Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Did you know......


















Did you know you could special order boxes of Crayola Crayons?
This is a good thing. No more buying a box of 24 just to get the
white or black. It's not cheap to special order crayons, but it's way
cheaper than 50 boxes of 24 count would be. Yay for the internet! Posted by Picasa

Monet's Garden


















I did this one while at FLIMP. It was nice to complete a work
without disruption. ;-) Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

More paintings
















This VanGogh was done quite a while back. It's really small and not one of my favorites, but the colors are good. The parts that look like blades of grass peeking over the edge to the right are. I took the photo outside and the lawn needs tending.



















This one is a Joseph Raphael called The New Blue Door. I re-did it today and like it much better now......darn the original and full speed ahead!

This painting is no longer in my posession.

















This is a Renoir. I think this one actually looks better in photo than real life. That's not normal with encaustics. Renoir's are hard to do encaustic. I think I'll finally quit trying now....except for that onion still life I love so much.


There are a couple more to photograph. I'll do that tomorrow.....I hope.

Posted by Picasa

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Woman in a Red Chair

It's been a long time coming but I've finally decided I like Picasso. Some of it actually reaches me and a few look fun to paint. I know this one was. I started it at Flimp and finished it this week here at home. As always, this looks much better in person. Posted by Picasa






This piece is no longer in my possession.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

An encaustic in process...

Labels:

Art Philosophy


This is where you tell why you've started this blog and what you will do with it. I'm all for convention when it serves a purpose, so here goes:

I love to paint. My medium is encaustic, which means: A paint consisting of pigment mixed with beeswax and fixed with heat after its application. I, personally, use crayons as my pigment instead of purchasing the very costly pigments available online.....which are probably better but have far fewer color choices. :-)

Encaustic is great for several reasons. My favorite is that you can build up texture with the wax very easily and the paintings take on a deeper dimension. It's also great because dry time is almost non-existent. The wax is dry as soon as it's cool. I can also make easy changes and fixes by simply scraping off whatever I don't like.

This medium can be tricky, though. It is not like painting with oil or acrylic....or watercolor for that matter. The wax tends to harden as you try to paint and you can not mix and blend colors on the canvas very easily. Artworks are also tricky to transport as you must avoid too much heat and bumps and scrapes can easily gouge the painting. I'm sure the "real" encaustic mediums, which include resin, are a bit sturdier but a little heat, gently applied, usually fixes small "owies".

My husband introduced me to encaustic painting after attending a small seminar at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art in Alabama. I ran with it from there. Last year I was invited to be an "Artist in Action" at the MMFA. It was the first year that artists demonstrated and also shared their art form with participatory activities for attendees (which means, people got to paint encaustic with me). It was really fun and when I was invited back this year we packed up the family and drove back to Montgomery from Texas, where we had since moved.

This blog was started because of that last trip. I realized that I had no business cards at the last minute and then realized that they would be useless, as I had no information worth putting on them. So, here is my business card fodder. A place to point folks to who want to see what I've done, can do or may someday do.

My philosophy of art is this: "If you don't have talent, have a niche."

o.k., I have two: "You don't have to be great, you just have to be brave."