I am back, #365daysofart and other things

I have not posted on this little blog of mine for a very long time!  A lot has changed!  I have two darling daughters now!  I am still teaching high school art and I am attempting to lead a creative life along with being a momma, a wife and full time teacher.  I have started the #365daysofart challenge on my instagram which has been an amazing source of creativity for me lately.  I paint my sketch during my 25 minute lunch break at school which ends up being only like 15-20 minutes after getting set up and clean up time.  Here are some of my sketches!  I will be posting on here more frequently  ( I promise!) Have a lovely Saturday !  Xoxo  

Searching for the Muse

Lately I have been searching for "the muse."  In order to do this you must WORK and hopefully the muse will think you are worthy enough to give you some ideas.  This is part of what Steven Pressfield writes in War of Art.   I recently read this book and can't get it out of my mind!

So here are some of my recent little paintings/sketches.

This one is my favorite.  I really like how my leaves turned out!

The little bird on the bottom right is actually a transfer from the top bird. 

P.S. Do you like the teal and white painted rock?  I painted this last summer and I just felt it went with my little paintings.



 P.P.S

Here is my earthy "muse".  Coffee!  Oh how I love it so!  It always gives me ideas:)   What is your earthy muse?

Have a lovely day!  I am off to paint some more! Be sure to stop by later!  I will be posting some pictures of Little I's shaving cream paint experience!  So fun:)

New Direction....

I am a girl with many different interests and loves. Recently I have felt like changing my artwork a little. I have always loved painting from observation and from photographs but have not done so lately because I was interested in creating a more stylized and abstract line of art. I am constantly trying to figure out what my "style" is. In college I always did paintings with very high key colors that combined my love with fashion and color. As I have gotten older I have been attracted to more neutral and simpler colors. I have been obsessed with white and blue for awhile now and lately I am really into french gray (and no, not because it has the word french in it...but that does help!)

So here are some of my new artworks that are not finished but still reflect a change in style. I would really like to know if you like these or my colorful collage artworks better. They are so different (except for the birds!)but I honestly like both of them.

Chickadee


Chickadee with coffee cup...which one do you like better?


Olive Warbler...obviously not finished but I like the contrast:)


Well I am off to continue working in my studio! Hope everyone is having a wonderful Wednesday! Here is a little Billie Holiday "Summertime" for you. I just love her:)

Monday Musings

(beautiful vase in my studio that inspires me...vase was a gift from my art penpal!)


I just love summer vacation...I can sleep in and leisurely sit around and drink my coffee while I blog away! I am almost done with my summer classes so I have been painting away in my little studio. Here are some new paintings I am working on:

This painting is not finished but I wanted to post my progress. I am trying a new style where I paint an abstract background and more realistic birds. It kind of makes it more surreal..what do you think?


Up close:




Here is another little painting I am working on, the bird has not been collaged on yet:


I recently came across this vintage 1950's map of the United States:





I just love the colors and have already started collaging it onto some small canvases and a large canvas. I will post my results as I progress!

Lately I have been really inspired by anything vintage or that looks vintage. Here is a box that I keep in my studio that constantly inspires me (oh and of course it is French! I am such a Francophile)


I think today I will paint the Eiffel tower into some of my artworks....we shall see:)

Art Giveaway: Little Pink Bird

Recently I have become blog friends with a lovely mother who has a wonderful blog called C.Beth. Blog. I love to read about her adorable children and their funny adventures. Recently C.Beth gave me the idea to do an art giveaway. So here it is! thanks again C.Beth for sponsoring this giveaway on your blog!

Details on the art:
This artwork is made with hand-painted papers collaged onto canvas paper. It will come matted, ready to be framed in a 5x7 frame.

Here are the contest rules:

1. Leave a comment, any comment, on this post. Perhaps you'd like to say what the little bird in the art is thinking? Or just say, "Yo, enter me." It's up to you.
2. For an extra entry, go to C.Beth's blog by clicking here, and leave a comment on her contest post, too.
3. For even more entries, tell everyone you know about this and encourage them to enter, and to mention your name in their entry. You'll get an extra entry every time someone enters and uses your name as a referral.
4. The contest will close at 8 p.m., Central Standard Time, Monday, January 12, 2009. An entry will be randomly chosen, and the winner will be announced on both blogs Tuesday, January 13. Be sure to come back here to see if you've won. If you don't contact Michelle or C. Beth by 8 p.m. CST, Thursday, January 14, another winner will be randomly chosen.
5. Contest is open to anyone with a United States address. You may also enter if you live in a country other than the U.S. as long as reasonably affordable international postage is available.

Good luck, and have fun!

Meaningful Christmas Present

I teach at a pretty large high school and have a great group of about six teachers that I hang out with regularly. Last year for Christmas we each picked a name out of a hat and bought a $20 present for that person. This year with money being tight for everyone we decided to do something different. My friend Karen got this idea from Oprah and I just had so much fun doing it and also felt like I was making meaningful presents for my friends! This is what we did...it is so simple!

Karen put six colorful index cards (the large ones) into each of our mailboxes at school. We were to write meaningful letters to each of our friends and decorate the cards (if we wanted to!) and then return them to Karen on a specific day. We were then to bring in a box and Karen would deliver our letters to us...kind of Valentine's Dayish also!

Well I have been working on mine and I just finished tonight! Here is what I did:

First I painted each of the cards with acrylic paint:





Then using some paper that I had previously hand-painted, I cut out flower shapes and glued them on using matte medium and a paint brush. I then went over the flowers with some more acrylic paint and added decorative details in the background. Next I layered the collage with gloss medium to make it shine! Here are some of my final products! I wrote the letter to each friend on the back of the collage-so fun:)











I am so excited to give them to my friends on Friday! That is our last day of school and then we get Winter Break! Yay:)

Have a great evening!

Egg Help!

OK- I have been working on some paintings of eggs all night! I am not finished but was just wondering which position do you think the eggs should be in?! All feedback is totally welcome!

Should it be A)



B)


or C)


Thanks!

New Art...without birds!

Hope everyone is enjoying their Saturday so far- I have just finished three new collages and wanted to post them. They will be on etsy as soon as the husband mats them and photographs them for me. I actually did three collages without including a single bird! Unbelievable! I have moved on to new animals! I am really digging deer right now. So we shall see how many deer collages I can do! Here is a picture of the deer that come into my backyard frequently. They destroy my garden in the summer but are so cute!



Here are my new deer collages. I prefer to make my deer colorful!





Here is a new sailboat collage. I know it is kind of summery but oh well...I am already thinking of warm weather! You kind of have to when you live in the snowbelt!



My sailboat collages are inspired by my summers at cottages on Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. I just love the water and someday hope to have a house on the lake. How wonderful would it be to sit outside and have coffee every morning overlooking the lake?! Or hear the waves at night? That is my kind of heaven!

Well have a great Saturday, hope it is productive whatever you do! The husband and I have a family Christmas party (we do things early around here!)so should be gone all day. Tomorrow will be my productive day I think.

Altered Book

Well I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was very hectic but fun. My husband and I went to 3 Thanksgivings! Lots of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pie! Yum...I am totally not complaining!

I just wanted to post a project that I have been working on for awhile that some of you might find interesting and fun! I have been working on an altered book. An altered book is basically any book that you take and alter the pages and cover through painting, drawing, collaging, stamping and cutting. It is so much fun and cheap! All you need is an old book and your normal art supplies and you ready to go!

My favorite books to use are old, hard-covered books because I think they give a lot more support than paperback books. I also like to use books that have some interesting pictures and text that I can allow to show through.

Usually I start by gluing pages together in sets of 10. I use matte medium and use an old piece of mat board to smooth the pages and make sure the matte medium in evenly distributed. This process can easily take a couple of hours so usually I put on some good music or a fun movie to keep myself occupied during this process.

Next I usually paint my pages or collage the pages with papers that I have made, fabric, interesting images I have found, etc.

Then it is time to start drawing/painting whatever you want to have in your book! You can pick a theme or just draw or paint what you want. Here are some images from my book. My book by the way is kind of random. I used a lot of different media and I did not really have a solid theme. My whole goal with this altered book was to experiment with different subject matter and to also play around with media.

Here is my cover:

The book was called: What's the Big Idea...I left the word Idea visible because I thought it went with the whole idea for my book.



Here are some of my images from the altered book. I usually like to do a spread, in which the artwork takes up both of the pages. I think it visually looks more interesting.

Monochromatic Underpainting Video

Happy Tuesday! I just wanted to post a video I made on painting a monochromatic underpainting. It is kind of long...a little over 9 minutes...I really need to work on cropping video footage! I am pretty new to making videos using my mac but am working on it!

I have also made some follow up videos for this landscape painting and hope to upload those soon.

I am also including the finished painting that I completed from these videos.

Thanks for watching, I appreciate it! Any feedback would be great!

Animal Paintings: Student Artwork

My painting class just finished their animal paintings using a limited palette. Students were to use only three colors plus black and white. I encouraged students to use the primary colors so they would be able to mix any color they needed. Some students did, some didn't.

These paintings were done in acrylic paint on a canvas board. Students started the painting by underpainting the canvas board with a color of their choice-anything to get rid of the white of the canvas board. An underpainting is the initial layer of paint applied to a ground (like a canvas board, canvas and paper.) I usually recommend painting the canvas with a complementary color of whatever is the dominant color in the picture. For example: If the picture has mostly greens and blues I would paint the canvas a peachy-red color. I think it just gives the painting a lot of depth and I like the underpainting to show through in spots to provide some interesting contrast. If you want to keep your paintings more natural and realistic a black and white or brownish underpainting works really well.

Next up we are doing a watercolor landscape, I will post those when we finish!