Feeding Insects Painting

Finally, I finished this painting! I think I've been working on it on and off for two or three months. 

I kept having other projects I had to finish first pop up along the way. 

Acrylic on gessoed cardboard and it measures roughly 10 inches square. 

Normally with my radial paintings, I've worked hard at making the "mirror images", for lack of a better term, exactly the same. However with these insects (I guess they are insects) I really enjoyed the challenge of making them all different while making it look as though they belong together. 

Of course, I still am working in the dots. Something about the way the dots turned out reminds me of Islamic works and architecture. Perhaps because the visual elements have become so stylized and more decorative I guess. 

The corners are the only element of the painting I'm just not sure about. I finished them last but I don't know if I like them but I don't know really what to do with them. 

This is my favorite part; the meeting of the three bugs. 

I like the tension of space between them as though they could almost touch but not quite. 

I have an idea in my head for my next painting to be somewhat similar but with stylized sea turtles and waves. We'll see how it turns out; I'll have to get some sketches done first. 

....or maybe I need to finally get that bathroom mural done....hmm, but I have some thinking to do on that one too! 

My New and Improved Etsy Shop

Well, I did it. 

I took the plunge...again...and re-opened my Etsy shop!

Before Yahoo was born and we moved to Kansas I was much more active making and selling baby booties in my shop. But after we moved out west and the boys started school and everyone seemed to get so busy, I just couldn't get my heart into making baby booties anymore. In fact it hasn't been until just the past year that I finally started creating anything again. 

I never even thought of selling my paintings, I just painted because I enjoyed it, but Kasse at Rural Women Rock suggested that I try it...so, here goes! 

So far I only have four paintings to put in my Etsy shop. 

They probably look familiar to you; I've posted them here before. 

I don't mind selling my paintings but I have a hard time setting a price for them. They range in size form 6 1/2 to 8 inches square.

What do you think would be a fair price? 

We'll see how it goes. I'm not much of a self promoter. I feel self conscious telling people that I have art work to sell. I'm not even sure how to go about advertising...well, besides a blog. 

Ah well. I just enjoy making them and for me, that's all that matters. 

Another Radial Design and Etsy(?)

Here's the latest work I've finished. It isn't anything special in my mind. Not a painting but in colored pencil this time. I started this one day while subbing in a high school math class where I had absolutely nothing. to. do. I've worked on it a bit here and there for the last few weeks but had a huge chunk of time to finish it while I was subbing for a Spanish class and watching Shark Tale (in Spanish) over and over. Boring! 

It's about 7 3/4" square; a decent size. Although I don't think it's too special overall, I am rather proud of the blue background. For a while the drawing was taped to an old textured cookie sheet I have and a blue pencil helped create the background. 

I've been painting these small works for a while and when I'm done the artworks get put in a closet. I don't have the time (or wall space) to put up a bunch of my paintings. And really, I wouldn't want to have to look at my own artwork all day. I have a couple paintings up now and I am my own worst critic. I don't like looking at them at all. 

One of my readers asked me what I do with them and if I sell them. I was rather flattered that she asked! I do have an Etsy shop but I haven't sold anything there for a long time. I'm thinking to give it a go with some of these small radial paintings; getting them matted and posted on Etsy and see what happens. 

You guys have seen them. You've been around. Any suggestions on price? They are all smaller than 9" square. 

I'm not looking to make a fortune off Etsy or anything. I paint these because I enjoy it; it's a problem solver for me...but I can't keep everything I ever create! I have to do something with it and I might as well sell it to someone who's actually interested in them. 

Any constructive criticism or advice would be greatly appreciated! 

Wild Bug Eating Flower Painting

My newest painting. Not my favorite but I was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out. At the beginning I wasn't having good luck with it and considered pitching it and starting again but I'm glad I persevered. 

I remember teaching about Australian Aborigines once and how they used lots of dots in some of their story telling paintings. I didn't intend to recall Aboriginal work but I couldn't help thinking about them the more I started adding my own dots to the painting. I still don't know why I do dots but I felt much more contented with the visual effects the more I worked on it. 

I was trying to think of a title. I don't like to title artworks because part of me thinks the image should be enough and further explanations shouldn't sway the perception of the viewer. But as for blog posts I try to come up with some sort of title just as a description of what I post. I wasn't having any luck thinking of anything so I asked Yip. 

Yip says it looks like a flower, a wild bug eating flower. So there you go..and if it changes your perception of what you see blame it on my son :) 

Spiral Barbed Wire Painting

No school today!! Yip and Yap and I have a list of things to do; make noodles, stay in our jammies, watch movies and eat popcorn. 

Since I'm writing this Monday night I can't tell you the latest update on our blizzard other than it is blowing hard outside and there is snow on the ground. I guess the brunt of the storm will hit overnight. Although the weather guy is calling for over a foot of snow I can't see that it will be here for long. As hard as the wind is blowing I think it may all end up in Oklahoma...but we'll see. 

Anyhow...I finally finished my latest painting Sunday night. As you can see I'm still on a circle kick.

 I love this one! It's acrylic on a cereal box, about 7 1/2 inch square. DR asked what I was going to do with all these little circle paintings. I think I'll do a few more and then frame them all together in one big frame. We'll have to see how many I get and how they look together. 

I intended it to look something like the middle of a corn cob with some abstract qualities to it. 

I love painting on cereal boxes. 

Once they are covered in acrylic no one can tell that it's cheap and besides, it's free. I do wish I had planned better though because the staple marks are showing through the paint :( 

Marker Monday - New Paintings

This is my latest painting. It measures about 7x7 inches.

The colors are a bit off and it's a bit blurry...still learning to manual focus on my new camera lens.

I started adding the polka dots and could barely contain myself.

They were so fun I almost covered the entire space with polka dots!

What kind of title should I bestow upon my polka dot sun/flower...thingy?

I think it'd make a wonderful quilt....anyone want to quilt it for me? Ha ha!

Harvest

The sight of all this yellow gold is a wonderful to see in the fall.

Harvest is a hoppin' despite a devastating drought there's still quite a bit of corn coming into the DR's elevators. Of course yields have been low but not quite as bad as expected. The biggest problem so far this harvest has been moisture. Despite the drought the corn coming in is WET. I couldn't understand why until DR explained that because of the lack of rain the corn plants starting cannibalizing themselves back in the summer so that every little bit of moisture went straight to the corn. While the stalks dried out early the corn still hasn't and therefore all the elevators are drying corn continually and running out of wet space.

So harvest is going as well as can be expected. DR's exhausted. He leaves for work at 6:30 and gets home at 10:30. He's worked two weeks straight without a day off. Poor guy. Harvest is always something to look forward to but I'm always glad when it's over and this one looks like it will be over, at least the heavy rush, in a few more weeks.

There hasn't been much milo coming in yet. It might be harvested later and I don't think there was as much planted this year as there was last either. I don't know what it is about milo but I think it is beautiful to look at in the field.

The Quilt Block Painting

Here's my latest painting.

It's acrylic on some scrap cardboard and measures roughly 9x9 inches.

I wish I enjoyed quilting because this would make a very pretty one. Alas, I don't have enough patience to quilt.

Corn in Black and White

I've had this little corn painting that I've been working on for a while. Sometimes I get frustrated when I start a painting or drawing because I'll start out with a concept or idea I want to express but because it sometimes takes so long and I get interrupted so often I feel like my train of thought gets lost and the work never gets to the point I want it to. But by the time I'm finished, I feel like I've lost the whole purpose I had in starting it in the first place. 

That was a big problem in this one because, although it is fairly simple in execution, it took me over a month to finish. Life gets busy, what can I say. The canvas size is probably only 6"x14" or so. Just guessing, I haven't measured it. 

Closeups. I like the idea of white on a color but I think I need to do more of these. 

I haven't reached the limit of what just white can achieve on a colored background. 

Suggestions? Comments? 

White and Red Wheat

A new painting is finished and I'm very happy with it!

My fabulous husband who has always been very supportive of any artistic endeavor I embark upon doesn't like this painting at all. Usually he thinks I'm done with a work of art way before I'm done with it but in this case he thinks I should do a lot more work to this painting. I don't think he likes the fact that it's only white.

Here's what it looked like right when I sketched it out.

And some close ups details.

I really enjoyed limiting my colors. I liked the way the white looked on top of the red. I think I'll do this again, a white painting on top of a spray painted background. I just have to get myself another canvas and think of another subject. Maybe more wheat, who knows?

So, do you agree with my husband and I should do more to this painting?  Or do you agree with me and think it's done? Either way...I'm not changing it :)

Wheat Art

If you've been around this blog for a while you've probably noticed I haven't been drawing lately. One of the reasons is because I've been busy this month taking an art history class at the local community college in order to get the credits I need to renew my teaching license in the state of Kansas. I've been reading and writing like crazy because this class is basically a semester long class crammed into four weeks. Even though I'm doing a lot of reading and writing I have been able to do a little artwork in this class.

This is a monoprint. Basically I painted this composition onto a piece of plexiglass with water soluble paint, in this case high quality watercolors. The paint is allowed to dry and then placed on top of a very wet piece of heavy water color paper. Then a rolling pin is rolled back and forth on top of the plexiglass to transfer the design to the paper. After this one was dry I went into it with some colored pencils to add more lines around the sun and most of the black at the bottom.

The wheat crop has been on everyone's minds here this summer, mine too, and artists are often influenced by their environment and community. I've just had a lot of different wheat designs on my mind lately and have somehow wanted to express some of the anxiety over a drought and poor wheat harvest.

This is a canvas I've just started. I painted the entire canvas red using acrylic spray paint and tonight I just finished drawing on the design with a white pencil. I'm hoping to get into this painting this week. It's been a while since I've painted and I'm probably kind of rusty. I'm thinking of painting with only white and having a very stark painting. We'll see how it works out.

Bowl of Sky; My Art Corner

My latest drawing, 18"x24".

An underdrawing in pastel with colored pencil details on top.

I don't know why but the photo has blotchy spots (in the middle dirt and green hills) that aren't in the real drawing. My favorite so far. This one and an old acrylic painting will be going into the Stauth Museum (here in town) in June for an art exhibit by Western Kansas artists.

So, comments? Critiques? Bring it on. Negative comments too are welcome....really!

My Art Corner - Mixed Media

My latest drawing, again inspired by Taos. I just loved that town.

This was a first for me; mixed media of pastel, colored pencil and paint. I am ecstatic how it turned out. I have a sketch for another one similar to this that, hopefully, I'll get started this week.

In the past my artwork has been much more realistic and the last few years I've definitely been leaning toward abstraction. I can't explain the shift but I am happy about it. The last time I tried drawing very realistically I was miserable. Not because it was bad or I couldn't do it (my theory is ANYONE can draw realistically) but I just couldn't see the point. Why draw realistically when a camera can do the same thing?

So, any thoughts on this one?

Hacienda in Pastel and Colored Pencil

I finally got back to doing some drawing after my mural was finished.

In Taos, we visited back in Feb., all the homes and buildings are of the pueblo style with the sand colored exterior and flat roof. DR wasn't sure he could live in a town where all the buildings looked the same, even the McDonalds, but I thought it was wonderful.

I loved how the buildings, especially the hacienda we visited, seemed to come from the earth and how the sky seemed extraordinarly large. As though the buildings weren't the town's focal point but the sky was.

So I did a drawing...here you go.

A woman in the foreground.

The sky. I wouldn't call the white things clouds; more like power....mmmm, that's not right.

Sometimes I find it very hard to put into words what I feel when I draw.

I love pastels but they are big and bulky and a bit difficult to use when trying to create sharp details. I got a brainstorm to use some colored pencils over the top and it worked really well. I think that's something I'll have to do again.

Mural...in progress

I told myself I wasn't going to do a mural.

Almost every house we've lived in I've painted a mural....

....then I moved away from it.

But I have this bathroom wall that was just screaming....

"PAINT ME!!!"

So after 2 or 3 different sketches,

I've silenced the screaming wall and started to paint.

A windmill, a barn, some prairie grass and a pheasant in flight....all in black. Like a giant pencil drawing.  

It's a small bathroom and too much color would go crazy in there, that's why I'm sticking with black.

And cuz, you know, black is classic.

Hi, I'm Johnny Cash.

ahem...back to the mural...

Some clouds and another small pheasant will be by the sink. There are a few other small spots in the bathroom where there will be small paintings too but the windmill wall will be the biggest.

A work in progress. So far so good with only two obstacles to overcome.

1. Yahoo.

There's only so much work I can get done

with an almost 2 yr. old running around.

2. COLD!

This bathroom is in the basement and dang,

can it get cold down there!

So armed with a Pooh Bear video and wool socks

I'm hoping to get the mural done before March!

Updates to come :)

Taxes and Colored Pencils

DR has started working on taxes. Now, I know there are plenty of supportive wives out there who help do taxes too, or do it all on their own. Way to go!! Not me. I'm lousy at this kind of stuff.


Record keeping, accounts, files, paperwork....this is what DR does everyday at work. And he's good at it. He got the taxes practically done in 2 days.....it would have taken me 2 weeks....if I was lucky.


But I was supportive!! I brought him a beer and sat and drew a picture of him working on taxes.

Okay, it's not exactly of DR but there is his beer bottle and ledger on the table and blue shirt in the background. Do you think the IRS would appreciate my efforts? Nah, probably not....not unless it came with a big fat check!

Colored Pencil Yucca

For Christmas I gave away a couple of my pastel drawings as gifts. Of course, I matted and framed them first. I bought the matte board myself so had some black pieces left laying around. I haven't drawn anything on black for a long time.

I used colored pencils to draw these abstract yucca plant landscapes. These were so much fun. They were small so I could finish them fairly quickly and colored pencil is much cleaner to work in than pastel.

This one is my favorite because of the brighter colors and sense of depth my second doesn't have.


This tall skinny one was fun too but I wish I'd done something different with the background. I do like the moon though.



I have a few more pieces of this black and I think I'll be drawing on these for a while.

So, what do you think?

Lousy Pastel that can't be saved

I posted a couple weeks ago this drawing of the buffalo and asking for help. I knew it wasn't done and it needed something but I was stuck. Leigh suggested I was lacking a focal point. Exactly! You nailed it for me Leigh, thanks!

So, here it was before.

And here is after I did a bit of work to it.

I tried to move the viewers eye towards the buffalo and center. I'm still not happy with it though. I think the best I can do is just put it away for now and work on something else.

It's hard to find long interrupted time periods in order to draw since I have kids. Working in short time spurts makes it difficult to really get into a drawing and do quality work. Before kids I could work for hours at a time. Someday I'll get that again.

I've started some small colored pencil drawings on black board lately of yucca plants that I'll try to share with you sometime next week.