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 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 :)

______________________________________________________

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.

______________________________________________________

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. 

______________________________________________________

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.

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.  

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.