Yep. Worked on more pillows over the weekend, but this time they aren’t of the hand-painted variety.  I decided I wanted to try something different and asymmetrical. These are the results (neither has been stuffed yet):

I like this one, but something about it bothers me. Someone suggested last night that maybe I need to change it so that I have more space devoted to a primary fabric with the other as an accent. I think I’ll try that this week.

I really like this one, but once I started stuffing it, I found the flaw: my gold accent trim ‘pops’ away from the pillow and looks bad. So I’m going ot re-do the design so that the gold accent is actually stitched flat invisibly and it will look better.

I’m really enjoying working on pillows at the moment, but know I need to get back to my bears. Hopefully all of this will get listed in my shop soon!

The Persistence of Memory (1931), Salvador Dali.

Well, going back to a 40+ hour work week last week really had a major impact on my art and crafts. I thought I was prepared for it, I really did, but I wasn’t prepared for it at all. Despite my best efforts, I have done very little painting, no sewing, and even went a day without any new original blog posts! As Pink Floyd sings, time is slipping into the future….

As being productive is very important to me, especially in light of the additional plans I’ve been working on, I really needed to whip my prioritization and time management up a notch. To begin with, I needed to determine what my priorities really are. Putting aside family (my children in particular), the priority of project-focused effort goes: Read More

Last night, for about 10 seconds, I could have made the most jaded sailor blush but after that, it opened up some guilt-free possibilities for me. What happened was pretty simple: I had two new canvases sitting next to me in my work area and put very noticeable holes through both of them when I accidentally dropped the scissors I was using to cut open a package I received yesterday. The first reaction, being a struggling artist with not a lot of money for supplies, was to immediately curse my luck and be mad about the loss of money. After that initial “I’m glad my daughters were asleep and didn’t hear that” moment, I felt liberated. Why?

Because I now had a guilt-free ability to practice some techniques on canvas! Because my supplies budget is so low, I am unwilling to practice my techniques on canvas and instead use heavy watercolor stock (which I DO gesso when I practice oils) but it’s not the same. My easel does not hold paper in any stable way so I have to practice with it lying flat on a table. Needless to say, it’s not the best solution. But with these two damaged canvases, I now have free license to practice on them and know that I am practicing on the surface I will put a final product on. It’s a nice, refreshing feeling to know I can do that. The lesson? Always find the golden opportunity in bad events. They’re almost always there, and can open new avenues for you!

Today we’re going to look at the evolution of an idea as it proceeds from being a vaguely abstract thought to being a painting hanging on a wall. While the idea didn’t end up being completed quite as I originally envisioned it, I think seeing how it progressed may give some ideas on painting workflow to others.

It all started off with an idea I had while driving home from a doctor’s appointment last week. I was thinking about my usual painting subjects (landscapes and flowers) and was wondering which I wanted to do next. My cherry blossom paintings are my most popular, but after doing a few more during the week, I was tired of the home decor style painting and wanted to do something different. Unfortunately, I also knew that my skills had not progressed yet to be able to do a more realistic painting of them.  Regardless, I knew I wanted to do something that evoked the light, gentle feeling of cherry blossoms. I also had this random thought of a young girl sitting on a swing, looking a little sad as the cherry blossoms danced around her, carried on the wind. The result was the sketch above. Read More

As others have become familiar with this blog and with my art and crafting interests, I’ve begun being asked more and more what the secret is to prioritizing so that I can paint every day, do multiple blog posts, work on other crafts and still have a life. The sad answer for everybody is that I have no secret. I just do it! See the calendar above? I put that up when I moved into my apartment in July of last year. As you can see, it’s never been changed. I must have at least 4 separate calendars around the apartment and of them all, only the ‘Art of Star Wars’ day calendar on my desk gets updated and that’s even hit-or-miss. I don’t even wear a watch! That said, I do have some guidelines I try to stick to for myself, and two golden rules, so let’s talk about those. Read More

At some point, I suspect everyone has heard the familiar idiom: ‘practice makes perfect.’ It’s a mantra thrown about frequently for anyone attempting to learn a new skill. Frankly, I think it’s a crock, and I’ll tell you why: if you ever think your work is perfect, then give up and go home as you’ll stop growing as an artisan or worse yet, become complacent and your quality will suffer while the world passes you by. Thus, I prefer the simple statement that practice brings improvement.

When I set about to begin painting again after not having touched them in twenty years, I knew my meager skills from high school had completely fallen aside and that I would have work to do to get even those back. When I left high school, my most accomplished piece of art was painting one of those little bears with hats that used to be in the art school ads in the TV Guide so I knew I had a lot of room to grow!  Thus it was with a bit of hesitation that I invested the dollars needed to purchase my first supplies. Even harder was getting over the fear of how badly it might turn out and touching brush to canvas.

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I was watching TV with my little girls, and while they were enjoying ‘Sydney White’ I was playing with my oil paints. The use and blending of color fascinates me and I am trying to find better ways of using it. That’s actually the primary reason why I moved to oils from acrylics. So as a quick project, I painted this 5×7″ canvas of dreamscape clouds. I over-blended while softening and killed some of the vibrancy, but I still think it’s pretty. My nine-year-old has decided that it’s hers when it’s fully cured so I guess I might need to do more! What do YOU think?

In my never-ending quest to milk every cent out of my art… errrr… I mean, to broaden the appeal of my creations… I have been experimenting with different ideas on how prints, cards and other reproductions might be made. Frankly, because it’s fairly easy to do, everybody seems to have cards and prints of their works and some even have mousepads, puzzles and mugs! I make such items available through sites such as Zazzle and DeviantArt but to be honest, I don’t really like having the same old stuff as everybody else. I do it because I need to make some money in order to keep creating but I hope someday to end my need for those external outlets and focus on my own end-products. Until that day comes, I keep experimenting!

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This is the tale of a humble little garden tote. It is a story of high hopes, of humble beginnings and of cruel rejection… or is it? In the creative process, and definitely in selling crafts, a little harsh reality and rejection can sometimes be a good thing. Today we’re going to look at this humble little garden tote and why it was consigned to a giveaway to a family member instead of being put up for sale in my craft shop.

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Today I thought I’d begin introducing my readers (hopefully to come) to my creative process. As with anything, the creative process starts with an idea. Oh, in some cases the idea may be more about finding motivation, such as in the popular “what can I make that might make me some cash” or the frequent “what can I make that will keep me entertained” and of course the distress call of the lonely artist: “what can I make that will impress the opposite sex?” We’re going to put those ideas behind and start at the next level of coming up with an idea, which is to begin finding ideas for projects after the motivation has been established. In my case, the creative process begins with a simple notebook. This notebook, in fact:

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