Rock Strawberries... will it work?

My strawberries are starting to show fruit and I decided this year I wanted to harvest more strawberries than the birds! So I looked online and found a lot of references to rocks painted to look like strawberries then placed around the strawberry patch to fool the birds. I decided to give this a try...

So I found a bunch of rocks...

Brought them last weekend when I went to visit my arty friend Leslie and we painted rocks...

then I put them into my garden...

and now I wait. Will the new little berries stay uneaten?

Painting...

It is definitely taking me more than a day or two to figure out the direction my life/my art is taking but I have that on the back burner now while I do ahead and play some more...

This week I dabbled at some painting. Making some backgrounds, doing the Flora Bowley online Bloom True class, and playing with some canvases I had other things on and wanted to reuse and start over with.  

And then there is You Tube. I have been spending a lot of time watching videos lately: mixed media, art quilting, sewing, painting, you name it! I found one via Facebook from Mystic Tulip Arts and after watching it thought I would make my own version. HERE is her video. It is Betty Franks Krause' Love Grows Painting and Doodling on Canvas.

This is what I came up with. It still needs a lot more doodling to go with her style, but it is getting there. I love how bright the colors are. It is painted over a paper collaged canvas which is what you can see through the colors.

D.R.I.P. Painting Weekend fun...

This last weekend I took a class from a local artist, Margaret Sarantis. We did her version of intuitive painting in a fun class called D.R.I.P. (Dreamy Realistic Imaginary Painting) and it was a great creative experience!

Margaret demonstrated her various techniques while also working on a painting of her own.

We started along the lines of Tracy Verdugo's class in making a grid on our canvas and filling it with personal symbols.

But then we branched out into Margaret's unique version of it and added color and more symbols and more color until our canvases had morphed into wonderful creations.

A few close ups of the interesting textures we came up with, scratching into paint, stencils, etc.

Here is our class art show at the end -- such great colors!

It was a wonderful weekend of laughter and painting and Starbuck's lemon cake and meeting new friends. My art friend Lisa Culjis also went (her painting is the dreamy flower one on the right hand side).  I love classes like this and plan to find more now that I have time!

Summer of Color Week #4

As I mentioned in the post below, this week's Summer of Color colors are pale pink and charcoal gray, neither of which are colors I use much. In fact, I was thinking of doing something with the Copic pens I have and came to find out I had neither pale pink nor charcoal (or any) grey colors! So I went for another plan...

And yes I know, in theory one spells it "GRAY' in America, and "GREY" in Europe, but I just like to spell it with the E so there! Anyway apparently so did Kristin for the challenge because that is how she spelled it!

So I started with the Moleskine journal which I had gelli printed some pink using bubble wrap (see photo from HERE on Wednesday -- it's the journal on the lower right of the photo). Then I decided to attempt drawing a face and the comment just came to me after staring at my wonky face for a while! I had added a bit of turquoise for the background (which looks a lot greener in the photo) and used a combination of various grey-ish pens and pencils that I had for the hair.

Linked to:
Summer of Color Week #4
Paint Party Friday
Art Journal Everyday

First day of Summer Vacation...

It's finally here!

Thinking of my intentions for the summer...

• a couple of short trips
• some house and computer reorganization
• eating what works for my body & remembering to take my vitamins
• yoga and other movement
• working on some unfinished projects
• learning some new things (how to make and edit a video) 

And of course...  time for art!

Finally finished this painting, started a month or so ago. It kept changing from one thing to another so I never took photos or blogged about it. But it is done now. Not sure it at all looks like a lotus flower but that is what I am calling it! Was also inspired by the Intuitive Painting idea.

Linked to: Paint Party Friday

Intuitive Painting, just about done...

Since this is the first time I have done one of these style of paintings I am not actually sure when I will know it is done. That said, it feels like it is just about there. I do a little on it now and then and after a doodling session yesterday I think I might be just about finished. I will just prop it up and look at it a while more until it tells me it is done for sure. HERE is the post for when I started it and here it is now:

I think I am getting tired of working on this one too and want to move on to more. That might be the deciding factor to deciding if it done or not!

So since I started I have found a few other people who do this style of painting too and have been devouring their blogs, You Tube videos and Flickr pages for ideas and techniques. The people I have found so far are Flora Bowley, Tracy Verdugo, Connie Hozvicka, Michelle Fauss, and Justine Aldersey-Williams. I would love to know of more, so if you know of anyone else doing this kind of "intuitive" or "fearless" painting, please let me know in the comments! Thanks!

WOYWW #207

Well I totally flaked out about it last week and didn't take any pix of my workdesk for the WOYWW linky party! That is what the end of school days does to me! 2 more weeks and then 10 weeks of vacation! Then next year is my last year at work! Not that I don't love what I do but it is TIME to retire!

So last night I was looking at all the stuff from that watercolor class last weekend and decided to take a photo of one of the techniques I hadn't shown already. And before I go on I want to say: I HATE THE NEW FLICKR INTERFACE!! Takes a LOT longer to get my photos to blog!

This is what we did: made an abstract watercolor and let it dry. Then we took a small frame (a card with a hole cut in the middle). We cut out three areas that we liked in the abstract.

And then he gave us blank cards (from Kelly Paper) and we glued the swatch on and voila! A mini-painting!

These are the only 2 brushes we used in the class! I love how the calligraphy brush held the paint -- might look into getting other sizes of it.

Linked to:
WOYWW
Paint Party Friday
Show and Tell Saturday

Watercolor class...

Yesterday I took a 7 hour watercolor class @ the Learning Exchange in Sacramento. It was taught by local artist Robert Dvorak. All in all it was a great class but I did discover something about myself: 7 hours is way too long for me to be in any sort of class, fun or not! I was exhausted when I got home! I was reminded of that old Far Side cartoon about being excused from class because my brain was full! I think my learning curve started petering out around 3 pm...

But none the less, I learned a ton of techniques and came away with a much great appreciation of watercolor as a medium.

And... came away with the total appreciation for needed a LOT of practice to get good at it. It was quite the challenge!

We used a 7"x10" watercolor block and did a lot of exercises and techniques. Here are a few of my meager attempts...

Mountain with waterfall:

People:

Trees:

Banana:

It was a fast-paced with lots of laughter and fun! A couple of other things I learned about myself: I need to wash my hands more as evidenced by the dirty smudges on my examples, which I did not edit out due to sheer laziness on my part this morning! I also need to move my shoulders and neck around more -- I was very sore when I got home. Even though we had a lot of breaks and up and down times moving out paintings out to dry, I think when I paint I tense up too much and was definitely feeling it when I got home. Relax Rhonda!

Linking to:

Mandarin Orange Monday
Blue Monday
Monday Mellow Yellow
Creative Every Day

WIP... Intuitive Painting

Recently I discovered the idea of Intuitive Painting (a la Flora Bowley) and decided to try my hand at it. I got Flora's book and read through it and when I got to the end realized I still had no idea how to start, so I scoured the Internet, devoured You Tube videos and sort of figured out the following: put paint on your canvas (or paper), put more paint on, add more paint over and around the other paint, keep going until some shapes emerge that speak to you, highlight the shapes, fill in, paint more and eventually it is done. (ok maybe I oversimplify). Oh yes, and add music and move around to get all those life forces (or whatever they are, maybe just my bowels) moving while and between paintings.

So here is a small progression of what I have done up til now. I am still working on it and will do so probably a good while bit this is the last few days work. Maybe when I am done I will make a short Animoto video to run through the process. I am taking photos now and then when I remember to document the changes.

Working with acrylics, paint pens, and inks on an 11" x 14" canvas board.

Linked to:
Paint Party Friday
Show and Tell Saturday
Mandarin Orange Monday
Inspire Me Monday
Creative Every Day
Blue Monday

Another painting with those lines...

I had so much fun using that silicone pastry brush to make lines on the last painting that I did another one, similar but larger (9" x 12" on canvas board) and with more little lines!

I am realizing I have no idea how to NAME an abstract painting! So for now this one is Window Reflections. That might change quickly if someone gives me a better idea for what to call it! Feel free to leave suggestions!

Linked to:
Orange You Glad It's Friday -- Take a look HERE-- she featured one of my other paintings! Wow!
Creative Every Day
Paint Party Friday

Sunday painting...

Spent a lot of today so far playing around with paints, catching up on art blog reading, and generally avoiding cleaning up my messy art room.

So... remember this? A bunch of orange, black and white on a 6" x 6" canvas board...

Well this is what it morphed into...

I am calling it "Wormhole".

Question to my painting friends: How do you display these small 6" x 6" canvas boards?

Linked to:
Mandarin Orange Monday
Inspire Me Monday
Monday Mellow Yellows
Create Daily
Blue Monday

I think this one is finished...

I am not actually sure when someone is sure that a painting is done, but this one seems to be done to me, so I guess it is. I showed it last Friday HERE when it was almost done but since then I added a bit more of the blues/greens... It needed more dots! I guess technically it is mixed media since it is all painted over a layer or two of collaged book pages and music paper. The size is 10" x 10" (25 cm x 25 cm).

Also not really sure what to call it so for now it is Sun and Rain. That could easily change...

Linked to:
Paint Party Friday
Orange You Glad It's Friday

Finally Friday...

Yay it's the weekend!

So when I got home today I played around with some paints and thought about the weekend and what I wanted to do artwise. Not decided yet, so I will just stay open to a visit from any muse that happens to pop into my neighborhood and go from there!

I want to work more on this. So far it is layers of collage (book pages and music paper) and inks and paint on 10" x 10" canvas. The blue is one of my stencils. Not sure yet what I want to make with this background.

Amazingly it has both orange AND blue! And no doubt will have a lot more as it gets done!

Linked to: Paint Party Friday and Orange You Glad It's Friday.

Working on a Painting... and Jeopardy Swag!

While I was waiting at home today I spent some more time on a painting I started the other day. It started out with some gelli printed background, then stenciling, and various acrylics, neocolors, dyes and inks over and over... I feel it still needs something but not sure quite yet. I am sure it will come to me eventually! It is the largest canvas I have tried in recent years (12" x 16").

So why was I home from work anyway?

I took the day off work today because...

A month or so ago I took and online test to be a contestant on Jeopardy and I passed! I got an email saying the second round would be held in Sacramento today so off I went...

Luckily the tryouts were held in Sacramento so I didn't have to travel but there were people in the room from as far away as Vancouver, BC and all over the Bay Area. We took another test -- 2 actually, one was the test that counted and the second one was a new test they were trying out and wanted to see if there were glitches so they were giving it to the contestants in this round all over the country to standardize it (or whatever that word is when you get a lot of different results for a test to see if it works for everyone). Then we played a little bit of a mock game and had interviews. Since I am a teacher I also get to be considered for the teacher tournament! Now if they want any of us there is an 18 month window in which they might call us... hope I get on! The whole process took around 2 and a half hours. AND we got parting gifts!