Another ATC (Artist Trading Card) and a playgroup photo.

Heather's ATC - front.

Heather's ATC - back ( it folds into a chair!)

Playing in the studio.

Tweet

More Playgroup Photos

Here are some wonderful pieces presented as show and tell at our last Playgroup.

Claudette's "Where Mermaids Come From"

Heather's finshed 'shoe' piece

Heather's 'Homemaker'

Tweet

Jamie's Diorama

I think Jamie is the only one of our playgroup to finish his diorama so far. This is the delightful result.

There is so much imagination and playfulness in this piece. I love it!

Tweet

A Creative Time of Year!

Journal page with herb info text and image book cover image.

Journal page with image and leaf pasted in, ready to write on.

On Friday we shipped out 30 boxes to Cirque...704 costume balls, 61 small paintings and 75 large paintings. We usually don't have big orders this time of year and we have been busy right through Christmas. That is good for cash flow! It looks like we will get new orders in March. And I am designing the next large Cirque painting for approval, as there are only 52 left to make of the current design. That will be a series of 250 sold! So we have time to spend working in the Studio on other things. Larry is already working on a few press projects, setting type and planning books and illustrations. I am dreaming up an art series on herbs for a one month/one person show in June at the Almonte Herb Farm. Not just paintings this time, but books and more sculptural works...with a medieval twist of course. I have been adding images and ideas about the series to one of the journals I posted pics of previously. It's so much fun to record ideas this way - very creative and it means that I have the paint and glue out daily. I was ecstatic to aquire a hard-to-find copy of 'Brother Cadfael's Herb Garden' online. It will be most inspirational...I am a big fan of the Brother Cadfael series and Ellis Peters' books. Those stories indeed combine 'medieval' with herbs...and mystery too. I will definitely incorporate some mystery into my art series as well.

Tweet

Some playgroup results

Here are two more wonderful pieces that have been inspired by our Thursday morning playgroups.

Heather's scary shoe goddess. She is a little different now...stay tuned.

Laura made a book to fit her lovely book box.

Here you can see both in all their splendour!

Tweet

What can you fit in a MINI Cooper?

Well...three people, one full size mannequin and a half torso mannequin for starters!

Look closely...you will see Laura on the left pretending to be a mannequin too!

Right down the middle...

Laura and Heather 'manhandling' the womannequins ( :

I wonder what the most unusual cargo for the MINI will be?

Tweet

Diorama?

I have been working on a modern wooden frame for my diorama container. I covered it with DAP, a bathroom caulking compound, then stamped into it and added ripped pieces of textured wallpaper before it dried. The whole lot was then painted with washes of "the uzh", Michael deMeng's wonderful recipe for instant aging. More washes were added until I got the look I was after.

On to the inside. I thought for ages about what I wanted to do with it. In the end I decided to work with some wonderful images of medieval tiles, drawings and cloisters. I scanned and altered them on the computer, further altering with stain, paint and stamps in the Studio. They were adhered to the inside of the box with matte medium.

I also played with a Photo Booth image (have I mentioned how much fun Photo Booth is (: ) in Photoshop, layering it with images of cloister arches and one of my own encaustic paintings. This may end up on a transparency inside the box so that you can still see through to the wonderful old paint behind. We shall see what actually happens!

looking into the box

note the inside top edge image

note the inside right edge image

note the inside left edge image and the detail of the texture on the outside of the box

note the inside bottom edge image

I don't know if the finished piece will actually qualify as a diorama, but it certainly is making me think both inside and outside the box and that is the important thing!

Tweet

Books & Art

I didn't plan to play in the Studio today, but that seems to be when I have the most fun. I worked on aging or altering books. The two larger books were bound already - part of our Bytown Book Artists excercise to do long-stitch bindings. The text pages are scrap paper which I have used to "clean" stamps and paint brushes on, etc. These become pretty interesting over time. The backs of these pages include old Cirque painting schedules, copies of employee time sheets from Performance Printing (yikes! talk about from another life!) and much older stuff. I paint over some of the pages so that I can write on top of them legibly. The covers are decorative heavy papers that I picked up at a craft store. They have been ripped, stained, painted, collaged, stamped and written on to make them even more interesting than they already were. The books have "metal" bands that hold them closed. These are made by putting real metal ducting tape on the back of the same cover papers, taping them into a loop, writing into the tape with a stylus to make a blind impression and finally aging with alcohol inks.

The smaller notepad is something I picked up at Chapters - nice enough in itself, but now much more interesting and grungy ( : This book was stained, stamped, painted, written on and collaged. The frame on the front cover is an old cardboard slide mount. I finally tried out the metal paint and rust finisher which worked great on this little frame. The picture inside is one that I came up with this morning...and extension of last night's creative photo altering episode on my iMac. Photo Booth is SO GREAT!!! There is a high gloss gel medium over the "slide" which hasn't quite dried in this photo. It will be completely clear and solid when it does dry.

front view

back view

back/inside view with "metal" bands removed

Now it's time to move on to the Diorama which has progressed at last.

Tweet

Creating Again

I just realized that I have already created one painting this year - the one that Laura won in the Chinese Auction at our MAG (Merrickville Artists' Guild) party. There are also the small projects I have done during our Thursday morning Play Groups. They are such a great source of inspiration and an excuse to get creating!

Today I started on a diorama, a theme inspired by Jamie a week or so ago. Employing some of Michael de Meng's texturing and painting tips and using items that I have had stashed away in boxes for years, I feel good about making an objet d'art. I could hardly sleep last night while my brain whirled - trying out different ideas in my head for this project. 

It's back to Cirque paintings this evening, but I keep stealing glances at the work-in-progress sitting on the top of the gothic sideboard. I'm creating something different for me and it feels great!

Tweet

MINI Winter Rant

It really is Winter here. The snow just keeps on coming with no regard as to how we are to deal with it all. Sitting at the dining room table the other day, I looked out the window to sneak a peek at our new MINI Cooper. Unfortunately its positioning in the driveway made it completely invisible behind a pile of snow. Good grief! The weeks go by and we are treated to days without snow, instead being precipitated upon by rain or ice pellets. The least hint of sunshine is welcomed, nay worshipped with a road trip in the MINI, however short. Time spent out of doors usually involves shoveling, bringing in wood for the stove, shoveling, lugging 40 kg bags of pellets to a more convenient spot, shoveling or arranging with the fellow across the street to clear at least the end of our drive with his snowblower. You know - that mountain of ‘heavier-than-any-other-snow’ deposited in the end of the drive by the plow. I used to wonder, but now I am firmly convinced that the snow-plow driver has a sixth sense regarding the timing of his passes. Bright and early last Saturday morning (around 7 am) Larry had finished clearing out all the snow in front of and around the MINI in anticipation of our road trip to Kingston. I joined him with our coffees and freshly baked scones to stand beside the car and discuss how our trusty steed might handle the deep snow on the street. Not a problem actually. From further down the street came the sound of the plow and before we could leap into the MINI and escape ahead of it (a dangerous action even to consider) the plow cleaned the street with one mighty sweep. The driver couldn’t have helped but notice us standing there beside our freshly cleaned off car, but I can’t be sure. I didn’t dare look at him for fear I might have given him the evil eye. We just stowed our coffee and scones in the car and grabbed our shovels. We were indeed capable of moving mountains, taking to the road about 15 minutes later than we had planned. Of course, the driver had to pass us once again as he cleared the far side of the street. Digging away on our side, we were safe from that wave of snow, but the driver was probably wondering if he was safe from us. Ah well, everything happens for a reason and we were, after all, expecting a delivery of one-and-a-half tons of pellets while we were out for the day. Now Earl would have no problem getting in to the bottom of our drive. Indeed he did not and we arrived home to a monumental tower where the MINI is usually parked. All we had to do was shovel a path, move 75 – 40 kg bags of pellets in the wheel barrow to their new location at the other end of the drive, re-stack them and put a cover over the new pile. At least it wasn’t snowing…

Tweet