Cord-Trimmed Pillow

So I decided to try something different for me and following the suggestion from a friend on Facebook, I tried fabric painting. I think I’ve fallen in love with it! For my first project, I decided to paint my trademark cherry blossoms onto a couple of pillows. Pretty straightforward. But then I decided to make them patchwork, just like my paintings. I’m very happy with the results.  The first pillow I made I put a gold and red braided trim on. It looks nice, but was a Pain to do.

Knife-Edged Pillow

The second pillow, I left the trim off and went for a plain knife-edged pillow. I like both of these pillows, but think I prefer the crisp, clean look of the knife-edged pillow. Next I’m going to work on making some pillows that don’t have the patchwork background!

A new, fun direction has been opened for me! Yay! Let me know which type of pillow you prefer: trimmed or not!

Well, earlier in the week I posted about the wonderful opportunity that came my way to have an exhibition and how it was causing me to feel less than confident about my works and my ability to pull off a showing. I wasn’t certain it was a good idea and was hedging. After much encouragement from other artists and some solid discussion with close friends, I’ve decided… not to do it. I can hear the refrain now: “Say WHAT?!?!” Let me explain why I’ve come to this decision and why it’s the best decision for ME right now. Read More

I seem to be suffering a crisis of confidence at the moment, and it’s all been triggered by a kind act.  I received an email this morning from an acquaintance who likes my art and knows I’ve been yearning to make a sale. In it, she has offered me the opportunity to make use of some good open space in a public venue to host a personal ‘exhibition.’ Now, neither of us really knows how to stage an exhibition but that’s neither here nor there. What has happened though, is that now I’m plagued with a ton of self-doubt about how good my art is.

I know I’m a good decorative artist, and my landscapes have grown better and better. But am I good enough to invite people, even strangers, to come and see it? I am just struggling to believe that I am. It didn’t help that I was hearted by someone on Etsy who does similar paintings and I feel they blow mine out of the water! I also don’t think I have enough to do an ‘exhibition’ as I only have 12 paintings right now and they range in size from 5″x7″ to 24″x28″. To me, an exhibition should have a lot of paintings of larger size.

I also have no idea how to invite people to such an exhibition or how to display my art. Would I need to invest money I don’t have into a bunch of easels? This isn’t a place where I can hang things on the wall as the owners would kill me for putting nail holes in the walls! Frankly, I’m worried about self-sabotaging a good opportunity but I really feel frantic and scared at trying to do this.

Does anyone have any good ideas on how to approach this that they can share?

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!

Ever since I started painting again, my kids, my niece and my niece’s best friend have been asking me to teach them to paint. I’m not actually very patient as a teacher in most things, and have sent my 9-year-old to both a sewing and cupcake decorating class because I knew I’d want to throttle her before it was done due to my lack of patience. For some reason though, I don’t have that issue with painting. Read More

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

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?

Completed this morning and now listed in my fine art shop are these two 5″ x 7″ gallery-wrapped original canvas paintings of cherry blossoms. They are listed at $20 USD each, including free shipping to the U.S. and Canada as I received a very good deal on a number of these canvases so want to pass along the savings. It shouldn’t only be the wealthy who can afford nice decorative art for their homes and I think these will find very nice homes in someone’s kitchen, breakfast nook or even bathroom!

‘Peaceful Mountain River - The Oil and Oval Edition!’
Oils on Canvas - 16″ x 20″

Much as I’d love to have written about my first, it’s destruction was mentioned in the last post! After the loss of my first painting immediately after painting it and before I had a picture (I was going to take one when it was in it’s drying location), I wasn’t going to worry about painting anymore tonight. However, lying on the couch watching TV, it began to nag at me that I had promised myself that I’d have an oil painting to show at the end of the weekend and I still didn’t have one! So I got set up again and was going to repaint the original but decided I didn’t want to do that again since I had spent plenty of time earlier doing it. Instead, I decided to revisit my current favorite view: the peaceful mountain river. I thought it would be a good exercise to see how well I could do in oils what I had already done in acrylics. I am very pleased with the results.

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