So I just posted about the big art project that I did for the "Art for Arthritis" benefit in my hometown, so I'll paraphrase here. In addition to the big auction piece, the artists and their mentoree artists also create a smaller piece for a silent auction. We made this papercutting, called "Even This Gecko is Meta."

It's (obvs) a big gecko, but all the lacy cut-outs are smaller geckos, each a little different. My mentoree artist came up with the concept and design for this one all on her own! We did the watercolor backing with the same blending technique as the other piece, but in vibrant greens and blues. I stupidly didn't get a pic of the framed final product before it went to auction, but I framed in in a black gallery frame with a wide charcoal outer mat and a thin, dark teal inner mat. It looked really sharp. This one is 18"x18".



Work in progress. We both went through a box of Pac-Man bandaids over the course of these two projects. I've been preparing a collection of papercuttings for an upcoming show (I'll post pics soon!), and I think I might be single-handedly keeping X-acto and Bandaid in business.





 

So my city has a big art benefit auction called "Art for Arthritis" every year, to raise money for juvenile arthritis research. Local artists are paired with a child who has juvenile arthritis, and they create a piece together to be auctioned off at a big fancy gala with all the city bigwigs. This is my second year as a mentor artist for the event, and it's a lot of fun.

This year, my mentoree artist and I created a lacework papercutting of a map of our city, Wichita, KS, entitled "Home, Sweet Home." The benefit auction was last night, and it took the second highest bid of the night, with an outright bidding war! Anyway, this took us about 20 hours, and over 100 x-acto blades (the tips kept snapping off). Most of the streets are 1-2mm wide, and the whole thing was as delicate as a spiderweb when it was done.

We mounted it on a large watercolor background that we did using a lot of water and a lot of pigment, letting the colors flow and blend without brushstrokes. We used shades of red and orange to reflect the colors of the city flag and the patina of our iconic Keeper of the Plains, by Blackbear Bosin (a 44-foot metal American Indian sculpture that stands guard over us at the city center, a symbol of our city). The finished piece is 18"x24", and 28"x32" framed, with a red and grey double mat. Stay tuned for process pics!



We drew the map out, using Google Maps as a reference. You'll notice that we drew it backwards, so that when we cut it, the clean side would face the right way. Bonus kitty helping.


Started from the center outward, saving the big pieces for last.


My mentoree artist, working hard! She just turned 13, and is such an articulate, intelligent, thoughtful young lady. This is our second year working together, and we've had such a great time.


All cut out! We just loved how it turned out- you can see the cloverleafs on the highways and the rivers, with the big stripe across the middle and up and down the center US-54 and I-135 respectively; all the random white squares are some of the larger parks, and the two masses on the bottom left and right are Mid-Continent Airport and McConnell AFB, respectively.


This is the most accurate pic of the watercolor backing, I couldn't seem to get a good pic of the color once it was framed and glass in the way.


Finished product!


And a bonus pic of the Keeper, part of our inspiration:

OK everyone, I finally have a moment to breathe, so here’s a little (i.e. extremely long and detailed) tutorial about how I made my Iron Man Mark II arc reactor, with tons of pics and thorough descriptions of the process!

I am a ridiculous fan of Iron Man and all things Marvel Comics as well as costuming, so I decided to make Tony Stark's mech test framework as seen in Iron Man I; just the arc reactor, gauntlet and arm frame, and palm repulsors for now, the boots are going to be a Christmas break project (gauntlets are currently a WIP). Ooooh, and I'm so excited about the palm repulsors, I'm rigging up a camera flash so that even though they'll glow with continuous LED's, when I cock my hand back, they'll also flash like a boss. Squee!! Anyway! On to the arc reactor!





This will eventually be the end result:

http://www.mwctoys.com/images/review_mechtest_1.jpg

I had all these materials in my garage, but you can get them all at your local hardware store, I estimate that the materials will cost $30-50, depending on how fancy you get.

Materials:

    -Clear acrylic patio table ring with plug (mine came from a pool and patio store, you can also order one here, make sure it has the ring and the center plug)

    -Large staples like what you use in a staple gun (mine were 9/16” or 14mm)

    -Designer bell-style faucet aerator

    -Either individual LED’s with necessary resistors, wiring and tape (try Radio Shack, remember not to use acid core solder), OR ribbon-style pre-wired LED’s from your local auto supply store, like these Flex-LED’s

    -24 gauge copper wire

    -22 gauge brass wire

    -A round mirror about the same size as the acrylic plug (I popped mine out of a makeup compact, it was about 2” in diameter)

    -Plastic regular size mason jar lid (my local hardware store sells these individually, farm supply stores tend to have them pretty cheap, too), like these

    -Solder with flux or acid core (or Tacky Glue and silver metallic paint, I’ll get to that later),

    -Black craft paint

    -Silver and gold metallic nail polish (I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Celeb City and Golden-I, just make sure its a very fine, very concentrated flake that looks more like metal than glitter)

    -Clear nail polish

    -Wire coat hanger

    -Super glue

    -Hot glue

    -Three very small screws

    -Some kind of thin but stiff plastic that you can cut with an X-acto knife, like the cover of a 5-Star notebook

Tools:

    -Hot glue gun

    -Drill

    -Paddle drill bit large enough to fit inside the center of the acrylic plug

    -Drill bit small enough for your three tiny screws

    -Soldering Iron

    -Needle-nose pliers

    -Wire cutters (or just use the cutter part of the pliers)

    -Very fine-tipped paintbrush

    -Ruler with inches and mm

    -Fine metal file

    -X-acto knife

    -AC/DC’s Back in Black to help you get into the right frame of mind

OK, so start by spreading all your materials out on the dining room table, so when your husband/wife/partner/parents/roommate comes home, they’ll have something suitable to freak out about. Assure them that the mess definitely won’t still be there three weeks after you’ve finished the project. Now that the mess is out of the bag, put on your jams (or the Iron Man movie) and make yourself a snack and a gin and tonic. You’ve done a good job so far!

Now you want to separate the acrylic plug from the ring, and drill out the center of the plug. I recommend not doing this at the table, and using a clamp would probably be a lot safer than just holding it with your fingers (who says I did that? Nobody saw anything…). You’ll see in the following pic that my paddle bit wasn’t quite big enough (you want the hole big enough that the wide end of the faucet can nestle loosely inside). I cleaned it up later and made it more round with my X-acto and file.

The ring part has two lips, you’ll want to trim one of them off with the X-acto knife. In this pic, you can see that the plug has been drilled out (left), the ring has been trimmed and I’ve started with the staples (right), and the piece of ring that I trimmed off is in the upper right corner.



I used the staples to create segments for the copper wire, so it looked more like the wire was part of something that could actually conduct a current, rather than just wrapped around a patio table ring. So that the staples stayed in place, I trimmed each with my wire cutters so it didn’t extend past the end of the inner part of the ring, then bent a corner so it would stay in place. Once I pressed each into place, I used my pliers to crimp the bent part into place so it wouldn’t budge. I made 18 even segments (9 segments of copper, use your ruler to make sure they’re evenly spaced) so the 3 prongs of the final piece each line up with a copper segment (looks more intentional that way, rather than just decorative, you’ll see when I get to that step).





Using your black craft paint, paint several layers of black on every other segment on both the front and back, so the light won’t shine through the wires and make it look inauthentic.Try to avoid getting paint on the staples.



When the paint is dry, start wrapping every other segment with the copper wire, trying to keep it smooth, tight, and even, bumping each piece up against each other (there will have to be some overlap to cover all the black, since it’s a radial shape rather than linear shape). I anchored the wire ends on the back of the staples, and tucked the ends under, as you can see here.



Ta-da! Time for another drink and Iron Man II!



Now comes the fun part (or frustrating part, depending on how many gin and tonics you’ve had by now). You’ll want to cut little tiny pieces of the brass wire, so that you can solder them to the staples. If you don’t have flux or an acid core in your solder, it won’t want to stick, and you’ll end up with drops of solder stuck to everything but what you want it to stick to. ANYWAY. I purposely didn’t get too tidy here, I wanted it to look like it was made under duress in a cave with a box of scraps.

You can also use Tacky Glue to glue the wire bits on, then paint the globs of glue with silver paint or nail polish once it’s dried. I like to make things difficult on myself, so I used the random unlabelled solder I found in the garage, because I like to make 15 trips to the hardware store to track down the right kind when the first kind didn’t work. The second pic shows that I put the plug back in place to make sure that I didn’t put the brass wires too close to the center for it to fit. The plug will be a tight fit with all the staples and copper wire, so just be firm but gentle to get it back into place.





Now take the plug back out, because we’re going to paint the black perforated ring. I looked all over the garage, hardware store, craft store, and interwebz for an appropriate substitute to no avail, so I decided that I would just have to break out my mad paint skillz and make it happen. So I just free-handed a black ring with holes with several coats of black, then coated it in clear nail polish to seal it in.



OK, this next pic shows two steps. First is making the plug that you just painted look like an actual, oxidized piece of metal. To do that, I dipped my finger in a little bit of the silver nail polish and rubbed it around the surface of the plug, concentrating most of it around the outer edge. Don’t be afraid to get messy, you can wipe excess off with a damp paper towel. Imperfect is the goal here, you want it to look naturally oxidized.

The other bit in the pic is from the faucet aerator. If you unscrew the back and take it apart, you should end up with two silver metal pieces, two mesh screens, two clear acrylic washers, and 2-3 plastic pieces. Don’t lose any of it, and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, remember how you took them apart so you don’t waste 45 minutes fumbling like an idiot because there’s a thousand different ways they could possibly go together and you don’t remember which of those ways is correct!

I used the gold nail polish to paint the plastic pieces (they hold the mesh in place and are visible in the final product, so I wanted them to look like metal (gold-titanium alloy, maybe? Eh? Eh?). When the nail polish was dry, I dipped my finger in a little of the black craft paint, and rubbed it into the crevices and textured bits (wiping away excess with a damp paper towel), so it also looks oxidized.

You really want to use your fingers for these steps, a brush is too precise and won’t give it that built-in-a-cave, battle-damaged, oxidized look.



Now we’re going to make a spring to go around the faucet. It’s not really part of the original design, but it hides some of the LED guts, adds a nice textural element, and diffuses the light a little. I made two springs, but we’ll worry about the other later.

Get your hanger (NO WIRE HANGERS!! JK, you need one here), and cut the long straight part off. Hold the end firmly with one end of the copper wire, and wrap it tightly around the hanger, keeping it tightly and closely coiled. I suppose I made about a 2” coil, but I stretched it a smidge to open the coils and trimmed some, so YMMV. I twisted the ends together, then popped it onto the faucet, where it hugged a groove nicely and stayed in place. Never mind the other pieces in the pic, we aren’t there yet.



Now you’ll need to reassemble the faucet, leaving off the back metal piece and the solid plastic piece with the stem, since they’ll block the light and make it too tall. Eventually you’ll have to put a drop of super glue around the edge to keep it all together without the back piece, but don’t do that yet because you’ll need to trace part of it in a later step, and you’ll need to take it apart to do so. Here’s the pieces we’ve done so far assembled. Nothing is glued, they’re just sitting together, just to make sure everything is fitting as it should.



Here it is sitting in the mason jar lid. There’s plenty of wiggle room, but you’ll need that for the LED’s.



Use your X-acto knife to cut a rectangular hole in the mason jar lid on the side near the base to accommodate the LED wire. You’ll be able to kind of see it in the following pics, I tried to make it pretty subtle.

Now you need to paint the entire inside and outside of the lid (not the back that goes against your skin though, if you use spirit gum and actually wear it, it could pull the finish off). Use the silver nail polish for this, it really looks like metal. I used 2-3 coats, and made sure I really got it in all the grooves.

Next it needs to be oxidized (after the polish is dry), so use your fingers and the black craft paint again. Rub the paint all over, concentrating in the grooves, and wiping away excess with a damp paper towel. Streaks, fingerprints, and splotches are all desirable imperfections; remember, we’re shooting for battle-damaged here.

And it’s definitely time for another drink, and maybe a pizza.





OK, here is a fiddly bit. I used the stiff plastic cover of my 5-Star notebook to make the little 3-prong cage thing (henceforth referred to as “The Assembly”) that sits over the top of the center of the reactor. Before I reassembled and glued the faucet, I took the part that holds the mesh in place (the small part that’s visible that i painted gold), and traced the inside of the circle onto the plastic.

Now VERY SLOWLY AND PATIENTLY AND CAREFULLY use your X-acto to cut out a circle about 1mm inside what you just traced, then cut out on the line that you just traced. You should now have a ring where the widest diameter is the same size as the smallest diameter of the faucet piece. Still with me? Anyway, you should cut the inside first, because it’s otherwise impossible to hold onto that little piece and get an even circle.

Now cut three rectangles, about an inch long and 2mm wide. I carved a center groove in each, then painted these and the ring with the gold nail polish, front and back. After they were dry, I burnished each with the black paint as I did in the above steps. The grooves pick up the paint, and make it look like a piece of cast metal.



I super-glued them all together with super glue flat on the table, then glued them to the plug, which I of course don’t have a pic of. Note: make sure that when viewed from above, the ring is on top and the prongs are underneath. Since The Assembly was flat on the table, I used the acrylic ring to make sure that the three prongs lined up with a segment of copper (with two copper segments between each prong).

While in that step, I marked on the ring where the prongs would fit, and drilled tiny pilot holes for the screws while the glue dried. Once it was dry, I super-glued The Assembly to the ring, lining the prongs up with the pilot holes and making sure the whole thing was centered (you’ll need to trim off some excess length, I made it so they ended just under the screw heads).

Once the glue is dry, put in your screws, and re-insert the plug into the ring (very carefully, it will be a tight fit and now there’s a bunch of little wires and bits that can be easily dislodged).



See! It’s purty!



Now you want to glue your round mirror to the inside bottom of the mason jar lid. I used hot glue for this. My mirror came out of a makeup compact, which I heated up with a heat gun (a blow dryer works too) to loosen the glue.



Whee, it’s time to wire your LED’s! If you feel like making a circuit board, go ahead. In all honesty, it’s not that hard, but you need to bone up on some basic electrical skills first, which can be intimidating for a beginner. Here’s a nice Instructable if you really want to earn bragging rights. If you’re lazy or otherwise time constrained, use the pre-wired strips. You can certainly get more precise placement if you wire them from scratch, but if you put enough reflective surfaces on the inside, it won’t matter much. I used the super-bright tape kind from the auto supply store, which have a convenient adhesive strip and can be trimmed to length (don’t look directly into them when lit, yo. Seriously, they’re bright. The finished arc reactor will light up the entire room, no joke).

I pulled the strip through the hole that I cut in the lid, and after some measuring and cutting, stuck them around the perimeter so the lights shine inward. The power switch is the kind that you have to keep pressed down, so if you want an on/off switch, you need to rewire one. I got mine at Radio Shack, and now I can turn it on and leave it on.

Get your wire hanger piece and more copper wire out, and make another spring, maybe 5 inches long this time. Twist the ends together, and spot-glue it on top of the LED strip with a very tiny amount of hot glue, so that neither the glue or LED tape will be visible when everything is assembled. The acrylic ring and plug will sit on top of the LED’s, rather than nestle inside, once it’s all assembled.



OK, now remember how I told you not to lose all the parts of the faucet aerator? In all likelihood you did, and now those extra parts are on the floor or in the cat’s mouth. You need to find the two clear rubber washers that came in the faucet. You’ll super-glue these together, then glue them into the narrow end of the aerator. This will raise it up a little and allow the light to shine through the center; otherwise, the very center of the arc reactor will be dark, and we don’t want people to think you’re in danger of shrapnel because of a malfunctioning electromagnetic heart.

You may now proceed to super-glue the washers together, then to the faucet, then super-glue the faucet to the very center of the mirror, widest end facing up. Be sure to test the lights first, to make sure they shine through the center. If not, you’ll need to come up with something else to raise the aerator and let the light shine through.



Now nestle the ring into the mason jar lid, adjusting it to find where it fits most snugly. I lined it up so that one of the prongs of The Assembly pointed down and lined up with where the wire comes out, which I intend to hide in my epic cleavage. Looks a little less random this way. Once you find the right position, spot glue it with hot glue on the back of the copper segments, using an X-acto knife to trim away any visible glue that squeezes out. You’re all done, time for a dance party!





All lit up!





Don’t forget to leave your mess for the rest of the household to observe and admire!



Time to party, you just made a nuclear-plasmic electromagnet with a fully-integrated miniature particle accelerator! Fuck yeah science, get on wit’ yo bad self! Hopefully you finished it sometime in the middle of the night, so you can stick it to your chest with double-stick tape and prance around in the house pretending to be Tony Stark. Don’t forget to put on a tank top and take a bunch of pics with it shining through your shirt, then lie in bed and marvel about how Tony can possibly sleep with the fucking beacon of Gondor shining out of his chest. Yay!

[Mini-Tute! (Lots of hints and tips throughout)]

Yay, this is my fave piece of my "I, Human" collection!! I love Daft Punk, as much for their beats as for their enigmatic, machine-longing-to-be-human personas. This is a larger piece, 15x22", and really saturated and vibrant.



(Closeup)



I've been getting a lot of questions about this technique and requests for process pics (it seems that a lot of people associate watercolors with sheer, pastel washes of tint, depicting pastoral scenes or animals). I thought I would include process pics showing what I do, with a little explanation on each of how to do it. Would that make this a mini-tute? I'm not sure, but if anyone decides to experiment, I really want to see the result!! Caution: this is a long post, LOL. OK, on with business....

OK, I always use gel watercolors in the tube. They are so much less work, because you don't have to sit there and scrub a pan of dried cakes to rehydrate them, only to come up with a pale wash and a ruined brush. With the tube paints, you can use them completely undiluted if you want, and really get that vibrancy. I also use soft, thick, squirrel hair brushes that hold a lot of water and paint, because using a lot of both is the secret to really saturated color.

Also remember that there's no such thing as a mistake! As Bob Ross says, "there's no mistakes, just happy accidents." One of the best things about water color is that it's so forgiving. Put too much or too dark a color on? Just rinse your brush, dab it on a paper towel, and use it to sop up the excess. Rinse again, and use it to spread and blend whats left. Went out of the lines or dripped in the middle of your lovely ocean vista? Here's the best part- if you take a stiff-bristled paintbrush with clean water, you can scrub at an area (dabbing with a paper towel), until you erase the offending area. If the paper pills, let it dry, and smooth it out with some fine-grit sandpaper.

One more thing for this technique- think HIGH contrasts! The darks should be super dark, the lights equally light. Think more like black and white, and less like dark grey and light grey. The contrast is what gives these paintings such an eye-catching quality- no hazy, pastel washes here! OK, now really on to business...

Mini-Tute! (Lots of hints and tips throughout)

So first, I always sketch out what I'm going to do; I never just start slapping paint down. The technique for watercolor is really different than with oil or acrylic. With them, you paint the darkest stuff first, and add the highlights last; you create the object first, then add the dimension. With watercolor, you paint the lightest parts first, then the darkest; in other words, you paint the dimension first, then create the object around it. You have to know which areas will be the lightest, because those might not have any paint at all.

I sketch very lightly (I increased the contrast here so you can see), and sometimes I do the bulk of the sketching on typing paper, then do a rubbing onto the watercolor paper, if I haven't drawn the subject before and expect to do a lot of erasing. I've also been known to do a pencil rubbing of an image from a magazine or google image search, when trying to learn how to draw certain proportions. No sense in ruining the good paper!



Since I have to decide where my highlights are first, I decided that the "sun" is shining from the upper left of the page, meaning that the lower right will be in shadow. I don't use brushstrokes, but instead use a soft squirrel hair brush that holds a lot of water, and sort of dab it all over. I purposely don't blend the colors smooth, but leave it "chunky," so that later I have definite contrasts in shade or color that I can outline.



I do a lot of layering with the watercolor, using a lot of paint and a lot of water, to get the deep, rich colors. Here I'm continuing to layer the color, being sure to keep the lightest parts in the upper left free from paint for now (or with just a very sheer layer).



Here's the fun part, adding the lights! Here's a little tip for painting light: never paint the light itself, only what's around it. Ever see Star Wars? Notice the light sabres- they're not actually red and blue, they're white! The color is just a halo around them. So when painting light, leave the actual light white, and paint a haze of color around the light, with the most color saturation concentrated right against the white. Even if it's a white light- the white halo will wash out the background, creating that glare. There, I've spilled Thomas Kinkaide's secret. Go forth and make millions.



More lights! I like how the LED strip around Tomas' (silver) ear came out (I added more contrast in later pics). All the colors on Guy's (gold) helmet are flashing lights. His is my favorite, and it's kind of funny that his helmet is so vibrant, since he's the quiet, shy, introverted one.



Now I've added the face covers. Since I wanted more of a flat finish here, I went ahead and used brushstrokes, but still left light areas in the upper left. Black takes a few layers to really look saturated, as you'll see in upcoming pics. With watercolor, you'll want to let the paint dry totally before adding another layer, or you risk your paper pilling or warping, creating potentially undesirable puddles.



I've added the leather jackets (they look grey because this is just the first layer). With clothing, I'm not usually too detailed. The subject is the face, and generally I'll just do a skeleton outline of the clothing, and the viewer's mind fills in the details. As long as you get the basic shape, you get the dimension. Another tip- I always add a hint of shoulder when I do a portrait, because otherwise it's just a weird random head floating in space. It anchors the face, and provides greater depth to a painting, since the viewer can imagine the rest of the body just out of sight.



Now I'm adding the color! Again, I use a LOT of paint and a LOT of water and a BIG soft brush, always dabbing, never stroking. Let the colors blend, blob, and flow how they want, leaving areas of light and dark, and some with no paint at all (this will give a lot of dimension). I always butt the color up to the subject, but never closer than about 1/4 inch. That little slice of white really makes the subject pop, and ensures that it doesn't all become a muddy mess. I also make the part next to the subject the darkest, so that it pops even more (you'll see in the next pic). The splatters are from blowing through a straw, or just leaning over and blowing on the page (although I've dipped my boobs in the paint a few to many times to keep doing that).



First layer of black, while it's still wet.



I've gone through and deepened the contrast on the helmets more (meaning, I've made the shadows darker), as well as in the black cloud around them. Now I've started the white outlining. You can do this with a liner brush and white paint mixed to about the consistency of ink, or do what I do, and get an ordinary white gel pen from the office store. Mine is a Pentel, but Bic sells them, too. For this, I outline around anywhere there is a sharp contrast in color or shade. I try to make each line closed, or have it end either against another line or off into the white page. It just looks odd with too many random white lines floating all over the place, but a closed line looks intentional.



Even though you can't really tell in the pic, there are color variances within the black, where the colors underneath are peeking through. Those are the areas in black that I'm outlining. I'm also outlining in the colored areas.



I suppose I should've done this with one of the darker colors, but it was getting late, lol. Here is the yellow before I had done much outlining, so you can see the variations in the color...



...and now you can see where I've outlined those variations.



Here's a closeup and full shot of the final products!! I added some little twinkles to the LED's in Guy's helmet (full disclosure- I want one of my own. I would totes go grocery shopping in that thing). To make twinkles, just do a little 4 or 5 pointed star in white over the color haze around any light.

My most recent biomechanical exploration! This called "A.I." (artificial intelligence). I'm so in love with how her face turned out, she has such an enigmatic smile, IMO. The lines in her hair are circuitry from the CPU of my old computer that I tore apart, which I thought was apropos since the CPU is the "brain" of the computer.

On a side note (and I'm posting this in general discussion, too), does anyone have any suggestions on how to price art? I really have no idea where to start, and am getting kind of a stockpile of art with a lot of buyers-in-waiting. Any websites or resources I should check out? I know that the gallery will have suggestions for the stuff they're displaying, I'm really thinking more about the art I make that's not specifically for a gallery (and won't have commission shaved off the top).

And even though I haven't mentioned it on other posts, C&C is welcome on all my arts.

Anyway, I give you "A.I."
14x17" watercolor

(full image)



(closeup)

I'm back with some new robot watercolors!! This little guy just wants to love, but he doesn't realize that he already can. <3

8.5x11" watercolor, "Heart of Steel"

Yay, another robot! I have a real love for the idea of sentient machinery, and this is another in the same vein as "Pygmalion," one of my recent paintings that I posted. I have my third Final Friday show coming up (third in only 5 months! Not bad for someone who's "not an artist"), and I plan to do a series of androids, where the lines between humanity and machinery are blurred.

Robbie is from one of Asimov's short stories, about a nursemaid robot who experiences deep emotion, but is only capable of expressing it through his eyes. He is loved by his charge as if he were human, and expresses his love for her in return in every way but verbal. "Gloria's Robbie" is 14x17" watercolor on paper.

Here is the full shot:



Here is a close-up for detail:



Here is "Pygmalion;" I plan to create the robot series around these two. Link to the post about this one: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=404143.0

I've been doing a little experimenting with watercolor, outside of my usual style. Normally I use liquid latex relief and create vivid, rainbow-colored confections with nature-derived subjects, but after some potentially career-ending surgery, a physically and emotionally difficult semester, and a period of self-doubt and lack of confidence in my skills (all of which I've fully recovered from!), I decided to explore some darker imagery.

This one is called "Pygmalion," after the story of the sculptor who carved a beautiful woman out of marble, then fell in love with her. The Gods brought her to life for the artist, so they could be married. I've always had a soft spot for sentient machinery in my heart- I find the idea of a machine searching for humanity or a soul that it doesn't know it already possesses to be very romantic. I love the notion that all of us, machine or human, can grow beyond our programming or expectations, but I also find that the reverse imagery can be very dark (think The Matrix, Terminator, etc).

Anyway, this is definitely my favorite painting I've done yet. I've cherished the idea for a really long time, and only feel like now I'm actually good enough to paint what's really in my head. She is kind of inspired by Maria from "Metropolis," is 14"x17", and as always, much more vivid in real life because all I have is a camera phone.

I've been doing a little experimenting with watercolor, outside of my usual style. Normally I use liquid latex relief and create vivid, rainbow-colored confections with nature-derived subjects, but after some potentially career-ending surgery, a physically and emotionally difficult semester, and a period of self-doubt and lack of confidence in my skills (all of which I've fully recovered from!), I decided to explore some darker imagery.

This piece is called "Chrysalis," and is 14"x17" watercolor on paper. I intended it to be something of an emergence- maybe like finding oneself in a cloud of doubt or darkness, and coming out better and stronger on the other side, as the cloud dissipates into the past. I guess you could call it a self-portrait, LOL. I didn't use any of the latex in this, and even though I've messed with the photo, it still doesn't show the real vividness of the colors (time for a real camera, methinks).

I'm participating in a fundraiser called Art for Arthritis, where I am paired with a young person who has juvenile arthritis, and we create a piece of art together. The work is then displayed at a Final Friday gallery show (on 2/24), then auctioned off for a scandalous amount of money at a huge charity gala ball (attended by all the area bigwigs, of course), and all the proceeds are donated to arthritis research and charity.

I was paired with a completely awesome 6th grade girl who plays the drums and loves horses. We made two smaller pieces (each 14"x17") for the silent auction, and a great big one (4'x5') for the live auction. The auction is on 3/8, and I'm super excited to see who buys them and for how much! I just want to note that this girl is fantastic- a quick study, and enthusiastic about our creation- she did just as much work and detail stuff on these as I did! It was really a lot of fun.

These two are for the silent auction, entitled "Lilac" and "Fern." They are meant to go together as a set, and were painted using the liquid latex relief technique that I used on my previous art show. They are matted in white with a black core, in frameless glass gallery frames. These pics aren't really true to color- the paper is pure white and the colors are very vibrant.





This piece is "Home on the Range," our showpiece for the live auction. We used liquid latex technique relief to depict horses running in the sunset. I love how vibrant this one is! I had it framed in a rustic frame with a bright blue and red double mat. Sorry the photo is so crappy on this one- I just never could seem to get just the right angle or lighting. The first pic is more true to color.