Not Happy

Brought a large custom canvas to art yesterday that I found at a thrift store.  I'm contemplating Monet's Water Lilies on it.

I was all excited to start on that when I walked in to class and noticed my two Georgia O'Keefe Black Iris paintings had something splattered all over them!

WTF?!

Seriously.  It's not like my work was a masterpiece but it was MY work.  And I don't want it trashed.

So I set them both up on my table easels, practically in tears, to attempt to fix them as best I could.  The teacher wasn't as upset as I though she should have been.  Basically she told me a story of a painting of some one's that she inadvertently messed up and then proceeded to tell me that it's not a great room to have art around (even though she puts every one's paintings around the class).  WTF, again?!  The room is shared with the ceramics people.  The teacher thinks it was the person who mops the floors.

Whatever.

I just said that I won't be keeping my art out in that room any longer.  Which kind of sucks.  I was enjoying having my art out and having my friend who takes the ceramics class attempt to guess which one was mine.

Accomplished

I got it done! 

I was racing to get two quilts done by today as there's a big storm coming in tomorrow and then another a day later.  Supposedly it's going to snow down to 2000.  Here at 4500 feet elevation, we're supposed to get several feet of snow.

Getting those two quilts finished, and delivered, is a relief.  Particularly because I'm already stressing about the car situation, or lack there of.  It's going to be a busy week and we may possibly be staying home with these storms.  I have art class Tuesday and Thursday and a portfolio review on Thursday.  Kids to get to school.  One kid has two doctor appointments and a haircut scheduled for next week.  Quilters guild meeting on Monday.  Zentastics get together on Friday.  And I'm going out of town for a party Friday night.

Whew!   Definitely don't need the car stress or anxiety of getting around in the snow right now.  But I do love the snow (i love the snow, i love the snow, i love the snow).  I just have no confidence driving in the snow and ice after my accidents.  Plus the fact that my car isn't running well and really needs tires.

Bleh. 

I'm going to keep saying it:  I love the snow, I love the snow!

And if I need to, everything else can be put on hold and we'll just hang out at home.  And be safe.

I could use a couple of days to sew, knit, crochet, read, draw, Zentangle, cook. 

No problem!

Cold Studio

Sometimes it's hard for me to get motivated to be in my studio because it's so cold down there.

I turned the one car garage into my art studio with all of my fabric, long arm, several other domestic machines plus a serger, my paints, easel, art books and art supplies.  But it's chilly down there these days!  It was 18 degrees out this morning and got up to about 28.  Brrrrrrr......

Almost finished the mirror image Georgia O'Keefe Black Iris paintings in class today.  The circles are just different enough that it bothers me, so I'm going to fix that on Thursday along with one corner.

The next painting I'm doing is going to be Klimt's Golden Tears.  I did a chalk pastel drawing of this already.  I'm planning on adding the gold leaf detail as well. 

Inspiration

What inspires you to create?

One of the things that inspires me is being around other creative types.

I have this amazing group of women that I get together with twice a month to Zentangle.  The group has been meeting for years now and we end up doing so much more than just art.  We talk, laugh, cry, inspire, joke, do tai chee, breathe together, listen to music, support each other, connect, have amazing conversations, share our latest creations, learn from each other and bond as women.

This what from our last get together:

I brought the sketch of the rose I did in prep to paint Dali's The Meditative Rose.

These are some of the tangles that we did.

We all did the tangle Diva Dance.  I love how they all turned out so different!

O'Keefe's Black Iris

I'm attempting to paint my interpretation of Georgia O'Keefe's Black Iris in class.

I've never been a huge O'Keefe fan, but I do like this painting.  I have two square canvases that I want to use.  So the first thing I did was change the proportions on her painting to square.

I'm not sure if it looses much in translation or not.

Then I gessoed one canvas white and one black.  I want to paint the first one on the white square canvas (which I started on Tuesday), and paint the mirror image on the black canvas.

The idea is that you can hang the two in several different configurations, creating new shapes each time.  What took me the longest so far was getting them the same on each canvas so that they will  match up.  Still not sure if I got that right or not, but we'll see!

Painting

In my series of exploring paintings by famous artists, I painted Edvard Munch's The Scream.

I've always loved this image, but never painted it.  I frequently have to work with the image a bit first before attempting to paint it so I did do a smaller colored pencil sketch of this piece in my sketchbook.

I had been looking at this piece for a few days as it was propped up against a chair in my living room.  There were a couple of things that bothered me about it, so I did some additional work on it today and I like it much better.

I made the facial features darker and did some work on the railings.  The last one just didn't look right.  It's not perfect, but much better now.

It's infrequent that I can look at a piece that I've finished and not see a section that I 'messed up' on or would have done differently.  But I'm happy with my interpretation of The Scream now.  

Inspire

Wow.   Haven't been on here in years!  One of my intentions lately is to revive this blog.

I do enjoy writing about my creative and crafty stuff.  It seems like I've gotten more into the sketching and painting lately and less into the fiber arts.  So, since this is MY art blog, it can be about all medium of creativity!

I am taking a painting class this semester.  I took my first painting class in college, which was now about.....20 or so years ago.  Yikes!  Painting is not something that I do frequently, but something that I want to do more of.

The first assignment was a monochromatic primary color still life.  Not easy for a first assignment.  My first instinct would be to do blue, but I've actually already done this assignment in blue for another class.  So, I went with read.

I don't like it. 

I could have really been done after the first class, as I'm a quick painter.  But I decided to continue working on it the second class and I think it got too worked.  Knowing when to be finished is something that is instinct.

The second assignment was to be analogous colors.  

I've worked with this image of Cezanne's Skull Pyramid before and done a crayon sketch of it last summer.  

When I asked her if I could paint this image, she said yes.   She told me that the assignments in class are more guidelines for the beginning students (there's a wide range in this class), and if I had a direction that I wanted to go in, go for it.  Very cool!

I really like how this one turned out and currently have it on my wall.

I hate to waste paint.  I've been keeping a small canvas or two on hand and at the end of class have basically taken all of the remaining paint on my pallet and just put in randomly on a canvas.  

That was the background for this piece.

I think the top lotus needs more depth, but I really like the lower one.

This was also a canvas that I had used up paint on for the background.  

I was playing around with a portrait of my daughter.

So here's to creative inspiration!  And more paintings to come!