And The Beat Goes On

Hello Again,

Every time I planned to wrap up that last project I found myself grabbing more materials and continuing with the mixed media. I'm enjoying it so much I think

I'll just ride it out.

At this point they're just for my own pleasure as I enjoy watching them change step by step.

I thought you'd enjoy watching the process evolve. feel free to comment when you feel I've gone too far. I never know when to quit.

What's new on your creative journey? Have there been any surprises on the way? Feel free to comment and share.

This little canvas went through a few last changes before I considered it finished.

Actually I just looked at it from a different angle and considered it finished. Before I went back to the rest of them.

This one is my new favorite so I glued it onto a card and wrote to another artist friend of mine.

And even it went through some last minute changes on it's way out the door.

After that, I couldn't resist getting back to the rest of them.

I'm not sure which version of this one I like best. What do you think.

This small canvas panel was a nice opportunity to to use some of my smallest palette knives.

This one was kind of bright and fun and will probably be glued to a card to another painting friend. we love challenging each other on our way to either "real" art or commercial success and of course we're all aware that there comes a time to make a choice. I plan to have some fun before I get there. How about you?

It's so easy to get carried away on these. Luckily no one seems to mind.

Well, this has been fun and there's still a small stack of them for another time.

I'll save these three (or more) they're on paper so I may cut them into more to save for a rainy day. (or a snowstorm) you never know what to expect these days.

Keep on painting, it will make you feel better,

Julia

Here We Go Again

 Thanks for following me so far. This is my usual method of working until inspiration strikes. I hope you're not getting tired of reading about it. You never know when another project will pop up so keep checking to see when the next inspiration strikes.

Oh well, Here's where it went today.

One painting is on a small canvas. I'd added some collaged bits of sheet music to it. They were about painting, making things and blue sky. At that point I began to paint bits of blue sky and clouds on it.

This is the one I mentioned in the last post, mentioning that it probably should have been left alone because it was fine as it was.

It's an easy mistake to make. One of the hardest things as an artist is knowing where to stop.

This last piece is on a scrap of heavy duty watercolor paper. It looks interesting so I can't wait to see where it goes next.

Speaking of not knowing where to quit. I went back to work on that canvas again on Wednesday and am not sure what to think of it now so I've hung it over one of the desks so I can think it over a bit.

I've titled it "The Nature of Art and Music" Because the sheet music scraps have messages about blue skies, making things and painting. So I tried to include elements of each.

I hope you're curious too. Come back and see how the others go.

Don't Forget to Paint Yourself Happy,

Julia

More Projects

As I finish each of the small paintings a toss a few things into the mix.

As you can see, at this point I added a large canvas and a couple works on paper.

I wasn't sure where to go with them all I added bits of collage and stencil.

I followed that with more paints and I'm beginning to like the look of one of them. I'm just not sure what to do with it.

What do you think of it? It took me until Tuesday to get back at it.

Now that I did get back to it I think I should have left it alone because now I feel that I've spoiled it. What do you think?

As long as you're here, feel free to pop into the next post and see where it goes next.

Thanks so much for joining me.

Julia

Slow Saturday

 Greetings Friends,

After I finished on zazzle yesterday I went back to work on those 2 small paintings and of course my mood had shifted and I no longer thought about them turning into landscapes and got a real surprise.

It appears that at least one of them want's to be roses and who knows where they'll go when I sit down to finish that  one.

Well, back to the design mine.

This is a no limits day so use any palette knives and brushes you want to, I am.

Have Fun and Keep on Painting,

I liked it so well at this point that I decided it was finished and will be putting it on a card soon.

Pop into my Zazzle store and look it over.

I hope you'll like it.

Julia

Progress so far

 Hello Again,

I'm happy to say that I found those scissors I was looking for yesterday and put them to work on some catalog images that reminded me of my work and seemed to suggested different ways to use them.

I look at this as low budget market research because I just flip through the catalogs in my junk mail to see what sorts of things are selling these days. Clipping the images and putting them together on "idea /inspiration pages" and then writing a few notes down on what it made me think of.

After doing that I went to my main zazzle store and followed up on some of the ideas. It was interesting to see how well my designs compared to those in the catalogs.

That made a pretty good days work for me so I set things up for doing a bit of painting today to continue "playing " with those small paintings.

Today I went back to palette knives and wasn't to excited about the results except that the dark areas on them began to suggest landscapes to me and I thought I'd try a lighter bodied paint and some brushes and see where that takes me.

Of course before I dive into that I need to pop over to zazzle and design a few last minute valentine cards so that I can kick my sales up a bit and be able to buy more art supplies.

I plan to kick my painting up a notch and do some bigger and more interesting pieces soon.

Keep Creating and Paint yourselves Happy,

Julia

Thoughtful Thursday

 About this time of the week I start to assess what I've created and what I'd like to do next when I realized that I haven't created enough cards that would be good for Valentines Day and that I will need to make a short detour to zazzle to get that done before returning to the things I've been doing around the house and studio today.

As I straightened things up I discovered that I had a lot more sketchbooks than I thought I did so I think a nice New Years Resolution would be to choose just one and finish filling that as I work.

Now I'm on a search for what happened to all of the scissors in my last flurry of creativity.

But first off to zazzle and some work on those cards.

Happy Creating,

Julia

Today's Challenge

 I'm starting with the remains of my last group of experiments and seeing what I can make from those. I only finished one but am pleased with the results.

                                                    Before

                                                   After

This time I used 2 different types and sizes of palette knives, one round brush and one liner. The sizes didn't seem to make much difference in the results and I used it to make a card for answering my mail today.

I can't wait to see what the results of the next painting will be. This one is going overseas to an old Friend who is also an artist and may enjoy the texture and composition of it.

 I hope you enjoyed the progress of today's project and will pull out your paint's and join me next time to

Paint Yourself Happy,

Julia

New Uses for Old Christmas Cards

 As we get ready to celebrate the new year some of us are taking down our Christmas cards and deciding what to do with them. Which ones are the keepers and which go to the recycling, trash or can be used for craft projects.

I have one more solution that works well for me. A lot of them have shiny surfaces so they work well to lay my paints out on instead of using a palette or palette paper and best of all they are free.

I'm using small scraps of heavy/stiff watercolor paper and acrylic paints to see which kinds of strokes and effects that I can get with each of my palette knives. First I tried a standard mixing knife and was pleased with the results.

Here you see the results along with the knife I used. I could have stopped here and made a card out of it but...

I was listening to the news this morning as I was working and wondering if I could capture the feeling I was having of what it must be like with the snow hitting some of the lava flows in Hawaii. The results were no where close to anything recognizable and I seem to have spoiled the previous painting. What do you think?

This was my 2nd exercise and I used a diamond head knife for this one. I liked the fact that the areas of color it put down were more delicate and less defined than the basic knife.

You can see quite a bit of difference between the two.

I nearly called the painting finished at this point until a friend and artist suggested that it looked like a bunch of flowers at which I took as a challenge as I went back to work on it.

I used both the pallete knife and a couple of brushes to achieve this result.

 

The 3rd exercise involved a much larger knife and should have been done on a larger surface.

To me it began to suggest a couple of people working in an art class but when I tried to develop that theme, the painting failed so I will be painting over it very soon. Don't worry, every failure just builds a strong surface for your next success.

Thanks for joining me and be sure to comment below. I'll be continuing my experiment with my collection of odd shaped palate knives over the next few days so you may want to pop back in and check the results.

I ordered very few art supplies last year beyond sample sets of both gouache and acrylics in tiny tubes in less than half an ounce yet I had a very satisfying year of work. Read on (or back) to find out how I managed it an whether or not I want to go on that way in the year ahead.

Moving On, Into the Blue

 Now that I've finished my designs for 2021 it's time to get back to some art and assess what types of materials I have on hand to work with so I decided on my favorite color which is blue.

I started with part of a collage in blue and white for inspiration and a blue Marker. I never have been comfortable with markers so I thought this would be a good time to start with a few different strokes and ways of holding/handling it. I was NOT happy with the results so I moved on to using gouache. (I had plenty of that).

I liked the way that some of the marker showed through the gouache.

The problem was that the more types of water based media that I used, the more of the collage lifted and pulled off.

Next, I decided to use a heavy bodied acrylic paint and my new palate knives so the moisture wouldn't be a problem but I discovered in the last year I'd used all of the amazing shades of blues I had and am down to a couple shades of liquid blues. 

Well, by then I figured I'd had enough of it so I grabbed the black and white with my hands, a spork and a palate knife, scraped stroked and beat it to see where it would take me.

I was amazed to see the clear image of a chair appear out of nowhere. at this point I split the image in half and turned it into a rather nice set of notecards just in time to catch up with my mail.

All in all I considered it a day well spent. I learned a few things about the art materials I have on hand and those I need to order in and on top of that I got some interesting new notecards to surprise people with.

I hope you all find ways to make your days useful and fun as well, I used the non object card as a get well card with the caption "I'll bet this looks like you feel right now, get well soon" so you see even your messiest work can come in handy. Never be afraid to dive in and use those art supplies. There's no way they can go to waste. Everything is good for something. Don't give up or sell yourself short.

Paint Yourself Happy,

Julia

My Last Christmas Design for 2021

About 25 years ago I did a painting of a Christmas Wreath for my parents living room at Christmas.

Now that they've passed and the painting has been returned to me I thought that it 

needed to be updated so that I could share it with someone else.

This time I decided to redo the image so that I could use it in my Zazzle store. The first thing that needed changing  was the bow.

I started trying to change the contours to make it look more real and then failing that I created a plaid pattern to cover my shortcomings.

Here are the in progress photos:

This is a close up of the bow.

Then I added a few more berries and leaves to brighten up the look of the grape vine wreath.

 

From this point it will be photographed and the background will be removed with the

Computer so the wreath can be placed on any product or background that I would like it on.

This should be nice when I use it on next year's Christmas merchandise.

There were a few other designs to finish up but I'm really looking forward to my new designs of 2022.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Adventure Strikes Sketchbook Mornings

One of the most important things you need when drawing is light and preferably natural light.

My best source these days is the large windows around our local McDonalds. The apps and coupons make the food affordable as well.

After I eat I pull out my sketchbook, pen and pencils to get some drawing done.

I started tis with drawings in both colored pencil and ink and then took it back to my studio to finish i in gouache and acrylic.

The greens, yellow and browns are gouache and the blue was a pre mixed acrylic.

Today went down another path as I pulled my wheelchair up to the table and a good Samaritan came over to move a chair out of my way so that I could sit up to the table.

As she did that  she explained that there were other tables especially for wheelchairs and I should have used one of those.

I thanked her and explained that I had chosen this one because of the sunlight, that it was important I sit there because I was an artist and had planned to be doing some drawing there.

At that point she asked what sort of things I painted and when she heard what kind of work I do, she said that she used to do watercolors. We discussed the ins and outs of working with those. After that she was surprised to hear that both of the masks my husband and I were wearing were made from paintings that I had done. You can find these masks and much more at Zazzle.com/julia_art* or zazzle.com/dalahorse*.

Well, by this time my husband had come back to the table and the wait staff brought the food but on went our new friend about grandkids, knitting and bunion surgery which wasn't too bad because we'd long ago finished our meals. Some where in the course of the conversation a diner at a nearby table chimed in to say that she loved my dress so I stopped to tell her where to buy them and went back to the conversation with the first gal as my poor husband sat by politely, joined in were he could and went back to just rolling his eyes from time to time.

 

I told our friend that I design dala horses that get put on a lot of things and our friend said she'd been given a keychain with a dala horse on it as a gift from a friend returning from a trip to Sweden. Just then the second gal chimed in to say that she collected keychains and had thousands of them which spiked quite the conversation between the two of them.

 When we left those two were happily chatting about their collections (and their feet) and we smiled to think we'd done our bit to stamp out loneliness at Christmas.  (both hers and our own)

Yes, I did also come out of this with a new drawing and so much more. I had kind of a Christmas sort of feeling and I'd like to Wish You a Merry Christmas to you too. 

One Dollar Nutcrackers

Thanks again to my local Dollar Tree store I got these plastic and paper nutcrackers. They are not as attractive as traditional wooden ones but good enough to use as models for some drawing and paintings.

This was my first attempt at a drawing. I decided to opt for a more festive look in traditional Christmas Colors.

It's obvious that wasn't paying attention to the actual shapes and sizes of all of the elements involved so I'll go back to the drawing board and give it another try.

Keep watching, it's bound to get better.

Merry Christmas!

Juila

More Pinecone Designs

 

Here's a notecard set that I made for a  friend from a new design that I've been working on.

This is the same image before and after I painted it in.

Which version do you prefer? Be sure to leave a comment and let me know.