The Odd One is IN!

Normally I post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.  Today I put it off because I was making this:

look like THIS!!!:

Seriously, I don’t know what got into me!  I was planning on putting it off for maybe a year or so, but I kept wondering what Oscar Rogers* would say if I asked his advice.

He would either tell me to “FIX IT!!! It needs to be FIXED!!!”  or to “DOOIT!  It needs to be DURNT!”  Who says TV rots your brain?  It can be straight up motivational.

Now I have a cozy, clutter-free space where I can complete my painting.

*Image found here.

Odd One Out

The Art of an Artist

I am a maker of art, but does that mean I have a house FULL of amazing original art?  Not yet, but I’m working on it.

Here is what I have so far:

A painting of Tuscany that my mother-in-law bought while on vacation in Italy.  She gave it to me for Christmas one year:

A really fun ceramic piece by Jill Moodie-Pellegrino.  I received this as a wedding gift from another artist:

A beautiful ceramic bowl made by Rick Oldhouser, a wedding gift:

And an awesome print by a professor that I had while attending Houghton College–Jillian Sokso.

The story of how I got this print is really great.  I took a printmaking class with Jillian and for the last assignment we were to make ten prints based on a song that we loved.  When the prints were finished, the ten of us (9 students plus Jillian) each drew a number.  The number that you picked was the number print (out of ten) you got from each student.  I drew #1!  So I got everyone’s first print, which is the best one to have.  **Sidenote: When choosing prints as a collector’s item, you want the lowest number of the edition.  For example, if there are 150 prints, it is better to have number 53/150 than it is to have 138/150.**

I also have this box that my great-grandfather made.  It was given to me when my great-grandma died.

Many people ask if I have a lot of my own art hanging in my house, and the answer is NO!  For one thing, it’s better to have your art in a gallery where it has more of a chance to earn you money.  I currently don’t have any work in a gallery, but I still won’t hang a lot of my paintings up because I critique them every time I pass.  I would never get any rest if I had a house full of my own paintings.  However, one of my paintings has a permanent place in my home:

My husband took this picture of a sunrise one morning from his parent’s roof.  He had stayed up all night praying about whether or not he should attend college.  It’s not my best piece by any means, but for me it is a symbol of God’s nearness in spite of uncertainty.   I painted it for Eric in December 2006, which was the same month we got engaged, and gave it to him for Christmas.

So there it is.  My tiny collection of art.  Do any of you have a precious piece of art in your household? I’d love to hear about it!

The Entourage: Blah, Blah, Blah

This is where the painting updates get a little more boring.  It’s starting to get a little harder to tell what I’m doing to the painting at this point, but hopefully you can tell that it looks better than it used to.

Here is what it looked like the last time I posted:

And here it is now:

Hopefully this video helps you see.  I just clicked back and forth between the two images shown above so you can see the difference more easily.

You can probably see that Asher’s skin tone is a little warmer, but I also worked on the orange sippy cup on the left, the skin tones of the two people in the background, and I painted another coat of white over the sky.  I hope to finish this guy by the middle of next week.

Happy Birthday Book

A friend of mine recently celebrated her birthday, and I decided to make her a book.  She had a baby this year, and I knew that she had been taking a lot of pictures of her growing family so I decided to make her a photo album.

For the cover I used a really cool green and ivory colored wrapping paper that I found at Target.  I cut a flower out of another roll of Hallmark wrapping paper, and made two green leaves with some scrap-booking paper.  I’ve covered books with wrapping paper before, but it can be a real challenge because of how thin the paper is.

The best thing about accordion photo albums is that you can store them flat or on a bookshelf, but you can also stand them up to display the photos.  Happy Monday!  I hope it’s good one!

The Entourage: My New Friends

I took my three new paintbrushes for a test drive yesterday, and they performed beautifully.  Only time will tell if they can hold on to their bristles.

Here is the painting as it was:

And here it is now with a little more detail:

The Traitor

My favorite paintbrush (who will henceforth be called “The Traitor”) started to prematurely lose its bristles a couple of months ago.  It was the only brush of its size in my brush jar, and I needed it for the smaller spaces in this painting.

So yesterday I went out and bought three new brushes of a similar size to…The Traitor.Why did it take so long for me to buy new brushes?  I always wait until I absolutely need a new one because they are expensive.  Despite their small size,  these brushes were in the $6-$11/each range.  And these are only medium-good quality.  Once the brushes get bigger, the price starts to skyrocket, and if you’re buying a whole set…whoa.  BUT if you don’t invest in quality brushes, you’ll end up with an unreliable tool, and a painting full of bristles.  So you might as well bite the bullet and spend a little more.

Ever spend your hard-earned cash on a tool that failed you?  Tell me about it!  I would love to know that I’m not the only one who got jilted!

The Entourage Ensues

The other day I was reading a post about artist Melissa Chandon on artstormer.com, and I was inspired and reminded of a principle that I learned in college.  Contrast doesn’t only have to do with color, but with value, texture, content, form…etc.  Melissa Chandon’s paintings have great contrast.  I am totally in love with the texture of the sky against the flatness of the car and the foreground.I was so in love that I decided to try it on my current painting of my nephew Asher.  Here is what it looked like the last time I showed you.

And here it is now:

I like it so much more!

As you can see I also changed a couple of colors around.  You know how I get once I start experimenting with color.   It could be another month before I finally settle on the right one for the shirt on the left.  I didn’t, although it looks like it, change the skin color of my nephew in the foreground.  It is the new colors around him that made his skin tone warmer.  Crazy, right?

So what do you think of this contrast madness?  Although it isn’t necessarily how you would see things in real life, do you prefer it or do you like paintings to look more realistic?

Change Is

So as you can see, if you are a regular viewer of my blog, I have changed the layout a little.  What do you think? 

I like the look of the old one better, but I think that the layout of this one might be a little more practical because it’s wider.  I wanted to try this one on for size and I may switch back if it doesn’t wow me.

In other news, I made a new book (Tea Ceremony Hand-bound Journal) and posted it on my Etsy shop.

I also rephotographed the other books that I made so they look a lot more appealing.  You can see the new and improved listings here if you like.  Today I may do more bookmaking or I may continue my work on the two paintings that I’ve been working on for-eeevv-VER.

Thank you Miller and Your Plant Farm

Now that the weather is officially amazing, I’ve been spending more time outside.  The downside is that I haven’t gotten much painting done.  But I was able to do something that I’ve wanted to do for a loooong time—plant some flowers in front of my house.

For the longest time, we had huge bushes in front of our house that looked like these ones.

I was never crazy about them, but didn’t have the confidence to do anything about it.  Then one day Eric went outside to “trim” the bushes.  I was happy because they were looking scraggly, but a little while later  I looked out and saw nothing but two ugly stumps where the bushes had been!  I haven’t let him trim anything since!  So for the last year, our front yard has looked like this:

I knew it had to change, but felt kind of afraid to do anything about it.  I kept remembering all of the plants that I’ve taken care of in the past and how they died.  Then on Friday night, an opportunity to act presented itself.  I was talking to my friend Danielle who works at Miller Plant Farm.  She mentioned that they were having an event the next day, and a portion of sales made would go to help breast cancer victims.  This way, if my plants didn’t make it, it wouldn’t be a total waste of money!

So Saturday morning, Minion and I set off for the plant farm and picked up twelve plants, three bags of mulch, and a bag of potting soil for $88.  We spent a few hours digging, planting and mulching, and ended up with this:

Notice how the stumps are still there?  I actually like them in with all of my flowers.  They add a neat sculptural element that is preferable to lawn gnomes.

Now for a closer look at some of the plants  I bought.

Two Butterfly Plants

Two kinds of Phlox. Lavender and Magenta.

Double Impatiens

Breathless Blush Euphorbia

New Guinea Impatiens

I also bought three round dwarf evergreen bushes and pale yellow daisies.

The garden itself is still getting started.  Some of the plants will stay fairly small, but others will grow to be about 24″ tall.  I didn’t want any more huge monstrosities blocking the light from my house.   As for whether or not I can keep them alive, I think I’ll be OK.  When I was picking out the plants, I looked at the tags to see which ones were easy to take care of.  I also kept all of the tags from the flowers, so that I can see how to care for them.

If you are like me (knowing very little about plants) and want to know how the process of planting everything went here’s the scoop:

1) Keeping all of the plants in their pots, I laid them out on the ground.  By looking at their tags, I placed the plants that like more shade in places that get more shade, and the plants that like sun…well, you get it.

2) Next minion and I marked the dirt where the plants would be, and dug holes for the plants.  We put a bit of potting soil in the hole for some extra nutrients before placing the plant, and filling in the hole.

3) Once all of the plants were planted, we spread a thin(ish) layer of mulch over the flower bed.

4) Take care of them!  The plants will tell you if they’ve had too much water or not enough by their appearance.

After this experience, I’m ready to redo my entire lawn!  Minion and I had soooo much fun, and it was such a good feeling to finish something in an afternoon.