Moving forward...

Woo Hoo! I will be a vendor at the St.John's Bizarre this May 12th and am hoping to be accepted to the Kenton Street Fair which would be tops!
I have been working on some new pieces to put in shows. I am learning a lot about wood and how different types burn differently. Hardwoods definitely take a lot longer to produce art on! Though the effects are nice, the time it takes is sometimes daunting!
Here is a picture of a salmon which is done and an owl in progress. I took the picture at the raptor rescue in ID an am working from that image of the owl.

 And now for the finished owl...

This has a lot of detail in it and was quite the undertaking. Due to working on hardwood, this took many days and about 15 hours to complete. I really, really like this one! I like it so much that I traced the outline and attempted to re-create it on an old cabinet door. The door is made from Doug Fir which is much softer and burns much faster so it only took a couple of days to complete. 

After working on such large pieces, I decided to simplify and work on a smaller board capturing the essence of spring flowers that are progressing this year much better than last year! The weather in Portland is much warmer than it was last year, we may even have summer this year! Yeah!! These are wood-burned and then painted. The Black Eyed Susan's were a bit more detailed than I had originally planned on but I think they turned out well. 

The Poppy turned out exceptionally well, I think. 

A little glimpse into what I have been up to lately, with more to come! I am looking forward to warmer and dryer weather so I can work outside doing the artwork I love! Burning wood inside is stinky and though I wear a mask, tends to stick in the already clogged sinuses of Spring! 

Comments and suggestions for backgrounds are most welcome! 

Enjoy the change in seasons and welcome change in life!! 

I just finished this piece last night. One of the largest wood-burnings I have done since the bookshelf for the Chair Affair, it took many hours but I love the result! 

After spending a week working at a temp job I was feeling stuck, unengaged. Thoughts of art work swirl in my head, desire to create was there but wasn't coming through. I had been working on this a few hours here and there but it remained largely unfinished. Frustrated but having the option of doing housework or working on this, you see what I chose! It was a great sense of accomplishment and relief. I am now reinvigorated to move forward with new projects! 

Oh Boy!! Awoke to SUNSHINE today!! Supposed to climb to 60 degrees today!! So excited, I am heading outside to do some work with the stylus tool. Hopefully there will be new stuff to post after today! Here's a little something to enjoy in the mean time...

Round and Round

I have been trying to vary my substrates a bit. Mostly I use wood that I have gleaned from other places. When I worked at Pratt and Larson I would visit the workshop and gather cast offs from where they make the display boards for showing tile. At one time the company my husband worked for had wood samples in a variety of sizes which was fun to work on too. I still have some of that to work with but I was looking for something else that would make a great gift item. 
I came across a great deal on Lazy Susan's recently and purchased a few - what a HOOT to work on! Literally having to think outside the box was a challenge! I traced and drew out several ideas on paper months ago... I didn't like any of them! So recently, I just decided to just go for it, do something on one of them. I loved working on the round surface because it spins! I disliked working on the round surface because it spins! I found ways to overcome and stop the spinning when necessary but embraced the versatility of the spinning surface, it made it easy to adjust hand positions and approach the subject from different angles to achieve different burn strokes. 


Here I started off just sketching on the surface: 

Next was to do the woodburning. I had to do this in stages over the course of several days. Perhaps it was the type of wood or the way it was cured, but it was tougher than birch to burn on. 

Given that the subject matter was small and detailed, that probably made it take longer to work on as well. I had to do a little research on dogwood flowers to remember what they looked like and what the leaves looked like! 

After adding some paint and then a little finish over the paint, I think it looks quite nice! 

Looking forward to the next adventure!! 

fishy, fishy

I know, I need to do more. More art work, perhaps less job searching! The job searching thing is bringing me down, way down. 
But I have some artwork to post so that makes me feel happier :) 
I worked on a piece for my husband for Valentines day which took quite a while to do but since he was out of town for the weekend, I was able to work on it freely! It is one of the most detailed pieces I have done. I thought the heron on the bookshelf was intense but this took the place of that intensity! 
Here's a picture of 'in the beginning' : 

It's a Salmon by the way.... 
                    And now for the finish.... 

It has a bit of a shine on it in this photo but I did put a finish just on the burned image, hopefully you can still see the details!  
More to come shortly! 

Beginning to End Bookshelf for the Chair Affair

The table & Chair Affair supporting the Community Warehouse

THURSDAY     MARCH 15, 2012

CASTAWAY   1900 NW 18th Avenue

     Portland, 97209

                              www.communitywarehouse.org/

This year I was invited to participate in the table & Chair Affair which supports the Community Warehouse. A great organization that helps folks to set up house for the first time or after experiencing hardships in life. It's a great place to donate all of the home goods that may not be needed at your house any longer. Towels, sheets, mattresses, toasters, silverware... You get the point! 

As a fund raiser, the warehouse allows artist to come in a pick out a piece of furniture or they can find a piece on their own, alter it in an artistic way and bring it back to be auctioned to raise money to support their efforts. This post is to show the transformation of the bookshelf I picked out and it's progression.

In the beginning, it was an old, way over painted bookshelf. After 2 chemical peels and a day plus of sanding, the wood grain was revealed and inspiration began bubbling. 

I took inspiration from a place I see several times a week, Delta Park Dog park. There is a wetland bird sanctuary located right beside the 'park'. Great Blue Herons, Eagles, multitudes of ducks, hummingbirds, and various other birds inhabit the wetland area. I love watching the birds and observing how the weather and light changes there from season to season. One day while pondering what I should do with the bookshelf a heron passed overhead and landed just a bit away as if to say, "pick me!". So, I did! 

 

I really wanted to capture the essence of what I see at the park with the cat tails, tall grasses and the water. The top of the bookshelf had a gorgeous band of wood grain that I wanted to emphasise and the idea of the wet land played perfectly with that. I began by wood burning the grasses, then went back and painted each blade and then sealed each so the color would show even after painting in the water and sunset. 

 

Moved by an Audubon post to my facebook page regarding how hummingbirds pick the fuzz from cat tails to make a nest, the inspiration for the last panel was born. I chose to put a male and female Anna's hummingbirds on the last side. (Anna's hummingbirds stay in Portland year round!) 

The final step was to put on the grasses. I painted grasses on craft paper, layering red, then greens in long strips I then cut them out and glued them on with matte medium. I will add that I used some blue & black spray paint and black gesso to paint the inside area of the bookshelf. The entire piece was then painted with a satin finish poly acrylic to seal the deal :) Here are the finished pictures, enjoy! 

 

Is it wrong to love it too much?

I'm in love with this drawing.
I can't help it, every time I see it I just want to reach in and scoop this little precious thing up and hold it, pet it, feed it and make it feel loved! But alas, it's on paper so I can only view and enjoy. I sketched it out in pencil, went over the key lines with a waterproof ink and then added color with watercolors. It's called a Bewick's Wren and I see them often hanging out with sparrows and house finches often in the backyard. I have enjoyed them so much because they are so cute!
Since I enjoyed this so much I made one for a friend of mine for his birthday and then drew out another.

This time I cut it out and applied it to a mixed media piece. This is one of those where I wood burned a branch over a background of leaves and stained the board. The paper square in the bottom right is actually a piece of metal covered in paper. I wood burned around it to make an attempt at depth. If I knew how I would have 'carved out' the space and sunk the metal into the board. I made the magnets too which was simple. Those are so easy; just paint a little picture cut out a circle and paste onto the back of one of those glass dots made to be accents in topiary and cut flower arrangements. For the final bit of interest, I used an extra large embossing crystal. I think they are supposed to be melted in a pot and then from what I have read, pour the substance into a form to make clear embellishments. But, I didn't use it that way. Attempting to place them on the leaves, some places it worked and other places not so much but then heated the crystals and the way they melted made it appear as if it were dew on the leaves. So I was happy with that experiment. I think it turned out well and it makes me happy!
Experimenting can turn out some cool stuff don't ya think!?!