Happy New Year!

My parents were in town visiting this week and we did a little sightseeing. I took a few pictures of a chilly sunset on Puget Sound. I'm still not used to being so close to the water and I love watching it.

And in other news, happy New Year, everyone! It's been an interesting year for me and I can't wait to see what happens next year.

Green Christmas (Eve)

I took a few pictures yesterday afternoon to remember how green it looks outside right now. Last year we were buried under 3 feet of snow and since we're now living in a different climate, things feel very different, obviously. But I'm pretty happy with this green winter and I'm definitely not missing the snow.

Hope you all are having a lovely holiday!

Feeling festive

I wanted to share some pics of our tree this year - as I mentioned last time, we didn't really have a Christmas last year and I'm a little fixated on it this year.

My next project is to make a tree topper because I felt that the old one (a snowflake) wasn't really what I wanted in a place that doesn't get much snow. It seems like having snow-themed decorations inside and a lot of green outside would be too confusing :) I had an idea to make a new star covered in bright green preserved moss. In my head, it seems really cool and appropriate to our mossy surroundings and I hope it will look good in reality as well. If I ever get around to making it, I'll post a picture here.

Stockings

I don't usually share my sewing projects on my blog - I worry that you're expecting art and giving you sewing instead would be a cruel bait-and-switch :) But I'm feeling very festive today and I wanted to show you what I've been working on yesterday and today. I had made stockings already for my sweetie, my horse, and our oldest cat, but since the other kitties are more recent (and we had no Christmas last year due to being in the middle of moving), I am making the last three right now. Hey, it's not Christmas yet - it still counts, right?

In our old house, we had a proper mantel to display things on, but I'm stuck with this odd round fireplace now...I think by next year I'll have a couple of shelves over/around this fireplace so I can use actual stocking holders and not have to fake it with stick-on hooks :)

papernstitch shop open

And there I am! So many gorgeous shops in this market, aren't there? My shop is right here, if you care to have a look.

papernstitch online market!

I submitted my work a couple of weeks ago to be included in the next papernstitch online market and I'm very excited to tell you all that I'll have a shop in the market that opens tomorrow! I'll post a link and image of the shop once it's up and available but I wanted to share the good news now.

I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season! I've got a couple little projects I'm working on for gifts but I can't really post them online because it would spoil the surprise :)

Next painting

This one is 8x8" so it fit on my scanner (whew). Very similar to the last one, obviously. I like things that are abstract but still reference some idea that I'm interested in.

I think you can see from these two paintings more of my process than when I continue smoothing everything out. And I think maybe you can see why I go through brushes so fast - all that scrubbing into the canvas wears them down to little stubs.

Oil painting

I made a couple more oil paintings last week and had to wait for them to dry to take pictures/scan them in. This one is 11x14" so it doesn't fit on my scanner and I had to try to take photos of it (!) I made a lightbox to try and eliminate the glare from the glossiness of the paint and I think it actually worked out pretty well. I mean, I still prefer using my scanner whenever possible, but that top photo is far and away the best picture I've ever gotten of one of my shinier oil paintings. The last photo is just to try to give an idea of the size and depth of the piece.

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. I wanted to try something a little looser and sketchier - more specifically I didn't keep blending and reworking past this stage like I usually do. Most of my paintings look similar to this at some point but lately I've been making them pretty smooth and uniform. This scribbly brushstroke look is something I was doing in school and I wanted to give it another try in conjunction with a more abstract subject.

Trading with Belinda

I traded some prints with Belinda and I finally have them framed and on a wall...although this is just in my studio and I'm still planning where to hang them permanently. I love them so much! Belinda's work is so gorgeous and I'm absolutely delighted to have these on the wall to enjoy every day. Thanks again!

An experiment

A few days ago I decided to try placing an ad on a blog to see what would happen. I've loved being featured on blogs but blog posts seem to disappear so quickly under all the new posts. So I happened to see a mention of ad space available on Where the Lovely Things Are just as I was thinking about advertising anyway and I thought "why not?"

I know my way around Photoshop pretty well but I never tried to make anything animated before. The only hard part was picking out my images - it's ridiculously easy to make them rotate. Anyway, here's what it looks like (although I guess it won't show it animating here):

And here's a shot of it on the blog:

I'm watching the stats and I'll let you all know how it goes! Head over to Mallory's lovely blog to see the fancy animated version.

Thanksgiving

So tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the US, and I'm not a huge fan. I always hated turkey (even before I stopped eating meat) and I don't care for mashed potatoes or gravy. Oh, and I don't watch football. But I do like giving thanks. Here's a few things I'm thankful for this year:

-getting my art career started

-finishing my degree

-living in a place where I can keep my horse and have miles of trails and back roads to ride on

-making new friends online (hi guys!)

-planting a new garden in a milder climate - some of my pot marigolds are still blooming and it's almost December!

-being close enough to a large city that I have a lot of art opportunities but I can still live out in the woods

And plenty more. Speaking of art opportunities, I went into Seattle yesterday to talk to a jewelry store owner about exhibiting in March as part of the Fremont art walk and I'm now officially booked in. Should be fun!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Learning to love fall.

I've always disliked fall because it means that winter is coming and winter means snow. Snow is pretty but only if you can stay indoors and not have to drive in it or push a wheelbarrow full of horse poo through it. But now we live somewhere else, and winter is going to mean rain, not snow. And it's cold, but it's never going to get down to 20 below zero (as it occasionally does where we used to live). I even went riding a couple weeks ago on a nice day. So I'm finding my irritation and anger towards the leaves for changing color and the days for getting shorter is gradually going away. I still like summer, but this year I'm actually enjoying looking at all the leaves that are falling.

Second art walk

The November Ballard art walk was last night and I think it went really well. I gave out a lot of business cards once I hit on the idea of telling people there was a tiny piece of art on the back :) The turnout was a little on the modest side, so I'm thinking about trying to get in on one during summer because I think more people are willing to wander the streets when it's warm rather than 40 degrees and drizzly. But mainly I'm just happy at this stage to be adding things to my resume and it feels like I'm making some progress.

They just keep falling...

Another leaf. There's so many interesting ones I can't seem to help myself. This is 11x14" on Yupo.

I'm also sketching and researching and figuring out what my next project is going to be. Once I've finished with these leaves, I think I have one more interesting plant to draw (seed pods on a witch hazel bush) and then I'm going to be shifting gears. This part of the process is always frustrating at the time but it's important that I have a good idea of where I'm going and have enough ideas to keep me working for a while.

Leaf

I'm still very keen on these leaves with the holes in them...I keep finding more that I like under the trees. This is 5x7" on Yupo.

Leaves

8x10" on Yupo.

I love having an excuse to go outside and shuffle through all the fallen leaves looking for interesting alder leaf patterns. Now that I can choose from more leaves than only the ones I could see from the ground, I'm finding quite a few really gorgeous ones. Normally I think of insects eating holes in leaves as a bad thing but according to what I was reading online when I was trying to identify this tree last spring, the alder trees are a food source for various bugs and it doesn't harm the tree.

Mimi

Nothing new to show you as far as finished artwork - I picked up a little set of gouache colors a few days ago and I'm still working out how I want to use them. I have a lot of bits of paper and various surfaces/combinations of materials but they're not really interesting to look at. So I thought I'd put up a cute picture of one of our cats instead...more actual art soon, I promise :)

Watercoloring

I had an idea that if I used a blunter, softer pencil for a drawing on Yupo, I would get a different effect with a stronger line. This was the resulting experiment. I think it was a lot less frustrating than trying to keep a smooth thin line on the Yupo. And I love seeing what the color looks like after it dries - it's really unpredictable how the paint will pool and settle.

The trail

I went for a ride today in between rain showers. This is the pipeline trail near our house and despite the chill, everything still looks pretty green. I'm going to keep riding as long as I can this fall and see how she does - at our old house it would be too icy or muddy or both to ride very far into fall. My mare is not waiting around to find out what the weather will be like and has already grown much of her winter coat. Look at those fuzzy little ears :)

These are pics I took with my new phone. I don't love the quality of the pics it takes but it's definitely handy to have a little camera in my pocket whenever the whim strikes me.

Ballard art walk

So the art walk went really well except for a few times when there was no one to talk to and I was bored :) But I met a lot of really nice people and gave out some business cards and overall I will call it a success. I worked enough retail jobs to feel pretty good about my ability to greet people and make small talk. I'm glad I'm not working retail anymore (so glad) but I definitely feel like it gave me some good people skills.

One more next month - hope to see even more people. I mean, free wine and snacks...why isn't everyone out at the art walk?

Framing like mad

This is the batch from yesterday.  I think I'll be able to go hang everything tomorrow, but I'm a little sad to be missing the gorgeous weather outside this week.  

Mint design blog

Ellie at Mint has a post up today featuring my watercolors...check it out right here.  Thanks, Ellie!  I love seeing my work in such lovely surroundings.