Pelican Pete

New class for a new year.  I will be teaching this for my local painting chapter in January.  It's been an eventful year and I'm not quite ready to look back and take stock.  It has certainly been a year of upheaval in a lot of different lives.  Each and every one of us has to take life one day at a time and right now that is all I can do.  May the coming year be just a little LESS eventful!

Bruce the Beta

Bruce is actually Bruce #2.  He lives in my husband's home office and swims happily around all day in his lovely aquarium. The first Bruce wasn't as colorful and flashy as this Bruce.  When I was thinking ahead to painting class submissions I thought Bruce would be an interesting subject and something that would appeal to a wide variety of painters. It was very challenging to come up with a way to teach him in the time constraints of a classroom setting.  The first painting steps are negative painting with a few washes of color to get him started. This is what I taught at the SDP conference in Daytona in May and then again to my chapter this last Saturday.  So there are lots of Bruce paintings swimming around now!

SPRING FLING 2018

Spring Fling 2018 has come and gone!  I found a darling metal catchall organizer at Hobby Lobby and decided it would make the perfect centerpiece for my table.  And for table favors for each of my "guests" I created these darling cross body bags with a very generous outside pocket - perfect to keep that all important phone handy when out shopping!  I was really ambitious when making these so a few extras were created and can now be found in my Etsy store.  Check them out!

EXPLORE!

Happy New Year!  My word for this year is Explore!!  New ways to make art, new destinations, new ideas and ways of thinking about life in general.  Some of the ways to accomplish this is with new art classes.  I am participating in a couple of new online classes that started the beginning of this month.  One deals with creating new art each week to create a series.  I don't normally work in series mode so this should be interesting.  Everyone participating seems to have a different idea of what a series could or should be.  Looking forward to seeing how everyone approaches this.  The second online class is called the ART Studio with Kelly Hoernig.  I have taken many classes from Kelly and she is very adept at challenging everyone to reach deep into the well.  One of the first assignments was to gathering together a group of objects that describes YOU.  Here is my collection and I am quite pleased with how it came together.  What would your collection say about you?

GREAT DAY IS ALMOST HERE

Great Day in the Country is our local art/craft show. It's a great show to participate in because it is so close to home and is only one day.  I have been hard at work creating new artwork for sale and to submit for judging.  This is my piece that will be submitted.  Wish me luck!

AND THEN IRMA SHOWED UP

Irma decided to stop by for a visit and make everyone's life miserable. Bad Irma! Bad Irma!  We were  fortunate to have no house damage but were without power for 3-1/2 days. Thank goodness we had a generator! At least we were able to keep the refrigerator and freezer running. The Keurig allowed us that first cup of joe in the morning to face whatever was coming that day. The Keurig also provided enough hot water to wash up the few dishes/cutlery we were using.  A couple of fans attempted to keep us cooled off. The aftermath was so hot and humid a not hot shower actually felt pretty good.  My studio is a shambles however - all of my own making.  There is a really large picture window in my studio that faces south.  We didn't have storm shutters or anything to board up the windows so I rolled my tall steel shelving unit in front of the wood blinds and pushed my really heavy cutting table in front of that. If the window was to take a hit and break I was hoping to contain the damage a bit.  I know, wishful thinking on my part! If the window had been damaged the wind and rain would have made short work of my studio. But everyone feels the need to do something - however futile - in the face of such destruction!  So that is where my studio is a week later.  Today's effort will be to put the studio back to normal and get back to making art.  I still have paint skins on the work table so there may be more of these in the works.  Here is another one in a square frame.  I am quite liking the quietness of these.  After all the generator noise I can use a bit of quiet!

Waste Not, Want Not?

There are numerous projects on my painting table (and the dining room table too) and all are in various stages of drying.  Not that I was really looking to start something else, I felt the need to take a break and maybe do something totally different from the norm.  There was an epic fail of a painting sitting on the corner of my art table. This was a really expensive cradled panel that I had started for a present and was set aside after an unfortunate transfer process went horribly wrong.  The whole surface really needed a heavy sanding to make it usable again.  Not to worry, just turn the thing around and use the back recess as a deep frame.  Started by painting inside and out with Carbon Black for a good base coat. The edges weren't very tidy so I rooted around in my supplies until I found a jar of  charcoal Terra Cotta Texture (DecoArt) that was still good.  A palette knife applied a lovely textural finish to that raw edge.  Now for some art! I have tons of mat board scraps lying about.  And I have been playing with paint skins, most of which are created on my silicone mat from my base coat applications (works great and keeps my precious palette space cleaner).  Earlier in the week I had smeared some gold gesso across the palette to capture all the little bits and pieces of acrylic paint.  Left overnight to dry and peeled off the pieces the next day.  I used some gloss gel to glue these paint skins to a piece of black mat board to create and set aside to dry.  Once they were dry, I figured out where the best pieces were going to be and decided on 2" x 3" rectangles to cherry pick the best pieces.  Cut these out but the edges needed some kind of finish.  Laid a line of gold gesso on the silicone mat and dipped the edges of the cut sections in just to coat and the mini panels were set aside to dry.  Also cut some tiny squarish bits of the left overs and ended up setting a few of those down into the Terra Cotta Texture.  Once the texture was dry, I rubbed on a bit of Quinacridone/Nickel Azo Gold (my favorite Golden color) and a bit of Raw Sienna here and there just to give it a "rusty" touch.  From another piece of leftover mat, I cut smaller rectangles to stack up for spacers to float the mini panels off the background about 1/2" and these were glued into place to use as handles during the glazing process.  I also wanted more of a glazed surface to the panels so a layer of Clear Tar Gel (Golden) was applied with a palette knife for a fairly smooth finish (only because it seemed quicker than multiple layers of varnish). The outside of the frame needed a bit of shine so I washed on a thin layer of Renaissance Brown Elegant Finish Metallic Glaze (DecoArt).  Once the Clear Tar Gel is dry, the mini panels were glued into place with Tacky Glue. And we are done!

70 Days for Vincent - Catching Up

This past week, I went to Daytona Beach to teach for the first time at the Society of Decorative Painters annual convention.  I had a great class of 16 beginning students for Sandy the Seahorse.  All in all, they had a lot of fun! I continued to work on my little art pieces for the Vincent project but wasn't able to get them posted until now.  Here they are!

New Art Challenge- 70 Days for Vincent

My friend, Kelly Hoernig, had the opportunity of a lifetime and made an incredible journey to Europe  with a group of artists. Kelly is normally an amazingly prolific artist on a regular day and for her to come back so awestruck and inspired it must have been one incredible trip!  She decided to put forth a challenge based on Vincent Van Gogh's life and work by starting the 70 Days for Vincent art challenge. This is 70 pieces of art in 70 days!!!  So we have started this challenge.  The pieces are small and Kelly has a list of art prompts - one for each day of the challenge.  Even though I do think about art and creating every single day there are days that putting pen, pencil, paint, etc. to a surface just doesn't happen.  This is putting that daily practice into play!

Here are the first two days:  Circle 1/70 and Brush 2/70

PALATE CLEANSER

After working on such a large project, something quick and simple was just the thing to get back to painting!  I've had several books on painting techniques out of my comfort zone and found an idea I had been wanting to try for some time. Using a masking pen, I laid down some free form lines - arcs, round shapes, zig zags, interrupted lines and such. Made some connecting lines. Kept things simple but tried to vary the shapes created.  Next came the color.  For this exercise I used Golden fluid acrylics.  I thinned a few colors with a bit of water and poured each color  across the surface of the paper.  After this was dry, I went back and did some shape painting with pretty much full strength paint (but thinned the darker colors a bit).  While some areas were still wet, I spritzed on some alcohol from a sprayer I had. Once all this was dried, the masking fluid was peeled off and the painting evaluated.  The color blocks were doing good but more detail was needed.  Out came the color pastels and Inktense color sticks.  Lines and marks were added.  Still needed more detail so out came the white ink with a dip pen. My dip pens have been hanging around from my high school art days and it was really fun to put them to use again!  Lots of lines and marks were created with the white ink.  Once this was accomplished it was time to stop.  The mat color decision was made and cropping the painting left over a nice size scrap that turned into a couple of note cards.  Not bad for a couple of day's work!