PREPARING: TEENY ART SHOW

Teeny Art Show

Pre-sale on Paintventure's Etsy Site

~ Art will also be in the Show - 

I have been painting on and off during the past three months.  I have some pieces now that I feel are "finished".  I will show you a few so you can get excited with me! 

Click on the pictures to go to the Etsy Site for pre-sale (and to be able to zoom in) before the art show. Thanks!

TEENY ART ARRIVES! part 3

Aunt Val. More like an older sister who was out of the house before me.  She's my Dad's Sister, and when I was very young I knew her as getting ready for dates and driving me around in her car putting on frosted pink lipstick and just being totally awesome.  There is a shift in energy when we are together... everything is loopy and fun, emotional and full of laughter and sass.  She has... WE have been through a ton of I-wish-this-wasn't-happening-but-it-is moments in the past two years that I know *I* wouldn't have been able to get through without her.  All I can say, is she is the Aunt who knows all the dirt on yours truly.  

  I thought this ocean teeny art was just for her.  She like my Mom's sister Tilee loves the Ocean.  Since she's my RISK IT ALL AND LAUGH ABOUT IT LATER relative... it seemed fitting to give her the painting that I was trying out a new brush with and it happened to come out terrific.  This painting also makes me miss my home in Lynn, MA...but I know it is a risk-it-all-and-laugh-about-it-later kind of time for me.

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MOM. <3<3<3 My Mom is always there to go to a museum or any destination with me no questions asked.  So much so that one Halloween I took a vacation and was going to spend five days in Salem.  She said she would like to come, and I said that was fine but I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to experience and she would have to go to those places with me, because I planned a solo adventure.  She did.  Sometimes I am like "I AM GOING TO DO ALL THE THINGS!! IF YOU WANT TO COME KEEP UP!"  

My friends are mostly like "meh" and she's always like "ok"

     I was like "I'm going to Art School" and she was like "ok", and I was like "I'm GOING TO WORK IN MOVIES!!!" and she was like "ok" and I was so surprised my whole life because I hear of other relatives and parents being like "YOU CAN'T GO TO ART SCHOOL, you must do something practical"  and my Mom was always like "ok" My achievements are hers :)

     SO my Mom got the first one I made on this teeny art mission.  I was going for an impressionistic style (Monet, Mary Cassatt) and also an abstract representation of that style and came up with what I know is a blond lady in profile wearing a blue bow in her hair and a blue dress sitting at a table with tea, but you can only see it if you are standing at least 20 feet away from the teeny thing. :)

You'll see it.  And if not you will see the duck with the hat my Mom sees in there too.

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     Shannon is my 3rd cousin?  I dunno hahaha.  I know we are related and she is on my Dad's side.  That side of the family is huge and I don't know anyone's exact relation to me, I just know they are.  Grandpa had a million brothers and sisters, so.  I don't know Shannon very well, and if I met her before last year I don't know.  I say this all because I do not have a little blurb about her except that she had a bottle rocket war with my cousin on Independence Day and plays some great horseshoes.  She told me that her daughter says it's DEFINITELY a Mermaid in the painting.  :)  

TEENY ART ARRIVES! part 2

A short refresher about Teeny Art... 

I did a little painting project at the end of April beginning of May that had just about 15 people waiting in anticipation for a piece of teeny art.  I had a stack of Artist Trading Card canvases.  They are a little bigger than a business card but not by much and Strathmore Art Papers produces them to be able to trade with other artists. 



 I was inspired one night to paint a bunch, I put addresses on for several people I already know love personal mail and like my art.  After that I put the call out on Facebook to send them to people who would be interested in receiving Teeny Art.  They were taken up fast and I have a little mailing list for the next go-around.

There have been a few no big deal but time consuming life changes in the past 2 months that had me moving and starting over.  The dust has settled for the time being and I would like to post more of the art I sent out for that project :) This post will be for the three that traveled the farthest down to Florida :)

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My Auntie Lee who I call "Tilee" is my Godmother.  So if you think we are a lot alike, we are. :) I spent a lot of summers with her, my Uncle Tone (Tony), Cousin Antoine Merriweather (Ant/TONY) and Jacki "think you're so cool because Jessie's here"(Jaclyn).  I miss that summer tradition terribly.  

I was so looking forward to her visit to New England this summer as it would be like old times, but like new grown up times.  I will have to bundle her up in one of my 300 handmade scarves.  I also almost bought the Dirty Dancing CD that we listened to on repeat the summer she got her new Gold Honda Accord and we all drove around in style and Air Conditioning.  :) 

My Aunt and I share a love for the Ocean and the need to live by a body of water.  So I sent her this teeny art that they love so much. 

I am making a much bigger version to go in their bedroom.  For now the mini one is protected in a sleeve on the fridge.  You cannot see it that well, but that swish is a 24kt Gold swish.

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Ryan Soap on a Rope.

Ryan is a friend I found working on 48hr Film Challenges with Team LTJFilms (Love Thy Job).  Ryan is a talent who could help in any department on the set.  Ryan would always be there to just pick up a project I was in the middle of when needed for head of department meetings.  You really need that person on a 48hr challenge.  I was completely afraid to do these projects when my bestie and right hand art girl Janet went back to school for animation. I had no idea that on the three 48 challenges Ryan and I had worked on prior that he wanted to be in Art.  

He is of tribe weird (horray!) and is always up for something new.  I knew this was the perfect Teeny Art for him.  It could be anything... Mountains, a City, an alien planet, and I know Ryan will see it as different things all the time. 

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STEPHANIE SNOW WHITE

Steph is literally a Disney Snow White Princess at Walt Disney World.  She is a rare story where she put herself where she wanted to be and everything worked out exactly as she planned.  She has the Magic of Walt Disney in her and I just think she is an inspiration!

 

Over the years Steph and I have kept in touch from our time in the "Impressions" in high school.  She is such a big supporter of my random art weirdness and the need to send it to a home that I'm not sure how much TEENY ART she has of mine, but I know she wants lots more.  She always loves cute little smiling faces like me and here is the one I made that lives with her in the Magic Kingdom!!! Lucky teeny art that wished upon a star.

Teeny ART! (Random acts of Art)

Good Afternoon.  It is about 70 degrees on this Sunny by the beachside day.  I'm sitting inside for now, but plan to head over to the beach to read soon.  

 I love to paint and decided one night I would do what I'm best at.  Being Kind. I painted 13 teeny artist trading cards (ATC's),  put them in tiny envelopes and cards I created myself.

I am sending these out to people I know on Facebook as it was a neat and easy place to publish my give away.  I did put my blog site on every envelope ( I think!) so you all can follow me here if you want as I'm trying to get back into blogging as it's a nice head space for me. 

I don't want to give away what everyone is getting before it comes to them in the mail so I am going to post more when I hear that people have gotten their "teeny Art"

Artist Trading Cards "ATC" - because I did.

I have a stockpile of "Artist Trading Cards" blank of course, and I am always deifying these little 2.5" x 3.5" cut pieces of Acrylic Pad Paper.  They sit in my drawer, wanting to be masterpieces that I trade with friends and artists and just have this awesome Artistic lifestyle sipping Martini's and being posh and wonderful... but since that doesn't happen for reals, and most likely won't, these cards just had all this unnecessary mysticism, or hopes and dreams, put on them, that stunted their potential and growth.  

So I was cycling through an emotional roller coaster in my Artist head one evening and decided... I'm never going to be the posh cool Artist that receives this beautiful fantasy of give and take pen pal art making and I got pissed about being alone all the time, broke and invisible so I opened all the little packages and started painting them all the color brown that you see on the package below.  I don't like it when my life is not ever like my dreams.  Art Therapy.

This started as an assignment from the book "Drawing Lab."  A person is to make art using a small inanimate object.  I chose these that live in the drawer dedicated to pencils in my drawing desk drawer: 

Wooden Sculptures acquired years ago Mom gave them to me.   I don't know who she got them from.

The gist of the assignment is limit your color palette and only use the object throughout a series of drawings that you complete each in five minutes or less.  The rule of the book is don't get too precious about it.  The assignment is fun and sketchy and no pressure art.  I really free up creatively when I "draw" with paint, I don't really relax drawing with pencil, I can't really "paint over" mistakes when I draw.  Erasers don't really erase.  

I started with four dinky acrylics that comes-with-the-dollar-stretched-canvas-purchased-at-Christmas Tree Shops and used those to "use them up"  but they actually ended up nice flowing paints.  Ivory Black, Yellow Ochre, Cobalt Blue, and Cad Orange.   I started just using two round brushes size 0 and 2.

Then this one had to start coming alive.  I was having a great time with the assignment just being what it was, and then this magical thing happened where my imagination just started flowing through my arm and doing that Zone/Sync thing and a story happened, and an unlikely friendship happened.  :)  So for the last two I broke out all the little brushes, including my awesome Princeton Select brushes.  I used a teeny bit of white (cheater) and definitely took more than five minutes (sigh... FAIL at directions...)

EYE CRINKLES!! SIGH :) Happy Giraffe is happy.

THESE BRUSHES HAVE SOULS I SWEAR!!

The finished pieces did end up getting a proper home to my good friend Annie. I was visiting and I have a compulsive need to gift her something when visiting.  We went out to chill at the lake where I dug some sweet caverns with my feet in the sand as she talked about all things.  Annie is one of my only friends that I really listen to and don't cut in with advice too early. 

 Her husband Matt came home while we were out.  Annie had left the cards on the Kitchen table.  When we came back, Matt said VERBATIM what was going on in my head when I was making them. He was describing the little story that was on the table.  I wanted to cry... it was so moving.  I don't think I said a word though.  It was just one of those things that never happens.  My thoughts transferred into the work.  :)  "He was going to eat him, and then he doesn't, because he thinks 'this one isn't scared and could be a friend'"

It was just so arresting because he said it exactly in the same words as I had in my head.  Psychically connected, or psychically imprinted into the art?  hmmm.

I may have just teared  up.  It was pretty Magical, the whole experience and I definitely hope to make some more someday and see if I show someone and that happens again.  If I ever die I want Matt to write all the reviews of my work to let people know what was going on in my head.  :)

So here's the next batch to be painted, someday. :)  I have to get back to Val's painting!  AHHH!  :)  I must stop being so precious about that one too, and just get some wine and dimples paint already.  

Carla is cool too, and you should check out her website sometime and her art.  

More of the Fish painting

As a painting progresses I like to take reference photos. Having a background in animation it's fun to see the echo of the animation process in the recording a painting.   I do this for myself, well, because it looks cool. 

I experimented with some mediums in this one using Gel Medium which slows down the drying time of the acrylic paint while giving it a gooey warm jello flow.  Seemed to feel in tune with the gooey fleshy snotty consistency of things in water all the time.

 These great cartoon ghosty eyes were happening all over the painting. I added some body to them as they became their own life.  

There are some freshwater fish making their way into this painting.  I had quite a few different fresh water fish growing up that have made it into there.  A Black Molly, a Fan tail Guppy, Some fake looking seaweed from a childhood tank... I quite miss having a fish tank. 

 The detail accomplished in these eyes were not premeditated.  They just came about in the swirl making process, and I tried to preserve it as much as possible.  I have never intentionally painted or drawn in this style before and it was quite a giddy surprise that I made something so cool looking.  Naturally I took 100 photos, in case I messed it up and had to re-do.  

I also added Dill seeds into the paint around the eye to give it a bumpy texture just to see what happens.  I have some Glass Beads Gel Medium that is hard to see in this picture, but they will be more prominent in the next set of pictures I will post on this painting.

Breaking the Fast of Winter

With a jar of blue paint leftover from another project this painting was born.

 I was thinking about what was under the surface of the ocean and a few swirls became identifiable fish.

I was inspired to create something on my new French Easel Mom bought me for Christmas.  Not quite outdoor weather to test it out in the field (like Van Gogh painting crows) but thinking about outdoors helps me get through the winter.