First Day Of Spring.....

My newest painting was finished this past week, my last one for a while.  My studio is being cleaned, sorted through and boxed up over the next week or so.  It is amazing how much junk I found and also located things I've been looking for as well.  Too many art supplies and too little time I guess.  I probably will not be getting back to painting until July as we'll have things to do on our new house that we want to take care of right away (to actually make sure we do them) and also, we want to spend some time driving around and doing things in our new area, to get to know everything and have a bit of fun as well.

Last week we finished all the odds and ends in the basement and I stumbled upon a bit of a surprise. 
I found our old coffee table buried under a pile of boxes that had accumulated over it through the years ( I knew about the boxes so that was no shock ) but the coffee table had quite a pile of nuts on it.....yes, nuts and nuts mean that there was a squirrel in my basement at some point enjoying a meal.  I'm so glad he left before I could run into him down there, I would have screamed my head off.  We're leaving NY for Orlando on June 12 and while most of the work is done, there are still some things to sort through.  Hopefully no more squirrel surprises though.....yuk.

Anyway, this little chickadee is 6" x 6" on gallery canvas and the bird, tree and greenery are all done with stucco for extra texture. 

Tile Trivets & Late Summer Swallowtail Butterflies

Beyond my frenzy of late to create cards from my artwork, I've also been making 6" x 6" tile trivets or I know, as lots of people like to call them.....hot plates.

These are 3 or 7 different varieties so far, that I'll be adding to my ETSY site little by little.  Along with cards though, I'm really looking forward to selling the trivets at crafts fairs when I relocate. 

I cannot wait to have tile murals of some of my painted pieces, I think they will be very dimensional and fun.  My husband will be my grout and frame man, piecing everything together, grouting to connect the segments and finally, finishing with a custom made frame.  Think of one of the above images much much larger and broken into smaller segments, connected to make a larger, ceramic piece of wall art.....and if you can imagine that, you will have imagined what I would like to create. 

These are all late season swallowtial butterflies that have been visiting my garden in the last few weeks.  I'm actually creating a painting now with 4 different kinds of butterflies and two of them are swallowtails so these beauties couldn't have fluttered into my garden at a bettter time.  The inspiration they gave me has been amazing.

I hope you find some lovely inspiration in your end of the season garden as well.

Pink Hibiscus In Bloom & The Wonders Of Photoshop

**I'm taking a blogging break for a week or so to finish enjoying some of my vacation time**

This week in my perennial garden the pink hibiscus have started to bloom, they are a summer favorite of mine as they always put on such a pretty show for about 4 weeks during the season.

I use a lot of my black eyed susans that have started blooming for cut flowers to bring in the house and sit on the living room coffee table.

With the black eyed susans, I like to cut them to bring them inside after a good rain or after I have watered, that way I find they will not wilt but will last for many many days.  I also run freezing cold water over the ends of the cut stems, which also seems to help.

The hibisucs I cannot cut and bring in, they wouldn't work as a cut flower but they sure are pretty to look at and photograph each year.

I hope you have beautiful blooms in your own garden each week to look forward to and photograph as they put on their summer show.

Ok, on to wonders that don't have anything to do with nature, this particular one centers around the amazing things that can be accomplished by using Photoshop.  This past week when I submitted "Fair Weather Friends" to my licensing agent Laurie, she asked that I change the types of birds in the painting to better suit what they are needing to make the image more usable for them.  

To keep my original painting in tact I decided to create the chickadee, goldfinch and wren that Laurie asked for on loose sheets of unstretched canvas and insert them into the orginal image by using photoshop.  Above is the goldfinch, I painted this bird leaving out the areas that would be in front of him in the painting, so he could just be slipped in behind  the purple climatis petals.

The end result is a pretty cool variation on my original theme.  The original painting is left in tact and a second digital image is created using the newly painted birds.....the finished product is two very different bird house scenes.  These changes of course did not magically appear with the waving of a wand (I wish) I did the painting and Chris (the husband with the photoshop chops) created the new digital image for me.  He did a great job so thank you photoshop for existing in the first place and thank you husband for all your hard work on this image.

Chickadees, Chickadees And More Chickadees.....

It seems I've been painting a ton of chickadees these days, these two pieces were the beginnings of a special project that I hope comes to fruition soon. These two happy spring birds are getting ready to fly out of my studio this coming week and hopefully, onto a new home.

This coming week I'm on to other painting projects, ones that do not include chickadees this time. The spring weather here in NY has been lovely, leading to lots of walks in the mornings and yoga sessions as well. It is amazing how much more "alive" I feel in the beautiful spring weather, ready for activity and painting projects as well. I hope everyone is enjoying a beautiful and inspiring spring this year.

"Awaiting Spring" - Chickadee On Gallery Canvas & A Blog Spring Cleaning

I've been painting a lot of birds lately for a project that I'm working on and "Awaiting Spring" is the newest chickadee to be added to the collection. www.artfulcreations.etsy.com

I had one of those mornings where I thoroughly amazed myself today. You see, my blog has been looking shabby and neglected for quite a long time now, it was in a real state of sad disarray. There were widgets I wanted taken off, things to be moved around, added, it basically just needed a lot of help. My husband being the techie in the family, always does all these tasks for me after I make him a detailed list of what needs to be done. Lately he has been very busy and I have totally forgotten to write a list so these things that needed to be changed, just stretched on, undone, for weeks and months.

This morning though I sat down and went into the design area of the blog and to my great amazement, I saw all the things I needed to take out and was easily able to delete them. I also added pictures of Chris and me and our doggies and was able to successfully upload those in the blog sidebar as well. What I'm probably most proud of though is that I figured out how to add painting photos, make them clickable so they take you to my ETSY site and also add links to my website and ETSY site that actually work. I was also able to add a photo link at the top of the blog in the left hand column that can take people to Creative Connection licensing agency. I then realized all the photos and links I had made were right in a row, not where I would want them so I was able to click and drag them to where I wanted them. I then realized by hitting that magic little "save" button, all my changes would be happily displayed just the way I want them on my blog. Amazing!!!

I hope you have been able to amaze yourself today as well!!!!

Summer's Sweet Song - Acrylic Tree-Scape Quadtych On Gallery Canvas

What can I say, in my mind, no matter what time of year it actually is........I live in the summertime, it is my favorite season and I'm truly happiest when the world is in bloom. This painting is really my tribute to my favorite time of year. I had a lot of fun painting on the 4 different sized canvases and creating the 2 singing birds high up in the trees.

This first panel is the perfect shape to form the body of the tree - 18" h x 6" w.

From there we go further on up the tree with a 14"h x 11" w canvas panel.

Then - 8" h x 8" w and

then a 6" h x 4" w panel. This painting measures a total of 26" h x 26 1/2" w.

I hope you like "Summer's Sweet Song", the newest painting to come out of my studio.

www.artfulcreations.etsy.com

Hydrangea Wreath Completed.....

My Hydrangea Wreath painting is now complete......every last detail finished.

I'm showing the overall finished work in the next series of photos but I haven't forgotten about the work itself in progress that I was showing and we'll pick up with that later on in the post.

I know, you're wondering where in the world this second bird in the upper left hand corner came from. That little chickadee wasn't in the finished sketch, so how did he get there?? Ow the questions.....

The wonderful thing about doing a painting on gallery canvas is that it needs no frame, as you can see here, the mottled green background is brought around to all 4 sides. The painting is 14" x 18" and the canvas is 1 1/2" deep.

This is where we left off in my last post....the topmost bloom had been painted.

I then started working on the two purple blooms at the bottom of the wreath. Here I've just barely started on them.

Now we can see them fully finished!

The next thing on my list was the 2nd blue Hydrangea bloom. Once that was completed, I could move onto the bird or should I say "birds" as it turned out.

Here I've completed the bird that I had originally sketched onto the canvas. This is where the second bird comes in though.....after the first chickadee was painted, I felt he was lonely and needed some company. Something just seemed as if it were missing to me. At this point I knew I wanted another chickadee in the painting but the question was where to put him. I decided he would look quite cute hiding behind the topmost Hydrangea blossom, peeking down at his friend.

Once that little guy was painted in, I felt quite happy. I also at this point added some color around the blue oval...the dark blue that is in my Hydrangea blooms, this gives the center of the wreath added dimention. I also, if you will notice, added little tendrils all around my grape vine wreath. I believe a part of any good painting is listening to what the piece tells you. This means even the best made plans can and should change if you think as you paint, that things need to be added, taken away, or just plain different. Listening to what your painting is telling you and being flexible with your own work is a sure way to a happy end result. Hope you enjoyed the process and being able to see the finished piece. This piece is available on my ETSY site... http://www.artfulcreations.etsy.com/ and will soon be coming to my website.

A Hydrangea Wreath In The Making

I've started a new painting this week, one that is inspired by the Hydrangeas that I love so much in my own garden.

These up close and personal shots were taken last year when my Hydrangeas were in full bloom and looking beautiful.

I'm always amazed at all the different colors I can see at all the different stages of the blooms life. The array of amazing colors gives me great ideas for the combinations I will be using in a painting, whether now or down the road.

I've been wanting to do some wreath paintings for quite a while now and I decided on Hydrangeas as the flowers that will decorate my wreath. Above I've gotten the design started on my 14" x 18" gallery canvas. I know it is hard to see the progress at this point but just look below to see how getting some of the basics done, really starts to make the design stand out.

Here I've gotten the twig wreath pretty much down on the canvas the way I want it. I then went in and decided to do a dreamy sky like background for the center of the wreath. It took me quite a while to get the blue and white fluffy enough but eventually I ended up with something I was happy with. I may always tweak it in the upcoming days but for now, it is good enough and I will move on to the next thing which will be to paint the area outside the wreath. I'll keep posting progress on this painting until little by little, you can see it come together.