Mixed Media Video

I want you to see how awesome these Molotow Chrome markers look. Different angles maketh different looks!  LOVE mixed media art! For me, the entire process of doing anything in mixed media is very rewarding because it takes so many steps.  This is one reason creatives are such good decision makers!  In order to come up with one good piece, so many decisions and changes must be made along that circuitous path called creation.

Seen at different angles, the small stripes are absolutely CHROME.  Sorry they don’t show up in this pic.  Trust me.

Creative Inspiration

This is so very true.  I’m wondering if other creatives feel the same way? There are so many things I’m interested in, so many things I want to learn, so many things I want to try.  There is always something I want to create and it takes time alone to think in order to produce.  And ya know what?  If you are good company with yourself, you’ll be good company for others as well. 

This is my own quote on a mixed media piece I did. ❤️ 

Newest Octopus Painting

Here we are - my newest painting entitled Maestro, for his commanding appearance. My octopus is done in layers of texture and color and my aim was to make it look like stained glass.  When viewed in person it is luminous and fairly glows!  You can find him on my website, 

colorcatstudios101.etsy.com

Also, I give studio tours.  My work is ever so much more beautiful in person.  Just contact me for a studio tour. The upside?  Gorgeous art in person, a peek into my studio and how I work and ... FREE GIFTS!!! Yay!  

Mystery Painting Piece

Here’s another tiny section of my new mystery painting.  Can you tell what it is yet? My concentration for this piece was texture and color.  The plan was to lay down textures before anything else, and then I thinly glazed colors, one on top of the other so it would be as luminous as stained glass. I am a colorful girl after all! The big reveal will be tonight at 7:00.  To help you guess what it is, this painting is the mate to another, which you will already find on my website 

colorcatstudios101.etsy.com

This painting really is a celebration of color.  I love even this tiny section!  Stay tuned: I’m going to reveal the entire painting tonight.

Painting Reveal

Here’s a super-closeup of a new painting I’ve got up my sleeve. Since it’s 24x30”, I guess that means I’ve got a big sleeve, huh?  Can you guess what it is?  This painting is a friend of another I recently painted as they both have the same subject; but that one was based on a linear concept with a strong emphasis on drawing and lines.  For this one I first laid down a heavy layer of textures and words to be the base for the painting itself.  My goal was to layer the colors in very transparent glazes so you could see how the glazing reacted with the textures and so you enjoy how the colors interact with each other, changing and mixing as they’re either layered or not layered.  Goodness, this painting is as complex as expensive, aged wine!  You’ll get the big reveal SOON!  Hope you like the little sneak peek! 

Creative Inspiration

I believe that artists of every type are commissioned to speak for all of humankind. I myself feel a deep responsibility to use the gift, and sometimes receive comments that surprise me about how what I created has so deeply affected another person.  All I know is that if I’m true to myself and true to my God, then what I feel and create will touch others. 

I’ve also learned through the years that if I stay true to myself and true to my God and DON’T receive affirmation for my work, that’s okay too.  I know in my heart that I followed the call and did the work, and that’s what’s important.  (my quote is on a portion of one of my newest paintings).

And by the way, the INSPIRATION for this painting, of which you see a little portion, is a bag of grapefruit a friend gave me.  They had stems and leaves still attached and were gorgeous!!! I had to draw and paint them for DAYS before I could eat even one!

Mixed Media Owl

Feeling owly? Honestly, teaching art brings out the goofy weirdness in me I guess; this in-class demo was pretty fun.

They say that creative people are good decision makers; I BELIEVE!  That’s because to make even one piece of art takes SO MANY decisions!  For this piece I:

First intended to collage all the feathers. (Oh, by the way, it was an example I did in-class with my students.  I’m teaching them collage.)

Once I drew him in I decided to paint him so he’d look good if the paper showed between the collaged pieces 

Once he was painted, I didn’t want to collage him, so I decided to collage the background.

Once the background was collaged I decided to collage parts of the owl’s feathers around the edge to pull the whole piece together.

(And that ain’t the half of it! :)

Anyway, here’s looking at you!

Preparing for Art Classes/Commission

I’m starting my art classes on the journey of collage and mixed media so I thought I’d better do one as an example. I’m also working on a commission and do practice runs like this and sketches before committing to canvas.  Cute little doggo!

Here’s my initial sketch:

This time I decided to do the background first. After that some of the shadows...

Time to add in some darks.  Rather alarming, isn’t it? :) I tell my students that if they spread the darks around it won’t be alarming.  Right now the focal point is on the darkest darks.  Need to move them around a bit.

Here we go - adding more textures and shadows into the work.

The following is the finished piece.  I like leaving my works on paper loose looking.  There were so many warms in the dog that I needed to change the background to cool.  Much better.  

Sketching in Art Class

Yes, I know these are terrible sketches, but they were super fast ones. Had a hilarious, fun time with my youngest students today taking turns dressing up and doing two minute modeling stints so we could draw each other.  Two minutes was about as long as any of my students could pose, haha! Here are a few of mine. Oh, my darling students. Love these goofy, wonderful little people.

Collage Art

One of my favorite things to teach my students is collage art.  SO MUCH FUN!  Here’s a collage I made which I’m using as an example.  I call him “Guy on Fire!”  Into each life a little flaming blue hair must fall, huh? :). Back to school!! 

Photographing My Art

As photographing my paintings is so intense, I’ve been working on it myself with my timer.  Of all the photos I took today, I think I got only one good one.  The rest? Painting not square, painting upside down, oops - I turned it around and got my coat, my nose looks too big (well, it IS a proud family heritage!) too bright, stupid pose, stupid smile, on and ON! ANYWAY, I did this so you can see the size comparison.  Good things DO come in small packages! For sale.

This one came out pretty well, and the painting is square to the photograph.

Painting crooked....

Whoops... didn’t get to the chair in time...

Much too bright and really stupid pose - move camera!

Oh brother!  I reversed it!  (Nice coat, though!)

Okay, I GIVE UP!

Anyway, here is the painting once again so you can actually see the nice colors and details:

You can find my work at 

colorcatstudios101.etsy.com

Pretty baby!

Art for Sale!

Have you SEEN my coasters? If not you might want to take a little look; they’re pretty awesome.  Just what a person needs whilst drinking a cuppa something.  Or not drinking a cuppa something. Also have some other pretty cool designs that I KNOW you’d like!

My raccoon painting is sold.  It was the most adorable 20” square painting EVER with micaceous earth ground into the blacks and an incredible, iridescent silver.  LOVE! But, I have magnets and coasters available!

The hands are mine.  I was working with charcoal one day and had our daughter shoot for me.  I knew we had something special with the reflections on my little charcoal pot.

The following shows their reflective nature, and their handy dandy cork back.  The chrysanthemum carving is a woodblock I carved. ❤️ 

And of course, everything’s better with Bob Ross.

You can find my coasters and more than you can imagine at ,colorcatstudios101.etsy.com

AND..... Happy new year!!

Cat Painting, Part the Eighth

Well, this is now installment #8 in my creative steps toward finishing my cat painting.  Here we go!  The first picture shows the colors I chose for his eyes.  Previous to this I had a number of colors out on a test sheet and narrowed it down to exactly these.  Once I have the eyes finished, I note these exact colors in my planning notebook for future references in replication, cleaning, repair and posterity.

The second shot shows my setup, typical for a lot of my work, and I usually employ my handy dandy iPad.

The third shot shows my color choices for his nose. :)

The last shot shows me back to black and white with a tiny liner brush.  These long brushes are good for, well, long lines!  When you see I’m working this small, it shows that the end is in sight.

These are really just such beautiful colors, aren’t they?  Luscious.  Good enough to eat but I’ll refrain.

The little details I do with this brush will be the icing on the cake. Almost done!!  Yay!

Creative Steps #7, Painting the Cat

I think this is Creative Inspiration and Steps Installment #7.  If you’re interested, you can scroll down to the previous posts.

Don’t be afraid! You must be a brave soul to create!  You also have to have a vision.  There are stages in your work that CAN look downright scary, so it’s important to keep your end goal in mind. 

I wanted to do justice to his gorgeous green peepers so I knew I’d need a white background to reflect those colors. These four shots show my next stage, which is finally painting Lupino himself.  My color work is mostly done and I’m now going in only with black, white and a slow-dry medium.  

Yes, my studio looks messy.  Yes, it always looks that way, and yes, I know where everything is!  Several days of painting the cat, with important nights in between.  This gives me fresh eyes to come back and see things I had previously missed so I can get him just... right.  

But as for now we have to look at those terrifying, vacuous eyes.

Part the Sixth - Cat Painting

Part the Sixth of my creative endeavor featuring my cat painting.  See previous posts as they’re in order.  As creatives often do, I once again changed my plan, taking a different tangent and turning the entire painting upside down.  I decided I’d prefer the blue at top and the reds below;  all three - the blues, reds and golds presenting our cat Lupino in a very royal manner as he so justly deserves.  A step not shown is that I burnished the golds in the painting for permanent adherence.  Once oriented, I got out my handy dandy Lyra watercolor crayons and drew it out.  Lyra crayons are the adored but unsung heros of my art supply stock.  As sketching is my specialty, this is one of my favorite steps.  Crayon done I try to always walk away and leave it at least overnight.  When I come back I can see any little tiddly-pom discrepancies in my work and can correct them thusly.  This finished, it is finally ready for PAINT! 

Cat Painting Installment #5, Creating

Okay, here we go with Installment #5 spelling out how my creative mind came up with my recent cat painting and the steps I took to get ‘er done.  These four shots show the next set of layers into which I brought golds to pull those royal colors together.  You can see I used my handy dandy linoleum acanthus leaf stamp that I recently carved.  Now... we’re getting close to actually painting a cat!

For me, a painting has to hold my interest, just like music.  With all the layers of color and texture, I never tire of work like this! :)

Creative Process Installment #4

Installment Four to my Creative Process Cat Painting explanation.  Good old thumbnail sketches.  Here are SOME of them.  Get the composition perfect or you might as well give up and go home.  Once I got the composition nailed down I did color testing to hone in on the exact colors I wanted to use to paint the cat himself.  After all these gorgeous blues, I ended up with Payne’s Grey, Carbon Black and Titanium White. The blues didn’t stand out against the background so were a poor color choice. Also, it’s funny to note that I always end up with my hand-scissored paintbrush.  It’s one of my faves because it’s EXACTLY what I want! Hold on for Installment Five, coming up next time! 

Creative Process Step Three

Creative Process Cat Painting Installment #3; for those of you curious as to how an artist works. You’ve seen a closeup of my cat painting and a pic of me sitting next to the finished piece in my previous two posts. This picture shows the third stage of my painting; first, paint the wood in blues.  This particular color pairing has been one of my favorites since I was a teenager, and that was a long time ago! Second, imprint it with garden leaves, and now third, adding the circle with rays.  My original intent was to put a halo around his head, Alphonse Mucha style, so the charcoal lines delineate that.  In a later stage I ditched that idea and decided to go with gold to indicate royalty. These leaf textures peek from the very back of the painting as you look, and beckon you to not only see the cat, but dig deeper into the mystery.  The same way I like complicated music, I like to give viewers a lot to look at and think about. There you have it! Lupus Regem, the start of my Wolf King cat painting creative process.  Look for Creative Process #4 next! 

Newest Painting, Full Picture

Presenting the newest addition to my family of paintings.  At 14 1/2x36” it comprises royal colors that bespeak our cat’s regal position.  In this collage we’re flanked on either side with closeups of the colors and textures within the painting itself.  It was great fun painting on a hardwood panel as opposed to canvas, and as a result it easily withstood the many layers I threw at it.  Pretty much loving this one,and it even matches my naturally red hair. :)

Well, this one’s not for sale, but I’m wondering if you could picture YOUR animal so beautifully portrayed.  If so, let me know!

Newest Animal Painting

Each Christmas I step back from all my other work and give myself a creative break.  This year I chose to do my baby, Lupino, and spent this entire month on him. Here’s a little sneak peek cutaway... the big reveal comes when I edit my 100-some photos. I chose to name him Lupus Regem, Latin for wolf king, as he looks like a wolf and is very regal. He also weighs in at just over 16 pounds!

Note the generous use of gold, blue and red; these are symbols of his royalty.  The Latin name gives a nod to the years I spent teaching our kids Latin and how much it has enriched our everyday lives. My plan is to reveal the mystery and walk you step by step through my process for this piece, so we’ll call this the first installment!

And remember, the first step toward your own painting is if you like my art.  I can paint pretty much anything you ask.  (Whew! That’s quite a claim, huh? Now I’m in trouble!)

I digress, but it does remind me of a time someone said, ‘Can you paint a ship on the ocean, and paint like Rembrandt?’  I said, ‘Sure, I can do that.’  After moaning and ‘why on earth did I say that-ing’ for about two weeks I got down to work and painted a GORGEOUS ship which I loved!  My patrons loved it as did everyone that saw it, in fact I had to paint a partner for it and sold that as well after it did a local tour of its own.

So, what’s the moral of the story?  Well, for me it means I should NEVER say I can paint like Rembrandt!  I think I’ll stick to painting like myself!