Starting Mark

I have finished my first piece for 2018! I started this in the winter of 2017, but then it sat dormant as my life got crazy. I picked it back up, and finally finished it:

"Small Talk" 9x12, acrylic on canvas panel, available

This is 9x12 inches, acrylic on canvas panel (with iridescent acrylics used on the moon, because SHINY!)

I have another sister polar bear piece that has the same backstory of being started and not finished that I am layering oils on and finishing it that way. I am going to compare the two and see which I like better.

I thought for a long time that I was going to dump acrylics altogether and just switch to oils because it's my preferred medium. With life being out of control in 2017, I realized I just didn't have time for oils. Not really. I didn't have time for much, so I started trying to do daily paintings. Since they had to be finished quickly, that meant I wouldn't be able to walk away for a few days while layers dried, so out came my acrylics.

Here are a few of my favorites I completed at the end of 2017, they're all little ones 4x6 inches:

Apple House, 4x6 acrylic on loose canvas, available

Cardinal, 4x6 acrylic on loose canvas, sold

Fox, acrylic on loose canvas, sold

Owl, 4x6 acrylic on loose canvas, sold

Vision (owl) 4x6, acrylic on loose canvas, sold

Raven, 4x6 acrylic on loose canvas, available

I enjoyed my dailies so much, that I realized it was a good thing for me to keep doing because it motivated me, and it is the first step in improving my skills like I want to. So, I invested in some acrylics that promised to be a little more like oils. I bought Charvin acrylics, and I have to say they are buttery and a bit more like oils in the blending which is nice, but I'm still on a learning curve with their drying process (it's a bit different than the cheaper Soho brand I had been using), and they still dry flat like all acrylics do (varnish helps this a bit, but you have to be able to see beyond and hope it causes that depth!)

I also decided my dailies are going to be on canvas panels instead of loose canvas going forward (for the most part) and that I will save the loose canvas for fast studies or trying stuff out. It's nice that you can frame loose canvas like a photo, but I think buyers would rather have a hard panel.

I finished out the year with some reindeer, because I was in a festive mood (and I have two more sketched out that I need to paint... although it feels a bit odd after the season has passed!):

Reindeer 2, 5x7 acrylic on canvas panel, sold

Reindeer 1, acrylic on 5x7 panel, sold

That's probably enough pictures for today!

I'm just happy to share my first finished painting, and I hope to be sharing a lot more going forward! Part of that is my own participation on this blog, so I'm going to do better with that.

I think... I'm going to go paint a turtle. It was my intended new years painting, to be the last for 2017, but showing up a little late isn't so bad, I suppose!

Little Bits of Progress

First, I want to thank everyone for your thoughtful comments about Cosmo, and us having to put him to sleep.

Things seem to be moving along a little better in the household, and we had an uneventful Thanksgiving (with way too much food.) I hid out from the Black Friday shopping, and protested the day by staying in my pajamas instead! Honestly, it was a little odd. I felt a little left out, and it was just so quiet. Maybe that's why Black Friday has become so big? After the cacophony of the holiday, the day after is so silent! I knew people were out shopping, in the hustle and bustle... and I was in my pajamas.

I did work, however. I've actually been working on lots of new little things (and all of these are available either in my shop (I'm having a 10% off sale until midnight tonight, it's been going all week. Code HOLIDAY2013), or on Etsy:

"Making Friends" 4x6 acrylic on hard canvas panel

"Snow Day" 3x5 acrylic on hard canvas panel

"Mini-Snow" ultra mini, 2x2 acrylic on stretched canvas

"Snowy I" 4x4 acrylic on stretched canvas

"Pepper" 3x3 acrylic on stretched canvas

And I also finally, finally drew out my official holiday painting for 2013:

This is an 8x10, I believe - hard canvas panel.

I don't know WHY it took me so long to do. I knew what I sort of wanted in my head, but I danced around the issue. Finally, I just did it. I built it as I went, not really having a clear picture, but just a vague idea. I rather like how it turned out, actually!

I started painting the fireplace, and I spent HOURS on the bricks to make it look like embers were burning low. I really don't understand why it takes me so long, but it does. I need to look up tips or techniques on how to speed things up. I only got the back wall finished last night. I'm very frustrated with myself, even though I like how the back wall looks.

Still working on the side walls, obviously.
I'll be working on that after I finish this post, actually!

I have a couple of commissions I'm working on, and a few other things, but I'm really feeling tired lately. We have a family trip coming up in two weeks, and I really hope that and the holidays in general give me a new kick in the pants to get things rolling again!

Lastly, I wanted to leave you with a picture from my son's rabbit's modeling session. My mother wanted to have an ornament made for my son, and Smoke (the rabbit) had to put up with modeling in a Santa suit:

Smoke spent the whole time modeling, not bothered at all. Is that a fabulous rabbit, or what?

Hanging In There

Last week I traveled to Colorado for a wedding, and I have to say that it was an eye-opening experience to be back where I grew up. I managed to finish my snow queen before I left town, however.  This is the evolution of the painting (I always like to see other artists' works in progress like this too):

She's a little zombie-looking without any red tones, don't you think?

This picture bothered me, until I figured out it was her lack of eyelashes that seemed so weird.

See? Much better with eyelashes!

"Snow Queen" 9x12, watercolor & acrylic. Prints available.

I think she turned out pretty well! She's prettier in person with all the iridescent paint (I really can't help myself at this point. If I can't make it sparkly, I'm just not happy I guess!) She has snow-freckles in white iridescent paint on her face that I just really like for some reason. I was also looking at how she looked with all the white background. I may do a second one that plays on the white of the paper and her being "barely there" just for fun!

Back in Colorado was a strange experience. I've only been back a couple times over the past 16 years, and honestly, I hadn't been back in 10 years this time at all. It's funny to see what changes and what stays the same. I have to say that all those shops and restaurants, malls, and whatever else... it was both nice to be able to go out and get something quickly if I needed it, but it felt like everything was crowded too. I don't know how you run a business with so many businesses on top of one another, often offering the same things 100 times over! There were more Targets and Walmarts in a square block than I have ever seen, they must compete against themselves at that point!

Colorado had the better drivers though. It may have been crowded, and wickedly high speed limits (65 MPH on many non-highway roads I traveled, with stoplights! That made me very nervous. How can you properly stop at a stoplight if you're flying around at 65MPH? I did it, but it was a bit strange to me!) Not five minutes back in Vermont, and I was already cussing out the drivers here after being cut off twice and then stuck behind someone going 25 MPH below the posted speed limit with no way to pass. That's Vermont for you, I suppose. It's pretty, but we're lucky cars don't have the ability to launch rockets at one another.

While out on the trip, my father's office was having a fun contest with hand-turkeys! This is like what you probably did in gradeschool where you trace your hand and then make a turkey out of the thumb, and the fingers are the tail feathers. My dad wanted me to do his (I made him make one too) so we picked up Crayola pencils and cheap paper from Target (oh, how I miss Target. None in Vermont *sigh*) and off we went:

Love my dad! His ended up with a hat on it.

And I decided I was going to do a non-standard turkey. It was MY turkey, after all. So here he is in all his colorfully confused glory:

While out there, my father and I got to visit the big Flatirons mall. Oh, a real mall, a REAL mall! I'm not much of a shopper, but when I go into places like that it's like a man lost in a desert for a week discovering a working slurpee machine. I even bought a pair of boots. I never buy shoes. Especially pricier ones. Clearly the mall went to my head.

I enjoyed visiting with family I hadn't seen in a long while, and the wedding was fine. I snapped a few pictures from my lap while we were waiting for it to start:

Mom & Dad

ME! Sorry for the sort of up-the-nose kind of shots, but I was trying to be stealthy about it...

I discovered this champagne that tastes like Fruity Pebbles:

So all in all it was a good trip. I'm really glad to be home though. It's taken a week, but I am finally back to painting again. I'm way behind the curve, but things have been way too stressful, so I'm trying to tell myself it's OK if I don't meet all my business goals this year. I don't see how I possibly can at this point. *sigh* But it's OK. Maybe next year, right?

And really... fruity pebbles champagne, people. How bad can it really be if that exists?

In the Season

I'm finally working on some snowy, holiday work! Yay! I love it! It's also just started spitting snow outside, so even better! Before Thanksgiving, I finished my first holiday painting of the season:

"Orb"5x7 Canvas Panel Normally a 5x7 would be $85, but I'm kicking off my holiday season with it on sale at Etsy only for $65 (incl. shipping US & Can). On my main website, it's the normal $85 price.

Then this morning I managed to finish a happy snowman and his little feathered friend:

"Snowbird"5x7 Canvas Panel$85 (inlc. shipping US&Can)
Zazzle merchandise is up too. I spent some hours this morning on that!

I had so much fun getting to paint these seasonal paintings, that I have two smaller ones in process right now. One will be a Christmas tree with a moon, and the other has a ball ornament and a pine cone together. They're small (3x5 or smaller, I need to measure...) so they're just fun! 

I've been struggling with listing paintings just on Etsy or just on my main website. I sell most of my paintings through my main website, but with these fast numbers I've been leaning more on Etsy. Unfortunately, I think that might leave some of my customers in the dark when I'm coming out with something quick and new. So, this morning I worked a little bit to put some of the Etsy minis up on my site, but I'm waffling on putting up the snowman on Etsy just yet. I don't know how some of the artists manage to get their stuff up consistently on so many sites. The time spent on that alone just boggles my mind!

I'm also working on learning Celtic knot-work (or relearning, I used to doodle in class... a lot. *ahem* But it's been almost 20 years since I was in High School, so it's been a while.) I have a commission with an Irish theme, and in addition to that it's my heritage on both my Scottish and Irish sides. I have a... need to start working some knot-work in. But! I have to relearn how to do them in the first place, and it's not easy.

I'm working on a clover right now, and I keep finding myself going a wee bit cross-eyed and losing track sometimes. It's there, my ability to do them, it's just rusty. Really rusty.

You can see where I went wrong easily in the top one. The bottom one is trickier, but it too isn't correct. Not all my over-unders went that way. Some of them went over-over-under and so on. *head*desk* But that's why I'm practicing, playing on notebook paper (I just got my hands on some graph paper, so that should help.)

Oh, and I just this past week received some pendants from my Zazzle store:

I had some extra credits to spend, and I thought what the heck? They're so pretty! I just didn't realize there were different sizes until they arrived. Anyway, I'm only sharing them because I thought they were cool (no matter who's artwork is on them.) I've been really impressed with Zazzle, especially considering my old experience with Cafe Press and feeling like CP's stuff was just so... cheap. My iPhone covers I ordered are simply fantastic (I did the Vibe cases), and I ordered postcards from several of my favorite artists on there and was impressed again. It's just nice  not to be let down!

I hope your week has been wonderful! Who's got something new on their easel?