the mental health aspects of being an artist ...

my pal allison and i frequently talk about the business bits of art ... you know, the ______part ..... fill in the blank with hard, boring, tedious, uninspiring, unartsy, difficult ... you get the idea .... 

in our discussions we frequently end laughingly saying we'll never be too famous or too succesful since we're just soccer moms ... me literally, her figuratively (her kids didn't pick that particular demographic for extracurriculars).... we aren't young enough or old enough to be artistically unique or interesting ..... we aren't edgy or urban or rural or uneducated  or genius....... we aren't impoverished or disabled or far from our native lands.... we don't battle any profound mental health issues .... not profound ... perhaps petite .... not certain on that!! 

anyway ... we are ordinary... gloriously ordinary ..... i'm happy with ordinary .... i paint, i enjoy it, i sell enough to keep me painting happily .... i used to worry that i'd die a little old lady with a zillion paintings in my basement ... paintings that nobody wanted .... i've now sold enough to not be fretful about that anymore .... even with the recession and a definitive downturn in my selling, i'm pretty sure that i won't die a hermit painter with paintings no one has ever seen (thank you flickr!) 

i say all this to you as a preface to this ....my favorite artist had poverty and mental illness working in his favor ....  i am thrilled beyond compare that i got an email today from a local museum ... fernbank ..... and they sent me information about a new imax ... now, i love imax movies to begin with .... but an imax on an artist!! a favorite artist of mine!! ... here's a link to my favorite book about him .... i love irving stone ... my favorite book by him is the agony and ecstasy about michelangelo ..... but that's a whole 'nother blog bit .... here's another book that i've read dozens of times about this artist .... or this one .... it's my favorite series for kids actually .... and this i've read most recently .... it's more serious than any other books i've read on him ..... i've read a couple other fictionalized stories of this artist ... i always like them ... but will spare you more links!! 

anyway .... imax anyone? surely i won't have to go by myself! .... if you aren't here ... is there a groovy imax there, where you are?

what part of speech is as? it is a prepostion, an adverb, or a conjunction ...depending on the sentence ... seventh grade english times twins ... ouch

famous last words ... i think my slump is over ... well, that was the last posts title ... and it's from more than a week ago .... i actually did quite a bit of painting last week .. i just neglected to finish anything ... and i didn't take pics either .... i have not painted this week even though i'm doing a show this weekend ... oops!! i'll get right on that!

in the meanwhile, i went to pottery today and glazed six pieces ... i was MUCH more systematic than usual ... i usually just kinda splatter and have at it .... with little thought to what the colors are ... or i'll be in a hurry and glaze everything the same (remember the recent green pottery phase?) .... but today i had six pieces ...

 -i glazed two mexico point green

-i glazed two emu

-i glazed two impossible purple (named such because it is hideous unless artfully mixed with other glazes)

then .... for the two mexi greens ... i sponged one in emu and one in impossible

for the two emus, one sponged impossible, one mexi green

for the two impossibles, one sponged mexi green, and one emu ... 

see? 

systematic... not like me at all .... not willynilly at all .... and this way i should get six distinct looks... hopefully it will work that way! .... and hopefully a couple of them will look groovy ... and not impossibly ugly .... 

between spelling, vocabulary and grammar tests this week ... and one kid home sick now... i'm ready for summer vacation ... and some time to paint! in the meanwhile, i'll tell you the truth .... too much tennis is not good for the art career .... 

what have you been doing lately? artsy fab stuff? life stuff? exercising? nursing the sick?procrastinating the day to day chore stuff? 

...... 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 .....