HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I'll be traveling this coming week so see you back here in a week! Boo!

the inhabitants......

I knew something was coming and here are a couple of them - I've been painting worlds for a few months now and the inhabitants had to show up sooner or later - two of them made an appearance today - the work has been a struggle for over a month and I finally realized today what the battle was all about - these came very quickly - there may be more and there might not - but however it ends up, I truly am breathing like a normal person again!






These are both mixed media on board 10x10 -

when I'm the enemy......

I struggled with this little painting for the last five days - I painted, scraped, painted, scraped, tossed in a corner, wiped off, painted, painted, finally got something and then f____d it up again!!! I won't blame all the life interruptions because to be honest, circumstances are never going to be perfect! Perfection is some sort of magazine fantasy or book fantasy! Today was so disjointed it's hard to track back and sort through all the starts and stops and constant interruptions - but then, it's all that sort of energy that my work is about - I like where this finally landed and I think it really speaks about what my week has been like thus far. So this is my life on a 10x10 board using extreme mixed media - and yes, I have also ramped down my surface size which caused a real jolt to how I work - at least I'm breathing normally again - hope you are all making art!

....the finish

I have had at least 7 paintings hanging out in my studio drying.....a few of them were not finished, but I had to wait until they dried to go back in and work on them - they are finally (finally !!!!) dry enough to finish, so I've been working on final layers for the last couple of days....this can be a touchy part of the process - notice I say 'CAN BE' - this is when a work can go upside down pretty fast, but, I personally like the challenge - sometimes I succeed and sometimes, well, it becomes something else - the two paintings below stayed pretty true to the original paintings....


The photo above is the under painting and the the pic below is the finished work....this is mixed media on board 24x24 "She Had A Secret"




again, the top photo is the under painting and the photo below the finished work...mixed media on board 24x24 "Summer's Elbow"

have a couple more to work on later in the week......hope you are all having a wonderful week!

sigh.......

CARDINAL RULE NUMBER 1: Never step on the scale the day after getting home from vacation! It's ability to calculate the chocolate and peanut butter ice cream in a chocolate waffle cone, extra pieces of warm corn bread and butter, white chocolate fudge with m&m's, large package of plain m&m's eaten while sitting in the dark of the 1914 era theatre watching "Get Low" (highly recommended), some sort of homemade candy that contained chunks of chocolate, marshmallows, nuts, all wrapped up with some sort of sweet outer layer, and now forgotten other yummy treats - well needless to say.........We are not in Oz any longer and reality screams "what were you thinking!" - "I don't know, it just seemed so right at the time..........." - sigh - back to reality and the first fire of the season -




happy Monday everyone.........

on the road......

Jim and I are on the road this week, getting the last bits of sun in the Eastern part of the state - As we were loading the last few things into the car, I grabbed my art bag without even looking inside to see what I had - sketch book, pencils, a few tubes of water color and acrylics and some oil pastels - so I just messed around for a couple of hours this afternoon - it was fun - nothing serious - a few sketches that have already been torn up and now I'm working on some collage - I have a very old glue stick that I've had to add a bit of water to to get even a bit of stickyness going on - I will have to pick up a new one tomorrow - hate to see this old stick hit the trash - it was the old formula before they changed to the 'more health friendly formula' - the new sticks barely hold anything down long enough to get a good build up going on - will be home sometime next week -

these two pieces are on paper that I worked so much I rubbed holes in them......







hope you are all making art!


UPDATE 10/07/10

I had some more time today, so I used the two sketches I made yesterday, collaged them together and then worked into it - fun!