Guest Speaker Prep

I will be giving a short talk at a quilt show on art quilts, art quilts with a face on them, not large quilts wall hanging size. This is a month away so I have to get my handouts ready and I have to write my talk. Today I prepared my hand outs. After I paint the face I print it out on fabric, the fabric has a paper back so it goes through the printer and then you peel off the fabric and can sew it anyway you choose. The small quilt you see on the right is a face painted on fabric.

This isn't a class it is a speaker engagement with a handout. Here you will see part of the handout, the painting, and the painting with digital additions that may or may not get cut apart for the quilt construction.

Oh OH, repeat performance

I was doing some editing on the post and lost it completely, so just a repost of this painting, and if you have not been here before you will see the stages if you scrol down. It really helps to get things right the first time. Thanks Star it isn't your fault I lost the whole thing. We use to have dial up and sometimes the connect box comes up when I post and it goofed me up a lot.

Photos of Spring Breakup and a Busy Painting

No Painting today, that doesn't mean I don't have a painting. The refridge died so had to go hunt for a new and be thankful for a cold garage. I knew it was going as sometimes it sounded like a semi trying to pass on the freeway, passing while honking. That was the first warning 4 years ago. So it held on.

These photos are just that what I felt was pretty as spring tries to arrive. the fields are full of standing water and geese everywhere. I like the photo that was taken on the high bluff of backwaters from a river. The other is same river.

I felt like doing a painting with much busyness, I rather like that. Sometimes I mount them on cardboard covered with newsprint, and even designs on the newsprint.
or just a touch of paint, doing that much bigger than the painting takes away some of the busy work in the painting. It also allows one to use thrift store frames that are quite nice. I can also mount several paintings with the same backing in a large frame. Use some of the same colors on the newspaper as in the paintings and pull it together with some stencils.

Thinking Spring

It is early for this far north to get to spring minded, I have seen 3 robins, only one other time that I can remember did I see first Robins on the 7th and 8th of March.

We have some rushing rivers, a few patches of bare ground, soft earth in places, and now and then you can drive with the heater off in the car.

I thought this tree bark covered with lichen, it is a pretty pattern for a background in a painting I thought, even Richard said looks like your backgrounds,
and like that a painting appeared. This must be a spring maid, she drifts through the woodlands to stir the Mayflowers, spring beauties, and violets.

a woman, a bird, a house

I didn't even have to paint it. The bird is one of my most favorite 5 cent items from a garage sale. It is quite old and it is a pie bird, you put it in the middle of your pie so the pie doesn't drizzel juice all over your oven. It has a tiny crack so I am careful with it. One hardly finds nickle things any longer, and this was some years ago, I had this pie bird a long time before I knew what it was, I saw another at an antique shop, and I am still thrilled at that identical bird was 22.00.

I like the woman also she is from Portugal, and the other things are just odds and ends and the effect you see is an altered layered look. I do like vintage salt and pepper shakers with flowers and I don't buy a pair I buy when there is just one. I like the blurred look, however I would appreciate ability to do a clear sharp look also.

Work In Progress Continues

This work has taken on a look of conflict perhaps between the two faces, and I am going to have to figure out how to get some joy or beauty into this work and still keep the expression the faces reveal. As I work on this I feel very much the need for the less stressed sort of painting that just has a pretty outcome. I am liking the faces and still see corrections to make.

You can look at this and play the game also of finding things wrong with this picture, like you did as a child in an activity book. We still say that don't we? What is wrong with this picture? I hope for progress for a view tomorrow. First posting in previous days post.

Quilts airing on the line, I made these quilts and they are just getting a spring freshen up in the March breezes. The photo has been altered, with cuttings and pasteings.

Work in Progress, and Whimsy

I do enjoy doing things that have whatever you feel like putting into the painting, what moves you that day. and I find whether it be a bothersome thing, an emotional happening, what is foremost in you thoughts it is likely to come out in the art you choose. I did this woman with the statue of a cat after and around the time of losing a cat, getting a new cat that developed a brain tumor and of course that was loss also, and then getting another cat. I enjoy finding a cat in my chair, seeing can antics, and the bossy nature of a cat, that seems to think they run the house.

I wanted a quiet sort of cat, and I got one, the shelter people said this is a low maintenance cat, and it was alarming for 4 months because he moved in a small radius of downstairs from food, to his bed, to the litter. The vet found him perfectly fine. He gained weight, and is still chubby.

Then one evening after the house became quiet he came upstairs, and bit by bit hs become quite normal. There was a setback, he got his claw caught in the end of a table runner and pulled a good bit of things on the floor, had a bit of a confrontation with the dog over the mishap and returned to his hermit like living. (I didn't even know I was going to tell a cat story.) Hermie now is just a normal behaving cat with some weight issues.

The second photo, or other photo you see is the beginning of a rather large painting of faces and it is a good thing I scanned early as I see somethings I don't like already. A good time to get them fixed before a lot of work is done. So I learned something to scan the beginnings and get an idea of placement. You see music, and papers adhered to the watercolor paper and a lot of that will be gone under layers of paint, yet bits will show somewhat, and that is the objective.

Talking of flowers

Painting flowers is a lot like the class subject of painting a background and then finding the face, except in water color you have to save a few flowers that were in your drawing mind and not get a lot of paint on the main subject, then paint around that in layers and hunt for the extras, there are buds, backviews, sideviews, that sort of thing, I usually save a few leaves also like I did the 3 flowers that were the main focus. You hunt for shapes and they appear. I taught this in class also some years ago, and it takes a bit if squinting, imagination, plus a willingness to

see what there is, not what you want there to be. I have relearned this recently. This thought of what there is and not what you want there to be plays in our lives in a lot of aspects.

There is a lot of learning, Acrylics, watercolors, pencils, crayons, oils, pastels, all work differently and watercolor interacts with the paper quite differently than other paints. You have to be willing

to let the paint run, mix, flow, as it wants with just a little control. And there is another factor

the make up the of colors interact differently with each other so that is another thing to keep

in mind. Some colors are more transparent than others and that causes a different reaction of the paint when they meet on the paper.

So more flowers today. I did not get to work on what I wanted to show you, too many things

that entered into the day. I saw things that were there when I really wanted to see something else.

Feeling like flowers

I always feel like flowers, even doing all these faces it is hard not to put in flowers, even the one of the serious faces I have started. BTW the red girls didn't want to be posted today so had to find something else.

I also plan to post a partial start to a painting tomorrow if I get time to paint, this cleaning up of winter grime in the house sure interferes with painting. And now the cat is out of sorts because I ran the carpet cleaner all morning and ruined his sun spot naps. But the house feels better, carpet cleaner, smells fresher.

This painting is done with thinned layers of acrylic paint, and done quite fast. Just something with lots of color and a satisfaction of something painted, plus the fact I needed flowers today.

Woman in red

It is a clean up week for me, getting some things done in the house and making it feel more spring, putting away of somethings I enjoy in the winter, mostly just stuff that decorates, and some angels of a wintery look, just stuff, the hydrangeas that were pretty for a while dried in vases are now dusty and horrible. Candles that seemed right for winter look tired. Where my family watches Tv and reads is full of too much, too many books and magazines. Those great magazines by Somerset that I love I will keep. One sees something new in them each time to inspire a painting or collage. Artists I visit on blogs have things published and written, things that are of value to me.

I have painted everyday for 4 months, so a few days to reduce clutter is a good choice. I will find things to post. Maybe find something to take a photo of, I have quilts that are ready for a photo.

No matter how much I have learned in my 4 week class I still like this woman in Red. I want more paintings like this, a better face but all the additions. I have another woman in red also and another that will get posted this week.

It is March, that sounds like spring.