Things I Love - No. 5 - Fall Foliage

I do love Fall. It is my favorite season, but that said, I hate to let go of summer. When I start seeing the first trees start to turn, I think about the cold and snow to come . . . I have to admit these are mostly feelings from all the years I lived in Colorado. I'm not even planning to be here for the winter. I plan to be in Florida, way before winter.  So what's up with that? I just remember how LONG winter lasts, driving on snow and ice, freezing!

However, that said, I would really miss Fall, if I weren't here to see the extremely gorgeous golden hillsides, and sparks of gold among the green on other mountains. Fall is usually the best weather of the year in Colorado, and the sky is so intensely blue that it doesn't seem real. And best of all, it's just beginning. In two weeks or so, it will be at its peak, and that is so amazing!

This is a photograph of what we have today.  It's still summer, the sky isn't that incredible blue just yet, but doesn't it look like a painting just waiting to happen?

The beginning of the season change

Things I Love - No. 4 - Having Lunch With An Old Friend

Today I had the pleasure of having lunch with an old friend. It was a long, long lunch where it seemed like no time at all had passed since we last had coffee, or for that matter were in school together and shared many good times with the same friends. It speaks to the value of the Greek system and how valuable a lifelong friendship with sisters can be. This piece of clip art I found struck me as capturing the spirit of our afternoon together, catching up and sharing a little bit of the old and a little bit of the new.



Credit to http://bestclipartblog.com

Things I Love - No. 3 Sunrise and Sunset

My most favorite times of the day are sunrise and sunset.  I grouped them together, because one completes the other.  As an artist, painting a sunrise or sunset challenges me, but nothing is like the real thing.  I have paint, which goes a long way to putting an image on canvas or paper, even without brushes.  How the airy canvas of the sky turns colors is nothing but a miracle, every day! Here are some of my favorites.

Stormy evening on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge

Beautiful long-lasting sunset from Panama City Beach

Lovely morning clouds in Colorado

Winter sunrise at Madeira Beach, Florida

Things I Love - No. 2

Today, I am sharing my love of flowers.  I love to paint them, but I also love to take photos of them.  Flowers seem like such an awesome extravagance of creation, something that is there simply as a gift of beauty for anyone who takes the time to just drink it in.

Monday as we drove into Breckenridge, Colorado, to go to the Art Festival there, suddenly we happened on an incredible field of poppies of many colors with some other flowers mixed in.  They hadn't been there too long, and had apparently been planted by a developer to attract people in to look at property.  What a brilliant idea, and such a treat for us as we had to stop and take some pictures to help keep the memory fresh. It was an amazing sight and a great present for Labor Day!

Beautiful Field of Flowers

Things I Love No. 1

Things I Love.  There is no order to the these loved things I am going to put on the blog. It's not like I am going to start at 99 and work backwards, or that I am going to start with my top loved thing. I expect to learn some things about myself as I progress.

As I begin this project, what popped into my mind this morning was kittens!  I do love kittens! Here is one I painted a few years ago.

And I just saw such a funny video of cats and dogs on Facebook that made me giggle and wonder, "Why do they do this?"

Here is the link:
Cats and Dogs In Boxes



Yes, for sure I love kitties! Puppies will get their day too, I think.

Proud Grandma

I am so proud of my granddaughter, Katelyn, whose artwork is currently in an exhibit at the Worcester Art Museum.  She was one of five in her school to be selected, and that is really good news, since she loves to draw more than anything -- and her grandmother thinks she's pretty darn good.  I have never seen her use collage as a medium before, so kudos to her and to her art teacher!  Katelyn is just in third grade.  This is her ballerina collage.

It's Coming Along

Shelves mean the clutter pile is disappearing, bit by bit!  Yea!  Thank you Dave.

Colors and Clutter In My Life

Exciting news around here is that we finally have color in our home's interior!  Years ago before we moved in here, we were going to have the place painted first, but we completely stalled on color choices.  We have had beige walls and beige carpet throughout the place, and after awhile you just forget about them.  We put in these horrendous gaudy orange window coverings and matching throw pillows, and absolutely hated them until one day, we just could stand them no more and ripped them down and threw them out.  Then all that was left was beige!

It is somewhat ironic and humorous to me, as an artist, that I couldn't decide with a blank slate what colors I wanted to live with on a daily basis. "If you don't like it, paint it," has always been by retort to watching shows with prospective home buyers who hate the colors. This is because we have always done our own painting up until this time.  It's much more difficult when you have 9 ft. ceilings.

It wasn't any easier this time.  I fought for color, but the designer finally won out, and the main area is all taupe, and it does look nice and will be a nice background for varied artwork.  But!  My studio is a lovely and bright shade of apple green, and I love how fresh it looks already.  The master bedroom is a grayed-down shade of Tango Tangerine, and since it is a northeast exposure, the paint has just added so much brightness and life to it.  The guest bedroom and bath is a lavender gray, and looks wonderful.

My one source of bafflement now is how to get my shelves back up.  Just before the painting was done, my top shelf gave out and came crashing to the floor.  It was a tremendous, reverberating crash!  Seriously, if I had been sitting where I paint, I would be pushing up daisies instead of writing in my blog.  Now I need to find some way to install them securely and safely, because I am totally spooked at the idea of having anything behind or beside me that could come crashing down without warning.

Anyway,  love the colors!  Love the painters who were so adept and fast at their work.  I am really impressed.  Pictures will follow when my studio looks like more than a junk pile with pretty walls.

Sharing Within The Artist Community

Yesterday was an opportunity to gallery sit in the co-op I belong to in Holmes Beach on Anna Maria Island, FL, Artists' Guild Gallery.  I say opportunity, because it is fun to be there and talk with the visitors coming through.  Many of the folks who visit art galleries are also artists.

On this occasion, I talked with an artist from Natick, Massachusetts who was quite congenial, and I was reminded once again of how generous most artists are to share techniques, supplier information, photo opportunities and so forth with one another.  She mentioned the fact that when a group of artists paint the same subject, each painting will still be different, and this is so true.  Each one looks at a subject with a unique eye for discovering the depth and texture and color and intensity it offers and views with their own emotional makeup and life experiences.  We also bring a different skill set and different materials to the endeavor.  It's amazing to observe the differences we come up with in portraying the same thing.  (Of course, I am talking about painting a true subject from life and not copying someone else's work that has already been done.)

I do find that most artists are quite giving with one another, their experiments with techniques, telling you what colors they've used and how they approached the work.  Maybe part of this comes from the isolation of creating, and we are just happy to have someone to talk with who speaks our language.

After closing the gallery for the evening, we visited nearby Cortez and took photos of the beautiful scenery with our cell phones and enjoyed a nice dinner at water's edge while listening to live music.  What a great day!

Abandoned Art In The Arms of A Pirate

I am having a lot of fun with this Art Abandonment idea and looking forward to my next one. It is quite entertaining to be skulking around with a piece of art that is tagged with information about the Art Abandonment project, knowing you are going to do an ArtDrop in a stealthy manner so that no one sees you.

Yesterday this ACEO magnet found its way into the arms of a pirate in an indoor galleria mall in Georgetown, SC.  He was waiting in the hallway at the door of a shop there.  AAAArrrrgggghhhhh!  I wonder who would have had the nerve to pluck it out of his arms.  I hope someone found it who was very, very brave.

We are on the road right now and working our way slowly northward.  This makes it even more fun.  Today we spent the afternoon along the beaches around Wilmington, NC.  It was very windy, but nothing actually blew away surprisingly enough.  I am amazed the the pretty little beach umbrellas stayed in place.  Didn't see even one of them go flying off!

Art Abandonment

My first Art Abandonment "ArtDrop"
a "Palm In Paradise" Limited Edition ACEO Magnet

I am going to abandon some of my art.  Really.

I'm getting ready to find a creative place, take a picture of a piece of my art in this location, leave a brief note and walk away for the first time.  This is called Art Abandonment.  If you're on Facebook, you can drop in and read all about it here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/ArtAbandonment/

I first became aware of this group a week or so ago when I read another person's blog post, Etsy artist Stacey Merrill of Artsnark .  She had abandoned a piece, and then another and another within five miles of where I'm sitting right now.  I'm curious about who might have found her artwork, and thought this was a nice thing to do for the sake of art and for others, and decided to join in the fun.  You can find Stacey's blog here:  http://artsnark.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.html .  The initial post about Art Abandonment was June 17th.  Go have a look, but please come back!

I started this post last night, but today at lunch I made my first "ArtDrop".  I left one of my ACEO Limited Edition magnets in the decorative fishnet handicap parking marker at Dockside Dave's in Madeira Beach.  The sign was decorated so great already, I just added my little decorator ArtDrop.  I hope someone finds it.  It would be really fun to hear what happens, how they came to find these pieces, and where and how they used them!!!

This is the site of my first "ArtDrop" at Dockside Dave's in Madeira Beach

As I'm writing this, the internal voice in my head has changed to what sounds very much like a TV reporter keeping his voice very low, so that no one will overhear.  LOL.

Happy finding!  Coincidentally, as I was making my ArtDrop, I made my first sale of an ACEO magnet in my shop on Etsy, and I love the happenstance of this.  It's pretty cool!

Daffodils Usher In Spring

Spring's Happy Dance

11 x 7.5 inches
watercolor

For me, daffodils are the number one signal that Spring has arrived!  In Colorado where I was raised, crocuses, and even hyacinths, always arrived before it really was Spring and they poked their buds out of the snow.  Not that it didn't snow occasionally on the daffodils, but by the time the tulips arrived, it was May and almost time for summer.  In a state where winters are long, but thankfully intermittent, the arrival of Spring was always special.

Now we live in the Tampa Bay area and are experiencing the gentlest of winters this year - fantastic after the last two years where it was not so nice.  I know it's all relative, and Florida winters do not compare to icy, cold winters in the higher latitudes of the continent, and that's what makes me so genuinely appreciate the lovely winter we have had this year!

Gorgeous sunset on the Gulf

I chose this photo, because of its simplicity.  There is a ritual every evening that the weather is nice, there are always lots of people celebrating sunset on the beach.

Back to Spring's Happy Dance -  This painting is available in my Etsy shop, DreamON. It has been painted, for Spring, in watercolors and gouache on Arches 140 lb. Cold Press watercolor paper.

Tulips For Spring

I worked on this watercolor off and on for a couple of years, and I feel such a sense of accomplishment to have finally finished it. Sometimes a painting comes together quite fast. Maybe it's because it features a subject you have painted many times, but honestly sometimes it just seems to almost paint itself. Then again there are the paintings that you start and put aside, pick up later and work on and then put aside again, over and over. You like what you've started, but something about it doesn't compel you to finish it. Sometimes you're just waiting for that special something inside you to come and let you know how to finish it, aka your muse. That was Tulips by Midnight. It took a very long time for my muse this time!

Tulips by Midnight

So. . . have you ever had anyone ask, "How long did it take you to paint that one?" What exactly are they wanting to know, do you suppose?  I dunno.  Maybe it's just a simple question, but my analytical side doesn't quite accept that. Is it that they are asking how long it took so that they can multiply the number of hours you say by what they assume your work is worth per hour? It is that the painting looks so basic and easy that it probably took about 5 minutes and so the price would be very, very cheap? Could it be that it's just so good that they think it took you a very long, long time? Hmmm, well yeah! Of course, there is the tried and true answer that it took a lifetime. That is the real truth, because it is the sum total of an artist's education, their travels, time spent in the studio and en plein aire painting, exposure to other artists and mentors, and most important of all - their life experiences - the good, the bad, the ugly and the ho hum!

Tulips by Moonlight may be found in my Etsy shop, DreamON.

My Happy New Year starts in February this year

Well, not really!  Since I had surgery the first week of January, January is what you call a lost month.  Everything went fine, and I am happy to be up and mobile again.

I have painted a number of new paintings, and now I can share some with you.  I have been experimenting with ghost flowers in the background.  This painting is called Poppy Shadows.  It was painted on a gold toned piece of watercolor paper 11 3/4" x 10 1/4".  I used a technique called color sanding to add some texture in the painting. I have just listed it in my Etsy shop. Click on the painting name under the first illustration to go to the listing.

Poppy Shadows

I put one of these new poppy ghost flower paintings into the Artists' Guild Gallery, and last week I was notified that it was sold.  Yay!  It's title was Ghost Poppies.  It is shown below.

Ghost Poppies

Ghost Poppies was painted on a toned sheet of watercolor paper that had been textured prior to painting.  Then I added some texture with a roller before painting the poppies.

Enjoy!

Winter Setting In

I have created an Etsy treasury to celebrate winter.  Winter Mood Setting In

To me, winter represents a time of being thankful for having a warm, cozy home to come to when the weather is cold and icy and presents challenges to drive in and even to walk on icy sidewalks.  This treasury has some beautiful and special items in it, and I hope you will visit the Etsy shops represented in the treasury and see what they have to offer.  Right click on the link Winter Mood Setting In, and select open in new window.  While you're there, come and visit my Etsy shop too!  Mary Hamilton's Etsy Shop: DreamON