Finally back to work

It's been a while since I have done any work in the sewing part of my studio. I have spent most of the summer making dolls or taking classes, then once the iMac arrived, I have been playing and learning about my wonderful new toy. I was told about a site that offer great tutorials on how to thrive in the Mac environment. The site is wonderful and offers tutorials on all sorts of programs for computers, but i digress...

A friend asked me to sell a few items at her churches bizarre this weekend, and of course I panicked. I spent my summer learning and not really making art. Luckily I have a few things that I can take with me, but i thought I should spend some time making a few things as well. Here are three of the little bags/purses I made in the last day or so. I love the zippers.

Fall in Maryland.

Although the fall of the year can be dreary, I love the colors. Great color pallet for my next art adventure.

Two new dolls

In my last post I mentioned that I haven't done much art lately, but while I was going crazy with clay, I made several dolls. Here are two of them.

Wow, It's been a while

It's been a couple of months since I checked this blog...bad, bad, girl. I spent a lot of time this summer working on art dolls and small angels that I planned to sell during the holidays. But somewhere in there I burned myself out with making dolls. So as I usually do when I get burned out, I cleaned the studio and did a little reorganization in hopes of inspiration. So far, no luck.

I am taking a couple of online painting classes (haven't started on those either). May have something to do with the fact that I purchased an MAC and have been spending a lot of time learning to use this new fun computer. I haven't transferred any of my photos yet. Took a workshop at the local Apple store a few days ago, which were fruitful in allowing me to meet two really nice women who turned me on to a couple of sites for great information and tutorials. I could do a commercial for Apple, because the mac is so much easier and trouble free compared to the pc. I still have my pc laptop and will still use it, but given a choice, it will be the imac.

Hopefully the muse will return soon and I will get back to creating.

Recent work

As I mentioned in previous posts, I have fallen in love with doll making with polymer clay. I find molding the soft clays (super sculpy and sculpy white) quite soothing and a stress reliever. I am working on an old world Santa (taking a class) and hope to share it in a month or so. I enjoy the sculpting but not so much making the costume.

Decided to take a short break from doll making and get back to painting. I made the first set of four paintings using a faux encauatic method. The second set of two are strictly mixed media paintings. I have started making art pieces to display in my home as opposed to shopping for prints. I tend to me a bit hard on myself and my art, and often think pieces are not good enough to display outside the studio, so I am giving the two larger pieces a run outside the studio walls.

New Doll

Took a short doll class and learned how to make a doll bust. It only took an afternoon to make. I have been experimenting with different types of clay recently, while learning to make armatures. I think I am parchal to Super Sculpy for sculpting because it is so soft, but bakes really hard. More to show soon.

Prom Queen

My most recent doll...she was really fun to make. I enjoy making the doll body, but dressing her is the most fun. Gives me a chance to use some of the MANY scrap pieces of fabric and embellishments gathered over the years.

New doll

This cute little doll is dressed up for an evening on the town. I am really enjoying this. If I can get a little better at this, I may place some of these in my etsy shop for sale.

My little angel doll

Don't know if I enjoy making the doll or dressing her more..lol

My first little clay doll

I just completed another online class. In this class we were taught to make an all clay Freida doll. It was such fun. I am already starting on another doll....very addictive!

Cloth and Clay art doll

I joined an online class a few weeks ago and learned to make a cloth doll with paper clay overlay on face on body. I had a bit of trouble with stuffing the doll and she popped her seams a few times. 8-) Instead of making new extremities, I continued on with the legs, that had popped their seams thinking that it would all work out in the end. I was able to complete the doll, but she has some real issues with her legs, hope she will forgive me. lol Really fun class. Inspired me to try another class making dolls using Sculpy clay. I haven't gotten very far with this one yet, but it should be fun as well. This is the cloth and clay doll with her odd legs....aside from her legs, she turned out okay for a first attempt. Hopefully her sister will have better legs.

Re-working the studio

I haven't done much art recently, because my Muse has gone on vacation. lol So whenever I have issues with art, I reorganize my studio, hoping to get inspiration. I took pictures today, and it is not made perfect for the photo. Oddly enough I got inspired to get to work....tomorrow. Here's the mess...

New Work and Great News!!

I've been painting on wood substrates since I returned from Art and Soul. I knew I loved this surface prior to taking classes using it, but after learning new techniques, I am sure this will be my surface of choice in the future. Here are two pieces I have painted on the wood substrate.

Now on to the great news... my work has been published!! I am over the moon. I received a free copy of Sew Somerset today and one of my small art quilts is featured in the gallery section of the magazine! This is my first time being featured in a magazine, and gives me courage to work harder and send in more artwork.

Photos from Art and Soul

As promised here are pictures of three of the classes I took. When I complete the two book I will post photos of them. I took this class from Lisa Kaus.

I took this class from Serena Barton. These were done from collaging magazine pages. The first one was made from small pieces of pictures of flowers, and the other was made from a piece of yellow cake with whipped cream frosting.

I took this class from Katie Kendrick. I know it doesn't look like my ususal paintings, the concept was to draw pictures with your non-dominant hand...

More later.

Back from Art and Soul

Okay, so I have been back for over a week, but it has taken me almost this long to recuperate from all the fun. I had a wonderful time and all the classes were great. This was my second year and the best so far. I have a few photos of my completed work, and will post them later today or tomorrow. The book I worked on in Misty Mawn's class is far from completed, but I will share a few pages tomorrow.

Off to Art and Soul in Hampton, Va.

Not that I post very often anymore, but hopefully I will have a lot to share when I return from A&S. Really excited and exhausted from packing all the supplies needed for five painting classes. What fun!! Plan to take a lot of photos to share as well. Smooches!

New Paintings

It's been a few days since I posted, so I thought I would share what I have been up to. Of course still counting down to Art and Soul. I have all of my supplies assembled and ready to go. The nice thing about doing this in advance is that now I know where everything is if I need something. lol. I did a couple more paintings experimenting with different colors to make skin tones. Oddly, I thought I had come upon something in using the cheap acrylic paints to do my faces, and I learned a few things. One is that it is very thin and goes on rather blotchy, the other is that I like the shades I get, and its much easier than tyring to make my own, but as they say you get what you pay for. Here is the one I did using the cheap paint on watercolor paper.I like the shading, but it was hard to spread and blotchy. I decided to give it another try using canvass board and a mixture of the cheap paint and Goldens. It went on smoother (perhaps the canvas board helped) and I was able to get smoother complexion. This one is still a work in progress...

Counting the Days

Woo hoo, just 18 more days and I am off to Art and Soul in Hampton. This is my second year, and I am more excited that I was the first year. I have signed up for classes from Misty Mawn, Lisa Kaus, Carla Sonheim, Serena Barton, and Katy Kendrick. All the classes require either drawing or painting, right up my alley.

Monday is the final class for the Paulette Insall class. I'll post my final portraits next week. Haven't done any sewing/quilting in over a month. Guess I have been obsessed with painting and gathering all the tools need for the classes at A&S. It always amazes me how many tolls one has to bring. This is definitely an expensive undertaking, but well worth it. Well, until later....

Week Five of Painting class

This week we added the hair and eyebrows. Next week we work more on the faces.

Art & Soul Fatbook swap

I joined the A&S fatbook swap again this year. Only 4 weeks before the event ! Woo Hoo!! The theme of the event is Rock and Roll as was the theme for the fatbook. I really struggled with this theme, because even though I love R&R, I am more of an R&B girl. My all time favorite R&R band is The Beatles, and I thought I would use them as my focus. I must admit that I always want art to be fun and when it becomes stressful, then I of course no longer enjoy it. That was the case with this swap. We had 45 pages to do (I know) and by page 10 I was wondering if i was crazy to have joined. We had the option of doing something that related to Art and Soul, or to a class we took at A&S. I decided to paint some of the pages, but alas that was REALLY time consuming. So to put this whine to bed, here are a few of the pages I did. I hope the recipient won't be too disappointed.