Studio Sunday - Relocated

Today the attic was way too hot for spending any length of time there. We have central air, but it doesn't even make it up to the 2nd floor, let alone the attic. So I decided to work in my kitchen today... I dragged everything down 2 flights of stairs and spread wax paper all over my kitchen table. I used a pizza box from last night's dinner to put the canvas panels in to spatter them with metallic paint. LOL

These are my Jupiter and Saturn backgrounds... my kitchen is a little brighter than my attic studio, so the colors on the canvases are slightly darker than pictured.

Next week is on to Uranus and Neptune!

Eclipse & App Recipes

I didn't get to see it personally, but thankfully NASA takes pics of these things!

Just recently, I found a new blog that I've fallen in love with. You can find it at www.clearerreflections.com. Dave is hosting what he calls The Recipe Book Project, where people share their "recipes" for manipulating photos with mobile apps. He also posts his own photos daily as part of a 365 Project.

For Eclipse, I took a photo of an old dictionary page with the listing for Eclipse on it, and a NASA image of last night's eclipse...

The dictionary page was taken with Instagram > Rise Filter. The NASA photo was imported as is.
Both pics were taken into Blender with a 75/25 blend.

From there, the recipe is as follows:

Magic Hour > Antique

Jazz > Sepia, Bloom, Light Leakage

Pic FX > Urban > Enhance

Photo Toaster > FX > Yellow Filter
                       > Frames > Funky

And this is the result...

Studio Sunday!

Today was one of those days where I didn't feel like doing much of anything, but I'm glad I made myself go up to the studio anyways, even if it was about 9000 degrees in my attic! Hot day, hot colors: today I did the backgrounds for Venus & Mars.

For Mars, I went with a deep Red... a tiny bit of Alizarin Crimson mixed into the Cadmium Red.

It looks a lot less orange in reality than it does online!

For the Venus backgrounds, I added Titanium White to the above Red mixture to get a deep rose look... I'm generally not a fan of pastels so I tend to make my pinks dark rather than pale.

Next week will probably be Jupiter and Saturn... I'm not sure what colors I'm going with just yet, so it'll be a surprise!

Hope all those in the West Coast get to safely enjoy the Solar Eclipse tonight!

Studio Sunday!

It rained all day today which was just fine with me... It kept the attic from getting too hot to work! Today I started on my Mercury backgrounds. (And yes, if you're sensing a pattern, Venus will most likely be next!) I don't know why, but I've always associated the color blue (specifically a royal blue) with Mercury.

I had a much easier time creating light washes for the top layer with the blue than I did with the gray last week. After drying completely, the collaged Moon background looks a bit better, but the black from the photocopies I used will still have to be amped up digitally later.

I went out yesterday and stocked up on some more paint, brushes and a pile of canvas panels so I should have everything I need to keep this project going...

More to come next week!

2013 Sketchbook Is Here!

Just received my 2013 Sketchbook Project kit in the mail yesterday!

I love the size/shape of this book and hope I can achieve the vision I have in my head for it. I'll be posting regular updates as I work on it. It's not due back until 2013, so I plan on taking my time with it.

There are several themes you can choose when you sign up, and I decided on an Almanac, so this will be a Stargazer's Almanac. Wish me luck!

Full Moon Madness!

Here's some pictures I took of last weekend's Full Moon... They were calling it a "Super Moon," but this must not be the right part of the world/time of year to see it as huge as other places did. But it was still beautiful!

As EarthSky wrote, the term Super Moon actually comes from astrology, defined as "…a new or full moon which occurs with the moon at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit (perigee). In short, Earth, moon and sun are all in a line, with moon in its nearest approach to Earth."


For my astro-readers, this Full Moon was in Tropical Scorpio. :)

Studio Sunday!

Today I started on the backgrounds for the Moon collages...

Gray can be a difficult color to work with... mixing just the right amount of black into the white to get just the right shade you want. I think my biggest challenge though was blending in the collage elements without totally drowning them out! Like last time, I did one plain, textured background, one with an assortment of collage elements and the other mini canvas I had laying around.

After I was done with the gray, I put on a thin layer of iridescent silver, and brought out some more of the whites in the previous layer. Hopefully they will scan better than they photograph, but I'm liking the very Moon-like feel of them.

When I scan the middle one in, I will play with the lights and darks to bring out some of the collage elements a bit more and make them more noticeable.

Since it was such a nice day out, I went outside and snapped a few pictures. Not sure what I want to do with this one, but I like it.

I hope to have a Studio Sunday every week, so keep checking back!

Just Signed Up For...

The Sketchbook Project 2013!
http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject

I'm doing mine as a Stargazer's Almanac, done in what I call my "starscape" watercolor technique. Here's a sample:

I promise to take many pictures!

Studio Day!

Since I last left off, I've been going through the Artist's Way a second time. At Week 11 and a half now, one of the themes that's been coming up the most is getting rid of clutter and getting more organized so that I can create at a moment's notice. And happily it's starting to pay off!

I spent a good 5-6 hours in the studio today, working on backgrounds for my latest collage project. It's going to be a deck of cards with an astrological theme and the first one I'm working on is the Sun. I also picked up one of those tiny 4x4 canvases that are just too cute to resist, and I painted that to match the Sun background, done on a 5x7 canvas panel for easy scanning later.

In between these, I was also gessoing some pages in a small journal I'm going to be using as a art journal/scrapbook for my years at the Art Institute. I never realized just how long it takes to gesso an entire journal! It's only 10 sheets of paper, but I had to coat them pretty thick and the drying time feels like an eternity! So the book's only halfway gessoed, and I'll have to finish the other pages as I get time. All in all though, it was a very productive day!

Enjoy the photos!

Just Do It Already!

"The beginning is the most important part of the work. " - Plato, Republic

It's still January for another 24 hours or so, so I've technically met my goal to get this blog started in January!

As an artist, I've been in a dry spell for too long. I tend to have large bursts of art-making, usually fueled by an idea for a series, followed by long periods of inactivity where I just tend to gather inspiration for the next go-round. But like many artistic souls, that's just not enough for me. I want to create on a more regular basis, hang out with the Muses more often.

Once upon a time, I used to work at a Kinko's. I would take the waste paper and spiral-bind my own custom sketchbooks. I'd fill them with doodles, planning sketches for paintings or collages, words and ideas that I found inspiring, to-do lists and journaling about what was going on in my life. Somewhere along the way, I lost touch with the sketchbook habit, but looking back I see that when I kept one, I was at my most creative.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a sucker for a pretty journal. I collect them like sweaters collect fuzzballs. I have every size of Moleskine imaginable, a few fancy books from Barnes & Noble, sketchbooks from the art supply store and a ton of cheap, skinny journals from the dollar bins at Michael's. But they've sat around here so long, either unused or only partially used, never being filled to overflowing like my old wastepaper journals. I've finally taken them off the shelf and committed to actually USING them. I know, what a concept, right?

What I hope for this blog is to get back into making art on a regular - if not daily - basis. And when I do, I'll post it here. I work mostly in mixed media and collage, acrylic or watercolor. My art tends to mostly be about spiritual or emotional themes: my gods and goddesses and their myths (sacred symbolic stories), ancient philosophy, astrology/astronomy, abstract representations of emotions and feelings, and some art journaling to vent about life. If that sounds like the kind of stuff that interests you, bookmark this blog and check back!