Boundaries

Here's a painting I did while thinking of interconnections and boundaries.  Took lots of photos with this one so you get to see all of the changes.  I started off with 2 magazine pages showing a night sky with a tree silhouette and stars.  Then I used up paint left over from my first art workshop.

 Later, I felt like making interlocking circles.  I also started rotating the canvas.

 More circles-- kind of missing that streak of red and white though.

 Adding in some other textures with stencils (you can see a clock face in the bottom right corner and some green dots in the upper center).

 Finished piece (rotated again).

Shadow Shrine

This is the project I'm doing for Eyes Open Now this month.  The idea is to work with our shadows which could be a hindrance, something you don't like about yourself, or something you don't like about your life.  By representing and exploring this shadow through art, maybe we can shed some light on it or at least have a different relationship to it.

I'm not sure this is finished yet, but I am certainly liking how it turned out.  I wanted to work with fear because I was feeling fear pretty intensely with the start of this business.

First step was to get some color on the box (purchased from Michaels).  I used Golden fluid acrylics.  I wanted to try a glazing technique that I learned in Collage Discovery Workshop by Claudine Hellmuth so I painted the back a light orange color.  Once that dried, I painted a darker color over top and then wiped off the excess.  I painted the edges blue.

Once this dried, I got to work by gluing images on with matte medium.  Some of these items were from commercial rubber stamps. The woman holding her knees is an image that I handcarved. I used some washi tape on the edges of the box and painted the outside with black gesso.

Women and Circles

I have been trying to play around more.  I haven't liked everything I've made, but it's been fun and I learn a lot.

Here I was playing with black gesso, wondering if it would scratch off like tempera paint does.  I colored the paper and then painted it black.  Scratching the surface didn't work that well.  I had to press too hard and the color came off too.  So I just played around with making marks and coloring in with cow markers (messy, but fun).

 In the one below, I started with the circles in the bottom right corner which are actually traced from a basket pulled off an old ski pole (I am somewhat troubled by the fact that I am being rewarded for being a hoarder of weird stuff now--Look at this cool shape, I can use it in art!).  Lots of fun letting loose with this one in terms of color and marks.  Then the woman emerged.  Then I noticed that these two pieces have a similar theme of a female figure in front of a circle.  Very different feelings to them though.

Word for 2017

I like this idea of having a word or intention for the new year.  Here's mine:

Things I'm grateful for

This was done in the collaborative journal I'm doing with my friend.  The prompt was "What am I thankful for."  I used cow markers or livestock markers which are like a huge oil-based crayon for the red, yellow, and black.  I did a watercolor wash over top and added the wording with Sharpie.

Owl

In early December, I took a group painting class.  This was part research on my part for tips on how to conduct an art workshop for my business.  But it was also fun and one of my friends participated as well.  I loved one of the tips the instructor gave which was "if you're not liking your painting, take a picture of it and look at it on your phone."  It's amazing how much better it looks given that different viewpoint.  And it gave me plenty of in-process photos.

It was also neat how different everyone's owls turned out (photo by The Painted Buddha):

Things I've been working on

Haven't posted in a while, mostly because I've been keeping busy trying to start a new business!  I am posting about it here because the business does involve making art.  Here's the website:
www.eyesopennow.com

I've held two art workshops and the participants seemed to really enjoy it.  And it's helping me keep my studio clean and organized.

I'll post some of the other projects I've been working on soon.