When Art Can Be A Gift

Art is not something ordinarily something you think of when wracking your brain for gift ideas, but why not give the gift of art?

People without a lot of art knowledge sometimes fear buying art even for themselves. I wish this didn't happen. If you hear a new song that you like, you want to hear that song. If you like bananas or salmon, you choose to eat those foods. If you like only blue shirts, you wear blue shirts. I'm just saying what kind of art you like should be as natural as these other kinds of choices. Choice really is a natural thing.  You either like something when you make a decision, or you are neutral, or you really don't like the thing. You should never buy a piece of art for yourself if you don't like it!  If your boss's wife loves it, be unselfish and let her buy it.

Years of Growth

Buying art isn't as permanent as a tattoo, and people don't seem to avoid body art. So, be bold, treat yourself!  Buy yourself a piece of art! How many times have you ever been sorry you bought yourself something you really like? Not ever. Really. (Unless, of course, you have a spending problem!)

Magnolia Time

It follows that your friends and relatives also have definite personal likes and dislikes. One likes cats, and the other dogs. One likes classical music, the other reggae. So you need to consider what they already have chosen to have around them. What colors do they have in their surroundings? Neutral colors, pastel colors or bright colors? You probably even know their favorite color. Do they like antiques or modern furnishings? Curves and frills or clean lines?

When to buy art? Give the gift of art when you know it would look fantastic with your friend's decor. It doesn't have to be large or costly. If you have a special relationship with a person, the fact that you bought it for them makes it special. Give them art as a housewarming gift, a wedding gift, or a Mother or Father's Day gift, or just because.  There doesn't have to be a reason! Purchase when you know you've found just what that special friend has been looking for! At least take a quick photo, and text or email it if you just want to share where it can be found. If this person is someone you shop with a lot, you know you have a good idea what they like, and you could just buy them a little spur of the moment art gift.

Another time to buy the gift of art is for someone elderly or ill who needs cheering up. Send them a get well or cope card, and enclose a small watercolor ACEO! It may be just the lift they need to make their day!

Leaves On The Move

If you are traveling and know your friend has a special memory of where you currently are, send or bring them a little art gift.

Castle Builder

How many times have you ever been sorry you bought yourself something you really like? Not ever. Really, unless you have a spending problem!

Remember, if you wait, you may never find that piece of art again. Even if you think you will remember, somehow you don't - or worse, it's gone!

You can find or inquire about any of these paintings at my online shop, DreamON.Etsy.com .

A Glimpse Of My World Tonight

As I sit here contemplating the world from my window tonight, I am thinking, "What could possibly top this for a studio view?" No, I'm not in jail!!! These are built-in partitions in the windows, and the view of sunlight playing upon the palm tree as sunset nears is pretty much all right with me.

Other than that, I have been painting, in acrylics, lots of grapes and grape leaves on a variety of surfaces from masonite panels to 4 x 4 canvases. Friends have been collecting corks for me for years, and I am planning to use them in some kind of art -- for years. About now, the corks are multiplying much faster than the artwork! So this week's project is to use some of them!

So here are a couple of my projects which are nearing completion. Here are a few of the little canvases which I am planning to mount onto a masonite surface which has been textured with acrylic gel and then painted with black gesso and with gloss gel. Wow! That didn't do it for me at all! I decided to back off and paint it with a warm brown, and then wiped and blotted some of that off of the panel. The glossy black surface looked terrible with the paintings and corks. After I took this photo, I decided to add a few corks. At this point, I have not glued anything down, but I can say I am getting close.

In the next photo, I have painted the grapes and grape leaves in a different style on a masonite panel. Yesterday, I had fun dremeling holes in everything I could get my hands on. Then I went to Michael's in search of some raffia, only to find they had no raffia in the natural color, but I found narrow ribbons on sale, so I bought 3 colors of those, and today I attached ribbons and a nice bow to the project and called it "done." The photo was taken "in progress" and before it was finished -- for sure! In this one, I decided no corks!
The dremel holes were drilled at the top left, and the presentation is vertical, with tri-color ribbons of gray green, lavender and natural, and a bow.

These have been fun, but there are Oh, so many corks to use. I fear, the fun has just begun!

Not sure where I will show these, but Etsy is probably not the venue this time!

Fun With Acrylics - ACEO Style

Abstract Flowers 2[SOLD] Abstract Flowers 3[SOLD]Abstract Flowers 1 (Available)

For these latest three ACEOs I started with backgrounds of Napthol Red Medium, Naples Yellow and Chromium Oxide Green Golden Liquid Acrylics combined with White Gesso. These three colors make some lovely shades when combined. As soon as the backgrounds dried, I drew floral images on each of the ACEO-sized pieces of watercolor paper. This size is always a constant 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches. Using some darker green combinations of the same three colors and changing the colors frequently from a more green to a more red combination of these colors, also varying intensity and temperature, I painted negatively around my drawings. Then I putzed around a bit to paint in stamens and centers.

The colors proved difficult to correct the photo and adjust for accuracy, but I finally achieved a reasonable likeness. The images look quite nice together against a background of neutral rice paper with a border courtesy of Corel Paint Shop.

ACEOs and Note Cards '>to view ACEOs later in my Etsy Shop in my ACEO Artist Cards Section!

Fashion Diva Series Continues

I haven't posted any of my Fashion Divas lately, but just so you know, the series has been quite successful for me, and I just sold the original of Amanda last week at the Artists Guild Gallery on Anna Maria Island. There are no prints at this time. Here's what Amanda looks like (on the right).

The selling of Amanda has prompted me to create Molly. I had the song "Devil With The Blue Dress" running through my mind as I created this painting. Molly is the star in the lyrics of this old 60s (I think) song. It brings to mind a funny thing that happened when I was in college.

The memory that runs through my mind here is my freshman year in the dorm, a few of us who lived on my floor had a party one Saturday night. At that time it was totally illegal to have alcohol in the dorms. Some other girls had gotten caught smuggling beer into the dorm in a pitcher (dripping, I think) earlier in the year, so we knew we had to be smarter than that. One of my friends came up with the idea of getting our beer in by putting it into one of those year-supply size of Kotex boxes, and it worked like a charm. We had a great party, complete with dragging out someone's red dress and a wig hat to dress up in and dance in all decked out, when this other song with those lyrics was played on the radio. (I can't remember how that song's title or how it goes right now). We all had a fabulous time, didn't endanger anyone by driving, we didn't get caught, and nobody got hurt - except for my roomie who ended up with a big hangover.

Anyway, Molly is shown above on the left. She's going to make her debut at the end of this month at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, for our Studio1212 display there in March and April. She is an acrylic with tissue paper collaged on over magazine pictures and a recycled acrylic painting underneath. So there were many layers involved in the creation of Molly. The base is 140-lb Arches Cold Press Watercolor Paper.

This Describes It

OK, so now I've managed to have an asthma attack; my first one ever, and it has not been any fun at all. After about 12 hours of coughing and really sensing that I could not get a good breath, I had my hubby take me to the E-room. They told me I had bronchitis and that since I have asthma, it couldn't be distinguished from an asthma attack, so for about the next three hours in the early morning today, I was stuck, x-rayed, wired for EKG and hooked up to a breathing machine. I much prefer sleeping!

So I looked around my files for a painting that describes the ucky feeling. I came up with this one, whose real title is Brain On Martinis. Of course, had it been martinis, it would have been more fun, and it wouldn't have lasted so long or worn me out to this extent. This painting is acrylic on a CT-scan of some disgusting body part or other. I have no respect for the films, especially not tonight. OK, and now photos aren't loading, and this post needs the visual. OK, I got it to load.

Anybody else have experience with this asthma thing, and how do you know when you need help? Because 12 hours is probably way too long to wait, I think.

Artist Workshop With Carol Frye

For the last two days I have been taking an art workshop which was called "Subtle and Sophisticated Collage Workshop," with Carol Frye of Lakeland, Florida (http://www.carolfrye.com ), an award-winning artist who holds signature memberships in six different well-known acrylic and watercolor societies. She has been featured in the " Ones To Watch" feature in the December 2007 Watercolor Magic and also published a few other times in this magazine and several other artist publications. Check out her website to see pictures of her wonderful artwork.

We prepared backgrounds for our collages using several different starting techniques and then prepared some artistic tissue papers to use in the collages which we then began by layering the three primary colors to produce dark but rich, colorful neutrals before laying on any collage materials. This in itself is so different for me, as I am wild for color.

I am sharing three of my projects here. The first one on canvas is largely a prepared background (above), just to show here how much preparation has already gone into the painting before any detail is ever added. This is the result of quite a few layers of paint on the textured canvas. I took my first photos after dark last night using an overhead light and a flash - probably the worst conditions to take photos, but I wanted to do my blog, and I intended to replace them today when the light is much better, which I have now done.

You will notice also, in addition to better pictures, that I have now finished the two last paintings.

Afternoon Delight Rescuing An Old Painting

Fixing up old paintings is always fun. I can look at them periodically when I am looking for something and never see anything I want to do to change a painting. Then suddenly the inspiration hits me, and I have to "fix it."

I originally created this collage five years ago (dated on the back) and found it again this afternoon. It is a mixture of watercolor, acrylic and things I found in magazines.

It was just way, way too dark over all, so I covered the dark top parts with white gesso and let that dry, then mixed up some pale Hansa yellow acrylic up and proceeded to let the sunshine in. That is the effect I feel now when looking at the painting. It is joyful now, where before it was just kind of dark, but I didn't see it until today.

For additional information or purchase info, click here.

Life Under Construction

I took this photo a few minutes ago of a beautiful yellow Hibiscus blooming outside. We have had such difficulty with our little "farm" on our deck this season, because of what I think is mealy bugs. First they attacked a nice red hibiscus we had to throw out. Next we threw out a tomato plant, followed by a basil plant. Now the little nasties have attacked my prize yellow hibiscus plant. A couple of weeks ago I started hand to hand combat with them by treating it leaf by leaf with an alchohol rub of each leaf and sticking a swabbed q-tip into the new growth areas. I took a risk, not knowing if I would be killing it, but by the next day I could see it had recovered a bit. Each time I would see the white cottony crud, I would hit it with more alcohol, until finally we got this whole blossom. Up until now, they had a portion of the bloom which had been stunted. But, alas, I see more yuk I will have to go and attack. If anyone has a suggestion how to eliminate these little critters I would love to hear about it.

I spent the morning sitting in the gallery in Anna Maria Island this morning. It was very quiet there. When it was time to leave, it was about to storm outside. We decided to find a place to wait it out before coming back across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. It rained a boat-load while we were having our lunch.

Thought I would show you what has happened to this painting since I took it down off my Etsy site. I first described the technique I used to create my painting surface here on the blog on March 27th, in an article named "Fun With String and Glue." However, I never liked the painting, and I eventually painted over it. I am putting it aside so I can look at it for awhile and decide how I can finish it. Which do you like better, before or after the start-over?

Oh Hey, there's some toes!

Shoemania Alive and Well

What woman doesn't just luuuuuv shoes? Well, maybe a few, but most of us would love to challenge Imelda Marcos for collecting many, many pairs of shoes if we had the means, the feet that could wear them comfortably and the space of course. We would also have to live with someone that understood a girl and her need for shoes and not go postal with the arrival of each new pair.

This brand-spanking new pair of peep-toe black pumps with monstrously high, high heels is begging someone, right now, to take them home. My original painting, Girl's First Love, has been lovingly painted by a girl who understands the value of shoes -- many, many pairs of shoes. Yep, I'm that shallow! The painting is on a 10 x 10 square canvas with no staples on the sides, so it can be hung with or without a frame. It would make a cute girly bedroom or powder room decoration for your wall. It is painted in acrylics and has a little Florida beach sand added for texture.

The painting will be available in my Etsy shop, DreamON. Click here.

Cabbage Palm

This is just such a cool technique. I just love it. First crumple up a piece of tissue paper. Apply it to a sheet of watercolor paper using a mixture of acrylic paint and sand. Then use a brayer to seal the tissue down to the watercolor paper. Next apply acrylic paints to the "paper" in a subtle variety of colors to make the "paper" look like it has been woven. When that is dry, then you are ready to apply your design to the base. In this case, I drew a Cabbage Palm onto the base and painted it. A couple of more steps and finally ending with rollering on a thinned-down purple acrylic. Sooo cool!

Cabbage Palm has been added to my Etsy shop. For more information, click here .

Tree Climber - Painting A Day

Tree Climber once again utilizes one of my favorite little animals, the little kitten. To use a kitten as a subject is completely natural for me, because I just love kitties.

I feel like I just might be getting back into the swing of the painting a day mode. Being sick with a stupid cold just absolutely laid me low, and it completely took any desire I had to paint. It exhausted me so that just the thought of painting made me want to run away. That combined with the fact that it's summer and has really gotten hot here.

A few years ago in my Experimental Painting class, we did some paintings called scrapings. The instructor cautioned us to save the paper towels we scraped the excess paint on. I saved it, and was able to utilize some of it in this painting for my collage materials. The tree in this painting is fabricated out of a drawing of black Sharpie poster paint marker, black permanent Sharpie marker and a Tombow gray pen. The background and sides were painted in a lovely light moonbeam yellow over which the drawing was made and the collage grew on.

This little 8 x 8 inch acrylic on canvas painting is available in my Etsy shop, DreamON. Click here for purchase details.

Masquerade

Swimming Upstream is an acrylic painting, the dimensions of which are 19 X 12 inches. Its charm comes from observing the many semi-transparent layers and textures it took to create the painting. Searching through the image to locate a recognizable object becomes a secondary task. The cloudy semi-transparent areas of thinned white gesso serve to define the tall surreal figure in the middle of the painting., but should you not see her, do not be dismayed. For each viewer, something different may appear, and the cloudy white gesso gives an eerie feel to the piece. The design radiates outward from the center. The painting is finished with a high gloss layer of Mod Podge. It will be displayed in my Etsy Shop. Additional information is available with a click here.

Get Polished

Today's painting is Get Polished. It is an approximately 9 X 11 inch acrylic painting on Arches 140 lb. Cold Press Watercolor paper. It would make a cute little painting to have in your beauty shop or powder room. I will be putting this layered acrylic piece on Etsy where you can find more information about how it can be yours. Click here.

Painting A Day: Flowers On Red Kool Aid

Flowers On Red Kool Aid is my Painting of the Day. It photographed quite orange, but it is much more of a true red. Reds are very difficult to adjust. I put a layer of Pyroll Red under the Medium Red Acrylic layer and then scratched design elements into the top layer, so perhaps the camera read right thru to the much more orangey-red underlayer. I will try to get a photo with truer colors tomorrow when it's light.

For purchase information or more details about this painting click either here or on the photo. Flowers On Red Kool Aid is displayed in my Etsy store, DreamON.

Paradise Input Decoder Devices

This acrylic painting of Birds of Paradise flowers has a "Space Invaders" look to it. I intentionally wanted it to have an abstract nature and kept from using true colors and utilized a gradated, textured background to further promote this effect. First I did some thumbnail sketches and chose one with a Papa, Mama, Baby bear composition (that is a large shape, a medium shape and a small-sized shape). Then I used two layers of gradated White Gesso, Hansa Yellow and Cadmium Red Medium to get a nice thick background before starting on the drawing for the "birds."

Once I started on the "birds" I found I needed a couple coats of the White Gesso to get a thick enough layer. The next step was to pick up the colors in the background and use them in defining the "birds." I had left the medium "bird" all white until almost the very end when I decided to use a little bit of the brown on it.

I had printed out on 8 1/2" x 11 paper, some red-brown Photoshop effects of my digital photograph of the real Birds of Paradise photo taken at Pinellas County, Florida's Botanical Gardens as well as some other photos. This effect was so cool looking that I decided use it in my painting by collaging some of it onto my canvas using Acrylic Matte Medium.

The final steps involved using some textures to blend in the collaged parts with the painting and also to achieve the darkest of the dark colors. The result seems other-worldly, and I began to think of the "birds" as other-worldly devices coming to Planet Earth to check it out and report back to the other-world, in this case picking up the paradise from the "birds." That's how the name came about. WoooooOOOOHHHHHH!

This painting is large: 40 x 30 inches on gallery-wrapped canvas which has been painted on the sides, thus eliminating the need for a frame. It has been protected with a layer of Glossy Acrylic Medium and Varnish. It will be on display at Studio1212 Gallery in Clearwater, Florida from June 1st to June 25th in the "Canvas and Then Some" exhibit. I'm also showing it in my Etsy shop, DreamON. For more information, click here.

Wind For Sale

Wind For Sale, the title of the painting refers to an old Finnish legend when in ancient times the Finns would offer wind for sale to traders who would wait and wait on their land because of bad sailing weather, and when the sailors paid for knowledge of the winds, the Finns would give them in exchange three magic knots tied in a sturdy leather strap. This is how they were to be utilize the knots: when they untied the first knot, they would have gentle breezes. When they indid the second knot, the winds would be stronger. If they weren't satisfied with the speed they were making and they untied the third knot, they were likely to face hurricane strength winds.

In the painting, the legend is applied to hopes for good sailing weather - full moon, stiff breeze and small boats.

For additional information about the painting or to purchase it, click here.

Everlasting

Today's Painting A Day is called "Everlasting," because I saw in the focal point, two rings which symbolized for me covenant marriage, and the colors of the painting are happy colors: gold, yellows and magnificent manganese blue; and where they cross, pale green. It is painted with acrylic paints on 12 x 12 x 1 inch canvas. It will not need painting unless it is the desire of the buyer to frame it. The painting is not signed on the front, because the buyer might like another orientation. It is signed and dated on the back by the artist (me).

To see more information about this painting or for purchase information click here. It will be found in my Etsy shop, DreamON.

Caught Looking

It's fun to give some thought to guessing what this little parrot has interrupted his grooming routine to peruse. Is there a hot little parrot chick out there? Maybe there's a human (how dare them) trying to snag him for a photo, or perhaps it's a wild monkey climbing the next tree in search of bananas.

In any event, I painted this guy awhile ago, photographed the painting and stored it on Photoshop. A few days ago I was looking at photos and playing around with the many different treatments you can perform on your pictures. I discovered an unfamiliar one that turns a photo into a monochromatic version of whatever color you have already selected. These looked to me like they should make some interesting collages. This is the first, but I carried it a bit further than I had intended by painting much of the parrot over again with my acrylics, and then did some outlining with marker before varnishing.

Caught Looking is 11 1/2 x 15 1/4 inches on 140-lb. Arches Cold Press Watercolor paper.

For additional comments and purchase info, click here .

Some Kind of Music

It's about time! Sometimes a painting just paints itself, and this one did.

Introducing Some Kind Of Music.

I just scraped the blue on with my palette knife, and then mixed up some pretty yellows - one cool and one warm, added the peach and painted the sides, and I thought it looked happy. The colors are just that pleasing. I had in mind that this was just a step on the way to somewhere else, but I was pretty contented with just this much.

I laid some bubble wrap down and waited for it to dry, and when it did I tried a couple of things for a focal point right where the bubble wrap pieces came together. I wiped a few of them off before I was satisfied with the treble clef. Then I did a couple of steps to embellish/obscure it, and I'm happy. I just think I like this painting. Some Kind of Music was sold on Etsy almost immediately after I put it on last evening. Yay!

Notes and Pieces - Painting A Day

This painting is entitled Notes and Pieces. You may notice it is unsigned on the front. Abstracts are often left unsigned in order that the purchaser can display it in any direction. That said, this is my preferred view, but people's tastes are so varied. I have put this painting up in my Etsy store, DreamON. You can click on the picture to get to my shop to see purchase info.

This weekend we flew to Oregon to see my DHLM. (That's code for my dear husband's loving mother.) It takes all day just to get there and another whole day to return. I may be feeling like buzzard bait by Monday morning. (I'm such an optimist!) My diurnal clock is going to be on Eastern Standard Time no matter what. Four days is just not long enough to reset. This morning I was wide awake at 2 am (oh joy!). I have a feeling that four hours of sleep is going to make me a very grumpy companion for the day. Help me to keep my mouth glued shut, lest I say something I shouldn't.

Once when we went to Amsterdam, I was sooo tired by the time we got there after that long flight. I just had to sleep, no matter what we were told about staying up until our normal bedtime. Then I stayed awake for days! There was a church very closeby that had truly amazing chimes, but they went off every fifteen minutes. I would tell myself, as I tried to go to sleep, "You have 15 minutes to go to sleep, surely you can be asleep before they go off again." Ten minutes later I would be telling myself, "The bells are going to go off any second, might as well wait until they go off to sleep." Then I would listen intently. Well, this went on for two nights, until finally I found a music channel on the TV to drown out the incessant sound. As beautiful as the sound of a carillon is, it can also be overwhelmingly annoying as a sleep-aid.

Who ever said that one of the requirements for being an artist was sanity? (VanGogh might be able to tell us something.)