Thursday, May 27, 2010

Portrait of a lady and her cat

Our cat has been extra cute lately, so I guess that he was on my mind when I painted this. Actually, I don't know why I painted it the way I did. It feels weird not to have a background with a lot of texture and mixed up color. No stencils, stamps, transfers, layers over layers over layers...
Maybe it's not finished.
Maybe I'll add all those things and show you a different painting some other time.
And maybe not....
Isn't it great that we can do whatever we want with our art? I wish we can do the same thing with other things in life... jump in, make a change, and then change it again if it doesn't feel right. It's easier and much less scary to be brave on canvas...

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Not pastel

As much as playing with pastels was fun,
jumping back to fat, saturated layers of heavy-body acrylics
felt great too.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Pastel fun

I had a 30% off coupon for Dick Blick. Doesn't that sound good?  Stacks of PanPastels caught my eye. I saw them on blogs, but never in a store. And look at those colors.... they were too yummy to pass by. So I didn't. I chose the most colorful stack.
As soon as I got home I opened my journal and started experimenting. It was fun and fast and relaxing.
I had to use all colors..... and was pretty proud of this next girl (until Hana said that she looks like she's bruised.... hmmmm, I guess blue and purple can give that impression).
I know nothing about pastels, so I just played. I noticed that they are soft, highly pigmented and very 'smooshable'. I wonder how will they look on watercolor paper. Or pastel paper. I guess I'll have to visit the store again :-)

Sunday, May 16, 2010

I like

I like wearing my crazy Vibram five-finger shoes everywhere.
They feel amazing whether I walk on sand or relax in my yard or go to the supermarket. It's fun seeing people's reactions to them. So far no one asked me anything, but I saw many surprised faces.
I like learning from other people.
Following the tutorial from DJ Pettit's blog helped me transform a picture of my overgrown garden from this:
to this:
Following another link from this amazing lady enabled me to play with my photos and quickly create fun things like this:
And this:
And then I couldn't stop playing in Photoshop, so I explored the color layers of cabbage and loved it:
I like following links.
I clicked on Misty's link, which led me to this version, which inspired my husband to pick up his guitar after many months of non-playing...
.... which then inspired an evening filled with music, wine and love.  
You just never know where clicking on a link will take you...
I like nut butters.
I don't think I'll ever buy nut butters in a store. It took me less than three minutes to put a pound of walnuts, little maple sirup and cinnamon in the food processor and turn it into a smooth butter. YUM!!! So good for you (if you can stop tasting after one or two spoonfuls).
I like buying art supplies.
Do you know what this is? More about it later....

Friday, May 7, 2010

Staying positive

Staying positive is a choice.
I almost stamped "Staying positive is a chore". Yesterday it felt like that. 
Realizing that my subconscious was about to make the mistake made me laugh.
And made staying positive easier.
This is such a colorful painting, but unfortunately the colors don't want to be pictured/scanned.
No matter what I did the colors look washed out. Weird..... 
I wish you could see it in person. It's much prettier.
Stay positive!

Sunday, May 2, 2010

May beauties

Look how big!
Our roses are amazing this year.
There are hundreds of fragrant flowers and I love them all - the ones like the one above that are past their prime, or the tender, water droplet covered beauty bellow.
Happy May!