Garden Wandering...

I've been wandering around the garden taking photos of all things blooming-anything that might inspire a later painting. The peonies have gone and the roses are doing their thing now. Most of them came through the winter unscathed.

I guess I'm already preparing for the winter months...you never know when you'll have the urge to paint a Fourth of July rose in the dead of winter. Here are a few of the latest pieces I've done.

The dandelion above was inspired by a photo taken by my friend Jocelin. She does awesome closeups of all sorts of flowers.

I don't know if I'm done with this one...the stems and leaves look too raggedy to me. I might have to stare at this one for  a while. While I'm waiting for a solution, I've prepared a lot of small boards to play with-perfect for noodling about while watching TV or listening to music. Hope everybody has a happy Fourth!

New Place To Show My Work!

My friend and stylist extraordinaire, Tatum, has just opened her own salon on Main street in Durham called Adara. Along with keeping my hairs in tip top shape and stopping me from shaming daughters 1 through 4, she has kindly offered to display my artwork in her salon. Last Friday I delivered 5 paintings to Adara and hope to deliver a couple more at the end of this week. Here is what is on display at Adara....

Ok, This is  sideways but for some reason iPhoto and blogger refuse to play nice...

Going From This to That...

Here is the painting that I was working on the other day. I didn't really like where it was going so I went elsewhere. That peach around the edges really was disturbing me. I don't know why. I just wanted to get rid of it. So I queued up Amazon Prime and started watching episodes of "Dead Like Me" until I got bored of that and switched to "Galaxy Quest". I love that movie...

And this is what happened while I was watching. (See below). I also don't know whether I am finished with this. So I will let it sit for a while and stare at it from time to time while I mess around with other projects...

Sketchbook Envy...

Lately I've been looking through this book, "Sketching from the imagination" edited by 3DTOTALPUBLISHING. I gifted it to myself at Christmas-ordering from Amazon and throwing it into my husband's closet when it arrived(My favorite way of ensuring I get what I want...). 

It caused a severe case of sketchbook envy. I love checking out other artist's studios and their sketchbooks and I'm always amazed at the intricacy of some-ok let's face it-most of their drawings. I'm more of a "bare bones" type sketchbook person, as seen by the sketch of one of my projects below. Granted, it is not a painting so it was more plotting and gathering ideas and suggestions of materials. I also tend to sketch with really light pencil so I put in black and white so you could see the actual sketch.

I wonder about the amount of time they devote to their sketches and whether or not they are a basis for a painting. Are they going to cover up all that beautiful drawing with paint? Or are they just messing around? I think I am too impatient for that. Here are a few sketches that are intended for paintings or have ended up as one.

Future painting

And another....

Preliminary sketch of Crow Maiden

Finished Crow Maiden

And that's as complicated as it gets.

Plants and Projects are Springing Up All Over

Well this winter has been a mother...and I don't mean that in a kind, devoted, and loving way. Didn't get much painting done. I felt like I was hibernating in my studio-gathering ideas and images-but little else. Then over the last week, the snow has melted, the sun has come out and plants are bursting through the surface. Now it's a race to get the garden cleaned up before the plants get too tall. In the meantime, I've got several projects I've been working on in the studio too.

Started working on this piece a couple weeks ago and have been gathering and testing materials on it. I want to kind of weave a sky between the two branches. Discovered wire won't work-not enough tension. Trying embroidery thread next.

Then I started cleaning up the frames I've been collecting from friends, the dump and wherever. I think I can stop for a while...

Don't know where I'm going with this one below. Just playing with some colors, drips, and splotches.

Again with colors and plant shapes. We all know they won't end up looking like this...

This one is based on a photo I took of the swamp in the woods last fall. Still needs lots of work, but the colors are in the right places...

 Hopefully I will be able to keep up with it all. I feel like I'm in a race but I don't know who I'm competing with... I would like this to be a calm creative summer. There is no wedding to plan. No guests scheduled. Just a lot of painting and gardening.

Mystery at Working Cat Studio

Sounds like a Nancy Drew book and I'm probably dating myself... but I walked into the studio this afternoon to place a bracelet I need to repair on my jewelry bench and I found this-

"Instant Gratification Jewelry". Who put it there? What were they trying to say? Were they trying to say anything?  Asked daughter # 3 and she had no clue. Texted friends and asked if they had broke in and left it on the bench and one of them suggested that maybe I ordered it after a couple glasses of wine and had forgotten it. Possible, but I don't think so. And yet, I did have a mimosa this morning....

What I'm Working on Wednesday...

So I got a little off track there during the holidays-too much good food, libation, and Pinterest! In between all those activities, I took a little break from painting and messed around on the jewelry bench the husband built for me.

I've been wanting to do that for sometime but between getting ready for the"Off The Grid" show and the holidays, it just didn't happen. I spent most of my Christmas vacation listening to music and surfing the web. I guess that's ok-it's all inspiration. On the jewelry bench, I did a lot of repairs of my own jewelry and created a few things. My goal was to complete at least one project from one of the many jewelry books I own. I made several milagro bracelets from the book "Inspiritu Jewelry" by Marie French.

I am also determined to bring eyeglass chains back into fashion-only because I keep losing my glasses at work and don't want to look like an old lady! I also made a necklace out of a snowflake ornament I purchased at the Button Factory in Portsmouth several yrs ago. That's the extent of my creative exploits during the last few weeks. It's time to get working. It's a new year!

What's A Girl To do?

Went down to the studio today to get some work done and what do I find? The studio cats have gotten there before me. No browsing books and catalogs on the thinking chair.

No working on the jewelry bench. Instead I made these-cats on flats! That's what I get for doing too much Pinterest!

Merry Christmas!

And a Happy Creative New Year!

What I'm Working On Wednesday...

Remember this monstrosity? Another old painting coverup. This time of a young woman with an unfortunately long face...

With a little time and regrets of the bygone summer (Where did it go so fast ? I swear we were just in August), the green blob evolved into this painting of digitalis or foxgloves...

I added a little more detail with a Prismacolor pencil at the end, but all in all, I think it turned out OK!

What I'm Working On Wednesday...

This project got a bit of an update the other day and was finally completed. When I last blogged about it, it was at this stage and I didn't know what to make of it:

I used the extra gessoed boards I had from my Glass Ceiling project, some light modeling paste (I LOVE playing with that stuff!), acrylics, and Radiant Rain's Shimmering mist spray for kicks. I was kind of stuck on where to go next when a friend suggested it needed little white flowers. At first I thought I would try an eye dropper and some fluid acrylics, but that was a fail. I ended up adding dots and flowers with a small brush.

At this stage I'm always afraid of ruining something and wondering whether or not to stop so of course I didn't. I added some more detail with a black micron pen and these were the finished paintings:

Daughter #4 has claimed them for her apartment next year. I guess that's a seal of approval...

Off The Grid Opening...

I attended my first opening that included my work on Friday night. Very exciting. I went with the Husband and Daughter #3 who is also an artist and met up with friends Joyce and Annemarie who are my artistic support team.

Daughter #3 and the Husband

We arrived at Artstream at about 5:45 and the place already had quite a few people there. I spoke with Susan, studio owner and friend, and then schmoozed with Annemarie and Joyce while admiring the other artists' work.

With Annemarie and Joyce

I also spoke with Jill another ARC graduate who also was showing some work there. Afterwards we hightailed it over to the local pizza place for some celebratory pizza and beer. Food of the gods, food of the gods....

Ta da!

The only bad part is now I have to set another goal for myself. Oh well I can safely shelve that until New Year's...

What I'm Working On Wednesday...

So I thought that since I'm struggling so much to sit down and actually blog a couple times a week, I would give myself a theme like "Throwback Thursday" in order to entice myself to blog on. I came up with "What I'm working on Wednesday". Not the cleverest of themes, but it works for me-I hope.
So here's another project that I've recently completed. I haven't even named it yet, so if you have any suggestions-let me know.
This project started off like several of mine lately. It was a redo of an old painting that I no longer liked. I had read an article in Cloth Paper Scissors about adding different textures to your canvas. This involved covering the canvas with masking tape and the gessoing it. When I last blogged about it, it looked like this:

Guess I was channeling the holidays and thinking of a snow scene. Well that didn't last long and the snow turned into woods...

And then the woods got a little crazy and turned into a moonlit scene...

Paint was dripped and a tad of glitter was added and then she was done.

Preparation for "Off the Grid"...

I'm not really going off the grid, although I used to harbor fantasies of that in my younger days. Too much reading of "My Side Of the Mountain" I guess. No, these are the pieces I have been working on for Artstream Gallery's "Off the Grid" show which opens this Friday Dec. 6th. I am so excited to be included. As a friend pointed out, this is the second time I have shown my work this year. How's that for throwing yourself out to the universe?
I have been working on these pieces for the past couple of months-ever since my friend Susan gave me the invitation.  Here is my process:

early concept-rejected because it was too literal

So one of the requirements was that we were allowed to submit up to 4 pieces. They also had to be a maximum of 6"x6". A challenge for me because I usually don't work so small.

I cut and then prepared the boards with a couple coats of gesso...

The concept that eventually came to me was that I wanted to paint a young woman pressing up against the proverbial glass ceiling, trying to break free of rules, confinement, strictures-the grid. I enlisted daughter #3 as model and took some photos of her from above. I selected 4 photos and based the drawings on them.

Photo, prepared board, and drawing

More photos and boards...

Starting to actually paint the figures was scary. I was afraid I was going to screw it up or make some irreparable mistake which I guess was silly because then I could just paint over it...

So I painted on fortified with the occasional glass of wine...

I decided to add the detail with prismacolor pencils so I could have more control. It also added an interesting layer of texture to the painting. I protected the pencil layer with a layer of acrylic medium and then added the glass ceiling after I had a glue trial with my glass and brass bits. I now own more glue than I will ever need...at least until the next project.

The finished pieces...Glass Ceiling #1, #2, #3, #4

Glass Ceiling #1

Glass Ceiling #2

Glass Ceiling #3

Glass Ceiling #4