Mark Polomchak Workshop In Bradenton

Today was the first day of an art workshop I'm attending which is being given by Mark Polomchak, an affable instructor from Crown Point, Indiana, with a lively teaching style who paints a variety of subjects from Amish scenes to animals. I got the impression that Mark's art would have wide appeal to all sorts of different people.

Many times in workshops I have had the feeling that though an instructor is intensely competent, and I have learned something I felt was significant, the fact is that artists are the main group who admire the techniques. How many people who are not artists are impressed by really cool negative painting?

Admittedly, negative painting is extremely important to the development of an artist, and being able to do it competently is no small fete. However, the average person on the street has probably no idea what it meant by negative painting, no more than the average bird knows what a nanosecond is.

I was also impressed by his teaching skills, which were evidenced by what seemed to be all-around, pretty decent paintings by everyone in the workshop. That tells me first of all that Mark's teaching techniques were most effective, and he kept the attention of all participants. In addition, even those who claimed to be beginning painters came up with quite nice results and didn't leave the session frustrated as so often happens.

Also, I'm looking forward to tomorrow!

Since it is dark now, and my photography at night is not the greatest, I will post my painting from today another time.

See Mark Polomchak's website to view his work and for more information. http://www.polomchak.com

Fruit of the Gods

What's Up In The Kitchen? What A Fine Fruit, in the spotlight for tonight, is a watercolor honoring the Bosc variety of pear. The Bosc is known for its long neck and brownish skin color.

Called by Homer, the ancient Greek poet who wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey, "the fruit of the gods," the pear has a lot to live up to. In the United States, second in popularity only to the apple, pears are actually related to them genetically. Most pears are grown in Washington and Oregon where the mild, moist climate promotes optimum growth.

Pears are said to be a healthy choice, being free from fat, cholesterol and sodium. What makes them soften, however is the gift of sugar created from starches as it ripens. It provides the sweet nectar advertised by Homer who was thought to be blind, and therefore who must have been oblivious to the characteristics of over-ripened feminine pulchritude when exposed to a diet of such sugars. Pears, on the other hand provide a wonderful amount of fiber, potassium and Vitamin C. Such is life; balance the benefits against the disadvantages. Enjoy pears! You can especially appreciate this one because its inedible and therefore calorie-free eye candy.

This little pear has been captured and held by a digitally created boundary of burnt sienna which enhances its quinacridone base color. I painted this while I was gallery sitting at the Artists' Guild Gallery this fall on one of the quiet days that season provides. The original painting is a 9 x 12 inch watercolor on Arches Hot Press Watercolor paper. Prints will be for sale here in my Etsy shop, and pears can be found in your local supermarket.

A New Spin On Margarita

What's Up In The Kitchen? This week I've found a new toy while editing A New Spin On Margarita. Not that the toy hasn't been available to me ever since I've had the Corel Paint Shop software, but I just found it, and I've been having fun trying out the "picture frames" on my new series of paintings which for the most part have a white background. This very lacy one reminds me of a valentine. I had to try it out in six or eight colors before deciding on this one. What's cool is I can print it out this way (on the right) or I can print it out without any background at all.
There are other options available also, including a small band of color, which I like the best of all. Aren't new discoveries wonderful?

Check out A New Spin On Margarita in my Etsy Shop to see this one. Then, come on back!

Pizza For Pam

What's Up In The Kitchen today? Well, it's Pizza for Pam! Who doesn't love pizza? It's a cinch that Pam loves pizza. Sometimes I wish I had a dress shaped like this. Why? Because Mary loves pizza too. Too much that is.

More about pizza. The first pizza I ever remember was the pizza that was served in my junior high school, and I thought it was terrible. We never had pizza at home, because my dad hated anything that had onions, cheese or garlic as an ingredient. Meat, potatoes and vegetables were the fare in the home I grew up in. Consequently, we never had pizza at home until I purchased a Chef Boyardee pizza mix to try. That was pretty awful too. At this point I could NOT figure out why my friends liked the stuff so much. I didn't find out about pizza at all until I was living away from home at college, and then I found I loved the stuff. A whole new world of culinary experiences was opened up for me. Now I know the pizza in junior high was pretty awful. Ditto Chef.

Some of the world's best pizza places are dumpy little places. Our current favorite pizza comes from one of these. It's possible to eat the pizza there, but a much better idea is to go and get it, and bring it home. We have another favorite restaurant where they have live Blues bands outside on weekends, and that's pretty fun, and the pizza's real good too. Yeah, outside in Florida, even in the wintertime!

Pam is going to come to my Etsy shop in the form of prints, hot off my Epson printer. The first one will be listed tonight. Then you can link to Pizza For Pam right here.

According to the Epson web site, "fade-resistant DURABrite Ultra Inks are light resistant and fade resistant up to 100 years. Light-resistance rating based on accelerated testing of prints on Epson special media, displayed indoors, under glass. Actual print stability will vary according to image, display conditions, light intensity, paper, humidity and atmospheric conditions. Ratings based on ink only; some papers may discolor over time. Epson does not guarantee the longevity of prints. For maximum print life, display all prints under glass or lamination or properly store them." http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?infoType=Specs&oid=56291070&category=Products

I never considered that the ink would last longer than the paper it was printed on. That's something I can just picture: images and letters hanging around after the paper disintegrated. Well, I know that's not what they mean, but the vision is fun to imagine.

New Wine

What's Up In The Kitchen? New Wine is my painting for today and joins the series. There are no "kitchen peeps" in this painting. Anyway I had been wondering how long wine needs to age before it is drinkable. (This painting sold in February).

So I was exploring the net and found Wine Spectator's top wine for 2008 was a 2005 wine from Chile.

Casa Lapostolle
Clos Apalta Colchagua Valley 2005
96 points / $75
5,987 cases made
Chile

In fact the majority of the top ten were bottled in 2005. Numbers 9 and 10, however were a 2007 vintage.

Mollydooker
Shiraz McLaren Vale Carnival of Love 2007
95 points / $90
2,596 cases made
Australia

Seghesio
Zinfandel Sonoma County 2007
93 points / $24
68,000 cases made
California

If you want to see the whole Top 100 list of wines for 2008, here is the link for Wine Spectator's list in a PDF : http://static.winespectator.com/Wine/Images/Graphics/Redesign/images/top100-2008-atGlance.pdf

Undoubtedly the most famous quotation mentioning new wine is in the Bible in passages where Jesus is questioned about fasting by the disciples of John the Baptist. In Matthew 9:17, "Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved."

The practical application is that wine was stored in the skins of animals in those days. When new wine is put into a wineskin it stretches out, once. If new wine is put into an old wineskin that has already been stretched out, and the fermenting causes bubbles that need to expand, the wineskin would rupture and the wine would pour out. So new wine needed to be put into a new skin, and neither the wine or wineskin would not be harmed in the process.

This is one of the parables of Jesus, using a practical illustration to get across His point. My (while others may agree or disagree, keep in mind it is just mine) simple interpretion could be that Jesus, is telling the followers of John that He is the new wineskin, their legalistic beliefs are impossible to live up to, and now that He has come they need to put their trust (wine) in Him, and not depend on what works they do themselves (old wineskin) to earn salvation.

What's Up In The Kitchen?

I'm back after taking a holiday break, and I have a new series I've started called What's Up In The Kitchen?. These are kitchen peeps who live in vegetables, fruits, glassware and who knows where else they'll turn up. On the left is Girl Caught Hiding In The Celery. I guess there must be kind of a little miniature celery forest out there in the celery fields, and before they come to the kitchen the little peeps must be out there playing hide and go seek.

I have no idea where the motivation for this series came from, but right now I'm finding the kitchen peeps rather fun to paint. You can just never be sure what's going on in the artist brain, but it's for sure different than what's up with the brain of an average Joe.

My dear hubby reads the newspaper every day. Once upon a time I read the newspaper too - the front page section, the weather, the section with ''Dear Abby" in it, the sports section and sometimes the classifieds. Now I find no time to read the newspaper. I have Etsy to play with, and kitchen peeps to paint, and lots of other art-related activities to attend to. I'm not that one-dimensional, but reading the newspaper just doesn't come to the top of the list very often.

The peeps on the right side are called Carrot Dancer Understudies. I was thinking about calling them Carrot Dancers Waiting For Their Wings, as kind of a play on words for "waiting in the wings", but I decided that understudies conveyed the idea, without making them wingless. After all carrots aren't lacking appendages of any kind, are they?

In any event, I've just started the series, but I can tell you that some of the paintings have peeps and some don't, but they all have to do with nefarious and not so nefarious kitchen activity. Stay tuned.

Interview With Miz Katie

I got to know Miz Katie a little bit from my convos with her about my Treasury about clotheslines. That has lead to our exchange of features about each other's Etsy shops. The following are questions I posed to her and her answers to my questions.

I notice that you are in Kansas and wondered how long you have lived there?
Almost ten years, minus 2. It's actually a very long story, so I'll try to keep it short. I moved to KS in 1999 from Maine. Ended up moving to West Virginia in 2005. I LOVE West Virginia. But, I came back to Kansas in 2007 to be near family. I will never regret that choice, but honestly, I miss my friends in WV.

Are you in a rural area or closer to KC?
I am in extremely rural Kansas, three plus hours away from KC, and about 40-45 minutes away from Wichita. Except for the 932 people and all the barking dogs, it's a bit like a ghost town here. The grocery store, two restaurants and barber shop were closed when we moved here. There is absolutely nothing to do. It is about a 20-25 minute drive to the nearest little city. But, we have a liquor store, which just opened. I heard it is doing very well. Wine is a top seller.

What do you like about it, and what do you dislike?
I love being near family.
I love my house.
I love the flat land.
I love the hot, arid summers.
I dislike/disagree with the majority of political views.
I dislike people not caring for their animals, and leaving them out all night, barking, no matter what the weather.
I wish the neighborhood kids weren't so loud, disrespectful and rude.
I miss my WV "hillbilly" friends.

Are you involved in any art groups or do you show in a gallery?
Only online. I belong to so many art groups, it would take days to list them all.
I don't think my art fits in a typical gallery.

How long have you been painting?
Oh, gosh! Well, hm..my obsession for painting started soon after I moved to Kansas in 1999..I was very lonely, depressed, and unhappy. I began to paint for that reason. Painting made me come alive. It gave me reason to get out of bed each morning. I couldn't wait to paint..still can't. It's something I look forward to doing every day. Before that, I was more into collage, writing, and photography. I've been published a few times in magazines/newspapers, and several times online.

What time of day do you find is best for you to paint?
Anytime is fine with me. I'm not one who has to sit around and wait for inspiration. I HAVE to paint. It isn't a choice. I usually paint from around 1pm to 7pm, though. That time works for me. I have the morning to get the boring stuff done, and I can play all afternoon. Sometimes, I can't wait for 1pm, though, and I head to the studio as soon as my first cup of coffee is brewed.

What do you like about your work space, and what do you dislike?
I have a pretty big room, which I call my studio. I love everything about it, except that it's freezing cold. I can't seem to get it above 60F in that room, no matter how high I crank the furnace. brr!!! I have to use a space heater the whole time I'm working.

Do you listen to any music while painting, and if you do what kind of music?
Sure, sometimes. I like Alternative. I usually go to Pandora.com and listen to the Foo Fighters station. That gives me non-stop music with no commercials the whole time I paint.

How did your "style" evolve?
Oh, there are so many ways! The most important is that I stopped taking myself and art seriously years ago. I used to be so anal retentive. It was incredibly boring and painful to make art back then. I was so careful. Ugh! The day I learned there are no mistakes in art was the greatest day I've ever lived. I know now that no matter what I do, I can NOT mess up. It's impossible. That's why gesso was created! All I have to do is paint over it if I don't like it, and try again. What a relief! Whew! The pressure is OFF.

I am much happier these days, so I insert humor into my artwork more often than I used to. I like to take something ordinary and twist it until it's humorous. Sometimes, absurdly so. I'm from New England; therefore, I am sarcastic. ;) Most everything I make comes from my imagination, made up stories, exaggeration, half-truths, and complete and utter lies! Oh, there is a pinch of reality thrown in from time to time, but eh.. I like to keep it as unreal as possible.

I hope you have enjoyed this feature on Miz Katie and will check out her Etsy shop, MizKatie!
I think her art is very fresh and lots of fun! Enjoy!

Crazy Days and Crazy Nights

I have been soooo busy since we got back to Florida. It has always been a fact that summer is a slower, more restful season, and most groups I've been involved with don't have either meetings or shows. So when I arrive on the scene two months late, I feel like the world is spinning extra fast, because there is just so much getting caught up to be done.

I've checked on and updated inventory in shops and galleries, helped hang a group show, participated in a reception for the group show, gone to meetings and board meetings, gallery sat, helped hang my month-long show in a local boutique, designed and had Christmas cards printed and distributed them to various outlets where they are being sold, and even put together a membership database for another group and layed out the membership book and had that printed. I've been to two holiday parties for two groups already, taken a one-day workshop and done a Treasury for Etsy. And this is only the "art-related" activities. All this, just since the first of November!!!

I am looking forward to having TIME, sometime in the future. I wonder what it feels like to actually finish reading a book??? Maybe I could even PAINT!!!! I love being busy, but this feels like crazy busy.

My New Etsy Treasury "Just hanging out"

As you can see, I've named this treasury on Etsy, "Just hanging out." I love plays on words, and I think this one works. This is my most successful treasury to date. Just looking at it I found it on page 5, and it's not even a day old yet. Just an infant!

I had been looking for subjects for a treasury, and somehow I started thinking about how much fun I had photographing clotheslines in Italy and how much fun I've had painting the two Italian clotheslines that I've painted. So I decided this would be my subject.

I had so much fun seeing what was on Etsy with search words "art" and "clothesline." I found some wonderful things, and I was excited to snag a treasury. Well it's taken me awhile to do that. One time the magic number was down to 336 or something, and I went into the kitchen to work on something - like dinner or something silly like that. I had one eye on the computer and saw the screen flash, but by the time I got to it, the treasuries had already been filled. So this time, the magic number was 347 when I started to stalk the treasury page and wait for the screen to "open, open, open."

Many thanks to MizKatie who offered me access to her blog photo, where she has featured my treasury. Screen shot declined to work for me tonight. She's a fabulously expressive artist so go check out her world at MizKatie .

Please do go look at MizKatie's blog, Miz Katie , and be sure to check out my treasury which can be found on Etsy.com in Treasury under "Just hanging out" . It will expire in two days on December 8th around noon, so look fast.

Christmas Cards and Computer Flu

I have been in the process of making Christmas cards, and I actually did get as far as printing three different designs on glossy photo paper before the computer had to go to the computer hospital. And, yes of course, it was expensive and it still doesn't quite work right yet!!!! It also made the Christmas card project grind to a halt while I waited for the machine to be fixed.



Anyway, back to the cards - I am going to cut the four-up printed sheets apart and glue the individual images to the cards. The cards also have to be printed with the inside message and the "who-done-it" information on the back.



I thought when I painted the images while I was still traveling that I would be ahead of the season, but instead the joke's on me. Hello! Don't you just love computer jokes!

Sears - An Email About Ethics and Appreciation

The following is an email I received that made me proud of Sears for treating its employees who are in the called-up reserves with kindness and appreciation for their military service.

Subject: Sears - Christmas shopping has already started

I know I needed this reminder since Sears isn't always my first choice. Amazing when you think of how long the war has lasted and they haven't withdrawn from their commitment. Could we each buy at least one thing at Sears this year?

How does Sears treat its employees who are called up for military duty? By law, they are required to hold their jobs open and available, but nothing more. Usually, people take a big pay cut and lose benefits as a result of being called up.

Sears is voluntarily paying the difference in salaries and maintaining all benefits, including medical insurance and bonus programs, for all called up reservist employees for up to two years.

I submit that Sears is an exemplary corporate citizen and should be recognized for its contribution. I suggest we all shop at Sears, and be sure to find a manager to tell them why we are there so the company gets the positive reinforcement it well deserves.

Pass it on.

Decided to check this before I sent it forward. So I sent the following e-mail to the Sears Customer Service Department:

I received this e-mail and I would like to know if it is true. If it is, the Internet may have just become one very good source of advertisement for your company. I know I would go out of my way to buy products from Sears instead of another store for a like item, even if it's cheaper at that store.


This is their answer to my e-mail:

Dear Customer:

Thank you for contacting Sears.The information is factual. We appreciate your positive feedback.

Sears regards service to our country as one of greatest sacrifices our young men and women can make. We are happy to do our part to lessen the burden they bear at this time.

Bill Thorn
Sears Customer Care
webcenter@sears.com
1-800-349-4358

Please pass this on to all your friends. Sears needs to be recognized for this outstanding contribution and we need to show them as Americans, we do appreciate what they are doing for our military!!!

It's verified ! By Snopes.com at:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/sears.asp

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.

Creatures From The Trip

We are now in the process of traveling back to Florida. I thought it would be nice to share with you some of the animals we have seen on our trip. The first one is this lovely white-tailed deer who ran across the road in front of our car somewhere in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Not to worry, it was a long ways from us, but such a lovely creature!





It was a very interesting day for critters, as not much later we found bison crossing under the highway (through an underpass) and were able to get some great shots of them both before they disappeared into the tunnel and after they reappeared on the other side of the road. Buffalo aren't especially rare, but we hardly ever see them, and it's fun to imagine what the plains must have looked like when there were thousands of them roaming free.
Then we went on to Mount Rushmore and saw these stone critters. What an amazing feat of human artistry this mountainside is! Seeing pictures of it is not adequate to describe the size of this work of art, because it really is unimaginable that someone sought out to create these images out of a mountainside. I have never noticed the glasses on Teddy Roosevelt until that day.

While we were at Mount Rushmore, we saw these mountain goats. At first they were drinking from a puddle in the parking lot, but that isn't a very cool place for them to be. They were obviously accustomed to people and showed no fear of us, but a dog barked, and they took off. This photo of them in a more natural environment is my favorite.Hope you enjoyed the critters, because I've had a lot of fun taking their pictures. It's what I do when we're on the road and there's no time to paint.

Beautiful Fall Colors To Share

We have been admiring the beautiful fall colors in the mountains of Colorado and taking lots of pictures. it was a crisp, fall day when I took the photo that inspired this little watercolor. I loved the contrast between the pale blue-green of the sage in the foreground with the gold of the Aspen trees in the background and the dark green and gold-greens of the tall evergreen in the mid-area. The far-away trees on the mountains lose their dark color because of the atmosphere and the distance.

Here are some additional photos we took that day. You can see just how incredibly beautiful, that Autumn's gold dress looks on the hillsides.





I have put Colorado Gold up in my Etsy shop, DreamON. Click here for more information.

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: