Caesar (the black kitty) loves sitting on lumps. He never likes to sit on soft things, he prefers piles of books; shoes or anything that looks like it would be uncomfortable. His sister just likes to get into everything and runs around like a mini tornado. 

Aren’t they adorable?

The new project is something in the works, more to come.

oh and he also likes to wear shoes.

Our last Art Explorer’s class is on Saturday and I wanted to do something “wintry”. I decided we should make some snowflakes. One of my favorite part of doing AE is finding new projects, trying them out, and modifying them for my own. There are so many wonderful art blogs out there and just not enough time to make art!

In a perfect world, I’d be making things all of the time all while teaching kids about the environment through art and music. I am getting some nifty ideas for things to do with all of our paper scraps for next semester’s Earth Day.

Here is my newest love and some photos of the snowflakes we’ll make on Saturday:

Lots of cutting and glueing…

I reused a bunch of my choir envelopes with old addresses…

Jumbo snowflake on bright blue paper!

So pretty!

Hopefully the kids like the project!

Either way, I’m looking forward to my long weekend, – I took the day off – so I’ll be making lots of art and singing in our concert tomorrow night, and surrounding myself wonderful people.

Enjoy the weekend! I hope it’s filled with lots of sparkly love…and laughing..lots of it!

Things I love lately:

*paintings with ribbons and diamonds…*

*…looming birds, webs of color, and fishes eating the roots of a village*

*a swan with feathers of glitter and a sail boat weathering the storm*

*a golden village above a pink octopus and a beautiful peacock looking at an organ*

*finally finishing this piece! it was on my wall for nearly five months*

*When Lavi gives me her opinions…*

*And decides she wants to help! (no worries, there was no paint in this!)*

*Updating even older art from my walls! (It started off with just the blocked colors as a landscape, no details)*

*bright colors and fireworks of color*

*diamond drips leading to tiny dots*

*finally having a messy art room, even if it’s a shoebox!*

*and messy hair is kind of fun too*

process and flow-
this piece has taken me a few months. it started off as something completely different, but after leaving it on my wall for 5 months (literally), i finally figured what i wanted to do with it. i think one day i woke up saw something new and/or different and i’ve been working on it every chance i can since then.

this is usually how i work with my paintings.  i start something because i feel like doing art, but i realize it’s not quite good enough. so i put it on my wall and stare at it until i figure it out.

in other cases (the new pieces in my head) i will sketch it out until i have the layout, and go from there. (the prom dress piece was also very planned)

sometimes (rare cases), i can just paint what i’m feeling/thinking/realizing about a person/moment and after a bit, i can step back and the piece is done. there was one time, i did a piece in a few hours and it’s been one of my favorites ever since. my friend asked me to do a piece for her family as a moving present for their new house. they had gone through some difficult times which i could relate to, and the piece just came naturally. to this day, the family still loves it!

so here are some pictures of this piece and it’s transition. it’s not quite finished, but it’s almost there. i was just excited about it and had to share!

//

My original plan changed a bit. I actually decided to paint out the entire mural on the canvas and outline everything in puffy paint. This way, it’s easier for the volunteers to help the students with adding the colored tactile material on top.

I was up until 4:00 painting this out, in my shoebox room (under the quilt is a full size piano, and my bed is rolled up against my clothing rack). The cat helped, you can’t see it, but there are paw prints everywhere! I’ll take some better pics soon.

The plan *modified*-

• Paint the mural out on canvas with color and puffy paint
• Cut up sketched mural into squares (this will be a large mural, probably 3 x 5 feet)
• Number the squares, so we know how to piece it together again
• Give each student individual squares with guidelines on colors to paint
• Students can add tactile objects on top with the same colors (beads, ceramic pieces, fabric, sand, etc)
• When the mural is completed, I will sew it together
• Final mural will be sewn onto a bar so it can be easily hung

They get to see the piece tonight! hopefully they like it!

Both are mixed media, mostly using recycled things: wire, dried up paint from my paint pallet, scraps of paper, etc.

2009

Release

New piece:

Untitled, 2009
Acrylic on Canvas

Detailed: but for some reason this is showing it stretched…