Thursday, June 23, 2011

Horses and other things

One of the things I love about being an artist is having a variety of things to work on. They do say it's the spice after all and I do like spice. If I choose, every day I can be working on something different. Right now I'm bouncing back and forth between a flat canvas and a horse shaped canvas. My horse for Horse Fever arrived yesterday and is here in the studio now along with my other work.
This giant cookie is on the easel now too and unfortunately my students are complaining that it's making them hungry. This painting isn't done yet, hence the not so great photo of it but when it's done I'll take a good picture and post it. This one is part of the Body of Work series so I'll explain more about it when it's finished. If you want to see some more of the pieces in this series head to the top of the page and click on the tab that says - you guessed it - Body of Work. This series is about women and body image. In later posts I'll feature individual pieces and give you an idea of what I was thinking about when I did them.

For now, gotta go paint.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

It was so obvious......

So which one is a more dynamic image? I've been playing around with photos and backgrounds for the pendants that I have listed in the Etsy shop - check out the link on the left side of the page. Even though the bottom image is not as close up as the top image I feel like it has more impact because of the contrast in values. I was looking at the pendant photos I've been using and thinking that they're rather bland. There has to be a way to spice them up a bit. Then it hit me. Duh..... I'm a painter! I have all these wonderful textures and colors sitting right here at my fingertips. Why not use paintings for the backdrops of the hand painted, original pendants that I make! Sometimes solutions are so simple that we just miss them.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

From Above
16x16
mixed media on canvas

Does anyone else do this - talk to their paintings in progress? This painting started out as a bright yellow non-representational painting and turned into a cool colored abstract that's reminiscent of sitting in the window seat of an airplane looking down at the planet from high above the clouds. That's not what I intended to paint. Sometimes a painting just takes on a life of it's own. Maybe we're not really the painters. If we can get into that zone it seems as if the painting happens all on it's own without much input from us. Getting into a zone happens for me when I take the time to listen to the painting. I start by actually asking what the painting needs. Where does it want me to go next? Then listen - like a good friend would do. Maybe that sounds whackadoodle but there's something to it. When I was working on this one I started with torn paper collaged on the canvas and then started adding the yellows and oranges in washes. I stopped. I looked at it for a couple of days. I put it away for a lot longer than that. It was just wrong. Maybe if I had been a better listener I would've figured out sooner that it didn't want to be a bright yellow painting. Instead it wanted to be a cool aerial view landscape with golden undertones.