Tag Archives: art

follow up…

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just a quick follow up to my last post to present my final piece from the 5 days to jawdropping art program that i mentioned. it took me two weeks because my work schedule had me out of sorts (and out of the studio), but i finished it! and even framed it, which i never do. (it’s hard enough for me to even feel like a piece is finished; i never get to the point of thinking about framing.)

quick explanation: the first day prompt was to journal all our fears about our art/art making and then make a physical embodiment of that. so the piece i made to start out with was much bigger than this, on bristol board (paper), and basically used up all the leftover paint on my palette from the last thing i was working on. i scribbled a lot with pencil and oil pastels but it was basically just a big jumbled angsty mess that was pretty garish. and i wrote out a lot of my fears, the negative crap i tell myself about my art and process, onto it. the next few days prompts asked us to use various kinds of alchemy to transform our piece – i won’t go into all the details but for me, i ended up tearing my piece up and removing all the bits that had all my fears and negative talk on them, and then reassembled the piece without those into a smaller piece. in order to do this i had to affix it to cardboard. i had masked off the edges originally so that helped me when reassembling. i then outlined in white all the places where the pieces came together, so you could see how it had been put back together. each day we were to do something else to keep transforming it; none of my subsequent days were as dramatic as tearing it up and reassembling it, but i did make changes each day and finally ended up with this, which i am happy with and will make me remember a lot of the internal work that i did through the week. i even miraculously found a frame in my house that was the exact perfect size for the final piece, so now it will hang in my studio to remind me of this experience.

though i am clearly someone who is receptive to these art class sales pitches, in the end i have decided not to join jessica serran’s keep your ass in the studio program, the 4 month deep dive. i thought long and hard about it and even crunched numbers in my budget, trying to figure out ways to afford it. i could have thrown it on a credit card and hoped like hell i could figure out a way to make back the money, that the course would result in me getting back in gear and being prolific making finished pieces i could sell for higher prices than i usually do. (i do know my pricing is ridiculously low and i intend to change that going forward.)

i think when i finally got a peak inside her program, which she offered today on a live zoom call as it’s the last day to register, i had the realization that while i liked the 5 day challenge and all the internal work and journaling and i do think it was productive for me, i don’t know that i can maintain my interest in that level of introspection for 4 months. and if it took me 2 weeks to do 5 days of prompts because of my work schedule, knowing what my next few months look like and that work always ramps up during the holidays in november and december… i just know i can’t commit and i don’t want to commit to something that is ultimately just going to add to my stress level and make me feel bad because i don’t have the time to devote to it. i don’t doubt i could get something out of it but it is not the right timing and maybe even not the right program for me.

there’s another free teaser course coming up at the beginning of september that i want to do though i have no intention of going on to pay for the longer course that follows it, for many of the same reasons i mentioned above. but it’s a chance to try out another artist’s style and have an excuse to be in the studio more. i’ll be dogsitting that week so it might end up being on a one-week delay for me, but most of these things give you a little bit of time afterwards with the materials to finish if you weren’t able to keep up, so i will be hopeful.

i am also setting the intention that in between dog sits and busy periods with my job, i will do more painting and i will finish some things and have stuff to sell this year during the holidays. i’ve let the holiday selling season slip by too many years in a row and i intend to partake this year, even if it’s just a handful of small paintings or another studio clear-out of old work, or both. maybe this is the year i finally plunk down the money on a really good printer so i can make nice prints of my work to sell. a lot of artists make a good income selling modestly priced prints, which also serves to make the originals more unique and valuable. i need to do the research on that but that might be a better use of my money-that-i-don’t-have than paying for an art course.

i guess we’ll see. hopefully i can maintain and build upon this bit of momentum i’ve had and keep going. that is my intention. i’ll keep you updated!

my week in art

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i haven’t had much to report artwise for a while, but this past week had some activity that i want to share.

this week i did two things i want to celebrate myself for: the first was that i entered a few pieces into the art2life international online juried art exhibition. yes, at the very last minute, literally, but i did it. an online art show might not sound like a big deal but actually following through and entering anything in any show is a big deal for me. i’ve had several shows this year i’ve wanted to submit to that have come and gone, mostly cuz i didn’t feel like i had anything that was “finished” that i felt good enough about. well this time i just said fuck it and i entered some pieces anyways. i’ve been part of the art2life world for more than a year now and i just missed out on entering it last year so i figured, why not? it was $40 to enter up to 3 pieces; sadly i couldn’t settle on a third and get it photographed in time so i only sent in 2. (serves me right for waiting til the last minute.) but dammit i did it. (pat on my own back.) i certainly don’t expect to win anything (there are cash prizes and it is juried by a gallerist from NYC) but who knows what might come from it. maybe nothing but it was a baby step and i took it. so yay.

these are the two pieces i chose to enter. i’ve posted both on my instagram before but haven’t put either up for sale. at the time i made them, i wasn’t really sure i liked either and wasn’t sure they were done. but they’ve been sitting in my studio for several months now and when i scanned the room for recent work, they just jumped out at me.

untitled blue – acrylic on canvas board (10×10″)
releasing guilt – mixed media on bristol board (14×17″)

the second thing is that i did yet another free taster online course from another online art guru that has a longer expensive class. this one was called 5 days to jaw dropping art. jessica serran who is based in prague is the artist/coach and she takes you through a lot of self-examination of your fears around why you aren’t making the art you know you want to/can. it’s kind of more art therapy than art instruction – there’s a lot of journaling involved – but the prompts were interesting and thought-provoking. i tuned in live all 5 days but have only managed to complete the first 2 days of exercises; thankfully i have more time with the replays and a partially completed piece so i guess we’ll see what happens. but when i signed up for it i wasn’t even sure i had the time to tune in every day cuz this has been a busy work week. so i’m patting myself on the back for watching the lives and trying to engage and wanting to follow through. hopefully i can get through the rest of the week’s exercises this weekend when i have more time.

where my jaw dropping art piece stands now – acrylic on bristol board that’s been torn up and glued back together onto a piece of cardboard (14×18”)

i like taking these free teaser courses because, well, they are free. but also because each artist-teacher has a different approach and conveys some different – and many of the same – nuggets about making art, having an art practice, overcoming your inner critic, developing a style, and creating an art business. i guess i keep hoping that if i hear these things enough they will sink in and i will make some progress. today was the last day of this one and as they all are, the day’s live was mostly focused on selling the paid program. hers is a 4 month deep dive with a step by step plan and regular coaching calls and some bonuses for those who sign up early. it’s around $2k for those 4 months and she has a bunch of payment plans. (i’ll add that none of them are as good as paying the full amount up front using paypal credit which gives you 6 months interest free to pay it off, which is how i did the art2life spark program last fall.)

i also keep hoping that one of these teachers will resonate enough with me to want to really invest the money that i don’t have to try one of these longer programs, to see if it would help me break through whatever my blocks are to build my art business back up. i liked nick wilton (art2life) enough to do the short (and cheaper, around $500) 3 week spark class, and i did feel at the time like it helped and gave me some momentum. i learned a few things but mostly it kept me in the studio every day with exercises that helped loosen me up and get the creative juices flowing. you’ll probably remember i applied for a scholarship to his CVP program, the longer 3 month course that cost around $2400, but i was not selected. and i just couldn’t justify that amount of money at the time when my pet biz was really slow and i was barely making ends meet.

i’m in a little different place right now financially – despite my dogwalking schedule thinning, my petsitting schedule has been in overdrive for the past many months so i’ve banked some savings – but $2k for jessica’s 4 month keep your ass in the studio program still feels hard to commit to – especially when the pet biz is so busy. and until i go back and watch the replays of the last few days’ lives and finish the exercises, i won’t know if i feel like i really resonate with her style. so i guess we’ll see after this weekend. but i’m still really glad i managed to do what i’ve done with the free 5-day class.

ok, so i guess that means it was “good” week in the studio? i dunno. it was definitely better than it has been recently. i’ll take that as a win. hope y’all had a good week and happy weekend!

it’s been a minute

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yeah, april and may whizzed by and i have no art to show for it. i’ve been struggling to have any creative motivation and there have been way too many distractions: weekend getaways, jazzfest, an unholy alliance with amazon (more on that later), and work work work. i should be glad that work has picked back up because it means i’m struggling less to pay my bills, but summer has arrived and it’s heating up and my dogwalking schedule is really stupid right now. (doesn’t geographically flow so i find myself criss crossing town back and forth multiple times a day, spending more time in my car than i am walking dogs.) so it feels, shall we say, not fun right now. petsitting has really picked up too which always complicates my schedule even further. i am grateful for the abundance of work and money but, whew, i am tired.

all of this is to say there’s been less time and energy to even think about art. but i have 3 dogwalking clients leaving me this month (one is going on summer vacation for a few months but will be back in august, and the other two are moving out of state/out of my service area at the end of june), so my daytime schedule is about to get a little slower and i’m hoping i can refocus and get back into the studio with some of that spare time.

in anticipation of hopefully having more time soon, and to try to jumpstart my creativity and get myself excited about making something, i just treated myself to my first ever gel plate for printing. gelli printing has been kind of a craft/scrapbook/collage fad for the past few years and honestly i pretty much resisted even paying any attention to it cuz i’m averse to fads and not into scrapbooking at all, but dammit if it’s not impossible to avoid all the gelli plate printing reels on instagram! and once i started watching a few of them, they of course multiplied and i started finding artists who use gel prints in different ways, as part of their painting or mixed media practice, or who actually seem to do well selling their collages that they make using their gelli prints. sometimes even on canvas. i guess it opened my eyes to the possibilities of using this tool in different ways, some of which might intersect with my recent foray into abstract art.

a couple different companies make gelatin printing plates. (which interestingly enough, are not actually gelatin.) gelli arts is the OG but gel press is a bit more economical, and speedball also makes them in different sizes as well as the other tools used with the technique. i opted to try out the gel press 5″x7″ size first, just to play with and see if i like it. i figure i can use it to make cards and postcards and small prints and if i’m really digging it, i can invest in some larger sizes. i already have multiple brayers on hand and tons of acrylic paint as well as silkscreen ink for paper. and i have oodles of paper to print on. so it’s a relatively lost cost investment in case it doesn’t catch on with me or i get bored with it after a week.

as soon as i’m done with my current dog sit, i’ll have a chunk of time to start playing with it. i look forward to sharing my experiments with it with you!

new artist paint tip!

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i wanted to write a quick post to share a pretty cool deal for artists but i think it’s only good til the end of march, so you need to act fast. and no, i don’t work for them and am not getting anything in return for talking about their product. i’m just someone who is always interested in new art supplies and especially eco-friendly paints and processes, so when i saw a sponsored ad for this company and their paint scroll across my IG feed, i looked into it and ordered some samples.

the company is called tomorrow’s artist and they make premium quality, highly pigmented acrylic paint using leftover paint that was destined for the landfill. “they” are a group of artists, art enthusiasts, makers and marketers who created a proprietary process to turn leftover paint of all kinds into high quality artist paint. you can read more about them on their website or that of their parent company, encore.

the deal they are offering right now is for the month of march, which they are calling artist appreciation month. they are offering buy one get one free on their 4-ounce jars of either standard body or heavy body paint in all colors, and free shipping for all orders regardless of amount. ever curious, i ordered 4 4-ounce jars of standard body, which ended up costing me $15.98 – a pretty great deal considering the prices of other brands. (their normal pricing for a 16-ounce jar of standard body is $19.25.)

i just got the jars of paint an hour ago and opened them right up. the colors are really vivid. i brushed some onto a page in my sketchbook so you could see what they looked like. the standard body is fairly fluid though not quite as much as fluid-body paints, more like basic latex. it brushes on really smooth but has good coverage, at least in the colors i chose. i ordered “bluebird blue,” “oak orange,” “thalia blonde,” and “victoria sunset.” i got the first three but the last one must have been out of stock or something, because instead i received “gaviota gold.” oh well. no explanation was provided, which is a little disappointing but since i’m just sampling their product, i guess it doesn’t matter much.

the only other minor grievance i will note is that the various jars were all filled to different levels, as you can see in the picture above. the “thalia blonde” and “gaviota gold” were not as full as the other two colors, noticeably different. but again, these are meant as testers and i got a good deal so i can’t complain too much. hopefully they don’t do that with the larger jars.

i have to run to work right now but i look forward to playing with these paints and seeing how they interact with the other brands of paint i have, how they layer and mix and dry on various surfaces. but i would say so far i’m pleased with the purchase and am considering getting another order in before the end of the month, maybe to try out some of their heavy body colors. but if you are someone who is invested in trying to be more eco-friendly with your painting life, this might be a good option to investigate and if you order in the next few days before the end of the month, you can take advantage of a pretty good deal to try them out.

ETA: after i posted this and an IG post pointing to this blog post, i got a response from the company apologizing for sending me the wrong color and offering to send me the one i actually ordered. it was just a mistake and they didn’t even realize it had happened. and then they explained to me that the jars they bought to use for the 4 ounce testers turned out to be actually 6-8 ounce jars, so that’s why the fill lines are all different. they didn’t want to waste the jars, so they are using them; and they didn’t want to just put 4 ounces in them cuz they’d look half empty! so they are in fact being extremely generous by filling them up closer to the top!

this is great customer service, to address the issues i brought up right away and to offer to correct their mistake. i just put in another small order for a few of the heavy body paints to compare them to the standard body, so i’ll report back when i get them.

on disappointment

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well, after not really sleeping all weekend and having serious anticipation anxiety, waiting to hear if i got one of the scholarships for the CVP class i mentioned in the previous post… i just got the email that told me i did NOT get in. “overwhelming amount of scholarship applications” blah blah blah. i find it so hard to believe considering how hard it is to even find out that there IS a scholarship for this program. it’s not listed anywhere on their website and they never mention it. i only found out because someone said something about it in the chat during a live call – and even then the official response was just “email us.” but at the same time, it’s no wonder they have a kajillion scholarship applicants because the course is really quite expensive, putting it out of the reach of most working class and/or low income folks. i guess it is geared to those who do have the money for it, as they are a business with a lot of staff and expenses to pay in order to keep the whole a2l empire going. i get it. nick and the whole team are great and deserve to make a good living doing what they do, inspiring artists to overcome their fears and create. i’m just sad to not be joining in the 2023 cohort. it sucks being poor.

i hope the other artists i’ve made facebook friends with who applied got in. many of them are on disability or are retired and living on a fixed income. i’m not, so i get it. but the timing is definitely not right for me to go $2.5K in debt right now so oh well. maybe i’ll try again next year.

it does however i guess free me up from what i was already thinking was going to be an insanely busy spring. not that i’m going to stop painting – i won’t, in fact i’m thinking i’ll go back over the spark videos again and see if i learn anything new. but i do have some busy work weekends of petsitting coming up and i’m trying to scheme my way for a weekend trip in april and festival season is almost upon us. spring in new orleans is a very busy time of year. so i guess i won’t have to forego all of that, as i’d previously thought if i were to be in CVP.

maybe the universe has other plans for me.

i know it’s ok to be disappointed. this too shall pass. back to the proverbial drawing board… or sketchbook.

post mardi gras update

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now that mardi gras has passed, it’s back to business as usual, which for me has been all about my art. (you can see more pics of my mardi gras adventures on my personal instagram, or if you follow me on facebook.) the chaos and whirlwind that is carnival sort of caused me to pause on my actual painting, save for some sketchbook playtime, in favor of costume prep. but i was able to continue to follow along with the live calls on the free art2life workshop in the lead up to the beginning of CVP. (if you don’t know what i’m talking about please go back and read the last post.)

so, i made a decision about CVP. as much as i really want to take it, i could not put myself that much in debt given my current financial status. it just wouldn’t be prudent and would stretch me really thin on a month to month basis in terms of covering my actual expenses, even on a 12 month payment plan. but i discovered a few days ago that they do have a scholarship program for those in financial need, so i applied. i don’t know if they will consider me to be in enough need to give me a scholarship or not, but i really do hope so. i get that there are probably plenty of others with greater financial need than me who are more deserving (folks on disability, or seniors on a fixed income, etc.) but i’ve pretty much been low income my whole life and right now i’m lower than i have been in a long time. i have no way of knowing how many folks they give scholarships to each session, or how many apply, so i don’t know my odds. but i had to go for it.

so it’s in the hands of the universe now. i turned in my application on sunday. (yes, in the midst of total carnival chaos!) the deadline was today at noon. CVP starts with a welcome call tomorrow but they don’t let you know if you got the scholarship until monday, so even if i do get in i will be playing a bit of catch-up. but that’s ok. i will be so elated if they do allow me in. (i didn’t ask for a full scholarship; i offered to pay 25% which is about all i think i can reasonable pay off over the next year. though if my finances change, i’m happy to kick in more.)

so wish me luck or if you are so inclined, visualize me getting in so i can continue this deep dive i’ve started into my creative expression and all the things that have blocked me over the years from truly succeeding as the artist i’ve always known i am. as i’ve mentioned before, last year started this new phase for me, with the (wo)manifesting of the extra rooms in my house which afforded me a studio space in my home. (this is something i never thought would ever happen and i willed it into existence last year!)

and then i took the art2life breadcrumbs challenge in the late summer, which was a free workshop that introduced me to how nick wilton and art2life approach teaching art. i immediately resonated with what he was saying, how he taught, and was convinced to take the paid Spark class in the fall. i feel like Spark really gave me some a-ha moments and started breaking down all the nonsense i’ve been telling myself my whole life about art and my abilities. i feel like i discovered some threads… that i really want to keep going with, pull harder on, dive deeper on. which is why i did the most recent free workshop and want to continue with CVP. i feel like i have momentum. and that now is the time. i fear if i don’t i’m going to have a hard time on my own keeping it going. like, i’ve been introduced to the principles that art2life teaches but now i need to really integrate them into how i paint. the structure of the classes, the recordings, the lessons, really help me.

anyways. i am accepting all woo and good wishes for best outcomes. and thank you. especially to all of you who have supported me over the years in my art journey, by listening to me talk endlessly about this stuff, or who’ve read my blogs about it, who’ve bought my art and craft, supported my patreon when i had it, or who’ve just generally encouraged me when i haven’t felt confident about what i was doing. i feel like i’m finally on the verge of figuring it out, of gaining that confidence i’ve lacked, so i can finally have a self-sustaining art practice that is meaningful to me and hopefully others.

for now, it’s back to the dogs and cats and to clean up this MESS of a house and studio post mardi gras costume making and general carnival life for the past few weeks. i’ll post again when i’m notified about the scholarship.