New work - Productive week

It's been a very productive week.  Having a show on the calendar certainly provides incentive to get things done.  Susan B. has been here working nearly as feverishly on my notecard inventory and other non-painting tasks to help me ready for Gosport Arts Festival.  She's experienced nearly everything now, except for painting for me. !   Printing, folding, bagging and pricing notecards is another full day of work (actually they aren't completely bagged, but at least they are printed and folded); hours that I was able to spend (mostly) in the studio.  


So, since a blog about art should be more than words, here are some images of paintings that will be seen for the first time at the Gosport show.  

This is still untitled and not quite complete.  I began this over two years ago while at the beach one fall.  It's been hiding in my studio for awhile and after visiting the Georgia O'Keefe exhibit at the Phillips Collection recently,  I knew exactly where to take this painting.  

This one is now finished, but not yet titled.  
Check out the image on my April 19th post.  What a difference a week can make. 




Hopefully I'll have time to post more as they are completed.  

A good day is a great thing

So far, a weekend going well.  Thank goodness. 


I finally picked out my new smart phone after researching them since last September.  
I've recovered some photos, but alas not all. 
4th Fridays was steadily busy with new faces as well as friends and fellow artists dropping in for a visit.  
My large format printer is now cooperating with all new ink installed.  (what to do with the old ink which still exists? I hate to throw away ink!)  
A painting is completed.  yahoo!  

Knock on wood?  

For Crying Out LOUD!

For those who wonder sometimes why I don't get more painting done.  Or what my ratio of "other stuff" to painting time is some days.  Settle in before reading...grab a coffee, or something stronger. 


So, on Tuesday Susan B is here working steadily most of the day while I'm trying to get some painting done.  Two days prior, I wanted to get some prints done.   My large printer decides it won't play nice with the ink, so I have to order new ink before I can try to do some reproductions.  There goes my window for framing, but maybe the ink will arrive and I can get Susan to print for me.  Ink arrives...no time to load and print yet. I have a show in 3 weeks.  I get some painting done, but also need to check in with Susan to see what she needs from me for her task.  She spends much of the day getting all my contacts loaded into that the data program I bought for record keeping.  


OK, so I need to print postcards.  My small printer doesn't want to play nice with the heavy paper, so we have to feed one sheet at a time.   I begin to show Susan how to do that and aforementioned printer decides not to take any paper at all.  Great.  
 At least I can get Susan to finish up and print out mailing labels after that, for postcards that don't yet exist....but that means there is always hope and we're prepared if we do get postcards.  yay.  Printer takes the label paper.  double yay. 


After Susan leaves, I load photos of the two commissions I made progress on to show clients via e-mail.  Now if you keep up with this blog, you may recall last May my PC died and I now use a MAC.  um-hum.  I keep my images in iPhoto - a MAC program.  I like that I can drag and drop images into various other applications and into an online gallery for my clients.  So that's what I did....I dragged and dropped two photos into their respective online gallery folders, which are supposed to automatically send them into cyberspace with their sister photos.  


Thank goodness, I emailed copies before this, because what happened next was a huge cluster farce of craziness.  My folders would not accept the images, the gallery would not recognize my passwords, I had to reset passwords via email ( "NO, thank you I did NOT forget my password - YOU won't recognize my password,"  I mumble to the computer. It's actually more complicated, but I'll keep this short.  LOL. hahaha)  I go retrieve my new password page and follow directions, come back to my photo album to drag and drop and gasp!  the albums are gone.  AND those photos are gone.  no.  nonono.  oh no.  Eight months of photos are gone, to be exact.    


I spend the next hour trying to find said photos.  And come back and MORE galleries are gone.  Oh this is really not good.  I have to stop before I destroy all my images or worse.  These are family photos, client photos, art work photos.  My entire album of artwork images that took Susan about 2 days to create for me - gone. 


I spend 2 hours the next day at the MAC genius bar.  (Include travel time - that's 3 hours of painting gone.)  No luck.  I "won" the "You've stumped a genius" award from my nice genius guy who could not figure out what the good grief happened.  Really.  I'm not loving my MAC at the moment, but we think we had a corrupt file or program cause all the grief. 


This story continues, but I shall not.  To end this rant, I'll close with uplifting news.  My MAC is now attached to an external hard drive with 1 Tb of storage space for backup every day.  yup.  
My photos are gone, except what I had not erased from my memory sticks and what I could find on my online web gallery once that was recovered ( which thankfully included my art work album. yay - I had enough sense to back that up)  I lost most of my painting time today,  recovering what I could.    My humor is still intact, although my emotions are sorely in need of a rest.  


And I'll paint tomorrow.  At least that's the plan. 

Artwork Updates

Here are a few pics of recent images I've been working on for the upcoming Gosport Arts Festival.  None are complete. 

This is the most recent incarnation of this piece. I decided to keep the ear, as my dear friend Sarah pleaded with me to please, please keep it in. You can't exactly tell it's an inverted ear, but I like the way it brings the body back around to the left corner to enhance the S-curve of this composition.

This piece is of a pup I painted awhile ago for a commission client.  I loved this incarnation best, with the human's hand holding her timid companion.  

These two chow paintings are on 6 x 6 wood panels.  I have a larger chow painting in progress.  Something about the chow is calling to me lately. 

April 16 2010

Recently, my art friend Susan asked me ...”Just curious... how many hours do you typically spend painting/week? And how many doing business for art?” I couldn’t answer that accurately and thought I’d take a few weeks to keep my hours and compare. Well, I still can’t answer that accurately.  It seems there is always something unexpected going on. 

I’m getting ready for a spring show, so I’m spending more time on the computer and prepping - things I don’t do year round.  I’m also spending more time painting, so even that isn’t quite as normal.  My current guess would be for every 3 hours painting I spend maybe 1 hour doing business chores.  At one time I would have said 2 to 1, but since I’ve changed how I deal with commissions, and hired Susan B. to assist,  that has freed up my time. And where do I include teaching hours?  hmmm.  Of course, none of this takes into consideration the time I spend taking care of home, husband and my critter family.  Do I include that as well?  

What am I doing right now?  Well, I’ve been painting for about an hour.  Took a break to check on the dogs outside, sat here to get off my feet 

(I paint standing) and post to the blog.  I’ll be back to painting when I finish this.  So this would fit into a 4 to 1 ratio - 1 hour painting, about 15 minutes for a break and blogging, which I consider business, since I blog for my clients and students mostly. 

After show season, I’m going to try and make an effort to record my hours. I think I’ll divide it into quarters - home life, business attention, teaching and studio time.  I’m curious to see what the outcome is. 

Art for Showtime

I've had an interesting few days.  I received a phone call from a gentleman who I met a few years ago. He is promoting a local event which includes a small number of artists and he felt like my work would be a good fit.  I was tickled and honored to be asked to exhibit at this high-end event and was considering it.  After some thought, I decided the timing and expenses were just not right.  Then I received an e-mail about another high end show in another state, and again, the timing and expense of doing such a show just won't work.   But I'm beginning to think that maybe the Universe is telling me something and I need to pay attention.  I usually do and in the past, I've found it beneficial to listen.  One door closes, another one opens. 


 I AM going to be doing my usual show, the Gosport Arts Festival in Portsmouth in May, so I've begun working on a few new pieces while finishing some pieces I began one and even two years ago.  In addition, as seen in recent blogs, I'm still painting on commissions and getting those completed.  


So here are pics of the most recent new piece.  "Party Girl," which was posted not too long ago, was such an easy painting - flowed like melted butter- I expected that to happen again... but no.  I realize I should be thankful when those paintings do come along.  Anyway, what I love about this is the challenge of dealing with folds and muscles, depth and a sense of place, and personality. 

Here is an early photo of the current piece, not yet titled.  
I've drawn loosely, freehand and am working on laying in color here.  I discovered a new mixture of cobalt green and cobalt teal with titanium and just love the blue tones.  

                                                          Here is the next phase: detail in the folds of the sofa cover, tightening up the drawing a bit and finding the lights and darks.  










Here is where I left off today : the color is building up to create the depth I like in my work and I began to play with the darks and lights nearest the body.  I like the red as a place to focus and have the dog lie flat while the folds curl around her as she wiggles on the sofa.  I'm toying with darkening the background to enhance the light focused on the chest and legs.  My color challenge now is to make sure the palette remains in harmony.  I love the green, but think it's going to need to change.  Or take the red back out.  And maybe that floppy ear needs to go. We'll see.