painting. I have 7 grandchildren so I'm never without subjects to test techniques on. This one is Mila Blaze.

I think this will take some experimenting with surfaces. I love using Canson Mi-Teintes for portraits because I love to work on colored paper but the adhesive size for the gold does make the paper buckle. You can tell in the photo- especially on the left side. I did this one pretty small because I had a feeling that would be the case. The paper size here is 8.25x11. Maybe it would buckle less if the paper were larger? I don't know. The Canson also absorbs the size so it took 2 coats of the adhesive in order for it to work and get tacky. We'll see how the next one goes....

In the "catching up" post I shared some new landscapes. Since then I've shipped them off to the Signature Art Gallery in Tallahassee FL. and my wonderful rep Vera emailed me the photo of how they have my work displayed there- you can see the brand new ones on the left. I love this gallery and am so happy to be included with the fabulous artists they have there. Check out their website, or better yet, visit them if you can.

What's next? NOTHING! I'm not painting a single thing for the next week because tomorrow I head to the beach. I thought about taking some art supplies with me but then I thought about the hundreds of books on my kindle and decided to make a dent in that list instead and this will be my view for the next 7 days. Ahhhhh.......

Here's to creativity, inspiration, summertime, relaxation, peacefulness, and sunrises over the Atlantic. I hope you're getting your own time to rest this summer. See you when I get back.

Shiny gold and a bird's nest

Birds have always fascinated me. If I believed in reincarnation I think I'd like to come back as a bird. The thought of being able to fly, soaring on the currents, looking down at earth, seems so amazing to me! I first started using the bird's nest image in my Silent Voices series about infant adoption. As a thematic element it works to represent the position of the first mother, the place where life begins. And because of my love of birds it just made sense for me to use the imagery of their handiwork. 

Since then I've been lucky enough to have wrens visit my home and build theirs inside my mailbox. So far I've collected 3 nests and keep them in my studio for inspiration and painting reference.

Here they are sitting on my big drawing table. 

When I paint my landscapes I frequently use gold leaf and texture- I love shiny, and I love the way a painting with gold changes when the light in a room changes. Lately I've been focused on some new gold sky paintings and decided I wanted to change things up a bit. A bird's nest is part of the landscape so why not? Why not combine the nest idea with the gold sky idea and do something a little bit different. So here's the first one......

And the second one (below) is in progress, still lots to do. I've noticed that when I painted the nests in the Silent Voices series they were more stylized. It just seemed better suited to the paintings that way. Now with these new ones I'm getting more realistic with them. They're not quite so neat- more messy and real. It just seems to work better with the texture and the looseness of the gold application.

I'm enjoying this little crossover in painting subjects between 2 different groups of work. Who knows where else it'll lead. 

Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your thoughts- it would be a nice break from the chatter in my head. :)

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.

Stages of the latest portrait

The days of the week have all run together lately. I had a rush job portrait commission so this piece has been my only focus for the last week. It's now done and in the mail to the client. YES- made the deadline! While I was working I took quick shots with my phone so I could share the progress online. Here are the steps as it went.

 I used a blue Canson Mi-Teintes paper. I know some of the photos look more grey than blue but I did shoot with the natural light from the window in front of my drawing board.

 First layers on skin and shirts.

 I used a variety of browns and golden yellows on his shirt. Building up the skin tones was trickier- using a lot of deco orange, pumpkin and mineral orange and burnt ochre.

 To get the blond hair to be blond and not turn green on this blue paper I had to layer white pencil first to keep the yellow and blue from mixing.

 It took a little while to figure out the reds for the other shirt. What finally worked was using peach and vermillion in the light areas and permanent red for the overall color, tuscan red for the shadows.

Calling it done!

Projects, parties and inspiriation

Sometimes in my commission work I get to switch things up. Instead of doing a beautiful face in colored pencil I just finished a graphite portrait of this lovely home. I really enjoy working in pencil once in a while. It takes me back to focusing on light and dark values. Value is king after all. If you don't have the values down the work won't be successful. I'll be mailing this piece out to the client this week and soon will have another house to do for her and I also have another people portrait to do soon. I love my time at the drawing board!

This week I'm also prepping for the Friday Painting Party. We've been in the middle of a wicked heat wave so my brain went to the beach hoping my body will follow- hence this month's project.....

This is from a photo I took at last year's beach trip. I love to lie under the umbrella and watch these guys skitter across the sand, pecking and poking. To stay updated on Painting Party info please visit my Facebook page. I'm usually posting links to cool artsy stuff I find online too.

The photo below is from the park where I walk in the morning. Because of this very hot weather we've been having I go to the park as early as 6:15 so I can finish my miles before I melt into the concrete. I really don't mind because I love to see the early morning light on the trees. Sometimes I even get to spot an eagle looking for breakfast. This tree is the eagle's favorite look out spot so every time I pass it on my laps around the lake I look up to see if he's sitting up there. This particular morning the orange light on the tree trunk and the moon peeking through the gap made for an interesting shot. You know this is going to show up on a canvas sometime. I might even play with gold leaf on this one- we'll see. I'll share when it gets going.

What's inspiring you lately?

Challenges and getting back to the drawing board

My favorite place to walk in the morning- Tuscawilla Park. This morning there was a breeze, the sun was shining, the crows were squawking and the ducks were mumbling to themselves when I walked by (you know how some words just don't look right when you spell them correctly? I had to look up squawking and it still doesn't look right to me LOL). Anyway.... it felt good to be out again. I did a very slow 2 miles today, much less than and much slower than I usually do but that's ok. 

For the last week and a half I've been fighting off a rheumatoid arthritis flare up. I've had the condition for many years and it's always been very mild- very, VERY fortunate that way. For some reason the first half of this year has been a little different. This is the second really bad flare I've had since the beginning of the year and it's been an extreme challenge. That's never happened before and this one took the wind out of my sails. Not being able to walk pissed me off but even more frustrating was not being able to paint or draw. I would look at the work sitting there- calling my name- the desire was there but the energy and physical ability just wasn't. 

Finally, yesterday, I was recovered enough to get back to the drawing board to work on this commission of Connor. Wow, did that feel good to be back. Got my Netflix shows going (Orange is the New Black) and I was able to hold and work the pencil for a few hours. If I could I would have gotten up and done a happy dance! :D

I'm excited about getting this little guy finished and I have several more commissions lined up. The next one being a house portrait in graphite. That'll be a little change of pace- looking forward to it.

Do any of you out there have similar issues with a chronic condition? I'd love to hear from you. If you're an artist how do you deal with it and your studio time? It can be pretty scary to think about the possibility of not being able to work. An artist friend of mine has had some severe vision problems and she's talked about turning to sculpture if she ever lost her sight. For me the fear is losing the use of my hands so I guess I'd have to come up with some creative way to hold a brush and pencil. We're artists right? We're creative. We can figure out a way.

So for now.... I'm back to work and not going to dwell on the negative possibilities because I can't even imagine a life without painting.

Take care everyone and have a beautiful Sunday.