Virtual Paintout

Sweeper, 11x15 Ink and watercolor

I submitted my first painting to the Virtual Paintout blog. I had a great time surfing the google street maps to find an interesting subject. After hours of searching the streets of Hong Kong, I found this man sweeping the street early in the morning.

This painting is my second attempt of the scene because I completely messed up the perspective of my first attempt. I realized after I submitted the photo that there were a couple of things I would have changed a bit. Too late now since it's already on the Virtual Paintout blog. Oh well. Next time I'll wait a day or two before submitting. I'll also start much earlier in the month. I can hardly wait to find out the location for August.

Acrylic skins

I've been experimenting with creating acrylic skins to print onto using the new digital grounds from Golden paints. Here is my first attempt. I put down a layer of gel medium gloss, added a layer of crackle paste (that's what caused the cracks), next a layer of self leveling gel, then a layer of Lumiere super sparkle paint. For the final two layers I put Golden's digital ground for non-porous surfaces. I let each layer dry thoroughly before adding the next layer. Then I took a manipulated digital photo and printed it onto the acrylic skin after taping it to a carrier sheet first. Here is my result and I'm quit pleased.

Tahoe in the snow and sun

I got a new macro lens for Christmas this year. It's a Nikon 105mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor Lens. We went up to Tahoe for the weekend and I took some close ups of icicles and snow covered things. We spent a lot of time walking the dogs through the meadow that is located behind my sister's house. The sun was shining and it was cold. We took the dogs to the new dog park in town and it was nice because they had a small dog area and a large dog area. For those of you who have small dogs, I know you can appreciate an area for the small ones. I did let my dog into the large dog area so he could play with my sister's dog, but not before taking off his sissy dog coat so the other dogs wouldn't make fun of him.

Chihuly

Last September my daughter and I went to the De Young Museum in San Francisco to see the Chihuly exhibit. It was an amazing display of glass form and color. If you have ever worked with glass you will definitely appreciate the work of Chihuly. Colorful glass filled room after room of the museum and it was all so beautiful. I would highly recommend the exhibit if it's in your neighborhood or even somewhere close. It was worth the drive for us. One of my favorites was the room that had multiple glass pieces suspended on the ceiling behind clear glass in sort of a skylight effect. All the incredible color was lit up by the light shining down behind the glass. It made me think that it would be great to have colorful skylights in my house.

I just watched a show on PBS called "Chihuly in the Hotshop". It was very interesting to see all the different glass forms and how they make them. I was surprised to find out that Chihuly did not do much of the actual glass work himself due to physical limitations, but he did a lot of designing on paper for each of the pieces. It was fun to see his artists slinging hot molten glass around like nothing. Of course there was some breakage which was good to see so that even the most skilled glass workers make mistakes once in awhile.

Clay Monotype

(Click on images to enlarge)
I spent the weekend at Diana's Art Farm in Petaluma. She is a ceramic artist and uses a process that incorporates clay slab and colored clay slip into a monoprint on Pellon interfacing fabric. The process was developed by Mitch Lyons and allows a much longer open time for manipulating and playing with pigment before printing it.


I met an amazing group of women at the workshop and Diana fed us incredible gourmet food all weekend long.

It took me all of Saturday to get into the rhythm of the process. I only made 3 prints all day Saturday, but on Sunday morning I was able to print out 4 in only half the time. I'm planning to take this workshop again at some time. If you are interested in the workshop or just want to see Diana Crain's work go to http://wallvases.com/ follow the link to her art farm. You may have to call her to get the dates for upcoming workshops since it looks like her workshops page is not current.

And while I was busy making art, that guy that I live with was up in the Annadel Mountains riding his mountain bike around. It was a glorious weekend for us both.

Digital Collage

Lately I've been running across a few vintage car shows and taking some pictures. I love the curves and lines and texture I can find up close to the cars. The level of detail on these older vehicles is amazing. I started playing with layering some of these images and liked what I saw. I'm planning on going to more vintage car shows in the near future so I can complete a set of 12 for my portfolio class.

Mendocino

My sister Alice and I spent last week painting with Birgit O'Connor in Mendocino at the Mendocino Art Center. We signed up for two workshops, back to back. The first was Treasures From The Shore where we focused on painting rocks, seaweed, shells and sand. The second workshop was painting flowers.

It was a fun and exhausting week. We learned a lot of techniques and were exhausted at the end of every day. We met some really nice people in the workshops and Birgit was a great watercolor instructor. Although the class was about having fun and learning technique I did come away with some paintings I like. Birgit also taught us a cool framing without glass technique which I haven't tried yet but plan to in the near future. I'll keep you posted.