Forced retirement and my art

Well, since my job is ending in a few months, it looks like I'll be looking at a sort of "forced retirement". It may be interesting to see how my art is affected by this. Over the last few months, the not knowing has certainly been rough on my poor muse. She'd been hiding for some time.

So...now that I know, at least I can look forward. More time on my hands should mean more art. I hope it means time to take some art classes and go to more live model drawing sessions and just plain do more of the things that nurture my soul.

I hope...

Getting "in the groove"

Now that winter is past, I seem to have some mojo back. Its a relief really. I was actually getting scared that I'd lost it.

So what I've mostly done is just a few quick and fun projects, but its helped.

These were for an ATC swap titled eVil Cute. Morbid huh? They were fun to make. I think we all have some capacity for evil in us, even if it just comes down to silly things like this.



This is an acrylic 3 page spread for a traveling moleskin journal group that I'm in. The theme was texture. OK, so this one wasn't quick. But it was fun.

My moley is home!

My first traveling moleskin journal book has arrived safely home. And I must say, its absolutely, stunningly, gorgeous in hand. It feels so incredibly special to me. I sure hope that all the artists that contributed to it realize that.

The artists in the group were
(1) my entry pages
(2) Bex (3) Wendy (4) alteredmommy
(5) adriayna (6) eggstudio (7) arteeztmom





Isn't it gorgeous?!?

Plein Air

Now that we're done building the cottage, I'm excited to be able to have some art supplies up there and actually have TIME to paint and draw.

So I set up my portable easel on the deck and tried some plein air painting. OK, so I wrecked a couple of canvasses. It still felt awesome. And its all about learning right?

Journey of the Moleys IV

I'm almost done with the journey of the moleys. I've just finished this one and there is only one more to do for this group. Note that I've already signed up for a new one! But it won't start until Sept, so I'll have a short break anyway.

The theme of this moley was "Sea", so I incorporated a scene from a trip to the Washington State/Oregon coast in one section and added a cutaway underwater scene featuring 2 seahorses.

I find water difficult to do. I'm relatively pleased with the resulting watery effect, but hopefully with practice I'll get much better. I've also been experimenting with Prismacolor markers (and a few other brands too), so thought I'd try using markers as my base layer (I usually use watercolour) and then do the inking on top.

I've also noticed previously that some markers made my pencil outline messy, so after I put down my pencil outline, I used a 10% grey color to outline over that, then went back and erased all the pencil that I could. It worked quite well.

Journey of the Moleys III

My latest moleskin entry was for a theme "a little bit about yourself" for Bex

I've been playing with image transfers off and on so thought I'd incorporate a few here too. So the photo of the cottage that hubby and I built and the puppy is using gel medium image transfer. The puppy transfer is from an ATC of watercolor and pen that I made earlier in the year.

The background and other oval images are watercolor and ink. The original intent with the background was to use circles to represent family. I come from a large family, so there were to be lots of circles. Somehow in the process circles morphed into ovals as the shapes seemed to work better. But when I was painting the background they started to look like jelly beans so I went with that. Ironically jelly beans have a meaning for me too.


Bill and I usually take Jelly Belly jelly beans with us when we go camping and we have a few around the campfire. So...jelly beans they are. But family they are too. Lots of flavors. So the double meaning works. Silly, I know, but hey....
The other ovals are the types of things that I love. Birds, animals, nature in general.

The moley I'm working on now is on the theme "Sea". I've sketched and erased so many ideas. But now I've settled on one. But you'll have to wait for that one.

Journey of the Moleys II

I have 3 moleys in hand now, so the pressure is on. The one I'm working on currently I'm still struggling through the background. I keep changing my mind. The theme is "A Bit about Myself". So there is alot of symbolism in it. At least that's the plan. :sigh: Not sure its working out. I guess at worst, I gesso over everything and start over. Problem is I'm behind as is.

:double sigh:

I'd post a WIP, but I honestly don't want to scare anyone. All my works look horrid at first.