Pat A Cake

Pat a cake, pat a cake.....today as I was conditioning my clay, that rhyme kept going through my head. I was so excited about bringing my clay to the Blue Skies Gallery to demonstrate today. Another artist and I brought things we had made and lots of clay to work with. Right away we had a crowd, well....not a crowd, but just about everyone in the gallery came over to look. My sister suggested I put out a bowl full of beads and that proved to be a magnet for everyone. People couldn't keep their hands out of that bowl!

These are the miniatures I made for a show at the Charles Taylor Art Center and decided at the last minute not to enter them. They are just not my  best work, so I'll wait til next year and come up with a better idea.

Fall Is Here

It seems like it was just sweltering, hot, and sticky and now, all of a sudden, it's glorious fall....my favorite season. Every afternoon I can hear the high school band practicing and it brings back all those college football games we went to in South Carolina. Good memories.

This is one of the pieces I've made from the Stroppel cane, which went viral last week on Flickr. It's a fun and easy cane, and you can't really tell how it will look until you slice it open.

I've been working real hard on my entry to the Tidewater Artists Miniature Show, which will open October 21 at the Charles Taylor Art Center in Hampton, Virginia. I've entered for the past four or five years and its a fun show with a lot of ingenious entries. Last year I took second in sculpture, so keep your fingers crossed for me this year.

After the show opens I'll reveal all three of my entries for you to see. Let me know what you think.

Painting Again

Oh, I couldn't wait to get my hands on a paintbrush again! I was so excited that I woke up at 4 this morning. Last night I started drawing this on the canvas and today it took me about two more hours to get the face right because it's at a strange angle. The model is my sister Ellen. One night she was sitting here talking to me and I liked the light so much I made her do all kinds of things and I took pictures while she tried not to laugh. But the pictures turned out well and I knew they'd make good paintings if I could pull it off. I have a vision in my head and I just hope it will end up somewhere near that. Now that everything is blocked in, tomorrow I'll concentrate on the face and hands, the hardest, hardest parts. I'm trying to use the biggest brush possible for each section.

When I made plans on my big calendar ( I'm going to call it 'my life on the wall') this whole week was devoted to the miniatures, but I think they are ok like they are. So I put them together, put a coat of medium on, and they're done. Now I can paint all week and be ahead of myself. Actually, there a several things I can do with the extra time.....work on the twins' portraits, practice using my Wacom tablet and Photoshop Elements, watch the five art videos I have but have never seen, or experiment with polymer clay. I couldn't ask for a more wonderful problem! This must be heaven; to have the time, supplies and space to make art for the rest of your life whenever you want to.

These are the finished miniatures. They are on gallery wrap canvas and the portrait is raised from the surface. I'm going to write an explanation of what they are about, I remember I posted that a while ago.

Is It Thursday Already?

Here is one of my miniatures which I've been working on forever. It's 4x4. I drew a portrait of a little girl I sponsor through World Vision. My idea is to use portraits of two of the girls I sponsor along with symbols of their countries ( India and Bolivia), using the colors of their national flags. Each portrait is on gallery wrapped canvas, so on the sides I first glued newspaper stock report pages and then painted over that and added national symbols on top. I did that to contrast our materialistic society with the sparse lives these girls live. Behind her head you can see part of a letter from her that I traced and stamps which I made. But.....while putting a last minute touch on her portrait, I ruined it. I have to do it all over again because I used a permanent magic marker to darken the outline of her head. Stupid, stupid. See how it bled through her shoulder? I already tried to salvage it by cutting her face and now it's uneven. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Below is my first attempt to copy Anne's instructions on a wonderful video I bought from Creative Catalyst Productions. I want to understand everything about her method before I incorporate it into my work. Her instructions in the video couldn't have been clearer. Without a doubt, her video is well worth the money.

Of course, Ann does a lot more than I did here. I'm going to watch the video again tomorrow and add to the notes I took the first time. She shares a lot of information. She stamps over and over her stamps. Believe me, I don't in any way think my example is a hundredth as good as hers!

Wow, It's Wednesday

Yesterday I worked at Blue Skies, which I have to do one day a month as it is a members' gallery, and I replaced my price tags with something more professional looking, but it's not very visible here. But anyway, this is my own three foot wide space at the gallery. A few weeks ago I switched out all of my work, so now I need to find another gallery to hang what is sitting in the back of my van. And that was one of my goals to achieve by November, so I'll get on that soon.

Yikes! Half of the week is gone already, and I still haven't posted my goals for this week. Remember, I said I'd post them in my studio so I can't forget them, but I seem to have forgotten. Well, I'll do it tonight so I can be productive tomorrow and Friday. Saturday is going to be a little busy, and my sister and I are taking both cats to the vet. And then Sunday is our birthday ( my sister and I both have the same day, ten years apart) so we decided to treat ourselves to a nice brunch without anyone else, and that means her three lovely sons and her husband. None of them particularly like to sit in a nice restaurant for long. 

One of my goals for last week was to finish my miniatures, and here they are. I have simple, two inch wide frames for them.

Leslie's Peppers, Second Reincarnation

8x10

And, finally, some peppers I started yesterday and finished today. Ta da!