This one is sold and tomorrow will be wending its way to its new owner. You would note that I added a little rust into the mix per the client’s request. Love the added color, and now it will compliment their beautiful silk carpet. Absolutely love the rich new dimension added into the mix!
Below shows my original painting. They request that salmon be added and I really love the difference!
Feeling owlish? A new painting on your walls will take care of that! This bad boy puts a little edge in whatever room he hangs around in, and a lot of conversation. For sale. (His name is Horatio.)
Just trying to make your evening’s feed a little more PALETTEable! Har har har! Ah, hum. Yeah. Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Anyway, kind of pretty, isn’t it?
Memorial Day Special! This beautiful 12”x12” square piece is only $50.00 to celebrate the day! Today only. I don’t have it on my site, so you’ll have to reply here. First one to reply gets this colorful painting! Mixed media on heavy mixed media paper.
Wow, I absolutely adore these colors and textures~!! :) Happy.
Ya know, every now and then I just really love the look of my palette and think it should be a painting. Such is the case today. Happy Memorial Day. Today I will paint a little, we will remember. We will eat, swim and celebrate,and plan to go down to ‘our’ sculpture down on the Waterway to pay tribute to our lost friends. Thank you to all who have served to keep us free and great, and grant us the freedom to plan our days in such a wonderful way.
These are my Peruvian Lilies. I prefer to call them Bad Hair Day flowers. Aren’t they just lovely? Even though they are beautiful, they DO look like bad hair in the morning, though, don’t they? Scroll down to see what the background pattern is.
It IS a nice background. Actually, it was serendipity. I washed one of my summer dresses and hung it outside on our umbrella table. It just happened to be hanging there. Of course, turquoise is such a nice compliment to red that it seemed like the perfect foil. So there you have it!
I spend a lot of time outside. Working in the garden, puttering around, biking, swimming and of course having coffee in the morning with my guy. ❤️ I cannot overstate the inspiration I draw from the beauty of God’s creation.
If you’re curious about the crazy artist responsible for this feed, here I am in a bush. Actually, this is a telling portrait because I tend to immerse myself in pretty much everything. These are lilacs which grow only in the North. I haven’t had a chance to see them blooming for 20 YEARS and every lilac we passed got to meet me personally. I believe that artists are a little more in touch with, well, everything. If you took a walk with me, you’d find out about that because I have to stop and examine whatever interests me. Part of my mission as an artist is to show these beautiful things to others.
My friend enhanced the above image somehow. And below... just can’t stop talking...
I’ve been doing some experiments with oil sticks on top of mixed media and liking the results. These are the pearlescent and metallic ones, and the illusion is that they’re actually floating on top of the watercolor. Pretty cool. Tonight I’m going to post a video of it to explain a bit more.
We had lunch with Grant at the Guthrie Theater in downtown Minneapolis on the banks of the Mississippi River. This was our view, and my quick sketch whilst waiting for food. (I painted it at home.) Our view was of these condos, which were built out of the old Gold Medal plant. They were beautiful. We never saw, but I’m sure the sign on the top of the building, which faces the Mississippi, said Gold Medal all those years. I’m guessing it still does. Adjacent to these condos is the Gold Medal Museum, if you feel the need to find out about your history. The big yellow space on the left was actually a huge outdoor pillar outside our building. Wanting to maintain the vertical feel, I chose to draw it in and fill it with Latin words as we’ve studied a lot of Latin. I chose the words that had a lot to do with family, since we were reunited with Grant. I never did take a photo, but this little sketch brings back the memories in a much sharper and more memorable way.
Doing some quick sketching in my small pad to keep my chops up. I never know what people are going to hire me for next, and sketching a wide variety of everything is always a good thing. This wide variety of everything just happens to be our youngest son. :)
I started this on a plane, minus the knife, of course. It’s extremely sharp and works really well to sharpen my big fat pencils. I’m not that good at it but it reminds me of my trip to Cuba and making music with the Cuban musicians. When we needed to correct our music or make notes, I noticed that they could sharpen their pencils to deadly weapon status with a few strokes. Sheesh!
Anyway, if you need me to do some artwork for you or sharpen your pencils, let me know. :)
One thing I miss about the North is the flowering trees. Here I’m enjoying a nice crabapple. We were lucky to be able to go to Minnesota during the beginning of the heavy flowering season. My wooden ‘bracelet’ is one of my mom’s necklaces. Intrepid person that she was, she went on a trip to Israel with a tour, leaving Dad home to work. She got this there. I’ve been wearing it a lot lately as it makes me feel close to her. It’s been one year this month now that she died. Aren’t these flowers just gorgeous?
Looks like I’m going to have to paint some crabapple flowers.
Now and then we all just need to laugh. So I put one of my favorite Dave Barry quotes onto a background of one of my paintings. Just in case you didn’t know, the difference between men and women. :). Haha! Just had to deviate from my art feed for this one as it has given me so many smiles.
I’m curious, of these six animals, which is your favorite? Because of a goofy sketch I did of a grizzled old lion, I began painting animals and haven’t been able to stop! Three of these paintings are still available and I always have these magnets and others for sale on my website. I love animals! Check me out at
This is, I think, the most honest art form for me. When I’m tired or worn out, in a hurry or just needing to lay down some color, it usually comes back to something like this. And it always seems to be an expression of flowers, to which I am so deeply and intricately connected. The layers of color, the compliments and the bleeds satisfy me in a very deep way. Not to mention the highly pigmented, super bright QOR watercolors made by Golden.
Seems a fitting way to end a year of art classes, doesn’t it? NO, I didn’t make these; one of my students did. And they tasted even better than they looked! Yum.
Pretty sure you need owl stickers. Find them on my website, colorcatstudios101.etsy.com. My first owl was a goofy sketch in one of my art classes that turned out to be really cute. I was demoing (that’s a funny word to write; it looks like it should rhyme with boing.) I was DEMONSTRATING watercolor and collage. After that I thought, ‘I could paint an owl...’ and here you have it! If you buy ten stickers, message me to apply a discount.
Really love the colors and layers in my cartoony fellow.
Working it out in my sketch pad. Sometimes just laying down some leftover paint on a couple pages can be inspiring. I’ve had mulberries on the brain for several weeks since it’s picking time and I’m a nature girl. Mentally working out some designs, I happened upon these painted pages and it was the perfect place to lay down some ideas.
I look at my sketchpads as recipe books. Something wonderful may come from this little sketch. Maybe in a couple years, something ELSE wonderful and totally unrelated may come from this same sketch. You never know.
And in the meantime, if anyone needs an artistic manicure, just come on over.
This feed is supposed to be about art, but really, all art we create is just a cheap imitation of the art God creates. This is my delphinium sporting what I think is one of the most perfect combination of blues in all creation, tying for first place with the bluebird. Because we had such a nice cold winter and a long, cool spring, it’s on its second bloom.
For this watchful cat I used our baby for inspiration as well as the Cheshire Cat. Couldn’t resist that little quiet smile. This one’s done mostly in bronzes and golds, and I’ve got gold behind a thin veneer of green and yellow paint for the eyes. This makes the eyes glow like a cat’s in certain light. Find him for sale along with a lot of other animal paintings at
colorcatstudios101.etsy.com
All nature rejoices at the beautiful rain we got last night. My coleus certainly do! These pretty babies make ME rejoice! Wasn’t God good to give us beauty? He didn’t have to do that. A tiny reflection of Him.
These do well in the shade, and actually get dappled sunlight for several hours a day. So pretty, and really inspiring for this artist.
You usually don’t get to see the work behind a painting. Here is some very basic, typical work I do when I’m choosing my colors. As shown, it usually ends up on some page in a cheap sketchbook where I’ve made previous notes. Once I HAVE chosen the colors, I paint swatches in my permanent workbook and write down the colors and brand. That way if in the future some client needs to have a painting repaired, I’ve got everything I need to remember what went in to it.
When you have me paint a piece for you, you can have full confidence that my art is going to last because I use the best products, AND, if anything ever happens to your art, I can fix it for you!
There is nothing like pen and watercolor for me. Actually, for this one I added acrylics and gold, so let me rephrase that... There is nothing like mixed media art for me. One of my favorite things is layering the colors so that you can see the different colors blending through previous layers. As a musician I like complicated music layered with a lot of different instruments, beats, voices and harmonies going on simultaneously. The same goes for my taste in art. All this to say, isn’t this a lovely onion? And the good news is that you too can own this complex beauty celebrating an aromatic blend of colors and mediums. Find it on my website,
colorcatstudios101.etsy.com
