Painting Tiny - Bite Sized 3D Artwork.......

This week I decided I really wanted to paint small and so I went to my basement stash of canvases and ferreted around for a while until I finally found what I was looking for, some of the smallest sized canvases I have on hand, a 6" x 6" and a 4" x 6".   "This piece is "Sunburst Monarch" full of color and happiness.  I think I will make a tile trivet out of this design.......

I also felt like painting a dragonfly so on the 4" x 6" canvas I created "Jeweled Beauty".  Both paintings are created using acrylic mediums so they are 3D, you can actually see and feel the texture on each piece.  I'm finding textured work really has the effect of making you want to reach out and touch it when you walk by.  It is really fun to feel the different levels of textures under your fingers, very tactile.

Aside from painting, I'm dealing with a house that is in a state of flux at the moment (no end in sight either).  Some of you might know that Chris and I are moving to Orlando this year. We closed on our house the week after Thanksgiving and we will be moving away from NY in a little over 4 months so these are the start of some crazy busy days for us.  We're going through all our belongings, trying to throw away what we don't want to move with us , organizing everything and even though we'll have movers when the time comes, we're packing our more precious items ourselves. We're very excited to get started on our new journey and I dearly wish we could leave now but we have to wait a few more months, most likely till the end of May.  At some point when the time gets closer I'll have to pack up my art studio but not quite yet, I will keep painting for many more months, until the last minute basically.  I always find I miss painting when I'm away from it for too long.

Emu Egg Butterfly Jewelry Box

I really ran a muck since my last post, I finished another jewelry box. This one I will be listing in my ETSY shop.

The star of this box is a butterfly that is perched on top of some burgandy, pink and yellow flowers.

This box opens to reveal a fabric lining, just as the brides box did. Rather then a curved horizontal cut, this one has a beautifully done straight cut. I have to thank Corinne for the beauty of these cuts because if she didn't do such a wonderful job with that part of it, it wouldn't look good no matter what subject matter was painted on it. Here you can see a close up of the hinge area.

I painted the whole box light pink, green & white, then built my design from there. The funny part way, I meant to leave it like the brides box that I painted, with the bottom half of the egg left its natural color. This however is where your best planned ideas go wrong. I was a bit sloppy with applying color to the top of the box, I really ended up having quite a bit of paint on the bottom half. I thought, hey no problem, I'll just wash it off and clean the bottom half up. Well, what a surprise, water, baby wipes, alcohol not even Goo Gone (which gets everything off any surface by the way) would work on this box. Turns out the shell is that heavily textured that, once you get too much paint on it, forget it, it's not coming off. This is where you have to be flexible in art and go with the flow. So, I decided that the whole box should be painted that base color, and so it was.

I also carried the design from the top half, to below the opening of the box on the bottom half. I really feel the design flows a lot better that way rather then forcing it to stay in one area. I really struggled with this box too....who knows why but it took me forever to get drawn out just the way I wanted it to be. Once it was though, I was able to dive right in and paint. From there on in it went pretty fast.

**I've decided that around mid month, each month, I'm going to be doing an "In The Spotlight" post on my blog. Here I will be featuring an artist whose work I love and greatly admire. I've got a long list of all different kinds of artists and craftspeople I plan on asking so I hope it will be a very varied display of work. I'll be posting my first artist next week so stay tuned. I hope you will all enjoy discovering some new and beautiful art work.