forward momentum

Small, achingly bittersweet and delicious moments of supreme clarity give me pause as a smile brushes my lips in hopeful laughter of what may come next.

A freeing feeling, it is, to let my soul believe, just for a moment or two longer, that there really is something powerful and awesome about life. That there really is something magnificent about just breathing in and out.

Oh, so much did I ache for this recent opportunity, and it was beautiful and fulfilling and awesome just to visit and be in their creative space for awhile. I learned from just that afternoon that anything truly is possible, there are no rules, no matter who tells you so.

And so, a breaking rules I will go. I will continue to create art that makes people smile while giving others pause. I will design my world of wood and canvas and nature and make it my home. I will pour out the words that affect my sense of balance until everything fits just right again. I will leap into the air and take flight as my dreams will let me.

It's these still, small, delightful moments that let me believe I can do anything. Let me believe.

Into the New

Celebrations 'round the world for the end of a year/decade thus welcoming the new, the unknown, the upcoming.

I want to go further in the art than I have done before. Having my first show under my belt has helped give me a few more ideas to work on, things to expand on and things that I can continue to work on for myself.

The zombie sheep caught people off guard, made them pause, made them laugh, and gave me a whole new perspective on these little baaa-uugggers.

My drip/splatter paintings were received in a different way. Several people stopped to comment on them, to admire and question and encourage me to do this or that with them. I am calm and at peace with these. If they sell or if they show, I don't care. I create them because it's what I feel when I'm creating. These paintings are what comes from my visions and ideas. These paintings tell their own stories and invite you to touch them to feel each line as it was laid down across the canvas. These paintings are my art.

May the new experiences in the coming year give me better understanding of the business side of making art work for me, give me more opportunities to create them and promote them, and find the audience they are fit to receive.

As for the zombie sheep, well, they'll be branching out on their own soon enough, given their own space to roam with a website and probably t-shirts.

Writing will keep me busy as I work for one company and develop my fiction writing skills in another. Words will continue to flow, gracefully or not, but they will pour forth and return to me as complete structured sentences. And, you know, better paychecks. Hopefully with a novel under my own moniker...

Here's to the new, here's to the unknown, here's to the possibilities. Let's celebrate and create about it.

Doin' it my way

This piece is one of two, because it was supposed to be one of four, but two of them were sent to the 'scrap it' pile.

This piece was submitted to the local art association for the juried show. It was 'not accepted'. My guess is because it's not a landscape or still life. (No, I'm not bitter... oh, well, maybe a little bit...)




This piece is called "Wishes Do...", because I thought it was cute and fun. And because it's only two feet long and the letters are like three inches each and they take up a lot of space, so word choices were limited. Logic. Of some sort. And because I wanted to have a happy little painting with a bit of meaning.


Actually, this is coming off as a bit jaded, and while I am about some things, I love the way these two came out.
They're cute, in a sassy kind of way. They're simple, and yet so many layers went into it, and I just want to run my fingers over the lines and layers... It's so tactile, the way I like my art. (<--- click on the photo for an extreme close up that makes you want to pet your computer screen.)

~~~~~~~~~

Now, this is a picture of one of the two that are being repurposed. Gag. (In my opinion.)

Oh, I should wait for you to scroll back to the top to see if you can compare and see the differences...

There - did you see it?

You can see the words in the first one. In the second one, well, you can't. The paint bled under the tape lines on the second set.

What the difference is: The base.

The two that came out awesome, or at least the way I wanted them to, are the two I built and stretched myself. I use muslin because it's thinner than regular canvas is which offers the opportunity to see through it. This is a feature I really like. The bonus part of this is the way paint adheres to the thinly woven fabric, thus making it easier for shape shadows that are set with tape, and making the paint stay thick so it stands out, not bleeds down.

The two that bled? Were done on the store bought gesso'd canvases. The gesso makes the canvas smoother, yes, and for some paintings makes a pretty decent base. But when I lay tape down and drizzle layers of paint over it and peel the tape up, it should be bare under the tape, right? For some reason, the gesso base lets the paint bleed under the tape. Yuck.

Peeling the tape off the bare fabric of the muslin canvases leaves a fairly clean line 99.3% of the time. This is more to my liking.

It was a learning experience. The two for scrap will be unstapled and the paint covered canvas will be cut up for... strips on something else, for cut outs to glue to cards for sale or gifts, for tying together to make funky necklaces, for spelling out naughty words on the front lawn, whatever... the frames will be used to stretch and staple fresh, bare muslin on and go about the process again with new pieces.

The two "Wishes Do..." pieces measure 12 inches by 24 inches, have a plain white cloth backing so the staples won't scratch your wall, are wrapped on the edges by navy blue ribbon which also serves as the hanging anchor. The colors on the canvas are grey, light blue, light pink, dark blue, and a rust red. Each is signed on the back and will be custom wrapped for shipping.

$120 if you'd like one to pet, stroke, rub, you're interested:

Binary Rain

I have this fascination with painting designs in a mosaic or tiled sort of pattern... This piece is one of them.

Let me insert here that I have post it notes everywhere with half sketched ideas, usually no more than a couple of cross hatched lines and the names of colors quickly chicken-scratched down. I then find them the next morning scattered across the bed or floor with notes like "thre angle lines sherbet blue" or "7 rows 3rd shape black yellow", and they kinda make sense to the artist part of my brain.

This particular painting started out as one of those small crumpled squares. I'm proud to say it came out like I'd imagined it.

Here's a close up:


I like it when pieces come together like this. I like it when I just sit down and start painting something and then it looks how I wanted it to. I'm still figuring out how to make this particular style work on a few other things, but I really enjoy it.

I've realized I need to just paint, to stop worrying about making these perfect little paintings, to just make a mess, make it happen and see what comes of it. It will better my technique, it will help me be less afraid of screwing up, it will be a better chance to see what I need to work on instead of sitting here not doing anything because I'm too worried I can do it at all.

One step at a time, Heather. Enjoy this painting because it did work out.

ArtFire!

Visit heatherartworks's ArtFire Shop

this title is yet to be determined

Here I go again, trying to type in a title for a post I'm barely beginning to formulate.

I don't work that way. I should know this by now. Really. I should.

It's one of those things, that my brain starts somewhere in the middle, or the end, and works backwards or outwards or whatever, filling in the puzzle gaps along the way. All those writing assignments in school where we had to turn in a title and outline and synopsis like weeks before the actual writing thingy was due - well, that sucked for me, because I never had a title until I was done. More often, after the reprimands & bad grades for "not completing work on time", I just made shit up. Whatever, it worked to appease the teacher who wanted a title & outline on her desk by a certain day. I figured out it didn't really matter if I changed it later after the real stuff was written.

That's how I do things. It's how I roll, baby.

That has very little to do with what I want to write about, though.

Today is the day the world holds a collective breath to see who is going to be head stormtrooper, puppet, poombah of these United States. Lots o' hype leading up to this circus, we're all tired of it.

I voted for Obama/Biden. Do I need to explain? No. I don't need to. I'll spare the stuff that you don't need to know about me or care about anyway and just say that I want to be able to look forward, not backward. I believe every person on this earth has a right to love and be loved, no matter their skin color or sexuality. I believe that women deserve far better in so many situations and am thankful a man like Joe Biden has stood up for those rights. I believe the man that Barack Obama is shines through in the way he treats his wife and family over the rest of the political dancing. The things like taxes and the war and the 'promises' do not matter as much to me as the ability to keep calm, make decisions based on how they will affect his own family as well as others instead of the quick-temper reaction that does more harm than good, a quick-temper reaction that I know all too well in my family.

I'm ready for the hope to move forward and make changes.

Personally.

Not just as a nation.

Personally.

So I bought (at least I think I did, it takes '24 hours to process') a domain name. But it's not the name we wanted, because the one we wanted is already taken by someone else. grumble. We're creating ideas & developing these lil' guys and their stories and having fun, and we want to share this with others.

But I know enough basic html to make a mess, and I'm good at picking and gleaning from other codes to figure a few things out, now I'm freaking out over the "How the hell do other people do this web building stuff?". Because I'm hard-headed (no kidding, really?) and I want to figure it out and do it on my own. Because I figure I'm capable and should know how to do this, so why don't I?

I also jumped on the NaNoWriMo bandwagon again this year after not doing it last year (something about driving back & forth from Florida & no regular internet connection & job hunting being a priority at the time, but whatever. excuses, excuses). I have maybe 600 words towards that 80k total by the end of November, and I'm using it as a chance to push myself and develop a few things.

One is the bunnyflies stories with Rob. One is the command of customer service stuff with Amber. One is an article on the boot camps that daddy & Papa Earl do for the museum. One is a piece of fiction that has been rolling around for awhile.

The best advice for NaNoWriMo is to just write - clean it up and edit later, like in December. So what if I'm using four different things to gain that word count, I'm trying to make it happen and learn about myself as a writer along the way.

There will always be some level of crazy going on. Election or not. Economy or not. Seasonal or not. Relationship or not. But I still have words to put to paper, I still have things I jump into the middle of and feel my way out of. And I'm looking forward to the day I can show off my stuff and be proud of it, because I learned something along the way to making it happen.

So? I'm snarky.

All the political talk has me agitated just as much as religion talk usually does. But I'm good with what I think & believe. I know where I stand and why. I have my reasons, you have yours.

Allright then.

So this whole 'socialist' movement that Palin keeps pushing about Obama's platform - well... here's what I have to say about that:



I mean, I talk on the phone, a lot, and I text, a lot, and I twitter, some, and I blog, some, and I facebook and myspace a bit... so I'm pretty social, right? I mean, aren't we all?

*Pimpin' over at cafepress - get it on a sticker or a t-shirt. make a tongue in cheek comment of your own.

back to the art stuff

Since I'm sure that's what you came here for.

This one is an 11x14 pre-stretched canvas, picked up at either Michael's or Hobby Lobby, since those are both relatively easy to find and procure canvas' like these.

It started off as white, really.

I had picked up a remnant of wine and blue colored fabric and some wine and blue colored little woven roses, miniature ones that come in a little bunch for like a buck.

Gina had told me about this magazine, Cloth Paper Scissors, and I was a little inspired to try out this form of mixed media. Sorta. In my own way.

So I have a canvas, some fabric, some roses, and some 12 inch dowels... oh! and some muslin, can't forget the muslin!

Of which I have glued one edge across the back of the fully painted canvas. (Note: when painting the front and back, it is not advisable to be like me and try to accomplish both sides at once, because this ends up with wet paint somewhere- hands, knees, carpet... Best to do one side at a time so something is dry when you lay it down.)

Anyway - I painted the whole thing with black, with squirts of wine and blues to pick up the colors I plan on using. Glued the muslin on one side on the back, in preparation for attaching other stuff to it. I've made a four inch cut in the center - opening it up like doors.

The plan is to roll the "doors" onto the dowels - attach the dowels to the canvas with wire or glue and ribbon, open up the center to show the layout attached to the muslin behind it. Does this make sense? It does in my head. Hopefully it will in reality...