So, shame on me, it's been a while since I've posted anything...like over a year. But I have been busy, I'm now a mother of four and they are all under the age of five...so I'm pretty much running in every direction after them all day. Even though I'm the crazy barefoot housewife I still find time now and then to do some painting. Officially I'm a mixed media artist, meaning I use several different mediums to make my artwork, pastels, acrylics, collage, pen and ink and a number of other fun artist and crafters products. So today I'm going to share a few of my projects. I do also have several art journal layouts, but maybe I'll get to those next year.
The first thing that you should understand about the artwork I make is that I try not to express my feelings in my art, I can be in a pretty dark state of mind from time to time and I have no desire to be reminded of it, so I choose to paint things that make me happy. Bright colorful things that remind me of spring or summer, paintings for my kids, things with quotes on them that I like etc. Another things about my art is that I have two main styles, the first is a sort of abstract, higher end style that you might see on the walls of homes on interior design shows, the second is what I consider more like children's artwork, things you might find in a child's bedroom. So here we go, I hope you enjoy.
This painting is currently untitled but was one of the first real paintings that I've made that turned out sort of the way I wanted. I was watching a lot of the HGTV show "Colorsplash" with David Bromstead and he did a painting similar to this and I decided to try it. I used a turkey baster to make the paint drip, it was a lot of fun and totally made a mess in my studio but it was worth it!
This is a horrible photo of this painting, the colors are more even in real life, I'm not much of a photographer, particularly since I take most photos with my iPhone but what are you going to do? I originally painted this for my daughters room but I thought it was so cheery and fun that I decided to keep it in our Family room instead. It's hard to tell but I adhered a layer of book pages and scrapbook paper to the background before painting it to give it some texture (I do this a lot with my artwork). I had a sample of some texture paste and tried it out on the cherry blossoms and it worked pretty well to give more of a gradated color palette. This painting is also untitled.
This piece is called "Ballerina" and I went very heavy on the collage. I was able to get such a vibrant and translucent shade of blue for the dress by using pastels on my paper before sealing it with acrylic medium and adhering to the page.
This piece is called, "For the birds" originally I was going for a cheery group of birds hanging out on a power line or clothes line but they all ended up looking like crows and the whole things was kind of creepy. I would have painted over it and made something else but so many family members and friends liked it that I decided to keep it. Personally I think this painting is for the birds.
I have a lot of sketch books and notebooks laying around my house, if I were to just sit and draw in them I would no doubt get better at drawing, but I don't have the patience for it and most of my drawings turn out awful, I do much better when I get to use paint and other various artist implements, but every now and then I luck out and draw something that I like. As I was flipping through an old notebook one day, looking for a blank page to make a list of something or other I came across this girl that I had drawn. The body was horrible but the head looked okay so I gave her the Anne Boleyn treatment and cut off her head and pieced together a body out of scrap papers I had laying around. I topped it off with a little tiny heart lace thing that I had acquired in my stash (my stash is quite extensive). I finished this piece a couple years ago but it always reminded me of my late friend Jenny who lived up to this to a tee. She will always be one of my heroes.
This painting is titled Butterflies, last year my mom talked me into helping her do a holiday bazaar...the bazaar was a joke, there were only a handful of venders shoved into a conference room that most people going in and out of the building didn't see and she only sold a couple things. This was a piece I made for that show, it didn't sell, total bummer because this would look so cute in a little girls room! So now it adorns the wall in my studio. It wasn't a total loss because pictures like this make me happy, and being happy is what it's all about right?
This is an abstract titled "Poppies" which did actually make it into my kids bedroom. I really love poppies, they have such delicate petals and are so vibrant. This is one of the few paintings I planned out before pulling out the paintbrushes, it didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted but still okay.
This was an old plaque that had a picture on it I wasn't crazy about, so I painted over it and made this mangy looking owl (if you don't know about it yet, see my post about my owl obsession). He's not my favorite owl I've ever made. When I go to visit my niece and nephews in Idaho they always ask me to draw owls for them to color or paint so I normally whip one up that looks kind of like this.
That's all I have for now, I have a few more art pieces floating around here and there, if I think of any I may add to it, but here you go for now, I hope you enjoyed my artwork and style.
