.... art studio .... studio art ... art time ... studio time ... sometimes you have a long title cause you don't actually have a good title at all ...

i am lucky enough to have a nice art studio in my basement .... it's not perfect, but it's mine ... and it is a dedicated space for my mess making ... um ... my art making .... the best part is that i have a really huge table ... i recently recovered the whole shebang with fresh paper .... so my doodle spots, my test a paint spots, my write something important down spots were all fresh white clean paper .... and here, disregard the green paint mess, one of my girls decided to fill up some of the whiteness and leave me a little message ...

i don't think that's HER words .... it's a pilfered quote that she likes ... i like it too ...

a short bit ago, i showed you an "always go" collage .... here's where i practiced it before i put it on the canvas ....

but you can also see where someone else is sending me messages .... in something remarkably similar to MY handwriting ... yet, i can tell it is not my handwriting ...

and here's the blank canvas i've begun working on .... but you just get to see it blank for now ....
i have a small show next wednesday .... and YIKES, hopefully i'll have quite a few finished pieces to show you before that .... but at the moment i just have bunches of started pieces ... not finished ones ..oops!!

i'm running out of time for all this procrastinating....

... pottery ....

i did not actually go into my pottery class today ... but i have some photos from the last class that i still haven't blogged .... so... here's what a pottery class looks like if you are me ...

i went to pottery and had four pieces on the fired shelf ... they had been bisque fired ... meaning all the moisture had been sucked out of them and they were hard, hard, hard .... baked ... cooked ...so ... i went to the glazing area and picked out my glaze ... mexican point green .. which is kinda turquoisey ... by turquoisey isn't as good a name as mexican point green .... so i stirred it .... to get all the glaze chemicals mixed up ....

you can see i left the giganto whisk in there after i stirred ...

i took one of the pieces and dunked it in ... i didn't want to glaze my hands so i just glazed it mostly and then let it dry ...

after it dried i dipped it the other way so that all of it was covered ...

this piece was too big to dunk in the glaze bucket, so i held it over the glaze bucket and oh so very carefully poured glaze over it ... i had to work on coverage as well as getting all the drips back into the bucket and not onto the floor ... tricky stuff, huh?

the next photo shows how i'm scrubbing some of the glaze off ... the clay i'm working with is called chocolate ... it is kinda milk chocolate when it is wet, and chocolate cocoa when it is bisqued, but when it is high fired with the glaze it is more dark chocolate ... so the clay bits that i reveal again highlight the texture i made and will show as a dark brown next to my turquoiseyness .... (spell check will just have to get over turquioseyness)

yup ... that's a car wash sponge i'm using to deglaze my texture ...

here's one that i think is going to be my favorite .... i got all fretful that i was taking away too much glaze and leaving too much brown ... but, if it's horrid, i can just do a second glazing ... not the end of the world ...

plus, i'm thinking i'm gonna really love the brown bits ....

so i glazed all four that i'd gotten back ....

and then i went back to work making some more ....

i have a big gift giving event coming up and would like to make a lot of these ... but i think i'm going to run out of time before i make enough... i have four ready to bisque, four bisquing, and four ready to glaze ... 12 total ....i need way more than that i think ... so then do i make them smaller to make them faster? or do i not give them all away at once and go ahead and make canvases to give away ...

tricky questions ....

stay tuned ....

.... happy easter ...

if you celebrate easter, i hope yours was joyful and hopeful .... filled with glorious possibilities ...

happy spring ... our weather finally seems to be well and done with winter .... we played croquet in the backyard sunshine today .... and we ate chocolate ... chocolate is a sure sign of spring, right?

happy day from the e.beck.artist family ....

....eek .. eight ....

today, my eighth day of blog posting in a row, almost didn't happen .... i was thinking that my post with the apple happened this morning ... but i figured out that was yesterday ... and i better get on it ....

that, is a photo i took today ... can you tell me what it is? what you see? aren't the colors gorgeous?

easter is tomorrow ... a very happy day .... a joyful easter to you and yours ....

... seven .....and an apple a day ....

so ... it takes ten times to make something a habit .... like your vitamin every day ... or flossing ... or fastening your seat belt (although now that's a law and maybe not a habit like it used to be ... now you just do it ... in the olden days some people didn't) ..... so ... ten days of blogging in a row to get me back in the habit that i somehow lost ....

my children did not have school today ... but, between other things, i snuck in some time at the pottery studio .... i was very busy and tried to stay focused and working hard ... i think that will be tomorrow's post .... but, the happiest bit of pottery was picking up some pieces ...

this spotty piece was my favorite today .... it has some of my favorite colors ... i stuck the apple on there to give you some size perspective ....

happy friday ... happy weekend ....

... six ... and a scarecrow ....

this is my sixth day of straight bloggage ...

i did no art today ... i did loads of other stuff, but no art .. which is going to be a problem shortly as i have a show coming up ... a small show, but still i need to get some more art going on for it ... eek!

since i have no fresh art to show you, i'll share with you one of the reasons i didn't do art for a while ... the wizard of oz ... yes, the wizard kept me from putting my painterly mojo onto canvas ... instead i was painting sets and such for the middle school production at the kids' school ... girl. beck.artist was the scarecrow ....

now ... she was darling, right? but you need to go back and look at any sets you can see .... i drew them out and then painted them with my pals ....

that's a pic of her being all sweet and happy before opening night ...

and here's one last artsy crafty project i worked on ....

you recognize the flying monkey, right? they took off the scarecrows legs, mean old things ....

.... five ...

number five ...

this is my fifth day in a row of blogging ...

i played tennis today and it was three SOOOOO long sets ...

and i went to boy.beck.artist's baseball game ... and it had extra innings ... (rah, they won by one ... go team..)

.... and every single thing i did today tool longer than it was supposed too ...

it was like my day needed extra innings ....

in spite of that, i am blogging for the fifth day in a row ....

i'm catching you up on the artsy things i've done lately and neglected to blog ...

one of my greatest joys lately was buying someone else's painting .... the artist is steve penley ... and we bought his painting at our school's fundraiser auction .... this sight is actually better to look at samples of his work ....

so i bought the painting .... and at the end of the night after dinner and dancing and auction hoopla, we checked out, got the painting ... and could not lift it ... OH! it is the heaviest piece of artwork EVER ..... it is a think wooden frame of two by fours ... with a plywood board backing ... that board is painted red .... and then a layer of polyurethane ... or resin ... or clear acrylic ... and then some vase and flower bits painted ... and them more resin ... and then more painting ... and then more resin ... and then more painting .... and on and on ... i can't tell how many layers there actually are .... it is totally deep and cool ... maybe four inches deep... oh yeah, two by four ... four inches deep makes sense ....

so it weighs about 100 pounds and has no hardware on the back ... it's not like you can prop it on the mantle like i do with my art sometimes .... if it fell forward it would most certainly kill someone .... so ... i propped it up in the dining room for ... oh, a month ... or two ... ok ... fine .. three months .... every time i saw it, i'd think hard about how exactly it could be hung ...

the solution? attach a one by four to the wall with screws .... hit the studs .... then hang the big red framed flowers so the top of the frame is resting on the one by four .... and then screw down on the frame ... sending screws through the frame into the one by four ... that baby isn't going anywhere ... it is so tightly affixed to my wall that it can't go anywhere ....it might just have to be there forever, right?

so there it is ... on my sunshine yellow wall in the family room ... with a peek into the kitchen .... the wall is big so it makes the painting look not as massive .... it's not quite three feet square .... i love it ... it makes me really happy ... and it makes me want to build a frame out of two by fours and fill it with layers and layers of resin and paint .... but i just don't know if i can be in the business of 100 pound paintings!! makes me like my canvas pieces' portability, if you know what i mean ....

have you ever bought anything at an auction??

do you have any huge empty walls where you need a painting? the one i took off of this wall was one of mine, and it now needs a good home!

five days in a row of blogging ... let's just bask in that goodness for a moment....

ok ...moment is over ... go back to surfing the ole world wide web ....

.... tuesday time ....

the other day, my pal ashley posted on her facebook page a quote that she liked .... and on that post, she wrote, now all i need is for e.beck.artist to make me a card so i can hang it up and have it always .... so, of course, i wrote it out for her ....this picture is of ashley holding it up ... i gave it to her when we were out to lunch together .... it was a full pic, but she was making a goofy face, so i cropped it to just the card and the hand .... cause i'm a good friend and didn't need to show you beautiful ashley with a squoonchy mouth cause she was talking while i snapped the pic ....

graduation season is upon us ... do you have a favorite graduation quote? i need some ....

... how do you feel about mondays? ....

i don' t love mondays ... for exactly the same reason most other people don't love them .... i had a good weekend and monday is back to the usual instead of the weekendish .... my usual is pretty darn good, but mondays, the kids back in school and mr.e.beck.artist back at work make my house quieter .... i miss them ... but don't really dig the mess that gets left behind from the weekend .... how is it that monday morning i am always stunned by the detritus of the weekend ... i should just be expecting it ... but no ...

so ... this morning i went and worked out after my kids left for school ... i usually walk them (and the dog) to school .. but not when i do early exericise ... then it's kind of a hurry up or i'll be late kind of thing .... in the eons i was away from this blog i had a hurt neck (c5,6,7, pinched nerves, numbness in the left hand, pain across my shoulders ...) ... all i needed was an orthopedic spine specialist, a very nice physical therapist, and time.... oh, and lots of ibuprofen .... so now i 'm back to working out ... but i spend most of my workout worrying that i'm going to hurt myself again .... i'll know i'm better once i'm not worried anymore, i suppose .... this is all actually pertinent to the art thing ... stay with me ... so ... in my six weeks of decreased activity(i had been doing tennis three times a week, exercise class three times a week, and jogging twice a week) i had all kinds of time on my hands ... i'd carved out all sorts of exercise time that was empty .... so, i decided to go back to pottery ... now, neck is better, exercising is back on and i'm doing pottery ... all that means then is the monday morning weekend mess didn't get cleaned up today and now, late at night, i still have two loads of laundry to fold ... alas, something has to give, at least it's not my neck at the moment ....

so ... this morning i took that much too early exercise class so that i could go to pottery class ....

the first class of the quarter i got a 20 pound bag of white clay ... and made three small pieces .... that leaves approximately 17 pounds of white clay left .... and yet, the next week, i bought a 20 pound bag of chocolate clay .... they only come in 20 pound bags, so i'm not actually choosing excessive .... that day i made four chocolate clay pieces ... and they made me so very happy that i was doing pottery again ... i loved them ... now, while they are still raw clay .... all manner of catastrophic things can happen to them between now and the finished product, but .... still ... happy, happy ....

i took a form (big plastic bowl, flat deli platter, weird bowl) and covered it with plastic (so the clay won't stick to the form forever) .... i then took pieces of clay and rolled it out... with a good old fashion rolling pin .... we have a slab roller at the pottery studio ... and i love it ... but for small bits, the rolling pin is grand ... then, those rolled bits, i pressed with textures and designs .... i added some dots of clay ... and pressed out some balls into crevices ... and have a highly textured piece ready for bisque firing.....

that's my story ... i'm a potter again ... i made four more of this type of piece today at my pottery class .... each one takes about an hour ... smaller is a titch faster ... later the glazing process will add more time to each one ... i have a good glazing plan ... we'll see how it goes, huh?

third day in a row of blogging .... i have a plan for some art time tomorrow ... so i'll blog it ... see you then ...

my laundry definitely suffers for my artistic endeavors, alas ....

2 days in a row of blogging ... a flower collage ....

my computer is just so smart it's astonishing, right? ... when i want to upload a picture to my blog, i click on that add a photo button and then my computer goes right to photos, and the first choice is always "last import" .... like my computer knows that i took the photo of this painting a good two or three weeks ago and am just getting around to blogging it today ... and the only reason i am blogging is because i have this picture ..... thanks there, smart computer ....i have, lately, not been living the life of a full time artist ... i have been living the life of a woefully inconsistent artist .... i'm just doing all the other things that there are to do ... i'm always happier when i'm painting, but that doesn't necessarily get me doing it when there are just so many other distractions in my life ....

but this one was a commission ... so it got me in my studio ... it is an 18 inch square canvas .... dawn's sweet husband ordered it up .. the words, always go, are the sign off for her blog ... and a lot of that blog is travel adventures .... i like it .... don't stay home on the couch, go! ... what do you mean you have a long weekend and you're staying home, GO! .... always go ....

i used a USA atlas for the background ... thinking that dawn will have an rv tooting across the country one of these days .... and then the flowers are just doodads and bits from my bin of painted papers ...

and then of course, there are six people in the family, hence... six flowers ... right? i'm pretty sure that each of them will independently figure out which flower is which person ..... nothing better than a little anthropomorphism to liven up the dinner time conversation .... i'm the yellow flower ... no, i am ....

so ... second day i a row posting ... my plan here is to get totally back into the easy groove of frequent bloggage .... for now, to do that, i have to have tomorrow's blog planned today .. which i do ... so ... until tomorrow ... when, no doubt, i'll have an intellectually stimulating blog title like,oh... 3 in a row ... 3rd blog in 3 days ... or 1,2,3 look at me ....

happy sunday night ... hope you have something great on your calendar for tomorrow ....

starting again ....

that's me in the pic ...circa 1969 based on how big my baby brother is....so there i am in the big bow, itchy blouse, very short dress and patent leather mary janes .... i remember the outfit, the grapefruit tree, the how much i disliked the shirt under the jumper .... but i don't think i remember this specific event ... the photo shoot .... i loved the bow ... it was a long, long, sheer ribbon, maybe four inches wide ... with tiny blue dots on it ... i had another just like it with red dots .... on the fourth of july i wore them together for years and years... i wore them tied on top to the half ponytail i usually sported ..... i still like mary jane shoes ... though my daughters have both outgrown the style, i have them in black, brown, and orange ... though none of them are patent leather ....

so ... i've been remiss in my blogging habits ... but intend to get better .. right now ... here i am, fresh start .... maybe it's a spring thing ... or maybe cause i've had some big stuff that is done ... or maybe cause i have a small show in a few weeks that i need to gear up for (read: make more art fast) ... but anyway .... i hope to renew my blog efforts .... i'm well behind in stuff i could have been showing you in my weeks (eek, months) away .... so ... to new beginnings .... come back tomorrow for a pic of a painting i've done recently ... and pottery, i had a great pottery class this week .... and the wizard of oz .... i did some oz painting too ... so ... i'll catch you up ... then i'll try harder to stay caught up .... using the whole thing to get my art reinvigorated so that i'll have something interesting to show you ....

until tomorrow ...