A Chance To Win

Not my art but a piece of art by one of my favorite contemporary artists, Diahn Ott.  Go to her blog, here's a link, Art by Diahn, you'll see some work she's thinking of adding to her Etsy shop.  Vote for your favorite and leave a comment there telling her what you chose and you'll be entered into the weekly drawing for one of the prints. She'll be selecting two winners next Friday from among the comments.

Hmmm.... I wonder about adding a contest to my blog.  I know a lot of folks read it but not many comment, maybe some sort of contest would be an incentive.  What do you think?

Dancers and some other things

 

This one is a poured piece that has been mounted on a piece of wood and then I put an acrylic glaze over the top to protect it.  I learned about the technique from a friend and decided to try it.  I'm not sure how I feel about it... I do like the painting.

This has been a busy week and I was thinking I didn't have any new work to post.  That is until I actually started to think about posting.  I have this piece hanging on the wall waiting for it to let me know where to go with it.  This is part of my Sacred Spaces Series

And last night I did another tempera resist piece experimenting with drying with a heat gun between steps.  My Creativity class starts tomorrow night and this is what my students are going to learn to do so I wanted to know if they could be finished in the time frame we have... they can.

And, on top of these projects, my husband and I spent a couple days in Chicago... camera in hand.  I'll share a highlight, the Sears Glass Tower, that's my foot just so you can see why I got such an unusual view of the city...

Studio Tour and a sketch

The camera has been found.  Some might say this studio is still a bit messy; however,  I work on a variety of things at once and they are out while I'm working on them, to me this is spiffy.  The first photo is what you see when you walk in from the house.  That's commercial size jelly roll pan on my easel.  Since most of my paintings are poured so that's my support, it catches the paint (which I save one way or another.)  The table under the larger window is where I do most of my drawing and work on fabric collages that become pins.

The right side of the island is where I mask for pouring and do the tempera resist paintings. The small white cupboard holds tools and supplies for dolls heads.  The rest of the doll construction takes place in my sewing room in the basement.   To the right of the cabinet is the matting and framing station. 

And here are a couple views if you come in from the outside.

 

I am fortunate to have a small office too.  Here's a view of that.  Notice the coffee table, I am so in love with that.  My thoughtful son gave me a type box for my birthday one year and I built a coffee table using it as the top.  I have another one that's larger and someday it's going to become a desk I think.  My computer and files are on the wall that you can't see.

Now that it's all clean the challenge is to keep in that way.  Having some clear surfaces gave me room to work on a couple pieces but they aren't done yet so I won't post for a few more days.  I did get some quick sketches done for a commission I'm working on.  I do pen and ink drawings of homes; I especially love to do older homes and this one is a folk style home that has been lovingly restored.  The sketches are pencil in my sketchbook... just trying on views.