At last....

I've beaten back the chaos, unpacked all the boxes, found a place for everything (which was frequently the donation box) and have a studio at last. I tried to make it so that I'd feel inspired when I'm in it, surrounded by things I love, but we'll see how functional it is - pretty doesn't do much good if what you need most isn't at hand, so there may well be some rearranging.  I threw together a temporary work table with a door and couple of cupboards to hold it up - I'll replace it hopefully soon since it turned out to be much too high, I just don't know with what yet. In the meantime I'll be sitting on the fattest cushion I can find!  The little secretary desk below used to be my only work surface, so having some room to spread out will be amazing, propped up on a pillow or not.

The little monkey above, sitting on the old mail sorter or whatever it is, is a recent birthday gift from my Grandmother and is precious to me.  It was my great-grandfather's, and the head lifts off and there's a bottle inside that he used to keep his whiskey in.  If he was trying to hide his whiskey habit, I wouldn't think drinking out of a monkey would be the way to do it, but I love it!

Maybe my next post will have some actual art, if I still remember how!  

Excuse the Mess

It appears that my studio is going to be the last room to be dealt with in this move. I'm currently just keeping the door shut and ignoring it while we deal with the myriad things that must be done first before I can call the rest of the house good and summon the energy to face this chaos. As you can see, I went with a pretty bold color - if you can't do it in your art studio then where, am I right?

I'm missing out on Summer of Color this year, which makes me sad, but I'm popping in occasionally to see what my friends are doing, and it looks like lots of fun is being had and wonderful art being created, as always with Summer of Color.  I can't wait to be sitting in my newly organized studio and create something, anything.  

The Sounds of Silence

Just wanted to let my blog friends know that I am still alive and kicking.  Between a new job and an upcoming move, art has been on the back burner to say the least.  And, I must admit, I used to do much of my blog reading during breaks, lunches or slow times at work, and now I pretty much have none of those things!  

So, my house is in utter chaos, which I do NOT handle well, as my husband would readily tell you. And my art supplies are mostly in boxes.  As an aside, it is shocking to me, the sheer amount of art STUFF I have accumulated in the 4 or 5 years since I started this journey.  SHOCKING. I came face to face with all the art phases I went through as I packed, much of which I no longer use.  Sigh...

But the exciting part is that I'm actually going to have my own studio.  A little one, to be sure, but my own, no longer will I have the corner of our guest room.  It's going to take serious organization and planning to get it set back up again, hopefully far more functionally than my corner ever was.  Let's hope by the time I'm ready to go again I still remember how!

This is a picture of packing chaos I found online, I haven't even been organized enough to remember to take a picture of my own chaos.  I hope I get to catch up on your blogs soon, I miss you guys!

Dipping Back In

I've had a dry spell, to say the least, in terms of motivation to do art lately. But it's a gorgeous day here, my yard is in the early stages of exploding with flowers, and I finally felt like it was time to sit down at my art desk.  I've been wanting to try something Francoise de Felice ish from the week Kate Thompson did on her in Studying Under The Masters, I had done a rough sketch of faces but that's as far as I'd gotten.  It went off the de Felice rails pretty quickly, and I just went my own way with it.  I'm just glad I dipped my toes in again, especially considering that the online class from Gillian Lee Smith I've been waiting for is starting soon.

This one I did recently after receiving some pan watercolors I'd ordered (Grumbacher).   Danielle Donaldson recommended them in her Studying Under the Masters class so I was just playing around with them on a girl inspired by ones she paints.

Botticelli WIP

I finished up a couple of pages in my fabric/plaster journal this weekend, before attempting to dig into Botticelli in the Studying Under the Masters class that I'm taking online.

This woman started out as an image transfer, although she got completely painted over.

The Tuscan countryside scene out the window below was also an image transfer, and I painted the window over it.  

I like how it looks like Kate the Great (from my last post) is looking out the window.

Now, this scary looking picture on the right is a WIP, rest assured!  I've been watching the Botticelli week with Jenny Wentworth, and apparently Botticelli used to paint his backgrounds first.  So Jenny painted her background black and did her initial sketching with white charcoal, so I decided to try it too, although mine is on a piece of linen with plaster over it.  It was definitely different, to just not be drawing the areas that are dark.  Not sure exactly where I'm going with this, but I have really enjoyed reading about him and looking at his paintings this week.  I'm a total sucker for Italian Renaissance paintings - I've been to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and seen some of his paintings, and the Sistine Chapel,  but it was such an overwhelming experience that it's kind of a blur now.

Studying Under The Masters

I made a sudden decision to belatedly join Studying Under the Masters, on Jeanne Oliver's ning site here. It's going to be available for 2 years, so I don't have to feel in any hurry and I like that there are 9 different artists teaching it.  I've started watching the Gaudi lesson, he was actually an architect and WOW, I want to go to Spain now.   Below is a quick sketch and watercolor of one of his stained glass windows, done in my fabric journal on a really thin layer of plaster.

And speaking of copying, which is a large focus of this class, below is a smaller version I did of one of Kate Thompson's pieces (called Kate the Great), which you can see here in this blog post.  Kate is actually one of the teachers in Studying under the Masters, and I figured she wouldn't mind me giving it a try.  This is also done in my fabric/plaster journal which I actually made in one of her online classes.  

And I thought I'd share a couple of pics I took last week while my Mom and I were waiting for our men to finish golfing, sitting on a bench with this view of Bodega Bay. We went there for the day and got so lucky with the weather, as you can see.

Art Journal Stubbornness

In spite of what my blog may have lead you to believe, I actually have been creating a little art here and there.  But I've been doing it in a journal that has become almost impossible to photograph much less scan, and with my working hours and the weather I've had no good outside light to photograph in anyway.  So why, you may ask, am I continuing to work in this journal that won't even stay open on it's own?  Because I just can't stand the thought of an unfinished journal! Permanently unfinished anyway.  So I think I'm trying to hurry my way through it now, probably not the best mindset to have when creating!

But today, we had some sunshine around here, and my valiant husband has been at home trying to wrestle this journal into staying open long enough to photograph it. I know he tried double sided tape, rubber bands and various kinds of grippers, so he's my hero!