Finished, But Why?

Family mementos saved over a lifetime, among them paintings, books, letters, photographs, collections of various kinds, trinkets, souvenirs clippings, etc.: presumably they meant something to the person who saved them. Some of them are antiques, some collectible, but for unknown reasons they have become popular to keep. The question could be asked, why? Some people have no need to keep anything, and others can't throw out anything. Why?

A week or so ago I read an article in The Art Biz Blog (August 2, 2010) that presented the question: Why does an artist paint a painting? Sometimes, for me, there is a clear reason, but since I really enjoy the process, many times I am painting a subject simply because I like whatever it is I am painting. I don't go through a huge psychological self-examination to ask myself, why? Is that what most artists do, or do most of them have a story behind each painting? I have no idea, but it would be fun to find out, I think.

This particular painting comes from a photo that interested me. First, it was a really old photo, and I wanted to see if I could paint it to look that way. Second, the subject is a young woman wearing a coat with a fur collar who was standing in front of a school bus that has curtains in the window. (Hello. The school buses I rode on sure didn't have any curtains! Maybe this is because the distance I had to travel to school wasn't long enough for a nap, or could be that school bus riders a long time ago were more civilized than the ones I went to school with.) Last, from other photos I unearthed from a relative's lifetime collection, these fur-collared coats were apparently as much a fashion statement of that time for young women as today's fads are relevant today. Later, after I had painted the painting, I found out the girl turned out to be the "matchmaker" who introduced my mother-in-law to her husband.

And that is the story of why I painted the painting, or as Paul Harvey used to say, "That's the rest of the story." (Oh, I had to Google the saying, because I couldn't remember WHO said that.)

This is the finished painting from one I wrote about in an earlier post, and showed the painting unfinished. I have titled it The Matchmaker.

Crowning Glory Girls - New Series at DreamON on Etsy

Lady of the Locks Original Watercolor Painting On Tissue Paper Collage


I am sharing the beginning of a new series tonight. I have called it the Crowning Glory Girls, because it is all about ladies with long, long, long hair, and that's what makes it so much fun. I was brainstorming all day and crunching on a name for the series. These are some of the ones I came up with on the way there:

The Crowning Glory Girls. Hair They Come. Ladies With Locks. From Tops To Bottoms. Tails of Hair and There. Heaps of Hair. Curlie Girlies. From Heads to Tails. Big On Hair. Heavenly Hair. World of Curls. Locks To Love. Looks and Locks. Curlilocks and the Bon Bons. Curly Ladies With Locks. Hair Hoopla. Cougar Curlers. We’re Out of Hair. Ladies of the Lock. Hair Watch. All About Hair. Out of Their Heads?

Well, you get the idea, I couldn’t decide what to call this bunch of ladies. They are loosely inspired by R.C. Gorman, Native American artist of the Southwest. What I do know is that these are (mostly) all watercolors, a layer of tissue paper, and then more watercolors with archival ink to finish. 8x8, 7 x 7 and 7 x 6 ¾ . Pastel colors in the background with stronger colors in the girl’s lovely outfits.

I say mostly watercolors, because I have almost finished one in black and white for the Studio 1212 Black and White show's 40 paintings for $40 wall in October.

The painting I have chosen to share here at "Dreams About Art" is called "Lady of the Locks," the dreamy girl with purple hair. She can be found in my Etsy shop, DreamON.

Black and White and Fun With Photochop

The Black & White Show in October, at Studio 1212 is going to be something special this year. It is the 40th anniversary of the group of artists who represent the longest lasting artist's cooperative in the Tampa Bay area. While there are none of us who have been there 40 years, it is an accomplishment for this type of endeavor to have that kind of longevity.

Among other things, we will have a wall of 40 works of art to be created on 12 x 12 inch canvases for $40 each. So I am starting to think of what to do this year for my two 12 x 12 paintings, as well as the regular size pieces for the show - all black and white.






My two kitties were last year's pieces I did for the show. I had to mail them back to the gallery, so they were on smaller 8 x 8 inch chunky canvases. I have just now put them on Etsy. Meet "Research," the white aloof kitty, and "Ambush" the dark, attack-planning cat.

I have listed them together, because they look cute that way, but also because the cost to ship them priority mail would be the same, whether they are together or separate. These canvases have wooden stretcher bars that are made of heavy wood.




After playing with Photoshop to come up with some way to show both paintings in one of my views on Etsy without having to photograph them again, I stumbled onto a couple of techniques that were new to me.


Now, I am completely self-taught in the art of Photoshop, and this may be kindergarten stuff to those who use Photoshop all the time, but I discovered this function of the paint bucket yesterday completely by accident by pressing the right mouse button when I was trying to do something else by pressing the left, and presto, my white cat turned pink. Thought it looked so cute, I used it in a poster.


Then I made another one that looks like the moths have eaten part of it away by finding out that Free Transform has some other interesting features associated with it.

Ah, if not to play and have silly fun with simple things, what would life be?

Wildflower Season

With the exception of two Springtimes spent in south Texas, I have never lived anywhere that has a real Spring. Certainly in Colorado where one day is 70 degrees and the next has two feet of snow, there is no Spring! Daffodils peak out forlornly when the snow melts.
This painting is titled "Give Me Lemonade."

Now, here on the west coast of Florida, there is a definite change, but other than fallen oak leaves everywhere and new green leaves replacing them and a few azaleas here and there, no true Spring. So our Spring Break to the Panhandle of Florida and Alabama was a treat for me, and I went crazy taking photos.
On the way home I fixed a water bottle in my map compartment and painted "little things" most of the way while hubby listened to ball games and sports things on the radio. Here are a few inspirational photos and some results so far.

"Daffodils Say Spring" below and "Renaissance Bouquet" at left are now in my Etsy shop. They are both 2.5 x 3.5 inches and are original watercolor paintings that are artist card size ACEOs.
"Daffodils Say Spring" [SOLD]


It was a fun way for me to pass the time, and when I am painting time really flies. I just loved the flowers everywhere. I took pictures and painted wild growing things with pretty blossoms that many would call weeds, I am sure, but they were lovely to me.


I had never seen Wisteria growing anywhere until a few years ago in Oregon, but that was planted and in someone's yard. In the panhandle region, it grows wild and is beautiful.

This last ACEO original watercolor painting is titled "Flowerlets Gone Wild." [SOLD]


Ahhhh, Spring!

Old Photos, New Fun

A few months ago, we took a trip out west to meet with my husband's family members to go through and clean out the contents of a relative's apartment when she was no longer able to maintain her independent living status. A few layers of dust and dirt gave way to uncovering a lifetime of memories. Among her things were photos of young girls on the threshold of womanhood, being silly and laughing about the things young women do together. A couple of them revealed that fur collars were quite the "in" trend of this day.

One photo in particular was a picture of a shy, young girl standing beside a school bus, smartly attired in the fad of the day.

This photo interested me, and I have chosen to paint her in the sepia tones of the photo. This project is a work in progress, and shown as it is today in my watercolor version.

I am fading out the background to give the affect of time in a misty, vague sort of way. Here the painting is shown after the first session working on the it.

Here Comes Mischief in Cat Form!

Misty Gray Cat is a painting about a kitty that we used to have. A soft, pretty gray-colored shelter kitten we got when my son could hold her upside down in one hand, she grew into a beautiful, although squirrely, cat who could be gentle and loving or as fierce as a tasmanian devil when she visited the veterinarian (which thankfully she rarely needed).

Misty, the painting, is done in pure watercolor on Arches 140 lb. Cold Press Watercolor paper with mostly Winsor-Newton paints. (I have a few other brands, all professional quality, and intermingle them on my palette.) It definitely reflects the personality of this loving tasmanian, split-personality, kooky kitty. Cool colors dominate the composition.

Misty Gray Cat can be found at DreamON by clicking here. Enjoy!

Beautiful Fall Day

Just thought I'd share a few memories from a beautiful fall day somewhere in Colorado between Steamboat Springs and Wolcott.
The beautiful gold colors usually peak the third week in September, but these photos were taken this week, and as you can tell there are still a lot of green trees.




Enjoy!


These next ones give you a feeling of flying, and the one on the right below feels like vertigo; it's hard to figure out where the horizon is.











The last one is one of my favorites. It makes you wonder where the road goes. It provides inspiration for a painting, I think.

The Birthday Unicorn

Just recently I undertook a project which put me totally out of my element. My granddaughter asked me to paint a unicorn for her birthday. Explicit instructions included size (big) and color (pink with green eyes and pink and blue hair). Now I might add that my granddaughter is an extraordinarily talented young artist herself, and her grandma is very proud of her. (Not that her grandma would exaggerate, but she spends her spare time creating art a large percentage of the time!) She would much rather paint or draw with markers than fill in coloring pages, and she really is pretty good for being just six years old.


The unicorn was not a subject I have ever tried before. I know a lot of girls draw horses when they are young, but not me. The number of horses I have tried to draw or paint, ever, could probably be counted on my fingers. However, this was a labor of love, and I grew to love it and hope she will as well.

The original acrylic painting is 16 x 20 inches. I may do prints, and if I do I would put them into my shop, DreamON, sometime in the future.

So here is the unicorn, and I hope you enjoy it. Copyright 2009 by Mary M. Hamilton.

Glenwood Springs Fall Art Festival

This is the best art show! The Glenwood Springs Art Guild has been putting on this indoor open entry show for 47 years now, and boy, do they do it right! The show is held in the lower level of the Ramada Inn in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. It is one of the best opportunities both for buyers and artists around. The art is always good. In addition there are demonstrations by the three judges and sometimes an additional artist also. This year's judges are Tanis Bula, Charles Hardy and Tim Wedel, and Cindy Brabec-King, an outstanding watercolorist, will give an additional demo. Judging is done Wednesday, and the show opened when judging was completed.

My entries this Fall are "Bliss" and "Tina's Dance."

The entrants are broken down into Professional, Advanced and Amateur classes. Media accepted includes hand-thrown and hand-built pottery, sculpture, oil/acrylics, watermedia, mixed media, graphics and pastels. There are landscapes, still life, portrait-figure, animal, sculpture and pottery categories for which ribbons are awarded. Cash awards are reserved for Grand Champion and Reserve Grand Champion in each classification of entrants.

Another real plus for artists are the artists' Friday night dinner and Saturday night's banquet and "artists' bash." The most appreciated feature of this show would be the patrons who support this event every year, but a close runner-up would be the hours and hours of work put in by the Glenwood Springs Art Guild. These are the folks who have made this event possible for the 47 years it has been occurring. Thank you to both!

Texture is fun, but more than that the added dimension it adds to a painting is becoming to me like putting salt and spice on my food.










The textures that can be added to every kind of two-dimensional media vary, but more and more I am looking at texture as a necessity rather than an addition to a painting. In this first example entitled Music For Martinis, texturing the background happened before the idea of the painting was hatched.





















In this next example, He Gave Me Flowers some of the background texturing happened as the abstract still life was being painted, but much of it was created after the fact.

The two examples are used to show that texture can happen at any stage of a painting to add interest and excitement to the artwork.

For added information about either painting, you may want to click on the images to read more.

How Did We Lose Our Common Sense?

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) is a law that was passed last year and went into effect in February of 2009 for products manufactured after November 12, 2008. Such an outcry has resulted that a minimal version of the law is currently being enforced, with more the stringent requirements to follow in August. At that time the lead paint limit for products intended for children under 12 will be lowered from the current 600 ppm to 90 ppm. At the present time, third-party testing for currently effective limits of lead by an accredited third-party is required for products manufactured after December 21, 2008. To learn more about this act, go to the official website of the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s CPSIA site at http://www.cpsc.gov/about/cpsia/cpsia.html .

The CPSIA happened partly in reaction to the toys, jewelry and other items imported from China containing lead and pthalates and partly because of the U.S. Government’s ever-increasing recalls of dangerous toys in the recent past. Make no mistake, the last thing we ever need is dangerous toys for our babies and children. Yes, we need to be assured that imported and mass-produced items contain no harmful substances that would make children sick or harm them.

On the other hand, and considering that lead and children have co-existed in the world for a very long time, most of us who are breathing right now are not aware of having suffered any ill consequences from it. No one denies that children have been harmed from eating or chewing on items that have been painted with lead or contain lead; however, in historical terms it is a relatively recent discovery that lead harms children. Lead-based wall paint was taken off of the market in the USA for that reason. It is incomprehensible to us now that anyone would still be painting toys with lead-containing paint; however, the government felt it had to strengthen the laws because products containing lead did get into our children’s hands.

But this act takes protection to the absurd, and it is hitting the small producer of handmade items for children extremely hard, because it requires testing that is way too expensive for them to do. Why not require the original manufacturer of the goods or at the very least the importer to test and not the middleman who bought the goods to make their products from? As an example, I just cannot believe anyone ever intended that the home sewer of baby dresses or crocheted booties should be the victims of this ridiculous legislation. Why not require the maker of the yarn or the buttons or the fabric used to make a garment to do the testing instead?

To me, one of the most absurd facets of this law is that old books printed prior to 1985 contain lead in the printed type and that those books should be destroyed. Talk about a total overreaction: this is just incomprehensible. Libraries, already short on funding, are falling under the law’s requirements to have old books “intended” for use by children either tested by third-parties or destroyed. If this were a valid requirement, then all of us who learned how to read prior to 1985 would be morons staggering in the streets, clutching at our throats with our eyes popping out from the deadly lead in the type of our textbooks and all of the other vintage books we read in our lifetimes.

Just Discovered - I've Gone Blue!

"Curacao In Venice" [SOLD]

Unconsciously, once again, I have found myself painting most everything in the same triad of colors. The last time I did this, it was red, yellow, orange: that was my Orange Period. This time I'm stuck in the blue, violet, green combo. It takes awhile to become conscious of this, because not absolutely everything comes out in these colors, especially landscapes. However when I look over the body of work I have created for the last month, it is readily apparent that I am in my Blue Period. Hm!

I remember from studying Art History that certain famous artists had their red, blue, green, purple or yellow periods. I thought at the time that this was awfully pretentious! So coming into my second color phase - at least that I've actually noticed, and it amuses me to have discovered this. It's most curious. Have any of you other artists ever experienced this?

The photo above at the left is of my painting entitled "Curacao In Venice." It was even more orange before I gave it a treatment of purple long after it was first painted along with the rest of the orangies.



Here are some of my latest (my bluies). First, on the right is "Abstract Pansies."






Back again on the left is "Before You Were Awake."










On the right, "Connection" [SOLD]


And my latest painting which is entitled "Connection." I did three that day, but that was a conscious thing that they were all the same colors, because I had seen a painting done by a friend of mine in those same colors. Her painting was a different subject and considerably larger, but the color combination totally resonated with me. Why is that? Looking back I can see it's the Blue thing.



It's proof for me that when we paint or write poetry and who knows what else that our inner thoughts and emotions enter into the product.

Except for Curacao in Venice(sold) and Connection(sold), the other two are available in my Etsy shop. You can click on the photos for more information.

Blogging Guilt

Every day that goes by is fraught with guilt about not updating my blog. I know how important it is to establish and maintain a regular habit of writing something. As a visual artist, it is also essential to include a photo of either my art, a technique or something valuable to artists reading the blog. At least this is my goal. Therefore blog guilt sets in when day after day passes and I haven't made a contribution here.

However, being an artist involves far more than just blogging, running an Etsy shop, checking email, reading other people's blogs or other types of social networking. And these are just the web-based activities. I sometimes feel like I need to clone myself in order to keep up. When do I just get to paint????

The following article really hit home for me. It was written by Alyson Stanfield of ArtBizBlog fame. Hope you will enjoy it and take time to think about it.

Return to Your Art

When times are good, artists make art.
When times are bad, artists make art.
When time stands still, artists will continue making art.

Artists who are true to themselves do not make art for the marketplace, but for themselves--to start a dialogue with their viewers, their fans, and the world. They make art because they have something to say that is best said not with words, but through a creative act. They make art because they have to. The marketing stuff can come later.

Through this newsletter and the Art Biz Blog, I give you ideas for promoting your art and building your business. Too many ideas. You can't possibly implement these ideas as fast as I generate them. And I'm sure I'm just one of the sources you're hearing from.

The result of all these ideas may be a feeling of overwhelm. The result of overwhelm can lead to forgetting about your art. And the result of forgetting about your art can either be no art to market or art you're not confident in.

Never neglect the studio. Always return to your art. The disciplined practice of making art is mandatory. Everything else is optional.

---

Know This . . . Artists make art--regardless. Think About This . . . Have you been neglecting your studio time? Do This . . . Return to your art. Remember why you are an artist. Recall the thrill of your best work. Hold on to that sensation and revisit it when you're feeling overwhelmed or uninspired. Just get back to the studio! Share your thoughts and listen to the podcast on the Art Biz Blog. http://www.artbizblog.com Don't miss these posts on the blog: Podcast: Promote an out-of-town event We need art now more than ever Artist-inventors who have changed the world Arbitrary art grant Read everything and sign up for updates at http://www.artbizblog.com Copyright 2009 Alyson B. Stanfield. Alyson takes the mystery out of marketing your art and making more money as an artist. Visit http://www.ArtBizCoach.com to get articles just like this one delivered to your inbox.

---

Small Beachy Watercolors

"Exile Island" [SOLD]
This is one of my latest beachy watercolors that I've been painting this week. I call this one Exile Island. I guess I've watched entirely too much Survivor, because the name just seemed to fit. While I'm thinking about it, how come they always pick the most beautiful-looking locations that have such horrible weather? I mean it rains on those people most every night, and of course, they have nowhere to go, so they're just miserable and wet. That must be a prerequisite in picking locations.

Anyway, this painting seemed to name itself. Most of the time I agonize over titles. If nothing clever presents itself, I can sit there and groan over naming a painting for an inordinate amount of time, only to come up with something dopey like "Red Boat." I think I need a Painting Namer - now there's a whole new profession!

These paintings I'm presently working on will be for sale in my local locations - at least for now.

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!