Another Day, Another Flower Painting

For the last few weeks, I've been immersed in painting imaginary flowers in Carla Sonheim's online Flower Crazy Class. This is one of my favorite paintings. It started as a purely abstract piece on a square piece of birch board.  In the class we learned how to use gesso to create wonderful texture and then paint with watercolor. The flowers gradually emerged as I added layers of watercolor, sanded, rubbed and added more paint. I love watercolor, but had never used it over gesso, nor on wood. It's amazing to me how beautiful and rich the results are. 

In this painting, perhaps my very favorite of the month, I  started with a collage layer before adding gesso and watercolor.

This one is also on an 8" x 8" wood panel. I am definitely going to continue use this painting method because it's so much fun to do, and I love the results!

Thanks so much for visiting my blog today. I always appreciate your comments.

Flower Craziness

Hello, my long neglected blog and lovely blog readers!  I seem to have taken an unplanned break from blogging but the good news is that I've been doing a lot of painting. I signed up for Carla Sonheim's Flower Crazy Class and have been going flower crazy (in a good way) all through the month of March. It's my first online class and I am loving it. Carla is such a wonderful teacher. Beginners and experienced artists alike can learn a lot from her playful and practical approaches to creating art. 

One of the great ideas I've learned from the class is to look at other objects for inspiration. for example, in this exercise, I looked at pictures of gears online for flower shape ideas. Pretty cool, huh?!

And in this painting, I was inspired by a sea anemone.

It's amazing how this takes the pressure off when you're drawing, at least for me. 

Can you guess what my inspiration was for this one? 

I'm amazed by how many completed paintings I've done this month. It's definitely been a worthwhile experience to take this class. 

New Collages with Old Spanish Papers

I recently decided to push myself to open a shop on Etsy. As I am one to take baby steps and let the process of selling my art gradually unfold, I am not expecting overnight success there! I'm sure I have a lot to learn about what will sell, and how to sell it. There's a good reason I didn't study marketing or business in college. Anyway, I'm really enjoying surfing the shops there and discovering all of the wonderful items for sale. I do have to limit that activity, though, because it is easy to be tempted. I did buy some interesting 'vintage' papers from Spain there that I'm having a lot of fun with in my collages.

"Especial"
mixed media collage
4" x 6" on paper

"I Will Touch a Hundred Flowers"
mixed media collage
4" x 6" on paper

Many years ago, I spent some time in Spain, teaching English. It's fun for me to bring a little Spanish into my collages in this way. An old pink receipt brings in a beautiful splash of color, and the lovely words are from Edna St. Vincent Millay,

I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

The Power of Doodling: Imaginary Flora and the Brain

I've been doodling this week, or, to be a bit more precise, my whole life. Yes, I'm a doodler from way back. In first grade, my teacher asked my parents to send in a special notepad I could use to doodle on in school. She could have scolded me, or tried to make me stop, but instead, she accepted that it was something I needed to do and found a way to make it possible. From that point on, my doodling passion flourished throughout my entire academic career, and I'm proud to say, it's still alive and well!  Even so, I sometimes I feel like I need to do something more 'serious' with my art than 'just doodle' and I don't always give in to the fun. But this week I gave in to the doodling and doodled on a grand scale! 

First in my sketchbook:

Then on my Ipad!

And finally, I got my encaustics and played around with a doodle design in wax:

Doodling is not only fun, it's good for your brain! Studies have shown that it can help you concentrate, and improve your problem solving ability. This Ted Talk by Sunni Brown outlines some of the benefits of doodling. I think any of us who doodle know this instinctively. It's just a part of who we are, and as natural (and necessary) to us as breathing. So if you're doodler, keep on doodling. And if you don't doodle, why not join in the fun and give it a try?

Encaustic: Inner Journey

Inner Journey
Encaustic 7" x 7" on panel

When I'm busy, the thought of getting set up for encaustic painting seems overwhelming. Since I don't have a studio, I do encaustic painting in my kitchen where there is good ventilation. For that reason, months had gone by since I felt I had time for doing encaustics. This week, I decided enough was enough and got the wax out. This small painting, which includes a few small collage elements, is my result of about an hour of playing with the wax. There is a bit of map in there, which inspired the colors and lines for the overall composition. As I was doing the lines, I focused on creating layers of lines by inscribing lines, rubbing in oil paint, and then adding another layer of wax and repeating the process with more lines. I also used a funky metal roller to create some additional texture in one of the layers of wax. Working with melting wax is so soothing  and really not as complicated to set up or clean up as I'd been letting myself imagine. Winter seems like the perfect time for working with wax so I'm promising myself not to wait so long until my next encaustic session!

Ipad Watercolors On the Road

Here are a few 'watercolors' I did recently on the ipad using the 'Paper by 53 app." As it turns out, painting on the ipad with this app is really fun, and has nice results. I did some of these sketches while in the car. This is a great way to do sketching on the go!

You can read more about my adventure with ipad sketching in this earlier post and see more of my digital sketching if you are interested. Happy New Year to my Paint Party Friday visitors! Thanks so much for stopping by.

Resistance is Futile: Ipad 'Painting'

Since I spend so much time on the computer for work, and other aspects of daily life, I have been resisting any form of digital artwork. It's not that I don't admire it, it's just that I do art in part because I need to do something with my hands that takes me far away from the fast-paced digital world. Yet somehow, over the recent holiday break, I found myself experimenting with drawing and painting on the ipad. I bought myself a stylus, and upgraded my copy of the app Paper by 53 so that I would have the watercolor painting tools. After that, I proceeded to enjoy myself thoroughly, playing around  with drawing and painting on the screen.

It's a great way to squeeze in sketching practice while on vacation. If you don't like your sketch, you just hit delete and start again! This certainly won't replace my other artistic pursuits, but I am happy to have found a way to use my Ipad to work on my art skills. 

Peace and Healing Art Journal Page

 This post could be subtitled, "The Real Reason I Haven't Finished Baking Christmas Cookies." Yes, I am prone to procrastination, even in the busiest of times (or perhaps especially in the busiest of times) and today was no exception. The kitchen was a mess, presents were waiting to be wrapped, and cards waiting to be written, yet I was calmly making a journal page. I guess I could blame it on my friend for sharing such a great quote on Facebook, because it really is so wonderful. I could also blame it on Jennibellie's latest tutorial on making a journal page in 15 minutes, which I also decided to watch today. But I think it was a little voice inside me telling me that it really is OK, and maybe even necessary to give ourselves permission to sit down, relax, breathe, and contemplate during this busy, and let's face it, sometimes stressful time of year.

The idea came to me to use this quote which I'd seen earlier and wanted to remember. In this time of so much violence and heartache in our country, and in our world, I found these words so reassuring and inspiring -- healing words to live by and remember now and throughout the coming year.

Thank you to all who have visited my blog this year and commented with such kindess. Best wishes to all of you for a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year.

Draw Your Own Sun: Art Journal Page

I was out at the coast over the weekend for two gloriously relaxing days. I love being there any time of year in any kind of weather. It's always breathtaking, even (and maybe especially) on the blustery days. One cloudy morning, I got out my sketchbook and did some doodling.

I only had a few basic supplies with me but I had already collaged and painted a background on the pages to use up extra scraps and paint from another project. After doodling and dabbling with my pencils and paints for awhile, the words came to me.

On a cloudy day, draw your own sun.

And while you're at it, relax!

It was fun just giving myself time to play around. In this second page, I really like the way the caran d'ache works together with the collage elements and acrylic background. I just used what I could find -- items cut from the newspaper and a tea bag (do you see it?). If you've never tried tea bags in your collages, I highly recommend it. They're stained in delicate earth tones and are beautifully transparent. They also add a subtle texture that absorbs paint very nicely. 

Thank you for visiting my blog! I always appreciate your comments so much.