Art Journal!

I've been wanting to do more art journaling.  I've been using my handy dandy sketchbook more but today I cracked open the journal - it's kind of a parchment-y paper that would probably be okay for ink.  It wrinkles a little with watercolor though.  I may go back to regular watercolor paper.

Anyway, last week I took a bunch of stuff to the county fair.  My two paintings got a 2nd and 3rd place (talked about that last week if you missed it) in the professional category.  But what was super cool was that my dried Cayenne peppers got a Best in Show in the Miscellaneous/Honey Canning category.  So I thought I'd journal that.

I also really need to practice drawing from life more, so this was an exercise in that too.  So, more journal pages to come, for sure.

Also, I'll be starting on a painting to donate to White County Animal Shelter for their fund raising at Liberty Square festival.  Pretty excited about that, stay tuned. :)

Her Sensual Curves

Well, I decided to work in the kitchen this morning with the sun pouring rainbows through the crystals in my window.  It was kind of nice.

I finally finished this piece, mostly... I played viola in high school and taught myself violin there towards the end of school.  I bought myself a beautiful black violin a couple of years ago but it's on that list of stuff I never seem to get to... maybe one of these days.

Anyway, this was sort of experimental, as it's watercolor on Aquabord.  The jury's still out on the Aquabord... I'll let you know after the next one ;)

Agua

Some progress on the violin. The Aquabord is a little weird in the way it takes up paint. I wet the violin surface but it doesn't seem to dry at the same rate, so I had some problems with blotchiness. I think it'll straighten out in subsequent layers though. I'd really like to like this painting surface.

In other news, last year was the first year we were members of a CSA. It stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Basically, you contract with a farmer and pay a fee at the beginning of the growing season. They then provide you with a certain amount of fresh produce weekly throughout the year, depending on what's in season. 

We adore this concept. It's an affordable way to have organic, responsibly grown, local food on your table all year.

Our farmers, Miracle Mountain Farm, asked me if I'd be willing to exchange services this year... I make them a logo and paint their sign, in exchange for a substantial discount on our fee this year. I'm excited for the opportunity to do this, and I can't wait for fresh produce!

Anyway here's the logo I came up with for them. It still needs coloring; I think I may attempt to do that on the computer.

Music of the Ainur

Major dry spell... I'm not sure why. Partly because I spent a week driving people around but that's been better this week. I had some jewelry orders to fill but if I'm honest, I could've painted.

Anyway, I'm back in the studio today and playing with watercolor on Aquabord. It behaves differently from paper, but I think I like it; when dry, the colors come out fairly vibrant.

I have a good bit more work to do on this, hopefully tomorrow.

Missed Day

I didn't get to paint yesterday. This weekend is nutty, my son is moving back home after having an apartment with his friends, we had planned to have people over last night (all day really) to play board games, and to top things off I have a ton of typing to do.  If I'm honest, if I'd gotten up early yesterday I could have found time to paint (which is why Thursday's Artists Helping Artists was inspirational for me.. morning is my best time to paint too but I don't get up at 5 am.), but I didn't. 

Fortunately, one day last week I decided to play with pastels a bit and came up with this still life of a bottle of Chaucer's mead and one of the beautiful steel goblets we got as a wedding gift from our wedding party... we had an amazing Renaissance-themed wedding :)

Not sure I like pastels, but maybe I just haven't found the key to get them to do what I want them to do.

Testing, Testing, Check, Check

I know, I'm all over the place. I can't help but try a little of everything this month. So far oil (my "comfort zone" medium), watercolor, pastel/colored pencil, and today, painting with a palette knife. 

 

There's a side view so you can see the texture on this thing. Also the first time I've tried anything like still life.

As far as painting with a knife, it will definitely take some getting used to. I couldn't get my colors for the inside of the lamp the way I wanted them... I mixed and scrapped three colors that ended up looking muddy to me.  

 

How do you get brighter without paler? Is it even possible?  It feels like I should know this.  I'm such a noob.

Anyway, experiment #5 accomplished. I will definitely be playing with this some more, I think I like it... Probably some more organic subject next time. Lines are hard and in watching my knife idol Leonid Afremov at work, I think they're meant to be blurred anyway.

Maybe a bigger canvas, too... This felt pretty cramped.