I made a comment somewhere on Facebook that this 30 Paintings in 30 Days is a triple challenge for me. The first is the most obvious, painting every day.
The second challenge for me is the figurative nature of the images I’ve chosen to paint. Holy crap, I’m painting PEOPLE every day. I’m not new to figures by any means but for the most part I haven’t done them in a long time.
The third challenge for me is I’m doing everything on my iPad. I figured having to use the digital art programs would make me more familiar with them. But it’s not like painting on canvas or paper and the feel of the digital tools is nothing like holding a paint stick or brush in hand. There’s a learning curve above and beyond the image making.
The fourth challenge–oh, I said there were three, did I? Liar liar pants on fire, silly me. Four. There are four things I set myself up for. And the fourth one is letting go, having fun and realizing these paintings are at best studies for potential REAL paintings someday down the road. Some of them stand alone as nice images and will be available as prints. Some of them already are (check out the link on the sidebar).
And the fifth challenge–because yes, there ARE five, is writing a blog post every day. I didn’t think I would do this, the writing part. I figured I’d just slap a picture up and be done with it. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. I just likes to talk.
So talk back to me. Say something in the comments below. That would make me so happy I might have to give you a pony.
Ahhhhhh…. The boots are off. The narrow toe, high heel cowboy boots that I wore ALL day TWO days in a row…on concrete Are. Off.
My feet have died and gone to heaven, heaven in this case being the top of the coffee table. They are officially nekked, except for the thickest, fluffiest socks that make them feel truly loved. Truly. Beyond truly.
The 2013 Open Studios Tour is over. Two weekends of welcoming the public into my workspace. Explaining what I do. Demonstrating. Talking about art. And life. And whatever direction the conversation leads us. Trust me, it went off in some crazy directions. Good crazy. And in between all of that, all that talking and demonstrating and hostessing, I sold some art.
And ate some chocolate. And was validated a hundred times over by people signing up for classes.
And looked two inches taller, twenty pounds lighter in those damn boots.
So now it’s officially exhale time. Five, ten minutes. Maybe a day. And then it’s time to put on the marketing hat and figure out what to do with all the remaining paintings, all fifty gazillion of them.
And plan those classes!
Meanwhile, my best best BEST beloveds, remember this:
Love You THIS Much
I love you THIS much! Mmmmmmmm-whaaaaa! (That was a BIG kiss)
Now go show your love and say something in the comments below. Smiley face here.
Spent so much time in the studio lately, Mr. Spouse almost put my picture on a milk carton. It was only the sound of loud music rattling the windows of Studio Grande that convinced him I hadn’t gone far.
Oh…if only he KNEW!!!
I went to Arty Life BLISS. I listened to music. Danced. Meditated in the comfy corner. And recycled all sorts of stuff.
Like old books and journals. Really, who needs to buy new when you can just gesso over the old stuff. Life is all about layers and textures anyway. The book up above was a journal from 20 years ago. A few pages of blah blah stuff about life back then before I got bored and stopped writing in it. So I gessoed and glued pages together and transformed it into what will be an art journal.
Ohhhh…but I used too much gesso. You can only paint one spread at a time. Rather than pour the gesso back into the bottle I started on another book.
This one is The Artist’s Way. I think turning it into an art journal is positively delicious.
Then it was time to give new life to old canvases. I found a bunch of ’em during the recent move/purge, Bunch as in they must’ve been breeding like bunnies because I swear, I NEVER made that many half-assed, half-finished crappy WHAT was I thinking??? paintings in my life. So I slapped on some gesso, tore up some paper for texture and scribbled with charcoal to get rid of the arctic blindness.
By the way, notice the tools. There’s a brush. There’s also a skewer and a credit card, two of my favorite mark making devices. Ummm…lemme see…and in the photo down below there’s that black circle thing I salvaged from a slide projector tray and the beige cone from a microwave angel cake pan. Nothing is safe when it comes to making marks.
Don’t be confused by the can of furniture polish. That doesn’t belong there.
I ended up with a dozen repurposed canvases of different sizes. Here’s some of them ready and waiting for da muse.
Somewhere around the middle of the R&B playlist (I Heard It Through the Grapevine) I looked out the window and saw Mr. Spouse working on his next project…Studio Grande’s soon-to-be patio. Can’t keep a good man away from concrete… Or maybe it was Marvin Gaye. Yes, I’m sure the musician in him was diggin’ Marvin.
Meanwhile, back in the studio I didn’t really have any idea or direction what I was going to do with all those canvases. Just started painting. Two of them told me what they wanted to be.
They’re still works in progress. I believe this will become a series of striped (pronounced strip-ed) animals. For an Etsy store. I don’t have an Etsy store yet but stay tuned.
Confession: Truth in Blogging Disclaimer
Oh my best beloved sweetums, a couple of months ago when I redesigned Arty Life, I made the grand proclamation that I would post something EVERY day. Mwhahahaha! What. Was. I. Thinking???
I wasn’t thinking about my sanity, that’s for sure.
So I’m pulling back. I’ll be here a couple of days a week. Monday. Definitely Monday. That’s when I’ll show you what went on in the studio over the past week and weekend. Later in the week there’ll be other stuff…photography or apps or musings about life. But right now I don’t have a schedule, only the sense of freedom that comes from knowing I’ll have that many more hours to paint. Or play.
If life was a canvas you could just slap some gesso over the poopy parts and start over again.
But don’t go squirting your husband or kids with gesso. Puh-leeze. No matter how much they misbehave. Arty Life, AKA Moi, was speaking metaphorically. Although I did gesso FirstBorn once, quite by accident. Something involving an open jar, a sudden movement and a toddler with a face full of the stuff.
Fortunately the advice nurse at Kaiser was married to a painter and understood.
But I digress. Back to painting. I often gesso over what someone else might think is a perfectly good painting. But if I feel like it sucks then it’s buh-bye. I don’t care how much time I’ve put in to it. In fact the more time I put into a painting usually means the more I’ve over thought the process. Which means the more it sucks.
Because…..Over thinking is the death of creativity. You can quote me on that. In fact, please do. Just go ahead and quote me everywhere. I’d like to be famous some day. And I promise, I’ll remember you when I am.
But don’t quote the part about the kid and the gesso, okay? He’s bigger than me now and I’d like to think he’s forgotten all about that little incident.
Back to my love of gesso and painting. It plays into why I wasn’t here last week. I was BUSY. Had a show to hang. A show that turned out to be a little more than I’d signed up for. I thought all that was needed were the two pieces I juried in with.
These two. If you’re a regular reader of Arty Life you’ve seen them before. Here. And umm…somewhere else. Top: In the Beginning. Mixed Media, 16×20 inches. Bottom: Over the River. Mixed Media 40×40 inches.
Well, guess what…turns out I had a WHOLE wall to fill. But I didn’t find that out until Christmas night when I went through my SPAM folder. Who goes through SPAM on Christmas? Really, who???
It was Christmas, y’know. And I was just checking to see if GMail thought some dude who claimed to be giving things away FREE to EVERYONE was a Spammer. Because Santa sure didn’t show his ass around here. OK, so Mr. Spouse and I agreed we didn’t need or want anything but I didn’t cut that deal with Santa. Did not did not did not!!! So there I was Christmas night, desperately seeking holiday spirit in my SPAM folder, wading through IMPORTANT!!! letters from the FBI, heartfelt financial missives from my long lost third-cousin-twice-removed-Mister George, and many many MANY helpful pharmacies promising me lots o’hair and a stiffy.
But not a hairy stiffy. Go figure.
There was also One. Very. Important. Letter.
From ten days earlier. Uh-oh…
It was… About. The. Show. And how many pieces did I plan on hanging. Because I had, like, a whole wall to fill.
Oops.
Now a visitor to my studio would see a whole lot o’ paintings. More than enough to fill a hall let alone a wall. But I got it in my arty little head that this was a challenge. Go for it Susan, create a whole new body of work in two weeks.
So I did. Sorta. I always have a number of canvases under construction. A number of them primed with layer after layer, just waiting for the Muse of Completion to arrive. Or a manic phase, whichever comes first.
I’m still not sure if it was muse or mania but I spent nearly every hour of the next two weeks rockin’ out in Studio Grande. And this is the result:
Dreaming of Bears. 40×40 inches. I’ve had a couple of bear dreams recently. They’re all over the place around here. It gets dark early and I move around the property wondering if Smokey is behind the next tree. And if he’s going to jump out and eat me or if he’ll run away when I scream like a girl. I did tree a bear once by yelling but the 105 pound dog in furious pursuit got all the credit.
If you have the time and are so inclined see if you can find the bears in the painting. Hint: there are three. I only painted one deliberately but the others acted like real bears and popped up unexpectedly. That’s bears for you.
Taking Flight. 24×24 inches. Like most of my mixed media pieces, you really need to see this in person to appreciate the depth and layers.
Feelin’ the Love. Mixed Media. 24×36 inches. This has got to be one of my all time favorites. Absolutely.
Eddy. As in, y’know, water swirling around. 40×40 inches. These were some layers, many many layers, who told me they were quite happy as is, thank you very much. And so I paid attention. I am not only the canvas whisperer, I am the canvas listener.
After the Rain #2. Mixed media 40×40 inches. This is similar in feel to an oil and cold wax I sold during the studio tour, even though this is acrylic and collage and twice the size. Another absolute favorite of mine.
But where is After the Rain #1? Well, this is where the gesso comes in. After the Rain #1 began life the usual way, via layers. And when I realized I needed to make more paintings for the show it began to take on the feel of Over the River (way up above). It was a river scene with critters and people and quite frankly, it was crap.
Contrived.
Over thought.
When the muse says this is NOT something you’re happy with, you listen. Pay attention. You being me in this case. So I slapped the gesso on before I could change my mind. And then I dove right in with the paint. Right into the wet gesso. And I rocked it. Oh man, I ROCKED it! Didn’t come up for air until it was done. And then I stood back and said holy crap, I am in luvvvvvvvv… with the painting, with the muse, with LIFE!
And that is what painting should be. Absolute sheer mindless creation.
I was on such an arty high I grabbed another so-so meh piece and did the same thing, using the same paints. That’s the one you see up above, After the Rain #2. What you don’t see in the photograph, because it’s not a great photograph, is the wonderlicious crunchy texture, the bumps and bruises from collage and scraping back collage and taking all sorts of mark making devices to it.
You also don’t see After the Rain#1 because I FORGOT TO PHOTOGRAPH IT!!!
The only photo I have is the one down below, taken as we were setting up the show. Not a great pic but enough to give you an idea. After the Rain #1 is on top. It’s 30×40 inches.
OK, enough about me. Now it’s your turn to go out and paint. And remember, gesso is your friend.
And so am I. Always and forever, my best best BEST beloveds. So you’ll quote me, right? And hit all the social share buttons to help me grab the big brass ring of cyber famousness. Because that’s what friends do.
And while you’re doing that, I’m going to email my long lost third-cousin-twice-removed Mister George. From the Nigerian side of the family. See if I can get him to buy a painting our Uncle Pablo Picasso painted last week.
Oh my sweetums, I’ve been spinning my wheelsuber busy in ArtyLand, so busy I neglected to post last week. Imagine that!
If you’re impatient or have a short attention span, you may scroll down now and watch the video. But if you’re here for a good story, stick around. You’ll get to the movie eventually.
It’s not that I forgot you, au contrair, you (my most best, BEST beloveds), have been on my mind CONSTANTLY. I’ve thought of you even more than I’ve thought of CHOCOLATE!!! Which is a lie, by the way, because nothing comes between me and my chocolate. But it sounds good, like overtime devotion in bloggy land.
Have you ever gone from point A to point B via points M,Q and X? Well, that’s what I’ve been doing. And getting nowhere fast in the process.
It all started when I got this idea for a blog post. I was scrolling through my iPhoto library, grumbling about the BAZILLIONS of photos I’ve taken and have yet to organize… yada yada… and I must be NUTS to think I can ever find a specific photo. Getting a wee bit frustrated because I’m not exaggerating the number of photos (well, yes I am because I don’t believe bazillions is an actual quantifiable number) when it dawned on me–ping–like a light bulb in the brain–that a lot of my arty photos resemble a LOT of my paintings. I don’t consciously take photos of rocks and paint them. And I don’t consciously paint pictures and then go photograph things that remind me of them–
But you’d never know that from looking at all those photos.
Never. As in NEVER. EVER.
So I thought it would be cool to post photos I’ve taken that inspired my paintings. Or at least resemble paintings enough to see where I drew some inspiration. I began picking and choosing photos to illustrate that point, saving them all in an album. Then I thought what the heck, let’s see how this works as a slide show. And then, since I liked the way it was working, I needed to find music. Music that was legally MINE to use and wouldn’t get all this work kicked off FaceBook or YouTube. That meant half a day pouring through license free music sites. Which is a mega time suck, believe me. I finally found something I liked, tweaked the timing so it would work, converted the whole shee-bang to a movie file, did the YouTube upload and went to bed.
Where I lay there thinking of how I could make it better.
The next morning I got up and did it ALL OVER AGAIN. New music. More bounce. Tossed out some photos, added others. Rearranged EVERYTHING. And then I added text because WHY NOT?
And when I finally got the video I was REALLY happy with, I thought the heck with a blog post, this is going to be my HOME PAGE on my website, the one that showcases my ART. The site I basically ignore.
Ah, but if I’m inviting people to see my stuff I’d better clean things up. Like get the galleries updated, the store open. Things I’ve been ignoring because they’re H.A.R.D. Technical. Not.Fun.
So now you know where I’ve been. I’ve been herding ducks. That’s right, getting all my little duckies in a row. You ever try and do that? It’s like herding cats on quack. (I’m high fivin’ myself for that one, yes I am!) What began as a simple blog post, turned into a video, a revamped website and a functioning store. Holy crap, I’m even impressing myself.
All because of this:
Do me a favor, if you liked this post PLEASE tell your friends. Share it on FaceBook. Give it a tweet. And, as always, stop in and say hi in the comments. I love it when you do.
