WIP View 1

WIP View 2

This morning turned out to be a  joyful smearing of paint – on canvas, on panels, and all over my hands. I had spent way too many hours this week at the computer working on digital art, which can be addicting in its own way, but can be physically draining too. It’s good to change focus for a little while.

I finally broke out of my fear of going larger with some collage on canvas. Well, I guess you can call it collage, though for now it’s mostly paint, and lots of texture. I want to shake my fixation on the idea that canvas=paint. The collage elements of weathered and hand painted papers that you do see are partially obscured by a blending around the edges into the surrounding paint.

Alongside these two canvases you will see two of my boxes with ongoing work. And you might notice the magazine pages that I’ve used to clean the paint off my knives and brayers.

I’ve taken two shots, each from the opposite side, for a better view of what’s going on so far. These canvases aren’t the really large ones, of course, but I thought maybe it was best to make a gradual transition to larger. But those old canvases are right there waiting to be next.

Have a great weekend!

Haiku 9, Acrylic and Collage on Cradled Masonite 8 x 8 x 2"

As you may recall from reading this blog, I like to buy art books. Exactly a year ago, give or take a few days, I wrote in this post that I had bought Art Revolution by Lisa L. Cyr. I’ve enjoyed reading the book off and on over time and, as with all good art books, every time I pick it up it shows me something in a new way. So I’m currently reading it again with my coffee in the mornings.

This time I decided to look for Lisa online, to possibly see more works by her. I found not only a beautiful website, but her new blog Confessions of a Mixed Media Artist. I was delighted to discover a whole page of links to her video demos on texture, each one 12 to 13 minutes long, and packed with detail. I’ve been watching the first one and wanted to tell you about these so that you can check them out, and also explore her website and blog.

The bottom line is that I wanted to tell you about how much I’m enjoying the book, and then I went on this voyage of discovery into a great series of resources for mixed media artists.

It's Still Winter - Acrylic and Graphite on Cradled Panel, 8x8"

This painting is the perfect example of how unpredictable my process is. Look at the before version below (with apologies for the bad photo.) Remember all that splattered and smeared and troweled color? All it ended up doing was create a very interesting texture when covered with white and gray and lines. It was probably the least promising of the three pieces I’d started. But I went out there tonight and decided to transform it into one with a neutral palette. I like it now.

Work In Progress, Before Version

Goodbye to Mediocrity

Next, I’ve been going through some paintings that I’d like to cover with new work. They are ones that were OK at the time I did them, but don’t really stand the test of time. We all have those, don’t we? After all, I do have quite a few that I’d never think of painting over. But I was surprised how many I found out there in the studio that are just ripe for something new. Large canvases to possibly use in my new painting/collage experiments. It was like going shopping!

A New Online Discovery

I’ve just discovered a fun website for collage artists, kohlage.com. I may sign up and upload some pieces. Lots of interesting stuff to see there, including a whole list of links to free and open source images for use in collage. If you visit the site, be sure to visit the “resources” page.

I’m going to have fun tomorrow smearing some more paint. I hope you have some interesting things happening in your world too.

Enduring Stories - Collage, 5x7" on 8x10" backing

It was good to be in the studio today. It is a warm and welcoming feeling, and everything that happens is a new discovery. It felt so good to just explore the possibilities of papers and texture and colors. The collage shown above is composed of hand painted and weathered papers.

Right now I am thinking about collage on a very large scale, primarily because of the show that’s coming up. I want to see what happens if I try to translate some of these ideas onto canvas or a large panel. Of course as always I will share what develops.

Tierra 7, Acrylic on Panel, 10x10"

“E.L. Doctorow once said that ‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.” 

― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

These are beautiful words for visual artists as well. I highly recommend this book by Anne Lamott, which I read several years ago. It doesn’t matter that it’s for writers, though it might inspire you to find your inner writer. It’s simply great reading full of life lessons and practical advice for becoming a better observer of everything in your world.

Storm Season Arrives

You may have seen news about tornadoes in our area last night. I was up with the dogs for most of the night, due to the terror that my Reno goes through with storms. I have a wrap for her that’s supposed to be soothing, but it doesn’t really help her for severe weather. She is well aware of wild fluctuations in the barometric pressure, even when there’s no lightning and thunder. I kept the TV tuned into local weather, and right after midnight during an imminent tornado warning, we sat in the floor in the inside hallway where I could still see the TV. That is, until we lost our satellite signal. Then I pulled the channel up on my laptop. The storm passed us by in short order, but by that time I was wide awake. I thanked my girl for being such a good protector. Sigh.

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Winter Fields, Collage, 8x8"

This collage made me think of red clay fields wet from recent rains, with mud exposed between beaten down weeds and fallen twigs. An empty bird’s nest clung onto a high tree in my yard almost all winter, but has finally blown down.

The birds have plenty to eat in my feeders for tomorrow. A big storm is coming tonight, and behind that a cold front first thing in the morning. I think I’ll sleep in, knowing they will be all right.

Have a warm and wonderful weekend.

This is the current state of the three panels I’m working on. I have chickened out of the saturated, bright color. It’s not what I do after all. So I’ve toned them down considerably and you will see more changes in the direction of more subtle colors on these.

I like the first one as is, so it might not change a whole lot.

The second one isn’t even a good photograph, but you can see the chaos going on. It will need to be resolved in some way.

The third one is a good basis for something to be superimposed, even collage elements. Possibly large scale text? Thinking out loud here.

It’s all good.

Canvas grouping, 14 x 35"

This is another example of canvases that have been combined into one unit. As soon as I put these together, they sold to a collector in New York.

I find it fun and interesting to add dimension to an otherwise flat presentation.

Echoes 19 - Acrylic on Canvas, 12x12"

Here we are beginning another new year, and once again I am doing a yearly review of which internet sites are serving my needs and which ones are not.

My website is now a no-frills version, a free site that I manage myself. I seriously doubt the need for a fancy website at this stage of my career. There are so many opportunities to showcase your art that the static website is fast becoming a thing of the past.

I have a facebook page that I update often, though probably not often enough. It can work well as both a portfolio and a blog of sorts, with more opportunities to network with a lot of really fine artists. If you have one too, please let me know in the comments section on this blog so we can connect. More and more artists are now establishing their own pages.

The jury is still out regarding my two Etsy shops. They are a considerable time requirement right now, at a time when other aspects of my art business require more and more of my attention. These links are colorpoetry and brushwithimagination.

Zatista is a great site for art marketing, and I’m adding more works to that one as time goes on. They do a good job of publicizing their site and their artists on social networking sites like facebook, twitter, and pinterest. Here is the link to my Zatista gallery.

Thanks to some of my readers, I have joined both RedBubble and ImageKind. These sites sell prints from uploaded images of your work, eliminating the shipping part. I like the idea, but am still waiting for sales to happen. (Though I do admit I need to upload more images on a frequent basis.)

I’m still on perhaps a dozen other websites (all free) just to keep the work out there visible to as many people as possible. But I keep a running list, monitor these links, and ditch any that aren’t working for me.

Is it any wonder that there’s little time to just get into the studio and paint?

The painting shown above is an example of my more colorful work. It’s not that new, but I still like that series.

If I use a brayer or a squeegee, I always clean them off on a piece of paper, with the idea of hanging onto those scraps for collage. The squeegee in this case is a long narrow piece of foam board. I’ll keep using that until it has a lot of coats of smeared paint. Then I’ll look at it to see if it’s getting interesting.

The first picture is of the three panels after the second coat of paint:

and the second one shows what my papers and my squeegee look like after smearing the excess paint on them. Who knows? These might become paintings too!

There’s a lot of drying time in between thick coats of paint. So now we wait to see what comes next.

Sometimes when you aren’t quite sure how to proceed, it just feels good to make a mess. It’s by doing that we are shown what to do next.