Friday, September 20, 2013

I Won, I Won!


Can you believe it? I was so excited I couldn't contains myself. I just found out yesterday. Thank you for your support and your votes, you are awesome. Woohoo!

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Spoonflower/Kuler Contest


This week's contest has an interesting twist. We had to create a color palette using the free Adobe Kuler app. If you haven't tried it yet, beware, it's addictive! And incredibly cool. I had used the website version before, but the phone app is great because you can literally capture a color palette from just about anything you find in your path. You can look at this quick and easy video on how to use it. For inspiration for my design, I used a fabulous skirt that my friend Renée gave to me just last week and grabbed my color palette from it. You can vote in the contest here!



Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Lush Color Background


I decided to sign up for another online painting class (remember, I am addicted to online classes) called "Daring Adventures in Paint" with Mati Rose McDonough. It's pretty fun, but I realized that after doing my last Jane Davies class, I pretty much know all the techniques to paint in that style, so I am not learning anything new so far but it's fun to be in a group and see what everybody else is doing. It's hard to work alone in your studio so these online classes are great for that, and it's always a very supportive community of artists of all levels from all over the world. For this exercise, we had to create a lush background, so I just threw paint around since it's just a background that is going to be painted over. But turns out I like this one just like that so I think I'll keep it as is!

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Labor Day Trouvailles


Last week's garage sailing finds:
2 books: 50 cents each 
2 puzzles: 25 cents each 
One mailbox: $1 
Grand total: $2.50
And my friend Diane found this great vintage bingo game and she gave me some of the cards and wooden pieces. Thank Diane! I am pretty excited about the mailbox too, we really needed a new one and I am planing on painting big flowers on it! I'll post a picture when I am done.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Art du Jour Retreat


My friend Diane from my San Francisco Art group came over to visit last weekend and we had a really fun art day together in my studio. I made her a little art menu and we just went crazy for 6 hours straight. That was a total blast. Here's some of the projects we worked on.


First we did a little exercise a la Diane Culhane, inspired by her "take a line for a walk" exercise. The blue one is Diane's and the brown one is mine. Then we made a Gipsy card deck and then a mixed media collage painting on wood where you add collage first and then try to find imagery by turning it around and looking at it at different angles. You never know what you are going to find and what the final painting will look like. We also played with the gelli plate on top of that. Diane works very fast, she is quite a prolific artist. I always admired how much she could get done when we had our art play dates together in San Francisco. It was so great to have here for my first ever Art du Jour retreat! Not the last one for sure!

My Gipsy Card Deck

My painting, work in progress...
Diane's Gipsy Card Deck
Diane's finished painting