Thursday, December 30, 2010

Two More

Remember THIS post. Well, I used some more of my painted canvas to make two more pencil/cosmetic bags and I just added them to MY Etsy store. I LOVE this piece of canvas and I am working on getting paint onto another large piece of canvas. I have a little project I have been working on for myself (I know, it's amazing, I am never working on my own stuff) to get me started on The Sketchbook_Challenge. It starts in just a couple of days. I've got my sketchbook, pens, watercolors, and whatever else, all ready to go. Just have to finish my project (it's so exciting). I can't wait to show it to you. But I had better get going...or I won't make it in time.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

If You Love Good Photography...

...check this out. THIS is my extremely talented brother Brent's smugmug gallery. Brent is an USAF pilot and has had a fascination with planes since he was born. He is also very artistic. A few years ago, he took up photography as his art form and his photos are pretty amazing. Of course, I am probably a little biased, but at the beginning of the year he set a goal to get one of his photos onto airliners.net and he just posted his 100th! So I feel pretty justified in saying that he's AWESOME! He also has the above photo listed in the photos of 2010.Brent has always been an inpiration to me when it comes to setting and achieving goals and his accomplishments this year have been amazing. Makes my little (big) list of resolutions look much less daunting. Thank you Brent! Love you!

Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you a peaceful, wonderful, Merry Christmas!
With love,
Jolene

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Painted Canvas Tutorial

Here's a little project I have been working on for Christmas. I took some pictures along the way so that you could see my process. It all began with a piece of inexpensive canvas that I cut to fit my kitchen table (the biggest work space in my house). If I had a bigger kitchen table, I would have made it larger, but when it comes to art, part of the creativity is finding ways to work with what you have.
I started by making some acrylic yellow/orange sort of circle shapes all over the canvas with my palette knife. Then I made some petal shapes with my palette knife using magenta, orange, white, and a little bit of yellow around my circles.
Then using a angled bristle brush, I added leaves with green, dark green, yellow, white, and a little blue. I then filled in the empty spaces with a mix of turquoise and white.
Using black fluid acrylics and water, I lined the petal shapes I found in the flowers and leaves. I can't seem to line anything without going back and lining it again. I LOVE to double line things. I also added dots for details.
Afterwards, I go back in with white fluid acrylics and add some more dots before I call it done. And that is the condensed version of how I painted this piece of canvas. Do you want to see what I did with some of it?
I made it into a pencil bag for a friend for a Christmas gift. And now I am off to finish sewing the rest of my canvas into more treasures. Have a good one!

Monday, December 13, 2010

On the Subject of Sketchbooks

Today I joined the Sketchbook Challenge. It begins January 1st and I am pretty excited. You can find out all the information HERE. I have been working in my sketchbook quite a bit lately because it seems that it is the only bit of art that I can find time for during the busy Christmas season. I can take it with me anywhere and work on it every free moment that I get. With my little compact watercolor set and my Koi waterbrush (Have I mentioned that I LOVE that thing!), I can even paint while helping out at my daughter's school or taking a shopping break at the bookstore with a Diet Coke. I am finding myself fascinated with other artist's sketchbooks too, that's why I am amazed at the timing of the Sketchbook Challenge. I know that I shouldn't be surprised at the timing but I am. I have been doing this art thing long enough to know that what you need always comes to you when you are ready for it, but I still find myself in amazement when it happens. I hope that I never get used to the "magic" feeling when the thing that I need appears at the perfect time. Now if I can just get better at the "trust" part of the whole thing. When things become frustrating, I need to trust that when the time is right, the thing I need will appear.My grandparents gave us a beautiful poinsettia for Christmas and I did a little sketch in my book of one of the flowers. I have been teaching art to my daughter's class at school so I decided to have them do a study on poinsettias. I had them do a quick sketch to understand the shape of the bracts and flowers before they tore the petal shapes out of tissue for their ornament project. They did great! I took my 4 year old with me and sat him down with all the supplies and just let him do his thing while I was teaching the class. I was shocked at what he did. His was every bit as nice as the rest of the class but I noticed something interesting. He just sat down and boldly did his thing while the majority of the older kids were somewhat panicked and critical of their work and not doing it "right" and using the word "can't". I HATE the word "can't". I had to ban the "can't" word from the classroom when I am teaching art. When do kid's develop this self critical attitude and fear of making mistakes? My little guy doesn't seem to have developed it yet but so many 9 year olds have. It is so interesting. What happens to them between 4 and 9? They had no reason to be critical of themselves, they all did wonderful art, but were so hard on themselves and some even seem paralyzed before they even tore a single tissue paper petal. I just found it so interesting, especially because when we become adults, we spend so much time trying to get rid of our fear of mistakes and critical attitudes. Apparently we didn't come into this world with these fears...when does this happen? Can it be avoided? I don't know but in an effort to combat this fear of making mistakes, I think I will go work on something scary...I think.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Book Fair

I LOVE book fairs! I am a total sucker when it comes to buying my kids books. I try to volunteer for at least one shift every time the book fair rolls around. I LOVE visiting with the kids at the school, most of which I have witnessed grow up during my daughter's time there. They are sweet, goofy, fun, and just plain adorable! LOVE them.
So, this afternoon was my shift to work the book fair. I brought along my sketchbook, pens, and watercolors to play during the down times. I was totally inspired by THIS amazing post by Alisa Burke. You absolutely must go check it out...now. Don't read another thing until you see it. Go ahead...I'll wait. Waiting....waiting....waiting.......

Unbelievable...I know! She totally amazes me. Here is the beginning of my Alisa inspired sketch.
I very much enjoyed working on this while there was no book shopping going on. The best part is, if you have a Koi waterbrush, you can pretty much do this anywhere. Everything I needed fit into a pencil bag. In fact, I think this page is calling me to finish it right now. So off I go. I show the finished product later. Go...get out your sketchbook...I'm telling you, this is great fun.