...... i think i'm out of my slump .....

i had a day of art with allison and my mom working in my studio with me .... this is what i made ... i worked on a couple pieces but this is the only one i finished .... i'm quite happy with it .... the background is a map that i left unpainted for the most part ... the houses and the sun are done with fairly transparent paint ... you can read more about it here ....

i did have an art all day plan for tomorrow ... but now school is cancelled on account of flooding ... so who knows what tomorrow might bring .... here's to cute rainboots and umbrellas .... 

three paintings .. .one notion ...

i recently did a painting like this .... 

and a sweet one saw it and asked for one .... 

so i made more than  one ... and now she can pick what she wants .... 

and the others can get donated to an auction perhaps .....

which is your favorite?

four times four is sixteen.....

cathy coley, on your comment to yesterday's post ... you were right .... pears .... to get the rest of you up to speed .... i did this large canvas in blue panes ....using masking tape .. the white isn't plain canvas, it is papered and glazed with titanium white ... and then i made pears ... i cut out 16 ... from papers i already had painted ... they were filed away by color ... i picked green yellow and orange .... then i decided it would be a better picture if the cute dog was with the pears .... she said ok ... then i tried on the pears ... i centered them in each pane.... and then i thought they weren't meant to be centered .... so i offset them ..... .... but now, i think they are all too big .... so that's my next thing ... to trim them all down .... then glue them on ... then go in with paint to give them shading ... depth ... richer coloring ...

so, i had that to do today ... and i had three hours in my studio today ....and i didn't touch it ... well .. i touched it to get it out of my way ... and i worked on two other canvases instead .... 

so tomorrow, i should finish those two other canvases, but, of course, i'll probably work on the pears instead .... 

it rained here pretty much ALL day .... the front page of the paper said "forecast for forever: rain" .... that just cracked me up ... so tomorrow, more rain, and probably, more art time .. what's your plan for the rest of the weekend? 

should i do the pears? 

are they the right colors?

should they be off center?

are they too big? 

how can i ever finish a painting when it gives me so many questions? 

blue paint friday ....

my pal al came over to paint today .... 

i had an all white canvas that i was planning to paint tonally ... and then i got a new idea ... 

i taped it off in squares .... and then painted it light blue ... then i did letter stenciling in a darker blue ....

on the pic below, if you look carefully, you can see the masking tape bisecting that o p q bit ..... 

see it?

then here, you can see the masking tape coming up from that same o p q bit ....

then below that, you see the entire three foot square canvas with sixteen small boxes of blue joy ... what would you put in the boxes? or would you put one big thing over the boxes .... or one cat peeking out the window pane? what's this canvas say to you?  i actually already know and have begun the next bit ... but you'll have to wait til tomorrow for it .....

and then this last pic is just a glimpse of  where the canvas is standing now in the studio .... ready to be worked on ... just like that limb is waiting for something .... hmmmmm .... i used to have birds cut out for that limb ... now i don't know where they are! so ... i've got some painting going on ... quick, tell me whatcha think ... tomorrow i'll show you what i was thinking ....

a pottery day .....

.... i had one of those grandly overscheduled days ... where every bit of the overscheduled was good stuff .... no doctors, dentists or boring errands ..... in the midst of all my busy, i had pottery class .... i took a quarter of pottery over the summer, an evening class ... but now i'm back to my usual morning class .... i made six pieces today ... 

no blog is fun without pics ... here's my workspace .... if you go here and click, you'll zip through cyber space to my flickr site ... and if you role over the pic, you can see little notes i've made about what's what ....
and here's one of my finished wet ones .... now it just needs to dry ... and then go to the kiln for a first firing ... then glazing .. then firing ... so ... finished is a very loose term, huh? finished with this piece of the process .... if you go to this flickr page, you can see my notes on the picture ...
my day had multiple fabulous bits .... girlfriends over for a late post-pottery lunch being one of the most fab .... and i chose to ignore the rainy dreary start, and the thunder and lightning and stormy end .... and just remember the sunshine afternoon ... 

how was your day? did you make anything? did you do anything extra great?

a tuesday blog post .... i only have 8 more minutes til it's wednesday ... so i must be brief!

my artistic endeavor for the week has been a bit of painting ... that i didn't photograph .... oops ... so ... you get a picture of the knitting i've been working on .... this is my laura ingalls activity .... i should carry it around in a basket and work on it while i'm visiting with friends .... which isn't far from what i'm doing .... i knit while the kids have games and practices ... the last two or or so inches were from girl.beck.artist's tennis practice .... the scarf is for little.e.beck.artist .... she picked out the yarn, oh, a year ago .... that might be an exaggeration ... nine months ago .... at least i'm working on it now ... and hope to be done with it before cool weather sets in .....

contessa kris, you won the last drawing ... shoot me an email with your snail mail addy .... 

i have pottery tomorrow, so probably no painting ... but with luck, some pottery joy to share with you ... 

what's your wednesday joy going to be?

11.59 ... g'night!

fourth day in a row of bloggage .... hold your applause ... really ... oh ... thank you thank you ... and a blog giveaway ....

yes!

four days in a row of bloggage ... rah!

day one ... cathy was the comment question winner ... and her artful delight is in the mail ... 

day two ... chris .. send my your addy ... 

and.... 

drum roll ... liesel ..... thanks for playing and your random artsy something or other will be heading your way .... 

today ... day four and the final day of our bloggy giveawayness of random artsy joy ... all you have to do is leave a comment ... preferably a question and you will be in the random commenter drawing ... you can't win if you don't play ... 

and on to the art portion of the art blog ....

did you read yesterday's post? were you waiting? holding your breath? 

wait no longer ... here's the painting .... 

the photo i showed you yesterday seemed too stark .... so .... i added some color all over ... i oranged up the house .....toned down the colored tissue spots ... and added on a swedish proverb since the foreground seemed to need more texture ... and given the choice of drawing grass and flowers or shopping my groovy quote library for the perfect verbage texture, i chose the latter .... talk less, say more ... i'm working on that ....

happy weekend to you ....leave a comment ... i'd love to send you the fourth and final piece of artsy random joy ... 

art process ..... and another arsty giveaway .....

... first i sketched a house ... cause i had a house thing in my head ...

then i put the house on tissue paper to make it easier to put on a canvas ....
then i put the tissue on a canvas .... unknowingly transposing it .... i just put it on the way it seemed right .. which was door to the right not door to the left ....
and then i went in with some pen and paint and tissue and worked on it for a bit ... and couldn't figure out what to do next .... 

eventually i did figure out what to do with it ... but that's tomorrow's blog post ... i gotta keep you coming back right? aren't you wondering if i managed to pull this one back from the brink of horrid? 

so ...drum roll....... yesterday's arsty giveaway winner was chris ... from prism trail .... chris, shoot me an email with your snail mail addy .... 

and this post gets a random artsy prize winner as well ... leave a comment, ask a question, shout out some good advice ..... and tomorrow i'll announce a winner AND show you how this house turned out ... and then we can all discuss whether or not we like it .... 

until tomorrow ... happiness to you ... but first leave a comment ..... 

art giveaway... day 2 ya know ....

i'm trying to get back in the groove of blogging regularly .... and i'm woefully behind ... so i'm telling you about some of last week ... or maybe the week before? .... old art endeavors .... 
my new year's resolution was to do 20 pieces on a theme ... and the theme was home ... house ... and i've not really done one yet ... well ... i did ... and i put a nest on it instead of the house that i had planned for it ....so i'm not sure it counts ....  but ... i've been sketching houses ... trying to figure out my house thing ... since i'm in an art rut... or an un art phase, really, not a rut, i'm trying to stretch and think and do artistic exercises that might lead me back to wantint to paint ....

so, these first two pics are just in a sketch journal .... i sketched some houses from photos .... pretty rough .... little.e.beck.artist saw them and said, i didn't know you could REALLY draw .... so .... not sure how to take that! ..... i then took the preferred house sketches and did them on tissue paper .... to apply them to canvases ...... i a bit feel like this might be a dead end path on my art journey ..... i had a notion ... but now i'm not that into it .... probably, in 40 years, when someone glances through my body of work, they'll say, well these house ones don't really go with her other pieces .... and wonder what i was thinking ..... but .... my art muscle is ornery ... so i'm stretching and exercising ... and we'll see where it takes me .... 

in my endeavor to get regrouped on this blog .... please drop me a comment, making sure i know how to contact you .... and ask a question .... at least one commenter a day will get someting randomly artsy in the mail ..... yesterday's art giveaway is for cathy at musing in mayhem .... thanks cathy .. i'll get to you at the end of the week to find out your snail mail addy .... 

leave a comment, ask a question, amuse me, keep me going... help! 

art giveaway ....

do you remember this post? ... about the candle conundrum?.... the one where i had to do a painting based on a poem .... on a deadline? well i did .... here 'tis ....  

i tried a variety of things to get what i wanted .... and none worked ... so i went with this .... on a background that was just happily waiting for me on my work table .... i think it is good, not great ... but it was well received by the deadline painting group .... my next topic on deadline is fruit ... i think .... now that i'm telling you that it doesn't sound right ... i'll go back and check prior to the deadline, huh?

i am far behind on my posting of my art life .... apparently i am all wrapped up in the unartful life ... and not taking the time to blog ... so ... to get back into the rythm of daily (sans weekends usually) blogging, i am going to try to blog every day for the rest of the week ... so, tu, w, th, f ... i don't even have to do art and i have enough to show you ... so ... this is tuesday ... come back tomorrow too .... 

and just to entice you .... leave a comment, ask a question, any question at all ... and i will randomly choose one non offensive question sender to send out some random artsy goodness to ... that's right ... i have to go to the post office anyway, so i'm going to include this lovely enticement .... we'll see how it goes ... ask away ...

fine print ... make sure that i have a way to email you that you've won so that i can collect your address ... anyone can play ... you don't have to be an artsy reader .... though i think most of my readers are artsy types .... 

thanks for playing ... leave a comment .....

house rules

when my children get into squabbles, i try hard not to referee them ... i try to get them to opt out of them by saying "are you being nice?" ... 'who is being kind?' ... when generally neither arguer is being kind .... so now i've done a painting (no collage to it at all! horrors! what's up with that?) ... and when the kids aren't being kind, i just point .... the painting is about five days old ... and i've already pointed at it countless times as a reminder .... 

my little one said, did you write rule 2 to be funny? ... yes .... it's not that funny, she said ... 

everyone's a critic .... 

i did this painting on thursday with allison, along with some other pieces ... i have others to show you .. but will hopefully do that in the next day or so ... rather than give you a glut of art and explanation today .... 

did you have a happy weekend ... mine was rainy and slow paced ... perfection! 

tell me what you've been working on ... or what grand thing this week has in store for you ... 

yippee, hooray, and zippity bippity bop ....

my fairy godmother arrived today and made me paint ... 

or ... rather .... my pal al came over and we did paint ... and paint and paint and paint ... 

finally .... 

i'd gotten to where it was so long since i'd last painted that it was becoming momentous ... a giant OH MY GOODNESS .... can i still do it? 

i can ... i did ... and wasn't even momentous ...no grand moments or grand creations .... but i worked on five small canvases ... 12 inch squares ... and did two long thin ones .... and one el grande ... a three foot square .... 

here are some pics: 

that's my lovely dog ... standing in front of the largest canvas i worked on today ... somehow i had it in my head that i wanted to do a white piece ... i'm not sure what to do now that it's white ... when i'm being my normal me, i keep lots of notes and write in journals and scribble ideas on my table .... but ... i've not had my normal routine at all .... not for  8 or 9 months really ... so i had this grand white idea ... but the grand bit has flown from my head ... and i just remeber the white ... so ... i papered it in music and dictionary ... and then glazed it with some white and some titanium buff .... next, i think i'll do a buff or buttery stenciling on it to warm it up ... we'll see, huh? 

and here's a shot of my table .... that far half was where allison worked today .... the foreground is the smaller canvases i was working on .... all dictionary pages ... and then glazed and stenciled .... i'm planning on a house series ... or really, a home series ... or even homey, cozy, comfy .... we'll see ... it too is a vague notion .... but a bit of a plan .... 

and here's a close up of one of the 12 inchers ... not sure which photo is the truer coloring ... 

and here's one more canvas .... no collage papers ... just paint ... a dark yellow, a titch of orange, and then plastic rubbed over the top to give it some texture .... 

this one is ten by thirty ... and i think i have a plan for it in my kitchen ..... hanging it up high over a door ... if the foreground goes as planned .... i also did another long one like this in orange ... also to hang in my own house ... 

we'll see how that goes, huh? 

so ... i'm painting again ... it's tentative .. but ... it's started ... and i believe i'll be painting again tomorrow ... 

any requests ?