The deconstructed, cliche still life 1

It took me a while, but I finally went back and worked into my latest intaglio print. I love the new dimension those little bits of color add to the piece. I cut this one down pretty close to the page, and I wanted to show you all the beautiful torn edges of the paper. That's why I didn't crop it down all the way... more soon to come!

Commissioned painting

I don't do a lot of realistic paintings, especially of people- which is funny because growing up that was basically all I did. Maybe I got burnt out of it. Well I was commissioned to paint this picture of my aunt's father in law for a Christmas present. And I actually enjoyed doing it, to my surprise. It was challenging to try and accurately portray all of his wrinkles and his glasses in watercolor, but I had fun figuring it out!

                                                                 8" x 10"

For information on commissioned paintings, just shoot me an email!

20 studies project

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I love mixed media and collage. It's kind of become a running joke that my professor Sunny is always telling us to crop down our art, because she always likes certain sections of the art pieces. Well I decided to take that idea and run with it. I painted maybe 6 or 7 larger, somewhat chaotic mixed media pieces, and then cropped them down into nice little paintings just a couple inches big. Each study was then matched with a corresponding magazine page.

You probably recognize this last one from my blog header background. I took this last study and painted it on a 2' x 2' wooden panel. I gave myself the artistic freedom to slightly change or alter the piece where I felt necessary. I plan to do this for all of my studies and hopefully have a show from it all based on the concept of process. Here's the first one.

                                                                2' x 2'

Lithography

Lithography is certainly not conducive for the way I work as an artist. It is extremely meticulous and exact, one false move and you will destroy your whole image. I usually work very loosely and intuitively, so this was a challenge. But in the end, after all the hard work, I was happy with the images.

 This print is for the true minimalist. It represents the depletion and fading away of local, small, personal businesses that have been around for decades. This print is 11" x 14" and has an edition of 5.

This print is based off of a peculiar, somewhat modern house in Uruguay. Fell in love with the composition. This print is 11" x 14" and has an edition of 5.

This is my only multi-run print I created. It is titled "Man's endeavor to mimic nature's precious gems." This print is 8" x 10" and has an edition of 8.

Mixed media with Intaglio

I love the gorgeous impression intaglio prints have. But I wanted to experiment with adding some paint, magazine pieces and other materials/mediums to add some color and texture. What resulted was quite exciting to me. I made a few extras of this print...

and thought I would play around and see what happened. Here is what came to be.

This particular piece was submitted to a juried show in October. Not only was it accepted into the show, but it was rewarded an honorable mention. Considering the scale of it, only 11" x 14", in comparison to the scale of much of the other work submitted, I was very pleased!

So many doors, so little time

When I visited Uruguay, I was blown away by the quirky and frankly stunning doors. They were so unique, I really had never seen anything like them. I went a little crazy, I must of taken pictures of 50 doors in two hours. So you may see a theme of doors and entry ways throughout my art, but I just love them. Especially when they are falling apart and are being covered up... like this door. For this piece I used watercolor, graphite, acrylic house paint, colored pencil, and magazine clippings.

15" x 15"

Intaglio

Intaglio- in short- is a process in which you are basically creating a really complicated stamp. For the pieces I will show, I etched into copper plates- using both acid techniques and non-acid techniques- making an engraved image onto the plate. You then ink up the plate and roll it through a press with a piece of wet paper, leaving the inked up image onto your paper. It's a really time consuming and tedious process, but it makes such a lovely image. Print makers will print an "edition", or number of copies of the image and then destroy the plate. So each intaglio print is an original. Here are the few pieces I made.

This print is based off home I saw in Colonia, Uruguay. It was in a very touristy part of the town- as touristy as Uruguay gets- and it just seemed so out of place, and maybe abandoned. This print is 11" x 14" and has an edition of 3.

This print is taken from a blind contour drawing of some type of odd flower. I took the drawing and refined it, taking away and adding lines and forms where needed to create a successful composition. This print is 11" by 14"and has an edition of 3.

This print was inspired by the last print. I wanted to deconstruct and re-make societies impression of a cliche still life. So I drew a blind contour drawing of some dying sunflowers, drew a very childish and two dimensional floating vase, and set it on some scaffolding in what can be assumed to be a construction sight. This print is 10" x 13" and has an edition of 6.

Tea and honey

This small mixed media duo is one of my personal favorites. It is based on the idea that bees work so hard together to create honey. It is this complicated and beautiful process in nature that is only an afterthought to us, like the sweetener in a tea. These pieces are 10" by 10", and incorporate watercolor, acrylic, colored pencil, graphite and acetone transfers.

Experimenting with Mixed Media

Here are a few more of my first experimental pieces with mixed media. I love incorporating several different mediums. It gives you a lot of creative freedom and range with colors, textures, forms etc.

Zion's National Park

My husband I went to Zion's National Park this summer in Southern Utah. It really exceeded my expectations, it was just breathtaking. I did this piece when I came back based on the mountains there, and their rich colors. I thought the best way to capture they different ranges of color and smooth textures were by using several different mediums, including watercolor, india ink, colored pencils and acrylic house paint.

Pre-req Class Work

Above is some work from my pre-requisite classes to the studio art program, drawing and 2-D design. Not my favorite classes, but these helped me get into the program, so I guess I can't complain too much. I do especially like the collaged portrait of the young girl, based on a picture I took in Kenya. It is 22" by 30" and is 100% collaged papers.


And here are a few pieces from my figure drawing class.We worked mainly with charcoal, but sometimes with india ink. The bottom two were transfer drawings, which was kind of a fun experiment.