"One for the Road"

"One for the Road"

18" x 24" x 1 5/8" acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

This is my next completed piece for my art gallery exhibit scheduled for May 2011. I'm really enjoying doing these cloud paintings. I love how you get the details of the close-up object with the huge puffy clouds in the background.

I chose a Monarch butterfly because Del Rio is one stop of many in the great yearly Monarch migration. Del Rio is kind of on the edge of their migratory channel so we don't get overrun with them, but when they're coming through the front of your car will be redecorated with orange and red smears.

It's gross. And sad. But mostly gross.

My next few paintings will be different in style and application. I will be doing some abstract art that I have learned and enjoy to do for it's freehand styling.

And use of a spray bottle.

One can't flourish a spray bottle with enough flair. It's fantastically fun!

I'm happy with the end result of the butterfly, especially the three dimenionality of the wings. I'm not even sure I meant to do that.

I'm finding that shading lighting is getting easier and easier. I don't have to think about what to paint or how to paint something to get the shadows or highlights I want. My hand just seems to know what to do. Maybe it's the brush. But whatever it is I like it!


Isn't this color just luscious? I could swim in it, or eat it. Maybe both!

"Dog Walker"

"Dog Walker"

9" x 12" acrylic on paper

This is my submission for this months Calypso Moon Artist Movement. Our assignment was to paint a scene from our life that included people. Since I've already painted Paige, I thought I would get going on painting each of the other children.

Phoebe, pictured here, is 2 1/2 and full of herself like most toddlers. She likes what she likes, hates what she hates, and gets what she wants. Mostly. She is one of those people that have "it", whatever that "it" is that attracts people to them like moths to a flame. Kids at the park fight to see who will play with her. Kids in preschool punch each other to sit next to her. Her brother sneaks into her bed every night so he can sleep with her. Why? As he says because he loves her so much.

We all do.

Especially Belly, our 10 year old Great Dane. Belly is meek and passive so it's no problem letting Phoebe walk her which she does often. To and from the park, the garbage bin, the "ditch", Phoebe pulls on Belly to get to her going.

Its a great thing, really. It keeps Phoebe moving in the right direction and makes Belly feel loved.

"Northern Lights"

"Northern Lights"

14" x 14" x 2" acrylic on canvas

This is the next completed painting for my art show in May. I am looking for more free-flying objects to paint so if you have any ideas let me know!

I entitled it "Northern Lights" because we don't see a lot of fireflies here in the deep South. I know they are common up North so I decided to name it as such.

Fireflies? Lightning bugs?

Whatever you want to call them they add so much to the interest of a dusk sky!

Up next: Monarch Butterfly!

"Be Free, Dandelion"

"Be Free, Dandelion!"

12" x 36" x 2" acrylic on canvas

Now that I've sorta kinda gotten the hang of painting sorta kinda decent clouds, I've decided to use them as my central theme for my art show in May. You see, in Del Rio the sky is vast, an immense blue blanket thrown over the top of your everyday life. It's stunning in it's depth of color, immense space, and limitless freedom.

And don't forget the clouds! Though Del Rio is a desert, the sky holds a lot of moisture in these spectacular cloud formations that seem to go on forever.

"Look, Mom! A starfish! Look! A hippo! Over there! A Parasaurolophus!"

I'm also going with the freedom thing as another side theme. I love the idea of flying; flying away, flying towards...

"I'll fly away Old Glory,
I'll fly away,
When I die, hallelujah by and by,
I'll fly away!"

Here's a closer look of the dandelion. (There is a strange yellow hue on the bottom of this shot that does not exist on the actually painting.)


Closer....


...and closest!


It's really hard to get the scope of this painting from these cropped images. The color washes out, the subject goes out of focus, and the whole thing looks kind of blah.

So I included a picture of the painting on my sad, yellow wall. I painted the edge of the canvas an espresso brown that acts as a kind of frame.

1 down, 6554 to go!

Next up, lightning bugs!

An American Songbird

"Free to Fly"

20" x 24" acrylic on canvas

The first blog I wrote, The Parent Trapped, was a fun journey of self-expression, family hilarity, and embarrassing anecdotes. I have since switched over to writing The Desert Chronicles which is less edgy, maybe, and more travel and locale specific, kind of.

My point....I am running out of photo space on Blogger so I have to delete The Parent Trapped soon. It spanned a year and has some real gems of humor, pearls of wisdom, and fool's gold of crap. I don't want to lose it, nor see it languor on a hard-drive collecting dust on the shelf.

So I am in the process of turning it into a hard backed book to languor on a shelf collecting dust. You know, Blog to Book. As I was editing it, I realized there was no one single picture that captured the essence of The Parent Trapped. I didn't want to use a family photo because even though it was mostly involving stories about my family, it was more about ME, and I am more than just my family.

That's one of the good things about being an artist. If you need something and can't find it, paint it for yourself!

I really liked how the clouds came out for my nephews C-17 painting, and since I really love clouds anyway, I decided to do another giant cloud painting.

Next I needed a subject. Symbolism.....symbolism.....Trapped....trapped by what? What traps us? A fence. A barbed wire fence! What is the opposite of trapped? FREE! What is free? A bird! An American Robin! Free! An American songbird, perched on a freedom denying barbed wire fence, but ready to take off for the great wide sky of liberation!

How's that for symbolism?

(I know. It's a male robin and I am a girl. Shhh! Don't tell anyone!

Here's a detail of the robin. I scrimped on the details of the fence but I liked the simplicity of it and didn't want the fence taking too much focus from the bird, er, me, or the clouds.


Here's a detail of the detail of the bird.

I am very satisfied at the overall outcome of this painting. Of course we artists are never fully satisfied but I am happy to say that I received the message loud and clear:

PUT THE BRUSH DOWN BEFORE YOU MESS IT UP. WALK AWAY. YOU'RE DONE!!!

I hear you. Loud and clear.

Pie; Tomorrow

This month for Calypso Moon, we were assigned a Halloween themed painting. Well, two paintings. Both of Halloween, one without using a paintbrush/palette knife.

I only have time to do one this month, so here is my recipe for:

Halloween Pumpkin Non-Painting

9 x 12 piece of canvas paper
acrylic paints
painters tape
homemade stencil of pumpkin, cut into strips for form pumpkin sections
paper plates for palettes
plastic shopping bags

Draw the pumpkin on a stiff piece of paper, cut out pumpkin form. Cut pumpkin into strips. Cut out a stem shaped stencil. Using a plastic shopping bag balled up, bounce the colors together to achieve desired values. Pounce the the colors on the canvas, background first. When dry, tape off a straight edge for the table top. Apply table top colors. Let dry.

Using stencil, apply pumpkin colors with plastic bag. When dry, use pumpkin section strips to create high and low-lighted areas of the pumpkin.

Pounce in stem color.

DONE!!!

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Rollin On the River

"Rollin' On the River"

11" x 14" watercolor and ink on paper

This is my submission to the Rookie Painter art assignment. The reference photo was of four leaves that were on a flat white background with shadows. The other submissions for this assignment have been spectacular in the originality and license each artist took for the project. I decided to make mine more a mix of abstract realism.

I am completely making up that term. Can realism be abstract?

Check out the other submissions over at The Rookie Painter. I never knew browning leaves could be so artistic and stunning!

(Funny story. Paige who is in first grade, came home with an assignment from school to collect "fall things" from our yard. Um, we live in an apartment in San Antonio. It's 85 degrees. We have non-desiduous oak trees. And purple sage.

Those poor teachers trying to do fall crafts without any fall things! We did the best we could by collecting acorns, though they were still green and on the trees, and picking a few of the mature red leaves from the red tip shrub outside our door.

Welcome to fall in San Antonio!)

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