A Peak Inside My Portfolio: Flight Series Continued

About a year ago, I was working on a series of acrylic paintings that involved the idea of flight. They were based heavily on photographs and sketches I did of my husband's airplane that he is building. You can see those previous paintings here and here.
Anyway, I have decided to expand that series and work on getting some of the pieces into galleries and shows. So over the spring and summer, I have been working on another small work to add to that collection. I plan on doing at least two more, hopefully before the summer is done!

Original picture of the plane that the sketch and painting are based on.

Getting started!

Blocking in basic shapes and lines.

It's looking more real!

Almost done!

Finished product :)

A Peak Inside My Portfolio: Fiber Arts

Lately I've been dabbling in fiber arts,. In the past I've done a lot with embroidery, as you can see here and here. But recently I added to my skills with painting on fabric. I have done two items that were given as gifts. One was a tie for a family member on my husbands side. I painted a seascape on a yellow tie. The other was a table runner for my aunt, in which I used, batik, dyeing fabric, painting on fabric and embroidery to complete the final piece.

First I used a flour paste to create a batik design on my fabric. Although it worked out well, I would not recommend this method, it was very messy!

After applying the paste and letting it dry, I then sprayed a watered-down dye  mixture onto the fabric and let it drive completely over night.

After it was dry, I washed it thoroughly, which took forever! I was very happy with the resulting design!

The last steps were to paint the design on to the body of the table runner. I used acrylic paint to do this. Then I embroidered some white designs around the painted portion and all along the border. As a finishing touch, I added tassels!

What's Going on in the Classroom: Acrylic Painting and Mixed Media Triptychs

I know it's been awhile since my last blog post. All I can say is that our school's art show has finally come and gone and that is my excuse for taking up all my time and keeping me away from this here blog!
We have been working on many different things in our foundations class, but here are the most recent! An acrylic portrait and a mixed media triptych. These two pieces gave my students experiences with acrylic, chalk pastels, oil pastels, and colored pencils. They also studied different color schemes and coloring mixing during these assignments.
With all that in mind, check out these examples:

A Peak Inside my Portfolio: Figurative Sculpture *UPDATE*

Sculpture Class is over! Last night was our final critique. It went fine and I can officially say I'm done. One more class and a thesis until I get that Master's Degree! Now if you remember from my last post, my figurative sculpture suffered some damage in the kiln. I did decide to use Kintsugi to repair it and I love it!  But before that, here's the final image of my subtractive sculpture:

Turned out just great! Now moving on to the 'happy accident' piece... After some serious epoxy use, both to repair my piece (as best as I could) and secure the posts for weaving, here's what my piece looked like:

The I used acrylic paint and water to create a stain for the piece. I used brown, black, red and brilliant yellow straight out of the tube, watered down, and layered over the clay. Then I covered the entire piece in a wash of black, watered-down acrylic. The places where there were missing pieces, you can see I left un-painted. That's where the Kintsugi comes in.

If you click on Kintsugi, you will head on over to a webpage with some wonderful info about the art form. However, briefly, it is a way of taking broken pieces of pottery and putting them back together to create a new and possibly more beautiful piece. I just used some gold leaf and gold paint, nothing like the actual gold resin used by professionals. Regardless, I still think it turned out pretty nicely. The weaving looks great as well!

At Home with the Artist: DIY Moon T-Shirt

This one has been on my list for awhile! I've been wanting to make a t-shirt with the phases of the moon on it. In fact I bought the shirt for this project months ago at the thrift store and have just now gotten around to making it. I found this DIY idea on another site, but it was all in Russian! There were some good pictures and since I'm an intelligent human, I was able to figure it out :) Check out the original tutorial here if you can read Russian! To get started, make sure to measure the area of the your shirt that you would like to paint. Then grab a piece of card stock (or in my case I had to create one big enough by taping two pieces together) and decided how much space you want in between each circle. Don't forget to leave some space on the ends too for when you cut the circles out! After you know what amount of space will be taken up by the area between circles, you can use the remaining space and divide by four to get the width of your circles. Now begins the hunt for something circular in your house that is roughly that width! Good luck!

After you find your perfect circle, go ahead a trace, while measuring the appropriate space in between. When you're ready to cut, use an Exacto knife and make sure to cut on a surface that you don't mind getting a little scratched up.

Tape down the stencil you've just created to your t-shirt. Arm yourself with a sponge brush and white Acrylic paint (or fabric paint if you would rather) and get ready to paint!

I would suggest using a tapping motion with the brush, this gives it a more texture look and you're left with some areas that are more white and some that are more grey which makes them more convincing as moons. As the paint dried it became lighter, so I went back and added more white to some areas to make them brighter. I also had a little bit of trouble making the moons the same moving towards full and then coming back to full, but I think over all it looks like it should! 

A Peak Inside my Portfolio- Additive Sculpture Update

Alright friends, this piece is a beast! I cannot seem to finish it and even though I've spent hours and hours on it, there still seems to be more to do! I've completed the construction and now I'm on to finishing the surface. I coated the entire piece in plaster which took forever! I had to make small batches and continually rinse out my container. Lots of trips to the sink! I used a fork and my fingers for the application. As you can see, the piece is taller than me so it took a long time to cover the entire surface area.

After the piece was completely covered, I moved into the painting stage of finishing the work. I'm using a matte black acrylic paint. Doing a small area at a time, I paint it and then wipe off a good portion of the paint using a sponge The process is slow (again!) not to mention it is tearing up my hands and the sponges. But, what I'm left with is an amazing texture and finish! I love it! The black paint remains in all the grooves and cervices but comes off of the higher areas so the white can show through. This gives the piece the grungy, gritty look that I was hoping for. I'm about half way done and have high hopes to finish it next week (although that has been my plan for the last two weeks so we'll see...) Stay tuned for finished product pictures!