Playing around with photoshop

I did a little playing around with my paintings from Make Art That Sells, in photoshop..... it totally changes the mood of the piece. You can see the original colors here.

All about Jimmy Thunder

me: hey did you see my blog post today?

JT: oh, you mean the one where you didn't talk about your loving boyfriend who's so awesome and didn't complain when you abandoned him and didn't spend time with him while taking that art e-course? The one who loves you and takes care of you and made you ice pops? That one? Yeah, I saw it.

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Happy Anniversary, Jimmy Thunder :) Your day has come, here on Life with Sam....

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This is my boyfriend, known on my blog as Jimmy Thunder.

Doesn't he look like a model in this photo? I think he's the handsomest boy in school.

He loves me and takes me places, like in this photo where we are in Franconia Notch at the Basin.

He likes to wear his winter hat in the summer. And then gets mad when I call it his "winter" hat.

It's a knit cap, JT. Of course it's for winter. But I like how he looks like a bad boy in it, what can I say?

He loves my dog Sam.

So sweet, right?

And Sam loves him too.

They're playing fetch. Sam isn't running away from him, I swear.

He can be a goof for the camera, a lot.

And likes to send me silly pictures when I'm not around.

Yes, that is my underwear.

He's great at the "selfies".

And makes me smile.

He's outdoorsy.

And isn't afraid of my own goofy side.

We're cute, right?

hahaha!

And he's a very very talented musician.

That's how the Thunder rolls, baby.

Have I embarrassed you enough, JT?

I wonder what he'll say about this post. His mom reads my blog :)

MATS Week 5 - Gift, plus my thoughts on the experience

Week 5 assignment

The final week of Make Art That Sells part A found us learning about and exploring the Gift market, and our final assignment was to create art for a zippered pouch that was jam-packed and hyper-lush, using imagery from our collections from earlier in the week, plus any other art we had created from the other assignments, if we thought it fit. I based mine on my favorite watch (which I wear for special occasions only) that belonged to my grandma. She received it for her 16th birthday, and it has her initials engraved on back. Its a lovely delicate art-deco piece, and I love love it.

I created this one digitally, scanning in my ink sketches, including hand-drawn numbers and words. I used Illustrator, and layered lots of different items and patterns on top of each other. All in all, I like the composition, and love the numbers and the big watch image, and that I used sketches again within the final art. Color for me has been so tough lately, though with this week's instructions telling us to make the art hyper-lush, I didn't worry too much about color, since I needed to use as much of it as I could. After loving the sketching part, I brought it into the computer, and the from that point on I wished I had done it with more traditional mediums, like collage or cut paper, but with the 4th of July holiday this week and commitments, I did not have time. Sigh....

Make Art That Sells - my thoughts at the end of Part A

All 5 of my assignments

This is going to be disorganized and rambly, but here we go:

I am SO GLAD I took this course. I needed a kick in the butt in regards to my art, my style, my technique, and this class has been a great start to getting me down a new path. I broke away from the computer, like I wanted to, and even created one assignment completely in traditional mediums (Week 4, Wall Art). I fell in love again with simply sketching, and sketching almost everyday. I got my ass kicked by color, and that is far from over. I learned a lot about 5 different industries, and what they each look for in artwork - and that was great, though it wasn't my main reason for taking this class, however in learning so much, and I also learned that I don't know a lot, and that was a great lesson in itself. 

I'm scared and sad the class is over - and I am really really looking forward to Part B. But I'm super glad that Part B isn't until October, because my brain is so full and exhausted from the very intense past 5 weeks, that I need a few months in between to digest, review, and keep creating (and I miss my friends and want to enjoy summer a bit).  I have visions in my mind of perhaps a couple directions I want my work to go in, and I'm really really eager to get started on them. 

I feel like I am at a crossroads in my career right now - and that the past year or so has been a battle - a battle to create a lot of art, even though some of it I wasn't loving, feeling discouraged and lost and envious and stressed and unsuccessful. Of feeling overwhelmed and tired and that everytime I put a pencil to paper it had to come out a masterpiece. And I'm a pretty smart girl I think - I know that those feelings and thoughts are ridiculous, and that I do have a talent, and that I'm putting all this pressure on myself which is completely unfounded. I have a few clients, and I love working for them. I had lost my joy in creating art, and I want to find it again. 

A very dear and smart friend of mine said to me once when I was going through a bad breakup years ago, that I need to be kind to myself. Her words really rang true for my battle-worn heart at the time, and still ring true today while I'm dealing with a battle-worn talent. So I'm going to be kind to myself by taking some time to find my joy again in my art, to figure out what that means, to explore new mediums and techniques, and to find some honest feedback and also love and support. It won't happen overnight, but I've always loved the process of creating art, so the next year or so should be really really good for me.

What do I collect?

For this week's mini-exercise for MATS, we've been instructed to gather "collections" of our own and photograph them, then start sketching and painting.... hmmmm I don't collect anything. No figurines of birds, or vintage letters, or mugs or whatever..... this is tough. I've gone around the house and pulled together a few things... still working on this. Much of it belonged to my grandma - I guess that's a reoccurring theme for me these days. Tomorrow I'll take pictures of my plants - there's quite a few of those.

Sam's collection of toys, which he immediately jumped on as soon as I starting taking them out of his basket

My grandma's crocheting supplies, doilies and buttons

My grandma's extensive sewing kit

Jewelry from my jewelry box - I don't wear a lot, and don't own much

A collection of items that belonged to my grandma, that mean something to me

MATS Week 4 - Wall Decor

This week in Lilla Roger's Make Art That Sells course, we covered Wall Decor, and were given the assignment to create one or two abstract collage-style wall paintings, geared towards the 25-45 year old female customer - we had to use some sort of floral motif, and also include at least one word.

I challenged myself this week - even more than the restrictions of the assignment - by not using the computer AT ALL for this. It was wonderful to paint and glue and cut and draw and make a huge huge mess in my studio - wonderful and freeing and sloppy and lovely and also in a way, a giant relief to get back to my roots, back to basics.

I'll be doing this again.

I struggled with what words or phrase or quote to incorporate... I really can't stand inspirational quotes - they make me gag. So it was hard to find something that didn't make me want to shove a pencil in my eye.... in the end, I figured it would be good to stick with the theme of this entire class for me : change, progress, journey, growth, etc. You can see what I chose in the photos below.

As for color, we were assigned a limited palette of two colors, and I had yellow and blue. I was grateful for these limitations, because going so far out of my comfort zone with traditional mediums was enough of a challenge for me. If I had to do it over again, I'd go a little lighter, with more neutrals or white.....

The mediums and materials I use in my two pieces: 12x12 canvas, acrylic, pen and ink, watercolor, various yellow and blue papers, vellum, tissue paper, thumbtacks and..... I used bees wax!! I've always been in awe of artwork that incorporates it - such a lovely texture and feeling. I'll definitely be doing that again and again in pieces to come. This assignment has inspired me to get away from the computer (well, the whole class has) - and let myself PLAY with art. I'm back, baby!

This is the piece I submitted for class.

Close up

And another close up

Collecting bits of this and that...

With this week's mini exercise, I kicked myself over and over again for getting rid of so much STUFF in the move last month, as we were instructed to gather papers, textures, bit of this and that, and random  things to collage with later in the week. Assigned colors by astrological sign, this Sagittarius collected yellow and blue items. I raided my studio, and my newly inherited sewing machine and kit from my grandma, who passed away a few months ago. I haven't had time to go through it yet, so it was a JOY to sit down and dig through all her buttons and thread, machine parts and doilies.

MATS week 3 assignment - cranky grumpy ornery snail

Last week's focus for Make Art That Sells was on the children's book market, and our assignment was to create a cover or a double page spread for the Hans Christian Andersen tale "The Snail and The Rose Tree", based on our snail sketches from earlier in the week, and hand-drawn lettering.

My double page spread

The story is pretty bleak - it features an ornery, selfish, dark, mean snail, who cares for no one, puts down those around him, and never changes. A lot of people in the class didn't care for how dark and bleak the message was, but I enjoyed it. I liked drawing a crotchety snail, and I wanted to show with color, how gray and depressing his outlook was. I had a great time drawing the type, and will definitely try that again in future pieces.

I tried again the scan-on-my-sketches-and-use-Live-Trace technique that I did back in week 1 for bolt fabric, and I really like the sketchiness of my snail character. I added color and texure and pattern in Illustrator - and that was a big deal for me, since I normally NEVER use texture in my work, only flat shapes. Its opened up a whole new world!

Overall, I like my piece. It conveys what I wanted it to convey, and I branched out with texture. As I was finishing it though, I wished I had done it in traditional mediums - either pen and ink with some collage or paint, or pastel or something.... I wish I had left more white space, and really focused more on the bleakness of the snail. It was hard to juggle how much life and color of the rose tree to show, in correlation with the grayness of the snail's life... And I wished I had used funkier colors - I'm still having so much trouble branching away from my usual palette - aurgh! (Though its a lot more neutral and gray colors than I normally use.) This is one assignment that I think I will do again after the class is over.