Crocus painting

Crocus  6" x 6" acrylic

This is the last of the paintings I completed since the weekend. I think it actually looks better in person that I captured in this photo. Must be all the glare off  the acrylic. I worked on this one last night, finishing up around 1am. Honestly, I love that the house is quiet and I can dive right into these pieces, painting all hours until I am happy with them. Seems to me that I got started on this after I made dinner, wait...what did we have for dinner? My brain must be fried because I have to stop and focus to remember the last cooked meal...Oh! Seafood cassarole, cauliflower and garlic bread. 

OK - so after a late dinner I cleaned up and got this painting done - probably 2 1/2-3 hours. Late in the day to start, but at least I got another painting complete. This one has a lot of movement as the ground in my reference photo was kind of blah wood mulch, so I took some liberties with the texture.

It's funny, but these little flowers were tough to paint. I have a pastel of crocus that I completed recently, and I think the acrylic was a bit more work. The color is very saturated and transitions greatly in value from center to edges of the petals.

Crocus  10" x 4" pastel

For comparison, here is the pastel I created of the same subject. The pastel was tough to get saturated enough, but easy to blend from dark to light. The acrylic was more intense (I must be short on brilliant blue pastels) but challenging to blend correctly before drying on the canvas.

Which medium do you think worked better? I'd love to get some feedback on this.

Welcome painting

Wickford Welcome  5" x 7" acrylic

This painting I finished on Sunday. My best estimate would have to be 4 hours, but maybe it took me a bit longer on this one. I'm not much for architectural subjects, and my hands really want to make curvy shapes rather than straight ones. So I don't often paint such structural compositions, but this doorway just captured me when I walked by it in downtown Wickford, RI. The brickwork is actually yellow from flaking paint with a lot of the original brick color coming through.

Working on this piece and trying to get the lines both straight and casual looking was a challenge. I really don't want to add so much tight detail that you lose that brushy effect, and make a technical illustration instead of a loose painting. An artist that I admire who does this well is Mike Bryce in Pawtucket, RI. I've met him a couple of times through friends and at art events, and his style is just masterful. 

Looks like I need to paint a lot more hard edges and get my perspective down pat. 

Red Bridge painting

Red Bridge  7" x 5" acrylic

I just finished this painting Saturday. I think it took me between 2 and 3 hours to paint. I'm going to try posting right after I get these finished so that I can better track my progress and the time involved. 

This scene is from a photo I took when on an art vacation in Vermont. My friend April and I made it up to the Stowe area for a retreat, where we toured the area, took photos and created some artwork. The local visitor's guide had an article on waterfalls in the region, and we passed this little covered bridge as we were on the road.

As you can see I am using my new Utrecht easel (birthday present from my husband) for most of these paintings. The easel is pretty large, but can handle the little canvases too. I have a tabletop easel that works great for smaller pieces, but I am trying to get in the habit of using the full easel and it frees up my work table for the paints and my laptop, which I use to view my reference photos.

Queen Anne's Lace in acrylic

Queen Anne's Lace  6" x 6" acrylic

Another painting for the Attleboro Expo for the Senses, this study of Queen Anne's lace makes for an enjoyable subject to paint. I'll probably try a few more variations of these flowers from some photos I took lat summer.

Attleboro Expo for the Senses

Lilacs  7" x 5" acrylic

Thanks to a good friend Kim, I found out that The Attleboro Arts Museum is working with the city of Attleboro to create the Expo for the Senses at the end of this month. Luckily I was accepted as an artisan for the event, and will be selling my paintings and prints from a booth there on Saturday June 26th! The Expo runs from 12 - 5 pm and there will be music, food and handmade arts, crafts and jewelry for sale. The event is free and outdoors in downtown Attleboro, MA.

I have some pastels that I am framing for the event, but am juiced to create a bunch more paintings this month. Here's the first one I painted to get in the groove - back to acrylics for a bit. I'll be working on lots of small canvases to keep the work affordable, and it's really fun to paint quickly, and see progress in a short period of time. This first piece took me around three hours. Our lilac tree lost a few branches earlier this year, so I cut all the flowers and got them into water as fast as I could. Lilacs don't last too long once cut, so I took lots of photos to make paintings of later. I really like the yellow/purple combination.

I'll be posting more artwork as the paintings progress. I've been back to work on my Heart Art project as well, so I'm looking forward to lots more art blogging!

I am Ms. Crankypants

So one of my goals is to be a happier, more productive artist. I really want to be creative, leave anxiety and worry behind me, and be actively working towards the future I want.

Today, however, I am Ms. Crankypants.

We have two beautiful Australian Shepherds and two cats, and one of them has given me poison ivy. The dogs are the most suspect, based on the location of my rash. It seems that I ran my hands through somebody's fur and then unknowingly spread urushiol oil over parts of my body (including my face) when I got ready for bed. And I am not a happy camper.

My husband has checked the dog run, pulled anything looking suspicious, and with the advice of our vet, washed the dogs with Dawn dish detergent. I have laundered and wiped down anything I have touched that might carry the oil, and it looks like the rash has stopped spreading, so we are successful in that at least. I've been scrubbing down with Zanfel and am working on drying out the rash with a cream from the doctor. I just prepped some oatmeal for a bath that I am looking forward to tonight.

Husband is working from home this week, which has been helpful to me, but can't be too much fun for him what with my current state. It's somewhat depressing to be covered in itchy rash, and off and on I am pretty damn irritable. After one particularly low moment in which he said something along the lines of: "Well, I'll do what I can but it's challenging to get rid of the plants", I think I lost my mind and yelled some demand about him being more positive and to just lie to me and say it will get better (!) for the sake of my sanity. I eventually regained my senses, but it's been rough.

Since that outburst, hubby is doing his best to lift my spirits with much joking and poking and general silliness. He has also been kind in telling me that he thinks I am beautiful (hard to believe it when parts of your face look like sandpaper). I truly hope none of you out there get poison ivy, though it is unfortunately likely some of you will. I am looking forward to feeling human again soon.

Recycled Art Show!

Things have been busy lately, on the digital art side. I haven't been submitting as much art work as I would like to local shows though. So when I saw this one I jumped on it. West Side Arts in Providence is holding a "green" exhibition, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. All of the art included was to be made with 100% recycled or repurposed materials (plus paint). 

I had a little lead time on this one, and I just felt like experimenting, so I created two pieces - and they will both be included at the show!!

Seasons  8" x 29" paper, found plant spikes, gloss medium and thread

Spiral  8 1/2" x 8" cork, pins, antique buttons and acrylic

A lot of the work on "Seasons" was just rolling up paper into enough tubes to create the tapestry effect. I grabbed all of my junk mail and then started with colors that jumped out at me. I tried to limit the slices of paper to be within large areas of color to intensify the color story. I made the tubes thinking that I would string them on these plant spikes that I salvaged from the garden.

The beginning of the project

There was a range of values within the blues that I found, so I started experimenting with a gradating series of tubes, and then started looking for more shades that made a nice transition. I really like the effect, and it made me feel like this had a wintry mood. It was a little bland, so I added a vertical stripe of color that still fit the theme. 

Playing around with shades of color

Once I had this much done, I liked the texture, and thought I would expand the piece to include four panels - one for each season. And so I went back to cutting out paper from junk mail, fashion catalogs, and old magazines I had saved. Using the first piece as a model, I repeated the gradating effect with colors that reminded me of each season - greens of spring, broken by a line of pink, like flower blossoms. The summer piece was based on warm sunny tones, with a watery blue contrast. The autumn piece was deep reds and gold like New England foliage.

My project workspace

OK - let me tell you, this took a freakin' long time to make all the little paper tubes. There are 260 of them in the final piece, and I made more than that as I tested and eliminated color gradations. Eventually I got the four panels worked out, and using some thread, strung the plant spikes together. I wrapped the individual rows with a perpendicular plant spike, again with thread. 

Sorting by color

That finished up "Seasons", and I'm happy with the result! "Spiral" was a more straightforward process - I sliced some corks that I had saved, and assembled them with some pins from my Grandmother's sewing basket. They were heavy-duty numbers, so they held the cork rigidly, similar to a DNA model. Once I had the cork lined up as I liked, I painted the front surface with metallic acrylic, and embellished a few of them with buttons my Grandmother had saved. It was a much quicker project, and really enjoyable in a different way - it was less color story and more of a sculptural form.

If you are in the Providence area on Friday May 21st, consider coming to the opening reception (6 - 10pm). The show runs through June 11th. Here's the Facebook event page. Enjoy!