Knife Painting and the Evolution of a Painting

I found myself quite frustrated with that Iris painting and rubbing the whole thing out so I grabbed a more more canvases and my painting knives and began just stabbing and slashing bits of color at them until I relaxed and began to feel better.

I like the unexpected nature of the results and the uninhibited nature of the process because you can never tell where it will lead you. 

I often get ideas for great paintings from an unusual color combination or composition of shapes.

 That small canvas and it's combination of greens began to suggest a garden so I'm going with that idea and attempting to do a painting of my front flower bed.

Once I'd decided to paint my garden on that green canvas the work went quickly.

Each day I give the other Canvases another try hoping to find a color combination that I like.

The Finished Painting

Inspiration and New Designs

As I've said many times. I just love the mail, it's my favorite part of the day. Aside from some letters to answer I had catalogs and this really caught my attention. 

I had been drawing and painting lots of branches and leaves and it hadn't occurred to me to use them on a doormat design.

Besides that, I had a bottle of tan paint that was drying out and needed to be used so this seemed like the perfect project for it.

At that point I decided to cover it with my favorite sort of vines an flowers instead if following the design in the catalog.

I couldn't quite decide which shades of green to use so I had fun and used them all trying out an assortment detail and liner brushes along the way. some worked better than others but I enjoyed them all.

When it dried shiny, I covered it with mat medium to cut down on the gloss and make it easier to photograph.

This is the finished piece. As you can see before I added the mat glaze that I had painted light veining on the dark leaves and dark veining on the light ones to pull the whole design together.

I plan to start this as a doormat like the catalog inspiration but there is no limit  to what sorts of other products I can put it on besides that.

Maybe a tote bag for the farmers market or the grocery store. Maybe even a bag to keep my garden supplies in (especially the catalogs and the seeds).

Maybe even a scarf or a hat to go with that...or socks...or just about anything. The sky is the limit!

Making the Most of your Work

The mind is an amazing thing and I was startled today to discover the similarity between my Tea Time painting and this ceramic button that one of my sisters had given me years ago when I was making some crazy quilt Christmas Stockings.

I was absolutely stunned at the similarity. Do you see it too? Apparently even things we're not thinking of or hadn't really noticed can really influence or inspire our thought processes.

I've been doing a lot of things with that painting since I finished it. This was a bone china cup that I had made for my Mom. It's a gift for one of her friends who hopefully isn't one of my readers. I'd hate to spoil the surprise.

I've been designing a lot of different things with that painting (or parts of it) on them in my zazzle store and I 'm pleased to say that I've already sold it on a postage stamp.

Here are some stickers that I made with some of the hats.

I love the design process and am so happy to see my art go out and play in the world.

It's always a challenge to see just how far I can push a design or how many different things I can turn it into.

It inspires me every day and seems to take on a life of it's own.

I can't wait to see where it takes me next!

Painting Last Summer's Garden

After having tea out in the garden one day I decided to pick some lettuce and pea pods for lunchtime salads. Since I didn't have anything handy to put them in I used my cup and saucer and loved the way it looked. I took photos and started a painting back then but didn't get anywhere near a finish until yesterday.

At this point the painting could be finished but I'm wanting to change the background so we scanned it just in case I ruin it now.

Another thing that we did with it was to remove the background on the computer and use the image on an assortment of different backgrounds on products in my zazzle stores.

My favorite one was to add it to my flying dishes painting that I'd done about 18 years ago. It blended with it so well that I'm probably the only person that can tell it was added on.

Many of my paintings have had blue and white dishes on them over the years so it will be fun to see how well it combines with those too.

Off to a Promising Start

I'm pleased with the results so far and have put this painting on around 100 different sorta of products this week. Now I've finished with this and am relaxing back into an abstract painting which so far is more of a finger painting than anything else. It felt REALLY good and I can't wait to get back to it.

Making life interesting, sparking creativity

You never know where the good ideas will come from. I clipped this border off a letter that I received this week. I'd never thought of using this color as a background on my florals before and this incorporates a wider selection of flowers than I usually use so it encourages me to experiment and stop worrying about which flowers would or wouldn't bloom at the same time.

I hadn't quite figured out how to do Iris as a vertical border and this seems to solve the problem for me. The first way that I'll explore that is by painting them on one of the spindles to my wheelchair ramp.

Once I see how that works out I plan to explore variations of it on some dala horses.

I'm very excited about the possibilities. You never know where inspiration will come from. Start looking at things in new ways to make your life and everything around you more interesting.

Mail Art, Inspiration and Creativity

A friend made this card using bits of envelopes an photos I'd sent her. Now it's my turn to run with the theme and see what I can do to make it more fun.

The first thing I did was to add more sunflowers and leaves to the  card before painting an envelope to match.

I'll ink them when I get back to work.

As long as I had paint left I couldn't resist doing a few more envelopes to get a bit ahead on next weeks mail. I tried a couple of roses too and this ant came over to watch.

An art project with sister's and friends

My one of my sister's does paper cutting so I scanned her little puppy into the computer and enlarged it so everyone could "play" with it.

I was drawing the roses on it when a friend brought the floral tape to the party and it inspired some of the other designs.

Before I'd finished I'd also cut up an old drawing and attached that too.

You can see the finished results in my stores on Zazzle

Designing with Lily and Iris leaves

The garden at the center of the universe

Everything comes from my garden. Food, inspiration, art, relaxation, exercise...the list is endless and of course includes the businesses where I market some of the artwork I create on various household items.

It made me laugh this week to create over 1/2 dozen new designs simply based on the unmowed grass in the corner of one of the photos that I took of my tulips a few weeks ago.

As I changed the image over and over again I eventually reduced it to what appears to be a perfectly conventional neutral tweed pattern and it really amused me to create something so classy out of a yard that's wildly grassy.

Oh dear, I find myself starting to rhyme so I'll sign off for mow before I drive us all a bit crazy.

Have fun! Don't take life so seriously, you'll enjoy it more.

Walker Gardening

This year I'm going to be making things a bit easier in the yard and garden. I'm turning one end of the driveway into a makeshift patio and container garden.

One thing about the walker I've got is that the basket and seat on it allow me to carry a lot of things around as I work.

There's no budget for plants or flowers this year so I'm just making the most of the plants I've got by dropping them into a lot of old pots that I had on hand.

These 2 mums are from my Dad's birthday party last year, it's nice to see that they made it through the winter and are off to a good start this season.

Recycle, collage and a bit more drawing before sliding into a painting

The first two images here are a combination of cutting up and pasting bits of the last drawings and filing in where needed by doing some new drawing. I'm hoping that will shake out the cobwebs and get me thinking about something new.

I thought it was a good sign when I sat down and drew this on the back of one of the other letters. I kept switching back and forth between between pencils and markers to see which results I liked better and all I really decided is that I'm ready to go back to painting. Now that I'm ready I just need to decide between watercolors, liquid or tube acrylic paints and knives or brushes.

So far I'm leaning toward heavy body tube acrylics and painting knives, it just feels SOOOO good!!!