It's been too cold to be in the studio this week. While I am so thankful to have an art studio, I do wish it was climate controlled. It just gets too cold in the winter to be in there. So, I've been painting in the living room. I have to change up how I work since I am not as free to make giant messes and get paint drips everywhere. I decided to bring some color with me by bringing up some tubes of Holbein acryla gouache. I pulled out a pad of Arches hot press water color block. I’m not sure why but somehow I feel like there is less pressure painting in the living room. Need to remember that the next time I feel stuck creatively. These paintings were so much fun to paint. I hope the bright yellows and reds in combination with the soft pinks and blues makes you feel happy and calm when you look at them.
PATTERN PLAY
Playing with bold color and simple lines.
Sometimes, too many art supplies can be overwhelming. I feel the need to use them all at once and end up with a mess of time. So today, I decided to keep it SIMPLE. I just used black ink and ONE color per pattern. I find having boundaries and constraints or limitations can often inspire creativity as you are pushed to think in more basic and elemental ways. I love how simple these cute little pink circle flowers are. I love the contrast between the sold color and the details in the line work of the leaves. A circle and line, that is all that is really needed to represent a flower. Can’t get more basic than that.
SHOP
Hurray! The shop is now live and up-to-date! I finally got around to putting some of my original drawings and paintings for sale. I much more enjoy the process of creating the art than selling the art, but I am happy to be able to make these paintings available to you all at long last.
HAD TO LET LOOSE
The day after painting the mural, I had to let loose and get messy, and this is what happened!
I really enjoyed painting the mural, but the process was slow and structured and methodical. I had to be neat and tidy and I planned out the painting in attempt to avoid any mistakes or errors. So when I came into the studio today, I had to let loose. I had to work freely with no plan, with no constraints, and no expectations. This is the painting that emerged from that need, that feeling. It was so fun! At the time, I didn’t care much to make a painting I liked, I just wanted to move and create and get into that flow state. But at the end of it all, I actually really love this painting. I love it for two reasons: the physical process of painting it was so fun and damn satisfying, and the end result is a painting that I visually enjoy and connect with. So yeah! I call that a win and a great day in the studio. Not everyday can feel like today, so when days like this happen, it’s important to take notice and enjoy. Hope you can enjoy this painting as much as I have.
MURAL MURAL ON THE WALL
Wow! What an honor it was to be commissioned to paint one of my floral patterns on the wall of a friend’s entryway. It was such an exciting and terrifying project. I was both intimidated and excited to jump right in. It is one thing to paint a painting on paper canvases that can moved around and put up and taken down, but it is a whole new endeavour to permanently paint upon someone’s walls.
Luckily the clients had seen a painting of mine that they really connected with, so I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. This was a huge comfort because I was going to be painting something I was familiar with and using colors that I was comfortable with. The aspect I struggled with the most was trying to keep a sense of spontaneity that happens when I paint on paper. I don’t do any pre-planning as I love the process of just letting things flow and seeing what happens. I don’t mind making mistakes when painting on paper as it pushes me to come up with creative solutions that bring the painting to a place I don’t believe I would get to if I planned everything out. You don’t plan for accidents. I didn’t feel confident taking this free flowing process to the client’s walls, so I did take the time to plan and draw out the composition. I am very happy with the final result and I do feel that despite the planning, the mural does still emit a sense of spontaneity.
Here are some pictures of the process and the final result with their beautiful Great Dane for scale.
PAINTED CLOSE UPS
Here are a couple of close up shots of my latest flower paintings. I thought y’all would like to see some of these paintings closer up so you can see the thickness of the paint and how the paint drips become incorporated into the overall design.
PAINTED ABSTRACTIONS
Below is an update from last week in the studio. I have continued to explore large floral forms. This week, I have made the florals larger and more abstract. I am also really loving this warm red that has taken over these florals. It’s fun to keep painting and discovering new ways to recreate such a simple subject matter as flowers.
PAINTED FLOWERS
The boys are back at school, and I have some time to myself in the studio. Lately I have been working on painting flowers. I am trying to work out their floral forms. I prefer my florals to be stylised and simple. I aim for my paintings to show the essense of the flower while capturing a whimsical and playful mood.
These paintings hanging on my studio wall are painted with acrylic paint.. The three on the right are painted on large pieces of paper. There is a freedom to working in the large format. I love that I can really move around within the painting. I like the physicality of painting big vs. working statically at my desk. I also love working in acrylic as it dries quickly and you can easily apply layer upon layer of paint. This comes in handy when I make mistakes.
I hope to keep exploring and seeing what other floral forms and color combinations I can come up with.
MATHKIT
This is what I have been doing all Spring and Summer. MathKit is a set of hands-on-games and learning tools that help kids master math skills through play. I helped create and launch MathKit in the Spring of 2015. My role was to create a cohesive and playful identity system-from product design to the website getmathkit.com.
ALL I HAD TIME TO DRAW
This pink post-it-note drawing of my delicious cup of coffee is all I had time to draw before it was time to be a mother again. (I did get to drink my coffee while it was hot though.) How do you all manage your creativity with motherhood? Somedays are more successful than others. Somedays I am a better artist than parent while the next day I am a better mother than artist. It’s tricky trying to prioritise and manage it all but creativity does center me, and I find that in the long run, it helps me to be a kinder, more patient mother.
UNEXPECTED
I am not sure what I expected to paint on this rainy Sunday afternoon. I went to the studio with an open mind (or is that just a positive way of saying I had no idea what to paint) and just let the paint and the charcoal tell me where to put it on the paper. I am so used to painting flowers, that I just assumed that today would be no different, but something about this rainy Sunday afternoon brought me to create this unexpected abstract, somewhat cellular and biology-vibed painting.
I kind of like it. It’s unexpected.
TODAY IN THE KITCHEN
Here are a few sketchbook drawings I drew today while working in the kitchen. Sometimes inspiration comes from the mundane moments in life like handing your young son a coveted juice box or stealing a moment to myself to enjoy a nice cup of tea.
I drew the mushrooms and the pickle because they are both polarizing foods in my house. I love a good dill pickle and so does one of my sons, but the other son can’t stand the sight or smell of them and makes his feelings known to anyone and everyone. I also love sautéed mushrooms on just about anything while the kids thinks they taste too much like dirt and wonder how and why the heck I would be willing to eat food that tastes like dirt.
I love the simplicity of drawing in pen on paper. I love making confident contour lines. It is satisfying and terrifying at the same time. You must commit when drawing with pen and I love that feeling of not knowing how my hand and brain will communicate with each other to render whatever object I am hoping to capture.
Plus, I can always find a pen and piece of paper and it is easy to set aside when I am called away to tend to one of the kids needs.
100 PINK CUPS OF COFFEE
A documentation of what it is like to draw 100 pink coffee cups.
Well, I had some time on my hands today and no idea what to do with it. I was feeling the creative calling but too lazy to dig into my paints and too intimidated to pull out a fresh canvas. So, I sat down and looked at the items I had on my desk.: a block of post-it- notes, a black sharpie marker, a pink highlighter and of course a cup of coffee, which I always have on my desk in various stages of temperature and amount.
Of course the most obvious thing was to draw my coffee cup, so I did. but that wasn’t enough to fufill my creative urge, so I drew another cup of coffee, but this one I wasn’t happy with, so I drew another cup of coffee and then I started to think to myself, what fun it would be to keep drawing pink cups of coffee. And that is exactly what I did. I outlined the cup in the sharpie marker, and coloured the cup with the pink highlighter. After the 14th cup of coffee drawing, the sharpie headache set it. We all know and kind of love-hate the smell of a sharpie. Well, if you use it too long, it can lead to your head feeling strange. But I continued on with pink coffee cup number 15. Somehow I decided that 100 cups of pink coffee was my goal and I wanted to document the order and any thoughts that came up along the way. At one point I found myself wishing for an another pink highlighter, at another point I had to switch to the next block of post- it notes. I had no idea when I started that I would be finishing the first block.
Anyways, take a look and join me on my journey of what it means to draw 100 pink cups of coffee.
What do you do when you are all out of ideas? Let me know because clearly I need some help brainstorming ideas!
SEESAW
This is part of a Family Documents series.
"A stripe and a polkadot make a seesaw" says Hayden Ellis Connelly, June 2011.
(I love how that kid thinks)
I LOVE MY CAT.
Hounddog is turning seventeen. Here are a few sketches of him throughout the years.
BLUE WHALE
This drawing of a blue whale is just one of several posters I have made illustrating things I have learned or re-learned from my two little boys. Did you know that the tongue of a blue whale is as heavy as an elephant? or did you know that the heart of a blue whale is the size of an automobile? I know I knew these facts at some point in my life, but as I have aged, I have filtered out information, so relearning them though the lens of a six year old is amazing to me.
Once I figure out how to properly photograph the other drawings, I will be sure to share them with you so you too can relive the sense of wonder.
OBJECTS
Here are some new drawings of some of my favorite everyday objects I have around the house. All these drawings are done with pencil and gouache on 18x24 sheets of cotton paper. These drawings are larger-than-life renditions of the real objects.
Gum stick: I love the smell and the color pink of a freshly unwrapped piece of gum, and the silver wrapper has subtle details and texture worth noting. It like a little treasure waiting to be unwrapped.
Colander: A shiny red metal colander is one of my favorite pieces of kitchen equipment. It is a beautiful object on its own made even better by having such a useful function. I love displaying it on a hook against my pale blue kitchen wall. I also love how the pencil marks I made have a shimmery effect that sadly you can only really see upon close inspection in person.
Dish Soap: There is something timeless in the shape of this dish soap bottle. I hope I captured it’s timelessness.
Match stick: Such a recognisable rectangular shape. I love the rounded orange top that is ready to strike at any time.
Spool of Thread: I found an entire box of vintage spools of threads in my grandmother’s closet. I was inspired by the multitude of colours and loved all the different shapes and sizes of the wooden spools. I hope to do an entire collection of all these magical little colorful spools.
FAVORITE COLORS
My kids are always asking me what my favorite colours are. It’s a big big deal to them. I guess their favorite color provides them with some sense of identity. They wear it like a badge of honor.
It took me a minute to answer. I mean I have favourite colours for different aspects of my life, but when I took an inventory of my artwork, two colors stood out the most: yellow ochre and Holbein’s Shell Pink.
What are your favorite colours to create in? Are they different from the colors of the clothes you wear? I skew towards black for most of my clothes, but the idea of painting in black seems terrifying to me. The idea of wearing yellow ochre and pink also terrifies me. It’s curious how colors playsuch a different roles in one’s life.
Anyways, I decided to quickly document my current favourite colours with these quick pencil and gouache drawings in my sketchbook.
ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Does practice make perfect? Clearly in my case, somewhere along the middle is my perfect.
My ‘Order of Appearance’ drawing of 66 paperclips.
VERY IMPORTANT! TAKE A LOOK. STAY AWAY FROM THE PINK ONES.
It may be smudge-proof, but it's certainly not faded-proof.
