Entries Tagged as: mixed-media
Bee Memories
April 20th, 2010, Comments (21)
This is where I took the collage that I began in the video I posted last week. Much of the collage is covered, but some of it peeks through and provides a cool texture and layered look to the piece, which is appropriate considering it's all about a memory.
I was inspired to paint this after re-connecting with someone I went to preschool with. She shared some super funny memories of our time together, including the time we dumped an entire bottle of her mom's perfume on ourselves and her doll carriage, and another time when we put my mom's lipstick all over her face (and it wouldn't come off!) But the most vivid memory I have of the two of us was when we sat on a bench in the preschool playground that was a bit too close to a beehive and we both got stung, her on the knee and me on the finger. I have a film-strip memory of the whole thing in my head as if it was happening in slow motion. Funny how the mind works, isn't it? It sounds like a scary memory, but it isn't, just a surprisingly vivid one, embroidered into my brain. And when I reconnected with my old friend, who is now a mom of a small child, I got the idea to paint an image of this little story that is so rich in sensory memory of sight, sound, scent, and touch for me.
What strong sensory memories do you hold in your body? In what ways could you express them?
Lights. Camera. Collage.
April 13th, 2010, Comments (27)
Hey, everyone! I'm having fun with the senses theme and was inspired to make a little video, to play with the senses of sight and sound. In this video, I show a few details of how I begin a mixed-media piece, along with some of the techniques and materials I use. I was rambling on a bit and I don't know how interesting it will be to watch, but I know I get a kick out of seeing other artists at work, so perhaps you'll enjoy a peek into my creating world!
I've continued working on the collage since I finished the video, as you can see in the work-in-progress picture above, and will begin the painting part soon. I'm curious to see how much it will follow the original seed of an idea I had for it or if it will go in a new direction once I start painting!
Other items of note:
* Memory Walk: In November, I mentioned that my grandmother passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer's (that's her and I a long time ago...gotta love the footie pajamas.) This fall, I'm going to be walking in her memory to raise funds for Alzheimer's Disease research. It's a terrible disease and I hope to make a difference. If you feel moved to sponsor me on my walk, you can do so here. As a thank you to those who donate, I will be randomly selecting one sponsor to receive a special piece of my artwork!
* Kitty Art: I've got a couple new items in the shop, including some adorable Itty Bitty Kitty art pieces and brand new Itty Bitty Kitty Greeting cards!
* Spring Sale: Through the month of April, you can use the coupon code spring2010 to receive 20% off your order of prints, cards, and original pieces in my shop.
* UPDATE: The collage in the tutorial above, later became Bee Memories.
Winter Roots
February 5th, 2010, Comments (39)
Some home related art. I started with a very vague image in my mind with layers, red, and houses, and then, following my intuition, it went in a completely different direction with lots of trees and roots. I'm calling it "Winter Roots."
Let Others In
January 30th, 2010, Comments (33)
Yesterday I finished this art for a project that's due shortly, but I thought it made a fitting image for the end of the body theme and beginning of the home theme. The theme for this piece is: "Let others in."
I think in many cases we use our body, either through body language or weight or attitude to keep others out. It's a safety mechanism meant to protect us from getting hurt. But these same safety mechanisms can also hurt us by not allowing us to get close to or get support from others. Have you ever experienced that? I know I have.
Doing this image has had me musing on the idea of letting others in, whether through an open embrace, sharing what's in our hearts, or welcoming others into our homes.
What are some of the ways you practice letting others in?
Update: A bit last minute, but this morning at 10am CST I'm going to be on Liv Lane's radio program, Get Real, in St. Paul/Minneapolis for about 15 minutes. The station is 107.1
*You can now listen to the podcast of the radio show here! I'm at the very beginning of hour 2. Enjoy!
Other places to find my art
January 28th, 2010, Comments (12)
Over at Liv Lane's blog, Choosing Beauty, Liv is having a giveaway for a print of my mixed-media piece, Lantern. You can enter to win by leaving a comment on her blog by Friday 1/29 at midnight!
I also love the question Liv asks with the giveaway, "What lights your way on your darkest days?" I answered the question in the comments and have been enjoying reading the answers from others! Liv is a fellow Creative Every Day Challenge participant, who also co-hosts a fabulous weekly radio show in Minnesota called Get Real, which I got to be a guest on last month!
You can also be entered to win one of my prints every month by subscribing to my Blue Tree Art Gallery newsletter. The sign-up form for that is in the lower left corner of the site, where I offer original art, prints, greeting cards, and calendars featuring my work.
This month and next, you can also see my work on the beautiful online zine, All Things Girl. The theme this month is Through the Looking Glass and my pieces, Leap and Listening are featured.
A big, heartfelt thank you to everyone here for supporting my growth as an artist. It means the world to me!
How to Be Gentle with Your Body and Your Art
January 15th, 2010, Comments (25)
This piece is coming along verrrry slowly, but it's been an interesting process using body shadows as the starting point for a piece of art. One thing I'm loving is the little heart that showed up in the bird's body. And within the piece, in the soaring bird, the blue hand and the layers below, I think there's a message from my body. What is this message exactly? I'm not sure yet, but I feel like it has something to do with gentleness.
The inner drill sergeant
I have an inner drill sergeant that barks orders in my ears about everything from my body to my artwork. Thankfully, it's so much quieter than it used to be.
In my early 20's, I became obsessed with my body. Like many in their first years in college, with the larger than normal consumption of pizza and mac & cheese, I gained a few pounds. And along with the pressures of being in school and trying to figure out what my future held, I became unhealthily obsessed with exercise and food and fat. Oh, it was not a fun time. I worked out 6 days a week, weighed my food, was crazy restrictive, and very cranky. I dreamed about the foods I longed to eat, but I did not eat them.. After a couple years of this madness, I was thin, yes, (people thought I was ill), but I was also miserable. And worse, I still felt "fat."
It's so easy to get sucked into the image of what women look like in the movies and television and think you're supposed to look like that. So much misery stems from trying to be some unattainable image. And then if you add in a strict drill sergeant voice, ouch.
Eventually, an inner rebellion began to build and warred against my inner sergeant and won. It was bound to happen eventually, but eating endless forbidden foods was not making me happy either. I had to find a balance again, I had to re-learn how to listen to my body, what it needed, and trust that it knew what was best. And that was hard.
A Gentle Approach
Over time, I've developed a relationship that is infinitely kinder and works a million times better for me. What does gentle look like? For me, it's about adding movement to my day because it makes me feel good (instead of out of fear of what will happen if I don't) and about allowing myself to eat what I want, while also noticing when I'm full and stopping. It's about adding self-care and noticing what my body is craving.
Have I banished that inner drill sergeant and healed my relationship with my body completely? No. It's a path I'm on. It's a path so many people are on. Sometimes, I still struggle with feeling like if I'm not beating myself up or guilting myself into action, I won't do anything at all. Just last spring, I signed up for a bootcamp exercise class. (What was I thinking?) And after the trial class, I quit. I remembered that route doesn't work for me. For me, the drill sergeant approach always leads to an eventual rebellion and that's a cycle I don't want to be caught up in anymore.
The Creativity Police
And what does this all have to do with creativity? Well, you know that drill sergeant? She doesn't just have things to say about our bodies. She also has input about the rest of our lives, including our art. With art, she might say things like, "That's not good enough! Why haven't you done more? You're lazy! Get to work and make good art, on the double!" Ouchie!
What's your art sergeant yelling in your ear?
Gentle Creativity
As I've learned to be more gentle with my approach to my body, I have also learned to be gentler with my approach to my art and creativity. And in both cases, I've found the gentle approach to be far more loving and sustainable. Part of the gentle outlook is what led me to start Creative Every Day. I loved the challenge of creating and posting daily for Art Every Day Month in November, but it wasn't something I could keep up for every day of the year. So I found a way to make creativity a part of my everyday life and it's been such a joyful (guilt-free) process!
Regular risk-taking and bravery are great for stretching yourself and growth. There's room for that kind of leaping too! But for day-to-day life, having space to be gentle, permission to do things smaller, and making things doable, works beautifully for me. I think it's so much easier to build upon our successes. It makes for a lasting relationship, one I can maintain without falling into a strict regimen or a rebellious outburst.
So how can you take a more gentle approach to your art, your body and life in general?
- Give yourself permission to do it imperfectly
- Check in with yourself, notice what you your spirit is craving.
- Have a dialogue with your inner drill sergeant (aka your inner critic)
- Take your to-do list down a notch and simplify what you plan to do. Make it doable.
- Celebrate your accomplishments. Make an already done list!
- List the things you're grateful for.
- Treat yourself.
- Notice what delights you and add more of those experiences to your life.
- Play with being gentle as an experiment, see what happens.
The list goes on. What would you add to it?
Stay tuned for more discussion about the body. In a couple days, I'll have an interview posted with the super smart Blisscovery expert, Briana Aldrich!
Body Shadows In Progress
January 7th, 2010, Comments (12)
So, yesterday I shared a video of me using body shadows to trace shapes on a piece of paper and today I began playing with paint and gel medium in those shapes. I had to stop at one point when I managed to splatter purple paint all over myself. Doh! I've been letting it sit like this and noticing what I see in it now. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a whale shape at one point. But when I turned it around, that same shape looked just like a bird's head.
Where's this going? I don't know! It might go nowhere at all. But I enjoy playing in this way, letting things happen, and then looking to see what comes up as I work. It's a fun, intuitive process that leads to interesting things that I wouldn't necessarily come up with if I planned it all out. I'll keep you updated as it progresses.
And be sure to check in tomorrow for an interview with the fantabulous Jamie Ridler about creativity and the body!
Flowing out of 2009 and into 2010
December 31st, 2009, Comments (26)
What a magical day. It's a Full Blue Moon, it's New Year's Eve, we're on the cusp of another beautiful year of being Creative Every Day, and I feel like I'm inside a snow globe with these teeny, tiny flakes falling outside. I'm especially loving that it's a Blue Moon, since I'm such a moon girl and as you might imagine, my favorite color is blue (plus, I say that "once in a blue moon" expression quite a bit.)
I've just finished my full moon dreamboard for Jamie Ridler's dreamboard group and I'm using it to reflect what I want for myself in 2010: mainly more ease and flow. I have this image of a river in my mind. There's an ease to the movement of a river, but there is also motion, action, and continuous, steady flow. Perhaps the river is also in my mind because I find sitting near moving water incredibly soothing. I think I sometimes associate stillness with stagnation, but ease and movement are not so separate. I see that in the way that getting regular exercise helps me feel more calm, and how de-cluttering helps me feel more spacious and open. It's a funny little paradox that I'd like to have in my life in 2010: ease, flow, and movement. While I've been thinking I'd use the words "ease and flow" as my theme for 2010, I think I may use the image of a river as it captures more of what I'm going for. Why not?
The dreamboard above was based on a sketch from my sketchbook that I drew onto a larger sheet of watercolor paper. I created the river with gesso and bits of snowflake tissue paper to create texture. Once that dried, I painted over it with ink and acrylics. (By the way, this is a great way to recycle holiday tissue paper and make cool textures in your art!) I then drew in the figure and wrote in some words, such as: ease, flow, resonance, calm, and movement. When I mentioned wanting more ease and flow in my life earlier this month, Terri (@TerriFisher on Twitter) let me know that Rhea is the goddess of Ease and Flow. How cool! I'm sure I'll paint her at some point this year too.
The last few years, I've loved choosing a theme word for the year. I think I may have read about it first on Christine Kane's blog (by the way she's offering a free download about choosing a theme word for the year.) Last year, I chose the word "Leap" and it served me well. I made some huge leaps in my career and my life in general. I'm especially proud of having art on the cover and an article in Artful Blogging Magazine, being on the radio, creating my first online teleclass, in-person workshop with the fabulous Jennifer Lee, first e-course, growing my online challenges, buying our first home, and selling more art than ever before. I'm so very grateful for my wonderful family, friends, loving hubster, and our four fuzzy cats. I'm also thrilled with the amazing connections I've made with fabulous creative people this year, many I met through this blog. I feel so incredibly lucky to be part of such an amazingly supportive community.
It's been a challenging year in other ways. I lost my Grandma after a battle with Alzheimer's just before Thanksgiving, I had some behind-the-scenes technical issues and problems with boundaries, I had a health scare with my beloved cat, Sadie, and I found the whole process of moving to be exhausting. I also made the decision to come off anti-depressants after being on them for ten years (I did this over a long period of time with the help of a doctor.) It was one of the most challenging things I've ever done. It still feels like a bit of a journey for me, but I'm doing really well and I'm thrilled about that. Overall, life is good. So very good. And I'm so grateful for it all.
To help me close out 2009 and grow my vision of what 2010 will be, I've printed out Goddess Leonie's stunning Creating My Goddess Year Workbook & Planner. There are some pages in the workbook that go along so beautifully with next month's (totally optional) theme of Body for the Creative Every Day Challenge, so I'll share those here. And I'm going to be interviewing the lovely Leonie next month about loving up your body, so stay tuned for that too!
Actually, I've got so much goodness planned for next month, that I can hardly stand it! It's going to be an amazing year. I love the energy that's building already. I wish each and every one of you a beautiful close to your 2009. May 2010 be filled with wild creativity, uncontrollable laughter, quiet moments of delight, and loads of love. See you in 2010!
Glimmer
December 14th, 2009, Comments (20)
I love how sparks come and tap you on the shoulder sometimes.
The days are getting darker and darker and colder and colder. I'm doing fine, but still, this time of year is more difficult and I feel more blah. But here and there are these glimmers, which is what inspired this painting tonight. The blue lines on either side of the figure were inspired by these little bare-branched tree vignettes that I saw on a walk through the woods this afternoon. Walks in the woods are glimmers. Feeling an idea come rushing in is another glimmer. A dash of hope and possibility is another. Sometimes glimmers are teeny-tiny, but just one can be brilliant.
So if you get blue this time of year and I know many of us do, hold onto those little glimmers, wherever they come from. The shortest day is right around the corner and then the days will begin to get longer and longer again soon.
I can't say this is connected to the recycle theme really, but that's ok. I'll have a fun recycling post up tomorrow! In the meantime, happy glimmering!
Recycled Bits and Pieces in Art
December 11th, 2009, Comments (12)
A little sneak peek of something I've been working on for a book by arist, writer and teacher extraordinaire, Carmen Torbus, that I'll be featured in along with an amazing group of artists. So exciting! And it's so hard not to share the whole thing because I love the way it came together! But soon enough.
I share this little snippet because it fits well with the recycle theme going on this month for the Creative Every Day Challenge. In this piece and in a lot of my art, I recycle bits and pieces of paper to create the collage backgrounds for my paintings. In this small section, is a bit of to-do list stationery and some sheet music.
Where do these bits and pieces of paper come from? Well, like many creative folks, I'm a collector. I see interesting pieces of paper and I have trouble throwing them away. So, they get stored in boxes and eventually used in artwork. Sometimes I buy the scraps at fairs that sell antique goods in the summer, sometimes I trade with other artists for scraps (I loved doing this for a 6x6 collage project), and sometimes I find the bits myself in everything from my own scribbled notes, junk mail, and doodles on rice paper. My sister-in-law recently gave me a great stack of old blueprints that I adore using and my bff recently gifted me an old book of design forms. I like having the variety, so when I sit down to collage, I can pick through my supplies intuitively and use what works for me in the moment.
Sometimes it's easy to forget what we have, so it's good every so often to sort through it all. Whenever I do this, I'm always inspired by what I find and re-discover amongst the boxes. What are some of your favorite recycled goodies that you use in your artwork?
p.s. I was recently interviewed as part of the "Inspiring Women" series on the All Things Girl blog. All Things Girl is a fabulous zine filled with great articles, art, and interviews (and you can submit your artwork too!) that I highly recommend checking out!
