A Friesian Cow

a big one

Since the seahorse in the previous post sold, I was inspired to do another, more ambitious one.
I wanted to make it cuter and more whimsical, but this is what I came up with. The main thing was that I had a blast doing it in my studio late in the evening when no one else was there. Listening to music, singing and dancing, spreading the paint around. Now that's living!

Look what made it to the Arboretum show.

New art

I completed four watercolor batik sea creatures, matted and wrapped them, and took them to Studio 15 today. This is a good medium for me, because there is no way to make it perfect, and it always has elements of surprise.

Catching up

Gee. It is past time to catch up on art stuff!

It is way too hot to spend much time in Studio 15. No AC there! Whew...

And I really haven't created anything that is finished and beautiful lately. 

But I am involved in art every day. Being on the board of the art assoc means I have to do a lot of communicating, and I like that. I am glad to be a small part of keeping the "club" running and letting people have opportunities to do arty things.
I also have photos hanging in a welcome center here, and some will soon hang in a gallery in Whiteville. 

My friend Elena is a glass artist. She started with mosaics and now does all kinds of complicated glass art. Today she showed my how to cut glass. Then I spread some acrylic paint on two small square panels. Tomorrow I plan to lay some of the cut glass on them and pour resin over all. I saw this in Florida while I was there in May. After watching how to use it on YouTube, I ordered the special epoxy after I came home. I tried it - messy - and the end product was cool.
Maybe they will turn out blogworthy. 

Sumi-e

This old Japanese style of black ink painting was new for me today. It was all about how to load the brush and hold the brush to make the strokes you want. Much more challenging and interesting than I thought.

Palette knife work

These abstract works came from the need to use my art supplies before buying more, and it kind of freed me to do what I felt. This is what emerged on one, and I like it.
I had old, used canvases that I spread paint on. A therapeutic exercise. Then I would spread on another color that would not cover every thing in the previous coat. Then another, and some scraping to highlight and perhaps an additional color until I felt I was on to something. Layered abstracts are like people in that we have many layers. You may wonder what lies beneath.
Not everyone will like abstracts, but I think they are fun to paint. And people look at them as if they are thinking...what in the world is that!

From photos to paintings

Occasionally an ArtWorks neighbor will use a photograph that I took and paint a nice piece of art from it. Here are two photos you may recognize that Jo and Cathy used as reference for oil paintings.
That pleases me to no end!