Moving Story

To my readers who weren’t aware we were moving, I wanted to wait until something “happened” before going on about it in my blog. As everyone is aware, the real estate market has been just so bad for the past year and a half or so. Our home was on the market for a long time, but we finally have a contract on it. I didn’t want to jinx it by talking about it too much too soon.

We are moving to my hometown area in Alabama to be near our extended family. And we have to do it fast, as the buyers want to close on the 31st of this month! So we are in Alabama scrambling to find something this week, get it bought, and go back home to pack. Things are going to be very busy for a few weeks.

We have been in the car all day looking at houses. They are all starting to run together. I need a drink.

When we know where and what we’re buying, I’ll put up some pictures. I’m putting it out there in the universe that I will have the perfect place with lots of room for a studio and a big fenced-in yard for our dogs. Yessss!

It’s a scary and exciting time. But I think change is good, especially for artists. We all need to interrupt our old patterns of seeing things once in a while. It’s all good.

Before and After Challenge, Eva-Maria Nerling

Continuing with the Before and After Challenge, today’s artist Eva-Maria Nerling provides us with her images and the  story behind their inspiration and her process.

This painting is part of a cycle in paintings and fiber art on the theme of Joseph and his brothers.

I created a cloth piece and finished it with red acrylic paint to make it look stained.

At the same time, I started the latest painting (22×40″). In the 1st picture, you see it unfinished. Yet, after filling the last white spaces with coloured squares, I found it very unsatisfying and by far not abstract enough. So I left it on the easle where it kept pouting. Then, one day this june, I woke up and knew what do do and worked on it to the phase in the second picture, and I think it is finished now.

It is another variation on a fake piece of evidence, maybe the earliest in history (I have not doubt). It is what the father sees: something within the coloured clouds that appear before our eyes when we are in a shock, and at the same time radiating with the glory of his favourite son.

Before

After

Thank you for sharing these, Eva. And the coat itself is wonderful as well. I hope everyone will click on the links to see the rest of the story.

NOTE TO READERS:  This morning we will be embarking on a 4-day road trip to look for a house in our new area. I will keep you updated as I get time on the computer. I am taking my laptop with me, but my ability to post to the blog will be limited by the time that I have. We have to find a house and be ready to move by the end of July! Yikes!!

Before and After Challenge, Chris Bellinger

Notes on the Challenge:  Click here for complete details about the Before and After challenge. I will keep the challenge open for at least a couple of weeks, or long enough to get as many participants as possible.

I have decided to devote an individual blog post to each artist, so that we can take our time and comment as much as we like. I will post them as they come in. Please bear with me. This could take a while, but I think it’s going to be fun.

I hope you’ll go back through each post in the Challenge and share your thoughts.

Chris Bellinger

In Chris’ own words:

These are from my small series using polyfilla and acrylic. The canvases are 3×4 inches.

I wanted to make the painting lighter and I think this works though in the process it has been transformed. It is always a question of knowing when to stop.

At the moment I like to use paint thickly along with the polyfilla pushing forward the boundaries and seeing how far over the edge of the canvas I can go.

Before

After

My take:  I can certainly identify with the fact that it’s not always easy to know when to stop. I think all artists have that in common. I like the deep texture and sculptural presence of this one.  As you may already know, I love excess!

Go to Chris Bellinger’s Blog for a look at more of his work, and don’t miss the separate page of photographs from his Fine Art Degree Show.

Before and After Challenge, Karen McConnell

Karen McConnell

Before

A little practice piece done several years ago with the subject matter being one of my all-time favourite toys, a jack-in-the-box. It was done on very poor quality paper and was an attempt to try out oil pastels. A few small embellishments here and there with a pen. The original was in portrait mode but I later cropped it to a square.

After

. . . a fairly recent period of manipulation and play in Photoshop starting with that previous image. I can’t begin to remember a step-by-step for this but it’s evolvement was a bit pleasing to my eye. So I ended up printing the thing on canvas which I applied to board and then painted over. The painting did little to make a real change in the imagery, but did add some texture and a more painterly appearance which galleries here seem to prefer. It measures 16 inches square. The title is now ‘A Fluttering of Wings’ – a reminder of some of the birds who manage to brave the cold and stay around here in Ontario throughout the winter.

Visit Karen’s website to see more of her beautiful work.

Before and After Challenge, Brian Parker

Brian Parker is our artist for today. Thank you for sharing your work, Brian. I’ll let him tell you about it in his own words. Here is a link to a gallery of Brian’s works.

Hi Martha,
I thought I’d join in on the before and after scene. I did a drawing
about two years ago when I was really learning. It was just one of
those drawings that seemed touching to me. I kept it hung in my
office at home for quite some time. After a couple more years of
learning and taking hold of my own technique, I decided to draw the
picture over again just so I could see if it would improve. I’ll let
you be the judge. I think it’s a great thing to do, to go back and
redo. Helps us to grow in our art and teaches us many lessons. Hey,
thanks for the opportunity.
Brian Parker

Before

After

My own response:  Wow! I see a huge difference between these two versions of the same subject. The proportions in the second one are much more convincing to me. It’s obvious that you took what you’ve been learning and applied it to this subject. Very, very nice.

I remember in life drawing classes when the instructor used to drive me absolutely crazy when he would walk over to my drawing pad and try to show me what I was doing wrong. I knew it wasn’t quite “right” but didn’t know how to fix it. He would tell me and try to show me, and it would just frustrate me more, almost to the point of tears. I knew he was trying to help, but it didn’t feel that way. It was very difficult for me to understand it from listening to his words. The only way for me to “get it” was just to keep drawing and drawing and drawing. And still I get rusty if I’m not drawing on a regular basis.

Thanks again for sharing, Brian. I really appreciate your willingness to show your Before and After drawings. Comments, anyone?

Before and After Challenge, Virginia Wieringa

Notes on the Challenge:  Click here for complete details about the Before and After challenge. I will keep the challenge open for at least a couple of weeks, or long enough to get as many participants as possible.

I have decided to devote an individual blog post to each artist, so that we can take our time and comment as much as we like. I will post them as they come in. Please bear with me. This could take a while, but I think it’s going to be fun.

I hope you’ll go back through each post in the Challenge and share your thoughts.

Next is:

Virginia Wieringa

Here’s my piece. I posted five of the many stops on the journey on my blog.

I think I would have been satisfied on the second stage, but I took a suggestion and it didn’t work. Now that I pushed it close to the edge, I like the finished product. Obviously, the middle stages had to happen.

Thank you for sharing your work, Virginia. I’ll be interested to see what comments we get on both blogs.

Before and After Challenge, John Gascot

John Gascot very bravely jumped right into the Before and After Challenge. Thank you, John! I love the changes you made to tighten up your composition on this one.

John’s quote:  ”I can’t believe I’m even sharing the first version, but here’s my entry. Key West Art Bar sold the re-worked version.”

Before:

After:

Personal note:  I love the introduction of stronger pattern in the background areas. Your changes must have been based on good instincts, since it resulted in a gallery sale. Congratulations, John!

The Before and After Challenge

OK, artists:  It’s summer and I’m in a silly mood. I’d like to propose a “Before and After” challenge.

How it works

If you have a digital image you’ve saved of one of your works of art that has been reworked completely, and also the new version of that piece, send both before and after versions to me by Saturday, June 27th to my email address:

martha(dot)marshall(a)gmail(dot)com

Or, if you prefer, you can post them to your own blog and give us a link to them.

I encourage you to share the thought process behind your decision to change the work, whether or not you have any regrets about your changes, which version you like better, etc., and this will hopefully start a fun conversation.

This challenge is not for the purpose of having critiques. Critiques are supposed to be reserved for those who request them. So I hope we’ll all agree to keep our comments positive and constructive and just have fun with it.

With your permission, I will post your images along with your comments about your work here on the blog over the next few days (or weeks, if we get a lot of contributions.)

In order to keep from overwhelming WordPress, please reduce your images to 72 dpi and under 6 inches.

I’ve already started it off with yesterday’s post. Who wants to be next?

The Painting Was Jinxed

Have you ever had that experience? The one that keeps you working for days and perhaps weeks on a painting, and then after investing all those hours into it you have to bite the bullet and cover it up?

Well, I have to confess that it happened to me — yet again. But I never consider those experiences as lost time. They are always learning experiences. And a nice buildup of texture, I might add.

The painting on which I showed several progress shots ended up looking very nice.  But “very nice” was not good enough. I needed it to be able to fit into my Sugar Free Series, and it just would never have worked. So now it is frosted and striped all over. I call it Jelly Stripes, and I call it finished. Since in real life the white area is a translucent white and looks like the glaze on a doughnut, and the colored stripes look like jelly . . . well, you see how I went right down a very gooey path with that thought.

“Jelly Stripes” – From the Sugar Free Series
Acrylic on panel, 16 x 16 x 2″

More Small Works on Paper

“Infinity” – Acrylic on paper, 5 x 7″

I decided to incorporate the watermark on the bottom right hand side of the paper into the composition. This is Arches Cover Paper and the watermark has an Infinity symbol. That symbol might be a great jumping off place for a series of images.

We have spent the morning ripping overgrown vines from the back corner of our house. It’s so hot outside that we stopped before we collapsed. That is a job that can be done in phases. The vines in our back yard are Asian jasmine, which started out as a ground cover years ago. Now they have climbed up and over the fence, which is pretty, but can get out of hand. At the very corner where the fence meets the house, they had gone right up the wall, all the way to the roof.  These vines are great cover for little vermin, so they have to be thinned out. What fun.

Asian Jasmine