Friday! (and a giveaway!)

The first Friday of 2013, and I'm welcoming it with a giveaway! Well, OK, it's actually because my Facebook Art Page is finally up to 300 likes, but it IS still Friday... Anyway... *ahem*

It's time to give away the free 5x7 painting!!!

Who's eligible? ANYONE! There are two ways to earn entries. First, like this facebook fan page, the second is to tweet the giveaway (which is optional.) The raffle is open from today until Monday at midnight, and I will announce the winner on Tuesday! Shipping is included if you are in the US or Canada, and if you are outside of those areas there will just be a small shipping fee just to offset the cost. 

You will get to choose either a 5x7 Acrylic canvas panel painting, or a watercolor painting. You get to then choose the kind of painting or elements you'd like to see (no portraits), and then I get to run with the idea and you get to own the result!

If you have questions, please ask! 

Good luck!






a Rafflecopter giveaway 




Moving on, Cosmo came home yesterday. I admit, seeing him without his leg was shocking even though I was prepared for it. He was much perkier than I thought he would be, and the vet apparently commented on it to my husband that he actually does seem happier. His leg must have really been hurting him more than we even thought. I'm hoping once he's all healed up he'll be back to his old self!

Cosmo, just happy to be home and snacking already!

The good news is that I'm feeling like the fires are back to building up and I'm ready to go! I want to knock out this fairy/peacock commission, get this new abstract finished (and there is another one half completed that I'd like to get done) and then I plan on diving back into my Alice series, I think with perhaps a much bigger piece (24x36?) This means I need to hit my sketchbook because I simply haven't settled on what I want my Cheshire Cat and Caterpillar to look like yet, but I have a good idea about my Queen of Hearts and other characters. I think it's time for a large composition featuring a lot of elements (but I don't want it to get too busy either...)  

So, lots percolating, even if nothing is getting done in the physical realm. It'll come! 


My husband is still home, so I haven't accomplished anything in the studio. I'm hoping I will but I wonder if it's going to take until Monday. I should be able to sketch out my commission piece without much of a problem, but for some reason disappearing off into my studio to paint is near impossible with other people in the house! (But he's cute, so it's OK *wink*)

Distractions

I thought that Wednesday was going to be all about getting back to normal. Kids off to school, people back to work... ME back to work.

Instead, I was surprised to find out (or be reminded, I am a teeeeeensy bit scatterbrained sometimes) that my husband actually has the rest of the week off. I admit, I didn't handle that bit of news with grace. Instead, I think I sat there blinking owlishly at him for ten minutes and saying repeatedly "You do? You... have today off? Wait, you do? The whole week? You do? Vacation?"

Not that I don't love spending time with him, because I do. He's my very best friend in the whole world. It's just that I thought all the normal cogs of the year would fall into place on January 2nd. I had a painting percolating in my head that I finally had started in on but couldn't maintain focus with because of all the constant interruptions (teenagers are fun) and "should do's" running through my head. After all, if the family is home mom SHOULD be entertaining them, right?

So, my abstract/surreal will have to wait until I get some alone time. Some non-husband-vacation-time where even sneaking off to write a blog is a trick! Here it sits:

General concept just barely mapped out. Abstracts are a bit more free in their plotting!
This one is an 18x24 canvas - room to play!

And some color. A tiny tiny start. I'm definitely going heavy on the blues in this one instead of the purples that I love so much. It's simply meant to be blue!

I also have a couple of commissions that need to be worked on as well. In particular a concept for a peacock, a fairy, and a key - all together somehow - is in process. It's slowly coming together in my mind. I have figured out that I used to use sketchbooks to figure out how I wanted a composition laid out, but I got better at it inside my head and stopped using the sketchbooks. I somehow managed to create a mental blackboard to work with. Now I don't feel so bad not using my sketchbooks as I used to! I need to start playing with them in new ways, though!

Another reason I wanted to get into my studio is that one of my dogs (we have three) had his leg amputated on Wednesday. Cosmo has bone cancer, and it's only a matter of time. However, in the area of pain management and quality of life, this was necessary.

This is Cosmo this Christmas, having snagged the new Labrador, Lily's bed.

They don't expect Cosmo to live out the year, which weighs heavy on me. I only lost my Labrador, Max, in April.

My studio is therapeutic for me, and it would have been nice to have been painting while waiting for the call from the vet letting us know he did well during his surgery (he did just fine by the way, and we get to take him home in the afternoon on Thursday.)

So that is where things stand, and where I sit; caught between loving the company, surprise vacation time, and a little sadness thrown in for good measure.

Picture Quilt

I was poking around online yesterday and I noticed some people had pieced together pictures from their past year. Most people were putting in life events (parties, graduations, etc) and some other artists had thrown together their paintings from the year. I loved that idea, but I thought that I wouldn't have enough. After all, I only really threw myself whole-heartedly into my studio around May (before that it was really sporadic while I was trying to balance my photography bookings with painting), and what with having kids and Summer break happening close after that, I figured I hadn't done much this year.

I feel like I haven't worked hard enough in 2012. That I was lazy. I should have done more.

Still, I figured it'd be nice to see. Maybe I wouldn't have much, but I'd have something to look at and say "That was the art of Kyra Wilson in 2012." So, I started pulling pictures from my files.

I ran out of room.

This is not everything, but I gave up after I finally got something cohesive to come together:

It's not as easy as it looks. It turned into one giant jigsaw puzzle, and if you look closely, you will see that some of the paintings got cropped funny (some square paintings are cut down all the way to tiny little rectangles! But it was the only way to fill the space up!) I didn't have a ton of left over paintings, but it was nice to see that I did actually have enough.

It's interesting to kind of look at my work like this. I have a lot of styles I work in, but the surreal/abstract is certainly under represented. As I said in previous posts, I'm remedying that this year. I may have to make different picture quilts next year based on style. As a matter of fact, I aim to...

I better get to work!

Happy New Year!

To all my art friends and collectors; here's to a new year filled with wonderful things that don't exist yet... but will!