The Italian Wash Job - ORIGINAL Mixed Media Watercolor and Acrylic on paper

It's finally done!

I started talking about this painting on July 12th as a sort of demo and did another feature on it on August 7th. Then I got busy preparing paintings for art shows, and did not get back to working on it again until this week. Final touches included straightening the lines of the shadows with acrylics and painting shadows under the laundry with a watercolor mixture of Cobalt Blue, Winsor Violet and Burnt Sienna.

I wasn't sure until the shadows went in that I was going to even like it, but they made a tremendous difference. One thing that has befuddled me for quite awhile is where the focal point is. I like the pane on the left the best, but the pane on the right is bigger and closer. Theoretically it should be where the center of interest is found; so I put some red socks there and increased the contrast of light and dark in this pane, but I still am more interested in the left pane, and I think it still dominates. I look at the lower window in the left pane, and I'm not sure that is a bad thing. After all it is located in the Golden Triangle. Where do you think the focal point is located?

More information about this painting is located here:

Smashing Flowers

OK, I've heard of smashing pumpkins and Smashing Pumpkins. But, have you ever thought about smashing flowers as an art form? A fellow artist sent me an email about Betsy Dillard Stroud's article which you can find by clicking here. Look for Printing with a Hammer, August 07, 2008, by Betsy Dillard Stroud. It looked interesting, so yesterday I gathered some flowers and leaves of different kinds including stems. Then I prepared my watercolor paper, padded it, laid wax paper over it, and proceeded to beat the living daylights out of some innocent plant life. (I'm still not feeling good about this.) Anyway, this first photo on the left is what my initial effort looked like.



Still feeling sorry for the flowers, this morning I thought I needed to make as much as I could out of it, so I grabbed a Tomball pen and my watercolors and went to work. First, I outlined to find the flowers and leaves that were obvious and invented a few more . Then I began to do some negative painting with the watercolors, and by now I'm not feeling so bad about the flowers, now that I've made something that I like a lot more. I hope you will like it too!

It's something different. It really doesn't matter if you use some kind of dillapidated flowers though, so if you get a chance you might try it with some past-their-prime poseys. I guess you could also try it with some blooming weeds you want to clear away anyway or on that bouquet you get from someone you now dislike with a passion (to relieve stress).

Click here for more information about this painting.

My Traveling Art Gallery Hits The Road

I have been absent from the blog for awhile trying to get a myriad of tasks completed before the deadline, which is when I leave for an extended road trip. Since we will be gone a long time, I had to consider what will fit in the car, and so many of the pieces from my Etsy shop are either too large or too bulky to bring along. I will be open for business as I drive along the roads of America and intend to ship my artwork to my customers without any delay. Have Computer, Will Travel!

Some of the places we will be stopping on our trip are places that we've never been before, while many are slightly familiar, but I'm sure changed since we last saw them. I'm planning on keeping a kind of travel journal thru photos, sketches and paintings which I will share on the blog, as we go. It should be fun. Stay tuned. The first mystery location will debut mid-week.



Meanwhile, I just put this little painting up in my Etsy store. It was painted five years ago, but being a mood painting of a little fishing village, it is timeless. The colors are muted, as a storm approaches. The name of this art is what else, Fishin' Village. Click here to obtain more information from my Etsy shop, DreamON.

A Single Gull on the Fourth of July

Sometimes I feel like a single girl in my own house. I'm alone in my art room creating or working on the computer or something. There's a ball game on in the livingroom and therefore a complete other zone. Go Rays! Nothing against baseball. The kids next door are playing with poppers in eager anticipation of tonight's fireworks, I'm sure. So the Single Gull and I have much in common. We're alone in our world - kind of.

A Single Gull is a watercolor I painted yesterday while I was Gallery-sitting at the Artists' Guild Gallery in Holmes Beach. She is 7.5 x 7.75 inches on Arches Watercolor Paper using Yarka watercolors. These are my "travel" paints which are very compact and have a lid that comes off and doubles as a palette. These paints are intense colors which come in pan form.

For more information on A Single Gull click on it's name.

Happy Birthday USA! Time to say thank you to our founding fathers for conceiving the Declaration of Independence and coming up with such a document while leaning heavily on the model for the theory of social compact in John Locke's Two Treatises of Government. It is a good time to reflect and give thanks to God for these 232 years since that document was hammered out and signed.

Midsummer Amaryllis

Behold the lovely Amaryllis. I can't forget the first time I saw one of these plants, because it had that, "This just can't be real," appearance. The stems were very, very long and coming from a much smaller pot, but atop the stems were these great, big, enormous, exquisite and showy red blooms. It was only a few years ago, and I had no idea such a beautiful plant even existed.

The blossoms fit my concept perfectly for what I was trying to paint today which was a vignette. I painted two of them, which are quite similar, and I still have another idea for a third which is not a vignette but a gradated background. This first one I took from a photo that I had photoshopped with a special effect that had a lot of exaggerated shadowing on the right sides. The second one is more or less a loosey, goosey watercolor with no special effects.

Hopefully tomorrow I will do the third one.

Anyway I have placed the first one up for adoption on my Etsy site, DreamON. You can find out more about it there including how you may purchase it by clicking here.

May 16 Sunrise - Painting A Day

This morning's sunrise, fresh and on paper!

The sun had just broken out of a fog bank across the water, and this glorious picture emerged. I just had to whip out my watercolors and try to paint what I saw. Of course, what is my paint and brush rendition compared to the glory of the actual beauty of a God-given sunrise?

The size of this one is 7 x 10.5 inches on 140 lb. Arches Cold Press Watercolor paper. For more details or to purchase, please click here.

Henrietta and The Drewster - Paintings A Day

This afternoon I find myself writing my 100th post to this blog. Should be some celebratory thing happening, like the celebration of the 100th episode of a TV show or something?How about a red carpet, fancy new dress, bouquet of flowers or a bottle of wine? I'll be waiting.


Anyway, today I have two paintings. They fit nicely together as a pair. They are Henrietta and The Drewster, a pair of colorful chickens done in watercolor and black marker (Sharpie). They are pretty cute, totally unrealistic chickies. They already found a home on Etsy in my shop DreamON, and I would sell the pair for $10 less if someone wanted to buy them both. Just convo me on Etsy, and I'll gitterdun!

Another Dawn, Another Chance

I just love sunrises and sunsets. I used to say that sunset was my absolute favorite time of day. Situated where we are now, I see many more sunrises than sunsets, and I am equally in awe of them, but the mood set by dusk strikes a melancholy chord; whereas, dawn is hopeful. There is the hope that with the new day, perhaps I can get it right this time.

This painting, Another Dawn, Another Chance reminds me that we serve a loving God who gives us chance, after chance to show love instead of indifference, impatience, selfishness, shyness, busyness, anxiety, and a bunch of other not-so-pleasing qualities we use to not be bothered with our neighbors on the planet.

This beautiful watercolor painting resides on a piece of 11 x 19 inch Arches 140 lb. Cold Press Watercolor paper. The sunrise which occurred sometime this week, was embedded in my memory to paint for this Painting A Day today. It will be available on Etsy, in my shop there: http://dreamon.etsy.com/ .

Tropical Vision - Painting A Day

Had a busy day today, and didn't have as much time to paint, so I got a late start on my daily painting. I switched back to into watercolor mode to create this Tropical Vision. This wasn't for any particular reason, other than it had been a little while since I had painted in watercolor.

There is not too much to mention about techniques, because there is nothing that departs from a pretty traditional watercolor. The sky was painted on a wet surface. The palm trees were painted with a palette knife and a rigger brush. the water was painted with a dry brush technique and then glazed when the first layer dried.

The dimensions of this piece are 10 x 15 inches. Materials used are watercolors and just a bit of gouache.

This painting is for sale in my Etsy shop: DreamON (Click on the image or the highlighted name DreamON to be automagically transported there.)

Finished Up One Fairy Shoe and New Art Too!

So this is how my Fairy-Kissed Fashion Slipper turned out when I got back into it today.

The background color is more of a burgundy than it shows in the photo. I needed to darken the background, because I noticed after studying it that the values were too similar. It helps to step back, in fact step away and take some time off, then come back with fresh eyes.

Also I had to go back in and work on the little fairy. I wasn't too happy with the way I left her last night.

Today I worked some again on a new "Fashion Diva." This one is on canvas, and she has a Western look. You'll get to see her when she's done. In the meantime, here is Adrienne, my daily art offering for today. She will be joining my Fashion Diva series section on Etsy.

Adrienne is a 15 x 7-inch watercolor fahion illustration with the line drawing done using a black Sharpie Poster Paint pen. The black on the sides is just Photoshopped in to make the illustration square, and I used black to make the paper look whiter. I need to figure out how to color balance the camera to make the paper look the color it is, but the illustration/painting is on Arches Cold Press Watercolor paper which is as I saw described somewhere else as "the good stuff."

Painting on lesser quality watercolor paper just isn't worth it. It makes this artist's temper flare to have to deal with paper that just won't handle the color like it should. Why risk a failure by using cheap, cheap paper? Not worth it!

Adrienne will be up on my Etsy shop (DreamON) this evening and available for purchase. Fairy-Kissed Fashion Slipper has now been sent up to Flourish Boutique in South Bend, IN for the grand opening in June.

Glory2727

Gloria Wilson from Etsy Shop, Glory2727 is my featured artist today.

The painting on the right, Field of Daises, is a good example of the containment, contraction and expansion design format using traditional subject matter.

Gloria, like myself, has learned a lot of new skills since joining Etsy. It sounds like, from what I read, that From My Brush is Gloria's second blog and that she learned everything she needed to know about setting up her Etsy shop afterwards. It was the other way around for me. Etsy was my first solo foray setting up anything other than a mailbox on the internet. I have worked with computers for a long time unlike Gloria whose daughter got her started by buying her a computer within the last 5-10 years. Both of us can see the benefits of new learning experiences and challenges.

Says Gloria, "My learning experiences with etsy began immediately. My writing skills began to improve by writing my profile, descriptions of my items for sell, and store policies. I found many useful tips in the forum posted by different shop owners on making your shop inviting. Next I went on-line with Hewlett Packard's free classes. I took a course on using my digital camera beyond pointing and shooting. Next I learned how to download the pictures from my camera. Sizing the picturesbecame another lesson. Templates are used when uploading and require the proper setting in pixels in order to upload.

Shipping was the next lesson. Many vendors again posted to threads in our Etsy forums. It is there and Etsy's How To's that pointed my way to shipping. Also we learn from one another the best and reasonable suppliers for packaging and commercial supplies needed.My computer skills have grown. From the Etsy forums I gained short cuts and knowledge fromsplit screens to cut and paste to designing a banner.

The one thing I am most proud of is the fact that I have joined a wonderful community of shop owners, who can share problems and solutions in a forum They share ideas, and information."

This cute little guy on the right is entitled King of the Garden and is available as an ACEO in her shop.


Little Pink Flower Pot is the title of this piece, useful as well as pretty.








Go visit Gloria at:
http://glory2727.etsy.com/
http://frommybrush.blogspot.com/

Monday Feature: Alternate Bliss

A Social Worker/Kindergarten Teacher by day and . . . Alternate Bliss the rest of the time, sounds pretty wonderful, and it shows in her work which seems to just emit a joy of life.

Above: Lotus Blossom Fine Silver Necklace, an original design

Below: Pink Jellies, Original Watercolor

Bottom: Rilo the Fox necklace, sculpted and hand-carved
Tanya, owner of Alternate Bliss, is also finishing up her Masters in Education. She says that her passion is directed towards her husband and children (always and forever), teaching, fine silver and just creating stuff in general. A former closet creator, Tanya says, "I was tormented because I felt so creative but never dared to explore it! So my advice is ... go for it...what have you got to lose!"
She is a Mixed Media Artist. In her shop you will find original art including watercolor art, ACEO's, art prints, and hand made silver jewelry.
Below are links to Tanya's shop and blog, Alternate Bliss!

http://alternatebliss.etsy.com/
http://www.alternatebliss.blogspot.com/

November 5, 2007

One of the things people have said about my artwork is that it tends to promote mental vacations. Translation: Dreams about Art. This blog will be a launchpad, I hope, for enjoyable experiences for many viewers as I share my thoughts and paintings with you.


Who am I? I am an only child, a caring mother and grandmother, my husband’s best friend. I love my family and my friends. I love kitties. I am an award-winning artist, graduated with a degree from Colorado State University in Art Education. When I am making art, I can lose myself in it. Athletes call it “the zone.” I recognize it as a very productive segment of “lost” time. I should set an alarm clock if I have something important I must do.



What do I do? I am a watercolorist. Many times my media is 100% watercolor, but I find it fun and more interesting to be free to add acrylics or collage materials to my watercolor paintings. For a change I will also paint in acrylics. I use strong colors and try to include values from very light to very dark in most every painting, even beach paintings.



Enough for now. Here's a painting to start you thinking.