Seahorse Numero Uno

A friend of mine commissioned a piece to be displayed in her new office. Her only request was that there be a seahorse in the painting. It's funny, we both thought seahorses were imaginary animals like a unicorn but found out they were real once we saw them at a zoo! They are weird but very cool little creatures and apparently tasty. Every time I see a travel show about a country in Asia, these are in the street vendors line up of interesting things to eat on a stick! I'll pass. Anywho, this is my first attempt at a seahorse and I'm pleased with how it came out. I'll be making more of them for sure. Listening to the advice of another friend, I will also be making more sea/ocean life creatures with my cereal boxes. This painting is a 12x12. I really liked working with this size. Click on it to see the details!

When Friends Have Babies...

...you make them things, like paintings! One of my besties is having twin boys and I'm super excited for her and her husband. I offered to make a couple of paintings that she could either put them up or just have them as a keepsake for the boys. She suggested animals like lions and zebras so here are my variations. The deep edges are painted as well. I used a palette knife to paint the zebra's background. I hope the boys like them one day! I know Amy and Jamie will make great parents too : )

Birds Birds Birds...and a Porcupine!

These are my latest pieces commissioned for Lauren, my brother's girlfriend! She recently moved into an office space where she has actual walls. Lauren asked me to come up with something for her new space. She suggested something on a larger scale so the space doesn't swallow the artwork up. I had purchased three 10x10 canvases with a deep edge (my fave) that were on clearance this summer during the Des Moines Artstop. I thought using the three as a triptych (the groundlines match up) or spread out as three separate pieces would be fun and could be rearranged if preferred. There are three different birds along with a small porcupine in the bottom corner. One of the birds is my take on a peacock, another is a giraffe/flamingo like animal. The bowerbird is Lauren's favorite bird and this one was the most fun to make. This bird is super smart. It's like a little architect and builds its home using colors that are all similar. If anything takes a piece of its home while it's out looking for more materials, it notices and has a full on tantrum! It's a pretty smart and cool bird.

Layers

All summer long I've been working on renovating/making over my house. I finished my bedroom, the bathroom and painted my kitchen "borrowing" some great ideas from designspongers along the way. I spent some time traveling as well. Now that I am back into the teaching world and the weather is getting chilly I now have more time to work on making more art. I am in the midst of ordering more canvas, watching for those sales on dickblick! My goal is to start promoting my work around town a little more. I am so antsy that I can't work consistently on something to save my life. I have high production weeks and months as well as very low production times. Just my nature I suppose. Well, these little ditties are fun to make so I can't wait to get back into my art. I am brainstorming new little creatures as well. Until next time : )

Three by Three

More new work today! Who knew old cereal boxes could look so pretty? The squares actually take less time than the circles because I can measure and cut pretty simply. The circles are a free for all haha. These have that newspaper woven basket look that I see in my bowlflowers and wallflowers. With the bowlflowers I am conscious of color and pattern but with these I am not using color in a specific way. Both are very much about color, pattern, and texture. I'm really just trying to make something aesthetically pleasing in 3 dimensional forms out of a 2 dimensional objects. I would like to make a 3 dimensional sculptural piece without the canvas as a backing. More to come : )

And We're Back

So, as you can tell from my last blog entry that I have been MIA for over a month. Taking winter break to a new level I guess. I have been busy however, developing some new pieces, working on prints for a print exchange, filling up a sketchbook for a gallery tour, and filling out paper work to be a substitute teacher this semester now that I am only teaching in the mornings. Hopefully subbing will lead to a full time job once again since I up and left my old one in Fairfax, VA. C'mon suburbs of Des Moines, show some love! So, I used to teach my elementary students different cut paper techniques and I should mention that they taught me some cool ones as well. I also showed them how to make cut paper butterfly molas that required layering paper that would be cut smaller and smaller each time revealing some of the underlying color. At the time I did a little bit of research and there are a lot of artists that do this in a number of ways, with different colors and patterns. One artist stacked paper and cut away at it to look like a topographical map. Another, one of my faves, Jen Stark uses stacks of paper that she cuts into. I guess this is my homage to what some of these artists do. I would like to take mine even further, making sure to completely make it my own and just using these artists as inspiration. I used rectangles and circles cut from cardboard cereal, cracker and tissue boxes to reveal some of the color and mostly texture. I would also like to keep symmetry and repetition in numbers in these peices. In this piece I used the number 3, three circles, three rectangles. Most people don't know this about me but when I was a kid I had these little ticks, like a lot of kids do. I used to clear my throat and make little sounds in 3's, take 10 steps and count again in 10's. The number 10 is actually my favorite number to this very day, huh : ) This is how my first one came out but I think for my next piece I would like to take a saw to the bigger stacks and cut sections out or cut them in half to reveal the inside. I thought about weaving strips on top of strips too. I believe I will expand on my original wallflower idea through cardboard layers as well. Ok, well it's bye for now and I promise to not go missing for another month : ) Toodles