finished!!! We Share One Moon

I'm always searching for the reasons why I paint.  I'm drawn constantly to my studio to draw or paint and create something where there was previously nothing...this draw sometimes gets me a little nutty since I'm a busy mom of three.  I'm balancing the "have tos" with the "i want tos".  You know what I mean...the "have tos" include but are not limited to, laundry, dishes, meals, cleaning. referreeing (spelling?), chaperoning, etc.  I'm discovering that this need to create will only fester and make me frustrated if I don't listen.  It was maybe a whisper for a while but it's heard loudly and very clearly today.  It is part of me.  It's who I am.  I know that I will not create maserpieces on a daily basis but I will create.  I will draw and paint and make things that were previously nothing but bits and pieces or paper or canvas.  I am not in it for the money or the prestige (a little nod of encouragement is always appreciated but not necessary) and I will keep going even if other people question my subject matter or my methods or the amount of time I devote to what they might see as "silly" or "foolish" or even "a waste of time."  I am an artist and I am me.  I am a mother but I have layers like everyone else and I refuse to make apologies for what I am passionate about outside of my family.  I'm devoted to my family and in that is me...aren't we as moms part of that family we're so devoted to and passionate about?  Without taking care of yourself, there is no taking care of anyone else.  You must feed your soul...in doing so, you better yourself for everyone else.  You show your children that you are self confident, you love yourself, you are ok with you.  Maybe that leads to them being ok with themselves, too....we can hope, right? 

So, I paint.  I draw, I dream, I imagine, and I create.  I feel alive when I do and I feel reconnected with the world somehow.  This painting has revealed itself recently in light of Japan's horrible circumstances.  I hope everyone can relate to the "something bigger than us" concept.  Perhaps "she" is Mother Nature, pregnant with new life, preparing to plant new life, holding the moon in her hands.  I initially titled this "She Holds the Moon" but I felt like "We Share One Moon" was more appropriate once I added the star painted like the Japanese flag.  I hope that when you look at this painting, you feel connected to the people of Japan and that you remember we do share one moon.  They are suffering in ways most of us can only imagine.  As humans though, we can empathize with their mourning, worrying, crying, dying, weeping, etc.  We need to keep them close to our hearts and do what we can even in small ways such as praying.  This is what I have done...beyond praying, and I hope it can help somehow. 

New Painting in Progress

This is a gallery wrapped canvas, 16x20 inches.  Lots of texture and layered color.

No title yet but she makes me think of Mother Nature...that there is something so much bigger than ourselves. 

close up of houses

close up of pockets...soon to hold flowers or stars of some kind.

I'll post more when I'm done...happy early St. Patty's Day!!!

work in progress

Working only sporadically but love to play with new ideas and materials or techniques.  Still loving the faces, textures, shapes and color.  This time, I tore paper and traced the unique shape for lips, nose, and eyebrows.  I then attached the papers with gel medium.  I'm still working on this and I fight myself to leave more of the background showing.  I love to blend colors though so it's tough.  I also love to use a great deal of scrumbling and my brushes are taking a beating!  My favorite thing to do though is to go into some areas with my watercolor pencils to add more dimension.  I will take a color that is a shade darker and accent edges, blending the color in with some gel medium to make the color permanent.  Sometimes I take a complementary color and add some touches of that to an area to make it pop.  The other thing I love to do is use colors other than white for highlights -- light aqua is great for this!!

I wish I could paint for hours...I'll settle for smaller increments of time just to be able to keep my feet wet so to speak. 

Enjoy!

art and some of my favorite media

Not feeling too chatty...plus, we're going on day 3 of all children being home because of weather.  I'm going CRAZY!!!  Enjoy!

my daughter

 

Before                                                                                       After

I painted over the whole canvas on the left and started over.  I finally got around to finding a better reference photo. I think I've come a long way since June.  I hope Ellie will like it, too.

I'm not finished yet. :)  I am taking artistic liberty here by changing what my daughter was wearing and not caring too much whether the painting looks EXACTLY like the photo or not. As long as someone who knows Ellie would come in and say, "Oh, that's Ellie!" I'll be happy. I'm so hard on myself and it really keeps me from soaring sometimes. I HAVE to let go and just paint what I think looks good. She's not finished but I'm liking the way she looks -- she looks like my Ellie :)

winding down

What should I do with the background?  Any thoughts?  I think I'm almost done :)

continuing

still working, building up layers of color with lots of drybrushing...still have button, flower and background to do...having fun and at least able to stretch my painting muscles a bit.

working in some realism

Latest work in progress...love doing faces and I love the 20s style of hair, hats, etc.  I'll post more as I get closer to finishing.  This is nothing like what I've been doing for the last year.  I'm sure I'm not finished with my bizarre style but it's good to do some realism once in a while.  (Not as fun I might add!!)
Happy New Year!!

penguins!

I've been working on these for what seems like forever!!!  They were done on upcycled coasters (the thick ones from bars or restaurants) to be used as ornaments.  These are just the images -- I may photograph the actual ornaments but no time right now.  I had so many more to do but the rest will have to wait or become something else.  I just love penguins and these were a more whimsical, cartoonish, children's bookish style that seems to come out a lot with me.  Enjoy!!

Here are the original sketches...feel free to right click and copy (but just for personal use, k?)  They are my images but you can print them out for kids to color or to use in your own hand painted art.  Oh, there is a mouse, too. 
Thanks!

Henry Darger WOW

Henry Darger was a janitor.  What people didn't know about him until he died in 1973 was that he was also a brilliant, self-taught artist and writer.  Thousands of pages of writing and hundreds of paintings were found which revealed a very different man than people knew.  Learn more about him by clicking on his name and enjoy this video I found on youtube:




Be inspired every day...

work in progress

work in progress for The Sketchbook Project

I suppose this is some sort of person dragging a wagon that holds her pet bird/dinosaur something or other.  I love when these weird things come out of the background.  I collaged some tissue paper that had some modern funky flowers on it.  Slathered paint in areas, leaving some of the flowers exposed.  I kind of just saw these two figures and pulled them out.  Like how this is going and it feels AWESOME to be painting something again!!

Have a fun week!

:)

dance with your dog

This post is really long but it's worth the read I think ;)

I was recently on a trip that included a visit to North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.  Before that, I was at sleep-away camp with my daughter as one of the chaperones.  Before that, I was in Cancun with my wonderful hubby for five days.  For some people, all of this coming and going might sound exciting.  For me, I feel glad to be home.  Please don't get me wrong -- I loved each trip for the things that made that trip special.  The week in Cancun was almost a second honeymoon for us and we had a fabulous time.  Camping with my daughter was so great since I could see and hear and enjoy all of the same things she was getting to do instead of just hearing about it later.  Our visit to NC and TN was about family and a 75th birthday, a farewell to the town where my husband grew up, and a reunion of sorts.  ALL of the cousins on my husband's side of the family got to hang out, we had two "Thanksgivings".  We had a lot of fun!  Now that we are home, I realize that an entire month has gone by and I haven't even picked up a paint brush (except for the little kit of watercolor pencils and sketchbook I took to Cancun).  I'm having to reacquaint myself with, well myself.  I see paintings I did last year and I remember the enthusiasm and raw energy I had for the process.  I would get lost in it, and then look at the clock and realize 3 hours had gone by in a blink.  Now, a month has gone by in a blink and I've had NO TIME TO PAINT.  Isn't that so weird? 

Now, I tend to be a pessimistic type of person.  I really have to force myself to see the positive in things.  The older I get, the easier it gets to do that.  So, I'm asking myself to look at all the experiences I've had recently and really focus on the fun, the smiles, the hugs, the visiting, the laughter, the sights, the smells, the food, the music, the uniqueness of each situation.  I get hung up sometimes on the preparation like packing for 4 (hubby packs himself), the kenneling of the dog, the care of the other pets, the stress of the airport, how the beds will be different or uncomfortable, how are the kids going to behave, do I have cold medicine with me, what if I get sick from the change of food and water, what if I lose my glasses, what if the plane blows up....do you see how my mind works here?  It makes it VERY difficult to simply enjoy the moment that I'm in. 

So, I'm writing this post to share with you an "A Ha" moment I had during an outing in Tennessee.  I had been anxious and nervous and tired from travelling so much.  One of the nights my husband and his family had planned for us to go to a place called "The Carter Fold".  (visit the site...it's interesting)  It's a famous little shack in the middle of nowhere Virginia (very close to the Tennessee border) that locals flock to on Saturday nights to listen to live blue grass music.  Johnny Cash played there many times -- remember his wife's name?  June Carter?  It's famous in it's own hillbilly way.  Anyway, it's not your average teenager's place of choice to hang out and not really a safe place for toddlers to be, considering the stadium seating (which replaced the old telephone poles covered with carpet squares that I sat on during my first visit years ago).  Since we had children with us ranging in age from 17 to 3, it was quite a gaggle to keep up with and it was clear they didn't really want to be there.  The toddlers actually did have a blast trying to dance and getting popcorn from the concession stand.  However, they were anxious after the first hour or so.  In the meantime, I danced with my husband (not well) and we "clogged" as is the tradition there.  So much so is this tradition that people who frequent the Carter Fold often wear special clogging shoes.  They are like tap shoes with metal on the bottom.  You could hear some folks climbing the stairs to get back to their seats with their "click clacking".  Stay with me here....I'm leading up to my a ha moment.  What amazed me and inspired me so much was just how enthusiastically some of these folks clogged.  One lady moved her legs and feet so fast, you'd think they somehow weren't attached -- especially since she was at least 70 years old!!  I was sitting there watching over the heads of our disappointed pre-teen and teen girls in sheer amazement of these elderly cloggers.  Some of them were VERY elderly but they were out there...cutting a rug with their wife or husband.  One lady was dancing with her dog -- I mean, in her arms like a person.  She didn't have a care in the world other than the music and her canine friend.  Again, I was amazed.  So many things were running through my head.  Like, these folks LOVE what they are doing and it's not weird or corny or out of the ordinary for them.  It's just part of them.  It's like a subculture -- Carter Fold groupies.  They were accepting of any person who wanted to try to dance or get closer to the stage and clap along to the band's music.  While I don't necessarily listen to this type of music, I really enjoyed myself tremendously.  I wasn't thinking about anything else...  Just enjoying the scenery, you know? 

So what is this A-Ha you might be asking?  Well, here's the best way for me to explain it....and relate it to my art and my life in general.  I saw people who were in their element, doing their thing without a care in the world.  The lady with the dog was hilariously unaffected by any looks she might have gotten (which mostly came from us I think).  I so admired her for being herself and doing her thing.  I had been feeling like I was withering as an artist (being away from my studio so much) and then I saw her dancing with that dog.  It's so weird but it made me realize that as artists, we must not always think that we have to be producing work to feel creative or energized.  We can gather bits of inspiration in our off times when other areas of our life need attention more than our artistic selves.  In fact, we must be gatherers of inspiration and experience so when we do have time to produce work, the work will have substance.  It's not to say everything in your life has to somehow relate to or find it's way back to your art.  Maybe you'll be inspired by something that will allow you more patience with your children or make you spend extra time with your pet or hug your mate a little longer or cook an amazing meal including dessert for a change.  Maybe you'll find a little something when you thought you wouldn't.  And if you are really struggling with inspiration or living in the moment, dance with your dog (or your cat, or your guinea pig or your python!).  It should get you moving in the right direction!  (Of course, Bluegrass music is optional!)

Halloween fun

This is the second year in a row we've hosted a Halloween party for our girls and some of their friends.  This year, we did a craft that was a take on Alisa Burke's post on her recycled toilet paper roll monsters (see http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/2010/10/little-monsters-tutorial.html.)  I thought this would be something 2nd and 5th graders could do but was worried about drying time for the paint.  So I improvised.  I let them use duct tape!  It was immediate color satisfaction since it was simply peel and stick.  They had trouble at first ripping the tape but once they got the hang of it, they went nuts with their ideas.  Here are the results of our fun:

Other photos for you to enjoy:

Homemade costume...we bought the hat, wig and tights (already had the shoes) but all else was made.  She designed and directed me in the production...so bossy that girl!

a giant oreo!

mini Michael Jackson!

My woodland fairy princess...shoving chocolate in her face.

I did the do...pretty good, eh?  I'm not much of a hair stylist but I was quite proud of this one!

I know this post comes late as far as Halloween goes...but my hubby and I went on a trip the day after so I hadn't gotten a chance to post yet.  I have more to post from the trip and some venting about moving to do but I'll save that for next time :)

I'm in a Gallery! Yay!!

Just wanted to repost from Lori Sander's blog...she has a gallery and is featuring several different artists' works and some of them are mine.  Yeehaw!!  So fun to know my art is in a gallery and people who don't know me might be picking up an original piece, holding it, looking at it, etc.  It's a very different feeling than just putting images on facebook or flickr or my blog...exciting but a little scary!  :)

Hope to share more of my art with the "real" world as my confidence grows.  How did those of you who have featured your art in shows or art fairs get through it the first time?  I'm petrified and don't even know where to start.  I need a check list!!  Help!  How do you get "ready" and then how do you know you are "ready" for a show?  ARG.  If anyone wants to comment, I'd love some feedback on the subject.  Any little tidbits of advice will be greatly appreciated!

Have an awesome week!
Smiles!

Witch

Finally finished this little witch (11x14 on watercolor paper).  She's much more stylized and cutesie than I normally would paint but I was in a children's-book-sorta mood.  Enjoy!

simple jack o'lantern

Not feeling well...been in bed for 2 days but I think I'm on the mend.  As I sit and listen to my husband sawing away on his coffin creation (we'll use it in our haunted house) and my children laughing,  I find myself wishing I had my energy back.  Couple more days and I'll feel myself again-- I HATE being sick (it's hard to slow down when you're used to being a busy mom!).  Halloween is just around the corner and I always draw a jack o'lantern or two (or 20!).  Here's one for you.  I hope you are having fun getting ready for Fall.  We are -- or at least 4 of us are ;)