square-ing

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!

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!

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

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

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

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

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 :)