A Peak Inside my Portfolio: Landscape Painting

This summer I had a magical painting experience in Florence! It was an awesome time of growth as an artist and also an amazing adventure as a person! I loved every minute of it! When I came home I knew that landscape painting was something I really wanted to keep doing. So whenever I can, I've been travelling to different spots near my house to paint! Thank heavens it's been unseasonably warm, more days to paint! Here's what I've been up to:

This painting was from a site just down the road for our house!

Painting

Real Life

Painting

I'm not as big a fan of this one, it's a park near our house and I think it needs some more contrast.

Painting

This is at the Cranbrook House and Gardens. Beautiful area!

Painting

 This is my favorite one! It's of the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club and I think it turned out really well!

Real Life

A Peak Inside my Portfolio: Social Issues Additive Sculpture

This semester, I'm taking a sculpture course as part of earning my Master's degree. I'm liking the course, but it is challenging for me, especially in the realm of construction. This first piece is a additive sculpture constructed of wood, dry wall compound and wire. It's not finished, it's taking so long to put it all together correctly!

The assignment was to create a sculpture that addressed a social issue. I chose to have my piece discuss the idea of our freedoms in this country and how, for some people, more 'freedom' actually means less freedom.

These are just in-process pictures, more to come soon!

Creating a wire loom for my metal wire weaving

Starting to do the weaving!

The structure of my sculpture complete!

A Peak Inside my Portfolio: DIY Felted Cardigan

Even though summer is hard because we're all going on vacations and such, I still get together with my art teaching pals and do some crafting and chatting and really just enjoy each others company. Like I said, it's been awhile since we've gotten together. You can see our last art-making session was during Easter time when we did Ukrainian Eggs, check it out HERE!

This time we all did our own project, just working on whatever we had going at the moment and chatting. Here's a picture of all our finished (well mine isn't quite yet) projects at the end of the day. Love those girls!

So a little bit more about my project. I have been wanting for awhile to do some needle felting on clothing. If you're not sure what needle felting is, you must check it out! It's so much fun and it's a really easy and cool way to personalize your clothing. I decided to add a design to a thrifted black cardigan that I have. Here's how I went about doing that:

1. I used chalk to sketch out the pattern that I wanted to create on my cardigan. Chalk is great because it rubs right off with a damp cloth, making it easy to edit your design as you go.

2. Then I had to decide what colors I wanted to use. I decided to go with some bright, almost primary colors that had a bit of a Aztec feel to them. After deciding on the colors, it's easy to felt them into the existing clothing. Using a felting needle I repeatedly poked the wool fibers into the design where I wanted them.

3. Continue doing this until the areas are all filled up. Be sure to have a foam pad behind your work and don't stab your fingers!

4. After I had the first side of the cardigan finished, I simply used chalk to recreated the design on the other side. I eye-balled it, but I suppose you could bust out the measuring tape and make it exactly correct. I know that's what my engineer husband would do!

5. Fill in the second side the exact same way you did the first one!

6. After the design is all done, get out your iron. Set it to the wool setting. Spritz your felted area with a bit of water and gently iron over it to set your wool felting. Voila! You're done!