June rhymes with moon

new drawing

2011-12-07T17:45:00.000-08:00

Happy December, readers! How is it December, anyway?

Here's what I've been working on for the past week or so. I used my grandpa's Pentax as the model for this (is that what you call inanimate objects that you draw?). It still needs the shutter repaired or cleaned or whatever but it works fine to draw from.

I did some ruler lines and some doodly lines on this one. It's still a challenge for me to go in on top of a finished drawing that I like with no ruler and just hope for the best but I think it's probably good for me :)

It's 11x14" pencil, gouache, and watercolor on hot press paper. Only thing I didn't try was an image transfer on top of this but I thought it was getting awfully busy.

square-ing

2011-11-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

I hope you aren't sick of the sight of these mini paintings because I'm having so much fun making them! These are both 6x6" watercolor, gouache, graphite, and image transfers on 300lb. cold press watercolor paper.

I love getting to incorporate some of the things from my digital collages into actual paint-on-paper paintings. I printed several of the bits of handwriting and typography multiple times on the sheets of transfer paper and it's interesting to me to reuse them in a different way each time.

I think if I only made collages out of the original pieces of paper I would never be able to use these things I've inherited. It's one thing to cut up an old book or magazine I bought but I would never cut up my grandma's knitting books or chop into her notes on a knitting pattern.

And totally unrelated: I had a dream about fireflies a few nights ago. I've never seen fireflies in real life but they were unbelievably beautiful in my dream.

art opening!

2011-11-11T22:33:00.000-08:00

The opening and art walk for the Mini Art Show and the main gallery show at Ghost Gallery was last night. I stopped by to see my little squares - I never get tired of seeing my pieces up on walls :)

It's official - I was there and I made some art. There you have it.

But the best part was seeing my lovely artist friend Letha! I hardly ever get to see her so it was delightful having a chance to catch up. That's not her work behind her - we couldn't get to her pieces due to a mass of people but she does some pretty amazing stuff (check it out right here).

Apart from a cold I'm fighting I had a great night! Thanks again to Laurie of Ghost Gallery for curating this show.

mini art show!

2011-11-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

Not a show with few pieces but a show with many many tiny pieces! I have a few of my new little square paintings in this show in Seattle at Ghost Gallery...looks like it should be amazing!

pillows

2011-10-26T23:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of little projects I did recently. I know, this is supposed to be my art blog but sometimes I need a little mindless crafting.

The geometric pillow is made of Pendleton wool - I fell in love with this fabric and decided to buy a yard of it. So nice that I can buy it by the yard! I got two pillows and a rectangle that I just hung on the wall by itself out of the piece I bought and I think I still can make a bag out of what's left.

The crochet pillow was a sort of "what can I do on a plane" project. I saw a photo of a cute granny square pillow somewhere in blog land around the same time I was going to be on a plane and I thought granny squares would be the perfect project for flying. No pattern to follow, really, and they're so small. I had finished most of the squares months ago and finally got them all assembled and onto a pillow form. It's also wool...Cascade 220 yarn in the closest matching colors to the Pendleton fabric that I could find, plus white because I like white. :)

So the last picture is what happens to these wooly objects with cats around: they're getting kind of squashed and I'm a little worried about the life expectancy on that crochet pillow. It snags pretty easy with all the little holes between the stitches.

last of this batch

2011-10-13T15:00:00.001-07:00

4x4" watercolor, gouache, graphite, and image transfers on watercolor paper.

Here's the last two of the stack. I'm really happy with how these image transfers are working - they're sort of translucent (as long as I only print things that aren't super dark). It totally feels like I'm doing some Photoshop layering but in real life - so fun. I miss having an "undo" sometimes though.

more squares

2011-10-01T21:09:00.000-07:00

Slightly bigger this time - 6x6" watercolor, graphite, gouache, and image transfers on cold press watercolor paper.

This is some paper I picked up on sale - I'm usually too cheap to buy 300lb. paper so I ended up with cold press this time. It's relatively smooth for cold press so I think I like it well enough for the price :)

tiny little squares

2011-09-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

4x4" graphite, watercolor, gouache, image transfers on 300lb. cold press watercolor paper.

I started a whole pile of these several days ago - I cut a bunch of squares, then I did all the pencil doodling, then all the watercolor and let them dry, then the gouache, and then some iron-on transfers on top. I decided to skip the acrylic layer that I was messing around with before because it didn't seem like it was adding that much to the pieces. So that made the image transfers infinitely easier - all I had to do was plunk the iron down and wait until the transfer stopped making a little hissing sound and then peel off the backing paper. SO much easier than applying them to the acrylic.

There's something very satisfying about going straight in and drawing crooked wonky lines and circles with no ruler! I'm sure I will still use my rulers and circle templates and things on some pieces but working on these tiny squares is so fun :)

drawing on Creature Comforts!

2011-09-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

Ez over at Creature Comforts has a post up today which includes one of my drawings. If you're not familiar with this blog you should be! It's just gorgeous.

Happy weekend!

film: roll 2!

2011-09-01T18:00:00.001-07:00

I had family visiting so the scanning project got slowed down a bit but here's some more film. This is the roll out of the Yashica (44A if you're interested) and I really like it! The fourth photo is a double exposure but it's hard to tell that it is. So here's a few shots and the rest are here.

Oh, and this is from the negatives...finally worked out the problems I was having with the scanner.

film: roll 1!

2011-08-25T17:43:00.001-07:00

I got my rolls of film back today...woo!

I'm still scanning everything but here's the first roll. Yes, I scanned the prints but I don't want to hear about it. My scanner which came with a negative and slide scanning accessory is apparently terrible at scanning negatives. They looked awful. I suppose I might be doing something wrong but I got impatient so I scanned the prints.

For some reason the prints were sort of sepia toned so I killed that off in photoshop so you can see how they are supposed to look. I think, anyway...the box said black and white so I don't know why they were so brown.

I tried to get a variety of light conditions but I'm not sure I can even tell so I think at least for this black and white film I'll just go for it if I see something I like. Everything came out pretty darn good and this is the camera with no focusing, no shutter speed adjustment, just a button and a winder. I think I'm in love! :)

Sadly the roll of film that was sitting for decades in the Pentax was completely blank. Not vague or hard to see, just blank as far as I can tell. I was really hoping there would be something interesting on it.

new drawing; image transfer update

2011-08-17T19:54:00.000-07:00

9x12" on hot press watercolor paper.

I thought I would try incorporating a little of the looser watercolor feel of those little paintings into a full drawing. This is kind of similar to how I was using the watercolor in the plant paintings I was doing a while back. It's nice to mix it up a little - I think I was getting a little rigid with the gouache and sometimes I need to just splash out some watercolor and not worry too much if it might ruin the painting :)

And here's some transfers on the last painting I did. I don't really do image transfers because it seems like you always have to have a laser printer or a copy machine for the usual methods (I don't). Also, one of my friends at school used to do them with acrylic medium and I saw how long it takes to soak and rub off the paper when it's done...I'm not always that patient.

So I got an email from Daniel Smith (local art supply store and maker of awesome paints) that said they were carrying an iron-on transfer paper that works with inkjet prints. Hey, I have an inkjet printer! And an iron! It's called Transfer Artist Paper and apparently you can iron it onto most anything. And you can use it as a drawing surface and then iron that onto something, too. So I went down and bought some and printed up a couple sheets. I ironed little samples onto gesso, fabric, different papers, and acrylic medium on paper.

I thought I worked out how to use it pretty well (by wrecking a few of the samples, naturally) so I put two transfers onto the acrylic medium that's on the top of this little painting. The first one - the handwriting - went on perfectly. The second - the diagram? Not really. :P I ended up having to do the full soak-it-and-rub-like-mad to get the paper backing off. So annoying. It fused the whole thing together so I think I need to start with a much shorter time with the iron before I check if it will peel. So chalk that up to the learning curve, I guess. I do like the effect though so I'll keep trying.

trial #2

2011-08-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

Here's another one - same paper, same size, watercolor, gouache, etc. I mixed up the acrylic layer over the top a little differently this time. It's a bit more watery and I think I didn't put enough white pigment in...? It doesn't have the sort of frosted translucent quality I was hoping for, anyway. It's hard to tell how it's going to dry while I'm mixing it.

I kind of like it like this but I think I'm going to try an image transfer on top of it to see what happens.

Camera/film update: I've put a roll of film through each of the cameras...just sending it out now. Can't wait to see what happened! :)

experimenting!

2011-08-11T22:40:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's August already! This summer is flying by. Of course, we didn't get any warm weather really until a couple of weeks ago so that may be what's confusing me.

Here's something I've been working on this week. This is pencil, watercolor, gouache, and a little colored pencil on 6x6" cold press watercolor paper. I've been thinking a lot about ways to loosen up my abstract work on paper and maybe incorporate a looser sketchier quality into the figure pieces in the abstract layers, too. So I played around with it in my sketchbook and tried actually painting a couple of things but this is the first one I don't hate :) It's still diagram-based but no rulers or circle templates this time.

Over the top is a mix of acrylic medium and a tiny bit of white and gold pigment to make it slightly opaque, plus a little water to thin it down. I saw somebody doing a faux-encaustic look with acrylic medium somewhere on the internets and I've been wanting to try it.

I got some 300 lb. watercolor paper to try it on so it could handle the thick layer of acrylic without curling up - plus I figured if I don't like this effect it would be great to collage on for the same reason.

rainy day - back to the studio

2011-07-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

I thought I was going riding today - supposed to be sunny and dry. Instead I woke up to steady rain and decided it was time to go into the studio.

I've been picking away at this project for a week or two - I decided to pull the paintings off some of these panels to reuse them so that was step one. Once the canvases were off I sanded and re-sealed the panels. Now I'm working on a little experiment with my surface prep. These have some molding paste mixed with gesso and I tried brushing it on for the first coat here. Then for the one on the left I sort of troweled the mixture on with a painting knife and did a second brushed coat on the one on the right. I'll probably sand it a bit too when it's dry. I'm not sure the texture shows up that well in the photos - it was very gloomy and dark today :P

I'm hoping for a thick and smooth texture on these but with some tooth to it so I can paint like it's gesso but draw with a pencil like it's paper. I can't really draw straight onto canvas the way I would on paper so I'm hoping this will give me some more options.

things I've learned in the past week or so: a list.

2011-07-13T15:40:00.001-07:00

(Cat included not to show scale but because you can't take a photo in this house without a cat stepping into the shot)

While talking to my mom about my pinhole lens for my digital camera she mentioned she still had some of her old cameras. So when I was home visiting this month I had a look around the basement to see what I could find and possibly use for my own purposes.

The little Brownie Holiday at the top is the camera is the one she used when she was a kid and it appears to be still in working order as far as I can tell. The other two look like they still work too...the Pentax takes 35mm film so it will be easy to find out if it's still working but the other two take 127 film. I assumed that anything I found that took an odd film size would only be useful for looking at or doing through-the-viewfinder images but apparently you can still get film for them online and even still get it developed, although not surprisingly you have to send it out. I think I'll get some film just to see what they can do. This may be a short-lived project since I don't really miss having to deal with developing film now that I have a digital camera but the temptation to try Mom's little Brownie is too strong to ignore :)

So to sum up some things I've learned:

I want to buy film for a camera which hasn't happened in forever

You can buy some really weird film formats online

Film people (as in, people who scorn digital cameras) are kind of scary

My mom keeps a lot of random stuff in the basement

And some things I've learned recently that do not involve photography:

If you think that you can go riding even when you have a miserable cold because once you've gotten the saddle on the horse, the rest should be easy, think again! Once you're away from your handy step to get up on the horse, you have to get on from the ground! And in my case this meant that even while standing on the uphill side to get a better start I still almost didn't make it. Which would have meant walking back to the house.

Double check that your new mp3s actually are on your mp3 player before driving back to your hometown (5 hours there and 5 hours back, for me).

30% chance of rain might mean anything from "a 30% chance it will rain at all" to "it will rain 30% of the time today" to " the air is made up of 30% rain." I had one very exciting ride this week :P

garden interlude

2011-06-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

June is rose season around here. Most of the roses are putting out their first flowers around the same time so it's a great time to go shopping and see what you're getting.

I've pulled out a few more big euphorbiums from this bed that died over the winter and the blank spaces seemed like they needed new roses. Last weekend was lovely and sunny (not that you'd know it from these gloomy photos from today) so me and the boy went shopping.

The top photos are of my own personal method of garden design: buy some pretty things that go together and then move the pots around until I like the effect :) I'll leave them in their pots and make sure I'm happy before I put them in the ground. I like making a composition out of the flowers and it feels very similar to putting together a collage - all the pieces are cut out and I just move them around until it all works (I hope).

The roses are (from top): Darcey Bussell (new), Eden, Rose de Rescht, Gertrude Jekyll, and Heritage.

pinhole Hawaii

2011-06-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

Cathy mentioned pinhole photography a few months ago and I thought it sounded interesting but I can't really see myself taking photos with film. So as I was poking around looking at pinhole photos I saw something about digital pinhole photography which seems much more like my kind of thing - instant gratification. :) I tried making my own pinhole but it was not working that well so I gave up and bought a commercial version.

I hadn't had time to play with it before we went on vacation so I tried it out on waves and palm trees and such. I kind of love it and I'm going to see what else it can do now that we're back home.

little vacation!

2011-06-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

We went to Hawaii with my sweetie's family last week. We got some good family time in - they all live two states away so we don't see them nearly often enough. I played with my new camera and lenses (although I must always add the disclaimer that I'm not a proper photographer). So I took pictures of fishes in tide pools (above)...

...little bitty crabs on the beach...

...and as required by law, I took many pictures of the sunset from the beach.

Of course, now I'm feeling all jet-laggy and weird so I should probably have another vacation to recover from this one, right? :)

tiny birds

2011-05-31T23:26:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again...the garden is growing out of control (including the weeds, unfortunately), there's a horse who needs exercising, and I have several sewing projects to put together for summer.

So there's no art in this post but am I apologizing? I am not. Things happen. It's ok. The only problem is that I tend to post here when I have art to show you so when I haven't been in the studio much I sort of feel like I have nothing to post. But today I am sharing with you some tiny little hummingbirds so I hope that will be ok :) I got a zoomier lens for my camera and I've been practicing on these little guys. Hummingbirds are so tiny I've never gotten a good picture of one before. They're all buzzing around looking for a fight so if you go out in my yard right now you're likely to be divebombed and chirped at within an inch of your life.

tattoo!

2011-05-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

Not on me, though. Lovely Stephanie who wanted the tattoo design of magnolias has sent me photos of the finished tattoo (and an in-progress shot, ouch). I think it turned out pretty fabulous! Amber from Dana Tattoo in Cincinnati did the tattooing.

Thanks again to Stephanie for getting me involved in this project - designing a tattoo was new to me and a good learning experience in doing custom work :)

Greenwood-Phinney Art Walk

2011-05-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

I've been doing prep work for the big Greenwood-Phinney Art Walk in Seattle the last few days. I thought I would bring some original pieces framed and also a few matted prints to accommodate a wider variety of budgets :)

The art walk is Friday, May 13th and Saturday, May 14th and I'll be at Alterations Fit 4 You at 7411 Greenwood Ave N.

I love hanging out and talking to people and especially talking about art, so I think it'll be fun! I'm hoping to sneak out for a minute and see some of the other artists, too :)

new member of the family!

2011-05-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

Meet the new member of the family! This is My (short for Marigold, her registered name) and she just arrived this morning. She's not quite sure what she thinks about her big move just yet but she's settling in pretty well :)

"growing" collages

2011-04-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

Digital collages, 6x8".

So the past few weeks have involved a lot of driving around meeting horses that are for sale. I'm desperate for a new therapist (the horse, in case that wasn't obvious).

I've found the right one, though, and she'll be arriving next week! Eeee! I'm sure I'll have lots of photos to show you when she gets here...sorry :)

Anyway, the other project this week was getting a building put up to store hay. Miss Boo was on bagged hay pellets instead of baled hay so we didn't really need much space to store them and now we need a place to keep a couple tons of hay. While the guys were here working on the shed I was working on collages since they're easier to set aside if I needed to pop outside when there's a question about something.

Incidentally, I titled them "Growing 1, 2, and 3" because it seemed appropriate for both springtime and a time when our family is growing. :)

magnolias

2011-04-22T12:36:00.001-07:00

I was recently contacted by somebody wanting to know if I do custom work. I don't, really, but she was interested in a magnolia drawing that she could have tattooed on her shoulder. I thought it sounded like an interesting project (and I do love the magnolias) so this is what we came up with. The drawing itself is about 5x7" and I think it's on an 8x10" sheet of paper. I haven't tried drawing this many things that small in years!

The bottom two flowers are the big southern evergreen magnolias from the tree at her house and the other two are from my smaller magnolias that drop their leaves. I like that it feels like a collaboration and has things that are meaningful in it. I humbly requested a photo of the finished tattoo so I'll post it when I get it. I just sent over the drawing a couple of days ago so it might not be right away, though.

Anyway, it was probably a good learning experience for me about doing custom work and commissions...not sure if I would do it again but I would at least know how to do it :)

quilt

2011-04-18T23:06:00.001-07:00

Hello all! I'm dashing off to go to a friend's baby shower out of town and I thought my little quilt I made for her turned out cute. This is before I washed it so it's a tad wrinkly in these shots and let's just say I'm not a quilter at all so you won't be seeing any close-up photos :)

Anyway, hope your weekends were all delightful! I've got another project to show you but it'll have to wait until I get back, I guess.

more books

2011-04-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

When my mom was visiting last week she brought over some books that she had found in their basement. If I've ever grumbled about how my parents had books that I wanted to use for art purposes, these are (almost) the books I was looking for. The ones I remembered were in my grandpa's shop/garage and were all old train books. Oddly enough, these are train books from my other grandpa. Like I said, there's railroads on both sides of my family - q.e.d. :)

As far as I can tell, he bought them from somebody at a garage sale or something - Fred Ackerland was the original owner and Robert Houx was my grandpa. Fred Ackerland (or is it Ackerlund?) must have been a teenager or so because there's a ton of random stuff stuck into the books with him practicing his signature. Isn't there a certain age where you are really interested in making your signature look cool?

Anyway, I've only just started scanning things out of these but I thought you might enjoy a small selection. I love that my grandpa left them all in there too.

Oh, and the Ryan Hotel is still there :)

whales

2011-03-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

My mom was over visiting last week so I don't have any art-y things to show you but I do have whales! We went out on a boat and saw gray whales migrating past the Washington coast. I've never been out on the water whale watching before - my only other whale sightings were from land so they were not exactly very close.

I love having house guests because that seems like the only time I do things like this. Even though it's not very far away I never take the time to do some of the tourist-y things.

mauve-y? lavender?

2011-03-22T12:28:00.000-07:00

More digital collages, 9x12".

I don't know what you call that color there but I'm completely fixated on it lately :) I used to never wear purple or lavender and now all of a sudden I love it. How does that happen?

spring at last!

2011-03-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

Happy Spring to my northern hemispherical friends! Not much has come up in the garden as of yet but my hellebores are going strong despite getting buried in snow a few weeks ago :) And whatever flowering tree I have there is juuuust about ready to flower. Oh, and the spotty green leaves are my pulmonaria popping up.

I feel like I'm coming out of hibernation, too...do you get that feeling in spring? One day of sunshine and I'm whizzing around doing things in the house and weeding in the garden and kind of all over the place.

I took these pics with my new camera which does not have a handy little screen that I can tilt up towards me when I'm trying to photograph something down at ground level. My old camera was great for this sort of thing (although not the greatest camera). So I tried to point the camera up under the hellebores and click and then look what I got. Not the most efficient method but I got some interesting compositions that way :)

facebooking

2011-03-08T22:33:00.001-08:00

Ok, Hollie has finally gotten me inspired to figure out the facebook fan page. If you'd like to push the button, it's right over there on the sidebar. Thanks Hollie! My hero :)

gallery

2011-03-06T18:10:00.000-08:00

My little pieces are now up at Ghost Gallery in Seattle. Here's some pics if you'd like to take a look. There's some other great miniature pieces there, too!

Thanks to gallery owner/curator Laurie Kearney! They look great :)

squares

2011-02-26T12:30:00.000-08:00

6x6", gouache and graphite on stonehenge paper.

Here's what I actually ended up putting in the two 6" frames for the gallery. I think this is the last of what I've been working on lately :)

fyi: that is some genuine old rickrack from my grandma's sewing box that I used for the reference photo. It even has the tiny little pin and the card it came on. Clearly my hoarding tendencies are genetic, which means it's not my fault that I can't throw away craft and art supplies that I might be able to use someday. I'm relatively tidy about many things but art supplies, crafty things, and books I always seem to keep. This is why you don't see that many photos of the inside of my studio, I guess. I can't stop hoarding in there but at least I know that I should feel a little shame about it :D

snow and moss

2011-02-25T15:45:00.001-08:00

Digital collages, 9x9".

These are from some pictures I took over the last couple days - one set of pics of snow falling at night, taken with a flash. That's what all the spotty spots are. The other pics were the next day in the snow of some mossy trees.

I took a kitty out in the snow to look around and this is what she did when I actually set her down in the snow. Those little toes all spread out with claws extended mean she was not too sure about all this :)

collages

2011-02-22T14:15:00.001-08:00

I scanned these little paper collages before I put them in their frames last week and forgot to post them so you could actually see what they look like :) And obviously I had the digital ones at the top finished before I printed and framed them, too. I've been fighting a cold and I'm not quite on top of things yet, I guess.

The two digital collages are 4x4" which is, let's face it, really tiny. I tried to keep them sort of simple compared to the big pieces so they wouldn't look too cluttered. Trying to keep some white space when there's only four inches to work in is kind of hard :P The purple is derived from photos I took of my hellebores which are just starting to bloom. The sort of scroll-y patterns are out of a 1920s or so copy of Pride & Prejudice. I've been re-reading (and re-watching) Jane Austen lately...very soothing, much like knitting and such to me.

oils

2011-02-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

4x4"
4x4"
6x6"

Here's the scans of those new oils I was working on.

I couldn't resist trying a new color when I was at the art supply store a week ago. I hadn't tried Williamsburg paints before and I couldn't justify buying any when I already have plenty of paints...until I spotted this one. The top of the label is the actual paint sample and it's called Ultramarine Pink. Who ever heard of an Ultramarine Pink? I like it a lot.

new pieces

2011-02-15T18:46:00.000-08:00

Here's what the studio table has looked like the past couple of days.

I have an opportunity to show some tiny wee little pieces in a small Seattle gallery and I only had a few things that were within the size guidelines. I put together some more oil paintings on a few panels that I already had and some little collages. I ended up having to order some frames online because I couldn't find any small enough that would let me put in a mat to keep the pieces off the glass. So I cut some really, really tiny mats - apparently I can cut a mat that's half an inch wide which I did not know before! Good to know :)

You've seen a few of these before...

...and these are new. These are 4x6" and 4x4".

Incidentally, these photos were taken during daylight hours. You'd never know it though...so gloomy today :P

painty paint

2011-02-04T19:49:00.001-08:00

Oil on canvas on panel, 12 x 12".

I wanted to do a pink oil painting to round out the blues and greens. I think oil painting is very relaxing for me because pretty much the only thing I can do wrong is overwork it. I mean, if I were doing something more detailed or realistic there would be tons of things that could go wrong but with these, any bit of color or pencil or any stray brushstrokes can be blended away. And unlike watercolors, I've got, oh, about three hours to notice that I don't like something and change it :)

I use four or five brushes at a time - one or two for each color I'm using so I can just swap them when I want to move a color back and forth. And I don't get too worried if the colors start getting into other areas - I just let 'em go. I like the sort of scattered effect and I love the brushstrokes that show when this happens.

new collages

2011-01-31T14:28:00.000-08:00

More photos, more scans, more textures. The colors on these digital pieces are all derived from the photos and scans instead of picking a color that's pretty like I usually do when I'm painting. I'm making the colors more or less saturated and replacing some with other colors from the same piece but it's all there to start with.

The non-photo bits here are from a gardening book of my grandma's. She had cut out articles in the paper with gardening advice and stuck them into the book, so I've used a little of both here. I think I'm gravitating toward the gardening themes again as we get closer to spring.

Creativadoration

2011-01-28T15:20:00.000-08:00

Janick over at Creativadoration posted on my work today...thanks, Janick! Check out her shop, too...lovely.

treasury

2011-01-22T15:45:00.000-08:00

Here's a little treasury I made. I think I get too attached to them and I'm very disappointed if nobody ever sees them, so I feel the need to post them here on the blog. I love finding new artists from other people's treasuries, so I hope you all don't mind when I share mine :)

more layers

2011-01-22T14:58:00.000-08:00

Digital collages, 5x7".

Making these is a good excuse to try taking more random pictures and I'm liking my new camera. I haven't had a camera that had a manual focus option in several years so I'm taking a bunch of odd blurry and light-spot-y pictures to use as textures for these collages.

The auto-focus setting is great, too, though. It focuses so much faster than the old camera. I'm taking lots of cute kitty pictures because it will actually focus while the cat is still doing the cute thing! With my old camera, I got lots of pictures 3 seconds after the cat did something cute :P I don't think I (or anyone else) wants this to turn into a cat blog, so I'll try to restrain myself from posting all cat photos.

In believe-it-or-not news, the sun actually was out today.

layering = best in winter

2011-01-13T16:46:00.000-08:00

I haven't really been back in the studio since Boo got sick. Something about mustering the concentration I need to work is really hard when things are weird in some way.

This last week or so I've been feeling the itch again a little. Working digitally feels like an easier way to get started again because if it isn't working I can undo what I've done or just delete the file altogether.

So this is what I've been working on the past few days. I've got a better camera now so I thought it would be interesting to incorporate photos (instead of only scans) into digital collage. I'm taking pictures of random things that I wouldn't normally bother to photograph with the idea that they document my days and function as interesting textures in the collage. You probably can't see for sure what they are but I know they're there and what I was doing when I took the photo. So it's sort of like a diary process but less literal. It's interesting to me, anyway :)

The other thing I've been thinking about is how I feel a lot differently about the creativity/crafty pieces now. I liked them before, but I seriously think knitting and sewing and doing simple, repetitive things helped me get through this tough time. And the idea that making these kinds of things might have helped my grandmothers and the women in my family to cope with difficult periods in their lives, too. I've inherited a number of crocheted and embroidered items from both sides of my family and looking at these things makes me think about what else was going on at the time they were made. I'm not sure how these ideas will be reflected differently (if at all) in the drawings I'll make but it's added a whole new layer of meaning to them for me.

I hope that all made some sense...I love reading about other blog-friends' processes and inspirations so I wanted to let you know what's going on with these.

frosting

2010-12-30T17:07:00.000-08:00

Cold today but the sun came out for a moment. Hope everyone's holidays are going well :)

playing with string

2010-12-23T13:25:00.000-08:00

I had a sudden whim (prompted by a gift request) to see if I could learn juuuust enough crochet to make a cute creature. Here's what I made - it's one of those learn-as-you-go projects since I hate making practice sketches/stitches/swatches. I'd rather just try it and see what happens - which is why any experienced crocheters out there will undoubtedly see tons of mistakes. It's nice to pick up a project that's low stress because I don't really mind mistakes if it turns out cute :)

The kitties have been also been playing with strings (see what I did there?).

festive

2010-12-13T15:45:00.000-08:00

Our tree is up and decorated, and I'm even pretty much done with xmas shopping (although the wrapping is way behind). I try to add a couple new things each year and this year it was pom-poms and sort of Scandinavian looking straw things. The heart above the fireplace is straw and I got a couple little garlands for the tree. The pom-poms are made with this brilliant little item and inexpensive yarn. Full disclosure: making them is very addictive.

wintry things

2010-12-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

I noticed a lot of pretty things stacking up in my favorites, so I thought it would be nice to put them all together. I don't know why these are so fun to make - must just be the eye candy factor.

thanks

2010-12-01T14:05:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone -

Thanks for all the kind words I've gotten here and in my email. I really appreciate it.

I'm doing ok, I guess. It's very odd to go from being outside to do horse things several times a day and having my whole schedule for the day organized around feeding times and such to...nothing. I think I still expect to see her when I catch myself looking out the window. I know things will get easier in time.

We had a nice Thanksgiving at home by ourselves. The weather was pretty wild around here that week (you may have seen the footage of the bus sliding sideways down a steep Seattle street). So we made some food and relaxed and it was very peaceful.

Hope you're all doing well.

update

2010-11-16T23:39:00.000-08:00

We had to put Boo to sleep on Sunday. She colicked again and this time she needed surgery...unfortunately the section of intestine that would have needed to be removed and reattached would have given her a low survival rate and a terribly painful recovery so we thought it was better not to put her through that. I know she was fine up until it happened and we got her to the vet hospital really fast, so she didn't have to suffer for long and this type of colic hits very suddenly. For anyone who has an old horse, I had never heard of old horses having tumors on their intestines until this June when she colicked the first time. They're benign but they tend to block things up and cause colic. So that was almost certainly why she colicked the first time, according to the vets. Probably more detail than anyone wanted to know...

Anyway, I won't be online much and I guess I like to know about other blog-friends' animals so I wanted to let you guys know what happened. Hug your kids (human kids and animal kids) and tell them you love them. I did every day, and I know she was happy.

A little branching out

2010-11-09T20:50:00.001-08:00

8x10" watercolor, gouache, and graphite on Stonehenge.

I wanted to try putting down a watercolor wash before I added the gouache to this piece and I think I like how it turned out. It gives the various opacities of the different areas of gouache a different effect. I'm trying to incorporate more brush-y, wash-y, scribbly looking areas in these drawings to loosen them up a bit.

October sunshine

2010-10-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

One of my projects last week (in between medications and wrapping a hoof and such) was to take some pictures of my pieces framed. Last week was still pretty nice out and sunny, so I wanted to make the most of it. Lucky I did, too, because over the weekend the weather changed and it's rainy and windy and miserable out today.

Anyway, here's what I came up with. It's kind of fun setting up little vignettes out of things that are sitting around the house. The main problem is keeping the kitties from wanting to strut their stuff for the camera and invade all the photos :) I guess that's my fault for setting up in the middle of a warm cozy sunbeam.

Pretending to be a photographer

2010-10-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

While Boo's foot is healing, she's wearing a wrap/duct tape boot. It works pretty well but it isn't perfect, so even though I'm making a fresh one for her every day I go out and check on it frequently to make sure it isn't sliding off. So I'm getting lots of chances to take cute pictures with my phone.

I'm not a great photographer but I really like how these turn out. I think I'm definitely getting my $2 worth out of this app :)

Update

2010-10-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

Nothing to show you from the studio - my mare has been having some trouble with a mystery lameness. I can tell you all about nursing an unhappy foot but I somehow doubt that anyone wants to hear the unpleasant details :) Let's just say that it's time consuming and kind of exhausting because we're still not sure what's actually going on.

In other news, as you can see from the photo I've been messing around with the Hipstamatic app on my phone. I want to use it a lot because I'm usually too cheap to buy a silly camera effect app that I don't need.

snip

2010-10-12T14:19:00.000-07:00

11x14" graphite and gouache on Fabriano hot press.

I used a pair of scissors that were my grandma's as the reference for this drawing. They're very old and not at all sharp - I should probably try to get them sharpened as I don't have any other scissors this small. I think they work ok as a model, even if they can't do any actual cutting :)

While I was working on this last night I had an idea to try to incorporate some brushier, more expressive watercolor areas into this kind of thing. It was too late to try it yesterday but I'm trying to work out how I want to do it and I think I'll give it a shot on the next piece. Maybe a small one, just to see if it works.

I'm always intimidated by the thought of ruining a big piece of nice paper, so working small lets me worry less. It's taken me a long time to get to the point where I feel like I can dive straight in and start drawing on a nice sheet of paper.

Button

2010-10-06T23:33:00.000-07:00

Still experimenting with paper size - this one is 8x10". It feels like it's easier to work with a smaller sheet when it's a less complicated subject.

I was mixing colors to see what I liked and this green is indigo and olive green in W&N gouache. I didn't think this is what I would get but I liked it :) Clearly I need to just sit down with all my gouache colors and mix up a sample sheet. I haven't gotten that many colors so far (even with all these gouache projects) so it wouldn't even take that long...but it feels like work. Maybe some other time :P

cute

2010-10-01T18:29:00.000-07:00

A cute kitty picture on the internet! What a surprise!

I felt like I should share this one because I've been trying for weeks to get a picture of my kitty with her paws up in the air. She only does this last thing at night and I either didn't have a camera handy or if I did, she never rolled over. That's kitties for you :P

I've got houseguests this weekend...back in the studio next week. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Back to drawing

2010-09-29T14:47:00.001-07:00

I got in a drawing mood after playing around with abstract painting and collaging lately. These two are graphite and gouache - the top one is 11x14" and the bottom is 9x12". I thought reducing the size of the paper would make it easier for me to fill in the composition when there's just one hand that I'm drawing and it seems like it worked out ok.

One of my challenges with these pieces is figuring out what exactly I want to show and what is unnecessary and can be left out. So I try to think of that when I'm putting together my reference photos or I end up wanting to put too much in. Even cropping down the image so it's showing only the bit I want to draw helps me simplify. Most of these drawings are a sort of composite of multiple images and the hands are usually pictures I've taken for reference. Not that it probably makes that much difference but I thought maybe other artists who work from images would find it interesting :)

collaging

2010-09-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

Three little collages this week - the first two are 5x7" and the last one is 8x10". I had an idea to put some kind of texture in the background of a collage, so I did some watercolor washes with a big flat brush. It's one of my grandma's watercolor brushes so I feel like it fits with my themes even though all you can see on the paper is an abstract wash :)

It's good to use the things I inherited from her - makes me remember her but not in a sad way.

I'm not ready for fall

2010-09-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know that everybody seems to be delighted that fall is almost at hand...I keep seeing blog posts about scarves and leaves and hot chocolate. To fall I say "meh." I am not ready to let go of summer yet.

I'm still getting used to the idea that I live in a place where it rains a lot. Like really a lot. This year we had an unusually warm January - 50 degrees and rainy. And that is warm, for January. Here's the problem: it was also 50 degrees and rainy for the entire month of June. And it's been hot in spells but not for long. And now we appear to be skipping straight to October.

That horse you see up there? She does not go out in the rain. At all. She will throw an absolute fit if she gets wet while we're out. And I'm not ready to stop riding for the winter yet.

Enough grumbling. I haven't been in the studio much lately - more working on knitting and sewing projects that I can pick away at a little at a time. I keep forgetting to get pictures but I'll get around to it soon, I hope.

brushy brush brush

2010-08-21T22:01:00.001-07:00

Two square oil paintings - small one is 6x6" and the larger one is 10x10".

I can't remember what I used to mix the greeny blue on the other pair of these that I did. I don't think this was it but I already mailed them off to their new owner so I can't confirm :) I need to get in the habit of noting some of the color mixes I use when I'm doing oils because I have just enough random tubes of color to be confusing. I used to make little swatches on canvas paper and stick them into a sketch book with a note about the colors I used. I should get back in the habit of doing that when I get something I'm especially happy with.

Cut and paste

2010-08-19T12:30:00.001-07:00

A couple collages today. I printed out the pink scanned images a while back and hadn't got around to actually putting anything together. The weather has been sunny and hot until yesterday so I thought I would go in the studio for a change :)

I like mixing it up a bit and incorporating that certain vintage magazine pink. I like the blues and greens and all, but I need variety, too.

Garden update

2010-08-11T19:39:00.001-07:00

Apparently the people are demanding a look at my garden this year...well, one person, anyway :) Here's a peep at the flowers for you.

Summer evenings

2010-08-06T16:09:00.001-07:00

We've had some gorgeous summer weather around here lately. There's been a few fires around - nothing close enough that we could even smell smoke but enough to give the sun an orange tint and make some crazy sunsets. So here's a summer evening treasury that was just the thing for me to do last night when I was feeling too lazy to knit :)

Miss Boo's summer so far

2010-08-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

This summer hasn't been our best, I guess. Here's my poor baby horse at the vet hospital on June 30th. She colicked and we had to get her to the hospital at 2 in the morning. She pulled through just fine and didn't need surgery, fortunately. She's 27 this year so things like this can be pretty serious.

I'm bringing this up even though she's feeling good again to explain where I've been lately :) After my June-of-the-migraines, I'm doing better and one of the things that made me miserable while Boo was at the hospital was wishing we could have gone out more this summer. I was worried that she would either come home after surgery and need weeks and months of recuperating or she wouldn't come home at all.

So I'm doing my best during the nice weather to make up for all that riding and exploring we didn't get to do before she colicked. She loves going out on the trail and meeting people, watching other horses, and sniffing any dogs we happen to meet. We even went out on the trail with my neighbor and her horse on Friday and Boo (who hasn't been ridden out with another horse in years) did great. She made the stink-face when he got too close but she was good.

I'm taking advantage of the sunshine to be outside as much as possible because I figured I can paint when it's raining. I'm sure there will be plenty of rainy days as we get closer to fall :P

How's your summer going?

Digital collages

2010-07-08T18:01:00.001-07:00

So with this whiplash-inducing change in the weather I'm feeling hot and lazy. What better way to make art during a heat wave than to sit at the computer next to the lovely air conditioning vent? I made these out of scans from my train book and some sewing and knitting directions and diagrams. I notice that my colors suddenly got quite a bit brighter - partly because of the source scans and partly because of the weather, I guess.

Some pretty for your Wednesday

2010-07-07T16:06:00.000-07:00

Making treasuries is a good way to avoid going outside where it's gone from March to July in a couple days. I love hot weather and summer but I need a little time to acclimate. Anyway, here's some lovely things that I think have fantastic compositions.

Poppytalk Handmade Oil Spill Fundraiser

2010-07-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

This month, Poppytalk Handmade market is holding a fundraiser for the oil spill in the Gulf. I'm participating along with a lot of other fantastic shops and artists. Everyone is donating items and there's some great stuff - go check it out! And I'm delighted to be involved in such a great cause...it's good to feel like I'm helping out in some small way.

Happy 4th!

2010-07-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

I've been offline and out of the studio quite a bit lately, between migraines and a sick horse. I think we're both on the mend, though.

Hope everyone's having a good 4th of July! Or if you're not in the US I'll just wish you a happy Sunday :) My evening will be spent reassuring the animals that war has not broken out and it's just fireworks.

Smallish collages

2010-06-12T20:31:00.000-07:00

These little guys are 5x7" with all the same materials as the last two. I wanted to do some smaller collages to play with the scale of the text/diagram pieces and I like how they turned out.

I think these give me a chance to just play with composition and not have to spend so much time as the drawings.

Also collage

2010-06-08T11:08:00.000-07:00

This is the next collage - same watercolor/pencil/gouache/prints and similar feel.

Making collages is a little more intuitive than drawing and painting. But honestly I just sort of look at what I've put down and start waving my hands around and try to get a feel for where I want to put something next on drawings and collages both :) I often draw in the first figural part of a drawing and don't really love the composition, so I change it up a bit with the diagram-y stuff that I put in last.

Oh, and I realized that if I take a photo with my phone camera of my collage before I have to move anything to glue it down, I can actually put everything where I originally intended.

Collage

2010-06-07T14:24:00.001-07:00

I did some collaging over the weekend. I'm trying to keep it cohesive with the other pieces and I think it's actually working :)

This collage is similar to the ones I was doing last summer where I scanned and printed out old magazine photos and used them instead of the original piece of paper. This time I'm using the same book and knitting pattern as the other digital collages and paintings so I hope it reads as part of the same batch of work. I've got watercolor on cold press paper, gouache on hot press paper, pencil lines, and then the printed pieces which I printed out larger than the original scale.

Pretty things

2010-06-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

I was messing around with the Etsy treasury again and made a new one a few days ago that I thought was pretty. And I guess someone else thought it was pretty too because it landed on the front page today...yay! I'm all about the nepotism, too - there's Leah, Belinda and Letha all right there :)

Shades of gray

2010-06-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

I feel like I need a vacation after people come to visit :) Last weekend we had more family visiting and did a few tourist things - Pike Place Market and such. We took a ferry out to Bainbridge Island which I've been wanting to visit anyway and drove out to a beach. I don't know about you, but I love walking on pebbly, rocky beaches. You can poke around and pick up pretty pebbles and toss rocks into the water to get a lovely splash.

The weather could have been better but I found that all the pebbles that caught my eye were smooth and gray and matched the surroundings. All the more colorful ones stayed on the beach and I brought home the subtle ones. I would have thought that the reverse would be true - on bright days I wouldn't mind the grayer pebbles and on gray days I would seek out the more colorful ones. I especially love that one with the two colors...it makes me happy :)

Weekend(s)

2010-05-27T16:58:00.000-07:00

I've been offline a bit lately - two family visits in a row will do that to you :) Last weekend we drove out to Port Townsend to have a look around. I'd never been there before but it's a cool little town.

We took a route that included a ferry ride because it's more fun that way.

Lots of old buildings.

We saw two wooden ships that (if we had known about them) you can go sail around in.

And of course we walked around on the beach.

I'm not sure what we're doing for the next family visit this weekend but I imagine it will be some other tourist-y things :)

And now it's dry

2010-05-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

This is another one of those diagrams from my railroad book that I've mangled to suit my purposes :)

I mixed about 5 different greens before settling on this one but I'm not sure what to call it...pale mint? Sage green? It's a little too green to be sage green which I picture as being very gray. I hope the pencil lines show up a bit better now so you can see them wandering around.

I'll try to remember to take more in-progress shots next time I oil paint because I think it's interesting to look back and see what I put down and left alone and what I went back and blended out. I like the roughness of the line I put down at the start of the painting but I don't want all of them to be so dark. It's really hard for me not to want to blend everything out but I feel like when I do the painting loses some energy (although the oils I did last year are very peaceful looking because of this).

Still drying

2010-05-18T15:39:00.000-07:00

Here's what I was working on last night - it's too wet to move or scan right now. I think it was a 10x10" panel with canvas. It's fun to paint loose and draw in pencil lines in the wet paint (although they don't show up that well in this photo). I draw the lines all wobbly and random and all the paint lines are wobbly too! Scary! I don't know why I'm ok with oils being sketchy but all my pencil/gouache/watercolor drawings have to be super clean.

My experimenting with gouache and opaque colors have made me want to use the oil colors in a more glaze-y, translucent way. I hope the scans will show this because I think it's a nice effect in this piece. I use alkyd medium to make the paint dry faster anyway and I just increase the proportion of medium to paint a bit to make it more of a glaze.

Pushing Daisies

2010-05-10T21:17:00.000-07:00

I planned to do some painting today but I didn't feel too great. After I took a nap and decided that I wasn't going to get anything useful done, I watched some Pushing Daisies. It's comfort TV (you know, like comfort food). Of course it was cancelled after only 2 seasons as always happens to great shows.

Anyway, if you haven't already experienced the joy, here's a link to a clip on Youtube. Full disclosure: there is singing. But I still love it and I don't care for musicals :)

A treasury? Me?

2010-05-07T00:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've never tried this before but I had a sudden whim to try making one of these Etsy treasuries. Now that you can apparently just make one and you don't have to wait for a spot, that is. I never could quite be bothered to figure all that out :) Anyway, here's some lovely things from some of my favorite people...these were all pulled straight out of my list of fave shops.

Post on Scoutie Girl

2010-05-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

Tara of Scoutie Girl posted on my work today! I popped in to check the blog as I do, and there's my name in giant letters! Startling, to say the least :) Thanks, Tara! And I've never gotten a "divine" before :D

Seed-y

2010-05-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

I loooove planting plants and starting seeds and coming up with all my little ideas for how the garden is going to look each year. So here's a little seed to celebrate spring, assuming it ever turns up around here. We had this exact same weather in January and I'm kind of over it.

I didn't use any straight white gouache on this one because I wanted to keep it subtle. I think it's easier to push the lines a bit darker when the paper already has some color to it.

Pins (and needles)

2010-05-04T22:08:00.000-07:00

More sewing - although it's just pinning, really. I wanted to include some of the preparatory steps to making things as well as sort of actual making, like with those scissors a few weeks ago.

I did some testing with colors on this paper and I decided I like the neutrals best. Something about the blues and greens didn't look as good as on the white paper. I used the same colors as the last one to mix the grays - indigo and sepia, plus white.

New piece

2010-04-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

I picked up a few more gouache colors and I wanted to try just using a couple in this piece. All these colors are W&N indigo and sepia (plus white and water, of course). Indigo comes out of the tube so dark that I didn't lighten it up as much as I could have so this is a little more contrast-y than most of my pieces lately.

The drawing is a little disproportionate to make the yarn-winding hand come forward a little more but I'm not sure it comes across right :) It's the same size - 11x14" on hot press watercolor paper. I should mix up my sizes a little bit more but I always try to cut as many pieces out of a big sheet as possible and they just divide up so tidy this way.

Discussion at Scoutie Girl

2010-04-28T12:20:00.000-07:00

Tara over at Scoutie Girl has an interesting discussion today about whether art is a luxury. Go take a look at some of the responses - mine is below.

I absolutely think art is a luxury. Just like good food, traveling, going to the movies, and reading good books are luxuries. Humans just need stories, and colors, and new experiences, in my opinion. We can't help ourselves. I don't think there's a single culture on Earth that only eats food to survive and doesn't try to make it taste good, too. Or makes objects without in some way decorating them or making them interesting to look at in some way when possible. To me, luxury is what you make of it and it doesn't necessarily mean expensive.

My work on decor8!

2010-04-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

Holly of the fabulous decor8 posted on my work today! I'm so happy to see my little ol' drawings on one of my favorite blogs :) Take a look right here. Thanks to Holly who, by the way, is ridiculously sweet - Belinda, you might have competition for the title of Nicest Person on Earth :D

Some digital collages today

2010-04-16T11:08:00.000-07:00

I was in a digital mood, I guess. I scanned some things out of my lovely book I've been using lately and combined them with some scans out of an old magazine of my grandma's. She knitted me a toy rabbit when I was little and after she passed away I found the magazine she knitted it from, complete with handwritten notes to herself.

I like preserving this kind of thing so somebody else can see it. I have an old travel easel/paintbox of hers from...I don't know when. It's pretty old. My dad gave it to me and I kept it exactly as it was with all the old tubes of paint in it and it's on display in a cabinet. I would rather have things like that out where I can see them even though there's some sad memories there, too.

Gouache - this time on tinted paper!

2010-04-08T20:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple little gouache paintings - 8x10" on tinted Stonehenge paper. I like this neutral on neutral thing. It's interesting to play with with the opacity of the paint when it has to compete with a color that's already there. I'm putting together some references for more figure-related drawings but I figured if I'm in a mood to paint I should just go for it. So there'll be more figure drawings sometime but today I made abstracts :)

Back to work

2010-04-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

I finally made it back into the studio! I know, it's amazing.

I can't help but return to gardening, I guess. I think it's like creating a little world and until someone patents a home terraforming machine I'll have to stick with gardening. I wait and wait for spring so I can go outside and tell my plants to grow. "Grow, my pretties," I tell them. And then I let out a little villain-y chuckle...muahaha.

I spoke too soon

2010-03-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

Turns out I wasn't getting better but instead going from being moderately sick to properly full-on sick. The kind where you don't leave the couch except to go lie down in bed and sleep. So the only creative thing I've done lately was create a massive quantity of used tissues :) I missed the most gorgeous sunny weather on Friday and Saturday while I huddled under blankets and tried to block out the light. I love spring so very, very much that on the first day of t-shirt weather I try to spend as many daylight hours as I can outside, and this year I was sick.

Anyway, that's enough whining for one post. Here's a picture of my pretty tree that I took last week. Happy spring, everyone!

Sick-y

2010-03-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

Good gravy, it's been ages! I got sick again...soon as the weather turned unseasonably cold, I was out. I don't know about you, but I can't draw when I'm sick. I try, but I can tell it's wrong and can't see why and end up scrapping the whole thing. I think I'm on the mend (and the weather is a bit more spring-like) so I hope I'll have something new to show soon.

Sewing

2010-03-03T12:41:00.000-08:00

Finished this one yesterday. Same size, gouache, etc. I guess I don't have much to say about this one :) I think the only problem I had was tweaking the fingers on the hand holding the needle so they looked ok as line drawings...something that's come up a lot in this pieces. If I were doing a lot of subtle shading and 3-d type modeling, things look ok even if they're foreshortened or at an odd angle, but as line drawings I seem to need them to look more simplified in order to read correctly.

I'm driving in to Seattle today to hang up my pieces for the show this month. I don't mind hanging, it's the carrying of heavy frames in from my car which will have to be parked a block away that I don't care for :)

Book

2010-02-26T12:06:00.000-08:00

This time - a person reading a book. Are you sensing a theme here? :) These drawings are all about me (but not of me, exactly) and I love reading. Also I just picked up knitting recently - hence the hat and scarf. Is that too boring? I feel like if I explain too much about what I was thinking when I decide what I want to draw it's not interesting anymore. I hope even if I'm doing something literal that it also reads as more narrative and ambiguous (why are these people going outside, for example) but I worry.

I like thinking about creating things - even if it's just a hat - and then using them for something. I thought as long as I'm overcoming my fears and using the figure that they should be doing something and definitely not nude. I'm so over the "figure drawings that are nude just because that's what everyone does" type of drawings. Not that some of them aren't beautiful, but I don't think most of them have anything personal to say. But maybe it's too tediously personal to draw a knitted hat, so I don't know :)

Oh, same as last time, 11x14" on Fab hot press, graphite and gouache.

Hat

2010-02-25T14:13:00.000-08:00

I was working on two of these at once, so it's been a little longer to finish one than usual. I have really mixed feelings about this piece. Sometimes I like it, and sometimes there's something I don't like about it, but I'm not sure what :) I usually just toss things that I'm not sure about in a drawer, but I think there's something here that's interesting. And also I'm trying to be more brave and show things online even if I'm not totally sure about them.

Anyway, it's another 11x14" on Fabriano hot press in graphite and gouache. I liked the photo I drew it from but somehow I don't think it's reading as "person putting on a hat" with some details left out. But I also think I've been staring at it for too long and I can't really tell anymore. I'm getting a few more things finished up for a show in Seattle in March and unfortunately that means I couldn't just draw this up and set it aside for a couple weeks until I figured out if there was something I didn't like (which is what I would normally do). It's good for me to not look at a piece and then sneak up on it and get a fresh look at it again - does that make sense? It sounds nutty :)

Little oil paintings to go along with the gouache

2010-02-20T12:34:00.000-08:00

Here's two oil paintings that I did a couple of days ago and had to wait for them to dry a little bit before I moved them. I worked on them both at the same time - one advantage of working small is that I can fit two canvases on the easel at once. I wanted to try the same kind of lines with color blocks like in the gouache pieces but with more blended areas and less plain white.

I'm getting better at stopping myself before I blend away all the rougher areas like I used to. I feel like if I go back and take away all the unblended edges it loses some of the liveliness. Which is ok too, but I did those last year and I wanted to change things up :) And I'm learning to love when the geometry starts to go wobbly because I'm using oil paint and brushes and not pencils and rulers. I try to keep going back to what it is that I love about oil painting which is taking a solid line and blending out parts of it, and putting brushy scrubby texture all over. There's no way to do all that and maintain a perfect right angle...well, I can't, anyway.

Fey Handmade

2010-02-17T17:04:00.000-08:00

I got an email a couple of weeks ago about participating in Fey Handmade's online shop and I thought it sounded like a good opportunity so I decided to go for it. It's free to participate with a commission taken from sales so there's not really any risk from my end of things.

I was checking to see when my pieces would show up and lo and behold, Leah's work is on there too! And today when my work was uploaded, I found Brittni's and Letha's gorgeous pieces as well! I feel very lucky seeing my artwork among all this work that I admire :)

Another figure-related piece

2010-02-16T13:52:00.000-08:00

Yikes, I finally have some more art to show you. Last week was a blur of head-cold blah but I can feel that the weather is starting to change so that usually means I can stop getting sick and actually have some energy again. I love watching all my plants starting to wake up and bud out in the spring and feel like I'm not in hibernation anymore :)

This is 11x14" on Fabriano hot press again. I like this paper mostly - it doesn't erase as cleanly as I would like and I've had two sheets that had a few little specks embedded in the paper. Not that it's a huge problem, but it's not the cheapest paper so I hate when it has flaws before I've even started. I'm really having fun playing with the opacity or watery-ness of the gouache in these. It has such an interesting flatness and texture.

I was trying to incorporate scissors in this without it looking too violent :) Something about those sharp objects make me think of knives which isn't really where I was trying to go here. I tried to take some photos actually cutting fabric and paper but they didn't really work out, so I thought I would try this slightly more abstract approach.

Little gouache studies

2010-02-04T15:45:00.000-08:00

Here's a few little paintings with railroad-y diagrams in them. These three are 6x6" on Fabriano hot press (again). I'm intrigued by how much the gouache changes color and opacity as it dries, so I'm doing these small painting to sort of practice with it some more.

I hate practicing in my sketchbook - I'd rather just get started on a nice piece of paper so that if it turns out how I want, I actually have a finished piece rather than having to redo it on a better paper. I waste some nice paper that way, but I used to be afraid to touch my nice paper and would leave it to sit in the drawer and do way too much preliminary sketching. So I think it's good that I'm not so precious about paper (and canvas, etc.) anymore.

Something I like in these pieces is the tension between the precise ruler lines and the (intentionally) wobbly edge of the color. I like the effect in printmaking when two colors are out of registration and they overlap in some places and leave white gaps in others. I think these would be really flat if they were actually perfect or if I did them digitally to eliminate all the color changes and wobbles.

Drawing + gouache

2010-01-29T13:43:00.000-08:00

Here's what I added to that drawing from the other day. The diagrams are all from that railroad book (although out of scale and simplified) and the color is all gouache. I like using it in a semi-transparent way that's somewhere between normal watercolor and gouache to give flat areas of color that don't totally hide the pencil lines. I can tell I'm going to keep playing with the opacity of the paint in these drawings to change how much it shows and hides of the underlying drawing.

Gorgeous objects, courtesy of Belinda

2010-01-27T14:01:00.000-08:00

Here's another beautiful treasury curated by Belinda that includes one of my pieces...go have a look. Thanks again, Belinda!

New old book

2010-01-26T11:20:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge used book store junkie. Did I ever mention I used to work at a couple of different bookstores? It seems like the most natural thing when I'm looking for reference materials for artworks to go poke around at old books.

This is a railroad manual from 1911. I haven't scanned any of the images in it yet but as you can imagine it is crammed with technical drawings. I love technical drawings in any form but trains are especially interesting to me because my dad and his dad many years ago worked for railroads. I've been trying to convince my dad to let me have some of his dad's old reference materials but I've yet to get my hands on them. So when I saw this at the local used book shop I figured it would be the next best thing :)

I imagine you'll see this book again in different forms in my work.

Work in progress

2010-01-25T15:34:00.001-08:00

Ok, this is the first thing out of what I've been working on that I think I like...so far, anyway. I'm going to add in something else of the diagram persuasion and see how that goes. It's on watercolor paper (Fabriano hot press, if you're curious) so I have some options for how to do that. And you know me, I can never just draw something and leave it alone - it has to have something strange layered over the top.

I'm very curious to hear what you all think...I'm not totally sure what I think yet because it's something new for me. I'm still working with line quality and line weights so I think it's still very related to my other pencil pieces in that sense. But like I said, I'm nervous about using the figure and I'm trying really hard to keep this from being so cutesy/pretty/fashion-model-y as the work I keep seeing and don't really care for. I'm hoping to give subjects in my work something to do because I don't feel a connection to work that has pretty girls just...sitting around looking pretty (if that makes sense). So I've compiled some reference material with things like putting on a scarf or hat (as here), sewing, cutting fabric, etc. and to me they're things that suggest "doing" - going outside, creating, and things like that.