Progress

Here is the original image I showed a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I have changed my direction with this piece. Here's how it started:

My plan was to stamp my block prints in the back ground, so I'd masked the cat figure in preparation. Here's what I decided to do instead:

I can see that available light and my fiddling with color balance gave several different impressions of color. It is meant to be salmon.

As I keep working, I will post more images and try to capture the color more carefully.

I purchased beautiful papers which I am finally pulling out to use in this series of paintings. I like the formality of the handmade, screen printed paper with the whimsy of my cat.

Stay tuned!

On the Easel

Cat Painting, untitled

Elizabeth W. Seaver

Perhaps the beginning of a new series? 

 

You'll be the first to know.

Bitsy Picks Her Own

Bitsy Picks Her Own, acrylic/collage, 16 x 20

Elizabeth W. Seaver

Bitsy is entertaining tonight. She uses only fresh local produce for her soirées, and everyone knows that the freshest produce is the stuff you pick yourself.

 

I didn't get an invite. Did you?

On Line Chat Room 21/30

On Line Chat Room, collage/acrylic, 6 x 6

Elizabeth W. Seaver

It was the best job ever. Floyd and Fred and Erma and Amy sat every Monday morning on the Boynton's clothesline, making sure the Boyntons' Saturday night, whoop-dee-do, go-to-town, hoe-down clothes dried nicely, all ready for the following weekend. Mrs. Boynton paid them in as much birdseed as they could carry away in their plump, late summer bellies.

Now, Sunday night is the birds' whoop-dee-do, go-to-town hoe-down, so every Monday morning, there was plenty of fodder for the rumor mill. The latest was that Alfred Jay made a terrible fool of himself over Miriam Cardinal, and her a married woman. Tinker Jay let Alfred know just how far off base he was in the Peck-n-Paw parking lot. And then, Penelope Peacock looked upon the persimmon wine while it was orange, grabbing the microphone from the band. Her rendition of Feelings cleared the joint. The party continued outside. The paper-rock-scissors loser had to go back in for the next round. The owner of the Peck-n-Paw banned her from coming back for two weeks.

Yes, there was lots to talk about this morning.

A Cupcake a Day.....

...keeps the blues away?

These days, all I can do is paint these delicious morsels. They are usually overflowing with frosting since it is so much fun to render, but when I ate them, I prefered very little frosting to get in the way of my cake. I mean, it is called cupCAKE, after all.

This little guy is 5 x 5, acrylic and collage and is framed in the LibertyTown gallery for $85.

I'll have more to share on another day.

Create to your heart's content, everyone!

3 Panels, finished...

...I think! I had such fun working on these yesterday. I can't help but show them. I painted the sides black, even before reading Tracy's blog about how she paints all her cradles black and likes to hang all her artwork without frames.

Progress on 3 Panels

Several posts ago I showed these three 6 x 6 wooden boxes that I gessoed and collaged with a variety of papers, handmade and recycled.


Yesterday, I worked on them, wanting them to both be a unit as three paintings, but also for each to be able to stand alone. First, I sketched my drawing across the three collages with watercolor pencil. Then I added first layer of paint around the elements.


My challenge will be resolving the elements into recognizable things without losing the cool look of the collage underneath.

Falling Pears

I have been watching this underpainting on gessoed, unstretched canvas which has been taped to my studio wall for several weeks. At the same time, I have been working on pieces to enter in a juried show at LibertyTown called Feast for the Eyes, which is all about food. It is paired with a contest on April's First Friday where the foodies and food sculptors get to create art with food. It is quite a fun event.

Yesterday, I began a painting of falling pears and leaves on the canvas from the shapes of several of my block prints used to create the underpainting. You can see them in the confusion if you enlarge the photo above.


I don't want to lose all of the visual texture provided by the first layer here, but I do need to resolve some of its impact. I am also considering how I might use collage, as well. I'll keep you all "posted!"

"Piles" of Gumballs

This picture is a little dark as compared to reality, though the paper I am using IS pretty dark with age. This is the piece I had in a previous post marked as "beginnings."

Below is yesterday's addition. I based my shape on a jelly bean machine that Bill, a talented colleague of mine at LibertyTown, keeps in his studio. His work is so cool, he doesn't even need the bribe to keep people coming back to see more!


I'm not done. More light and shadows and details will be added (I hope today if it is dry enough.)

Why Young Mothers Feel Trapped

I have had such a fun, productive week creating art. This piece is one I have been cogitating on for a while-- waiting for the right time and place. It finally came together this week. I created the back ground by doing an underpainting in midnight blue (a mix of phthalo blue and black) on a piece of canvas cloth that I had coated with gesso.

Then I did a layer of small block prints in white and gray on the blue, and went back over it, hand painting in white, grays and red, highlighting or exaggerating shapes I liked.

I wanted to leave branches showing against the sky, so I used negative painting in a warm blue mixed with titanium white and painted the sky around the branches, freehand.

I had found this great article in a Reader's Digest from around 1960 called Why Young Mothers Feel Trapped. I cut out a portion of the picture and the title in the shape of two little birds. I used some more of the very old catalog pages (see previous posts) from an ad which had in bold Boys and Girls and used it to make a nest. Here is the result. It is in the stage where I am watching and waiting to see whether it is done.



Here is a piece I finished today. It is also mixed media using acrylic paint and collage. I started with torn pieces of a reproduction of one of my acrylic paintings called Lights of Home. I cut small bird shapes from vintage papers and printed on the canvas and the birds with my hand-carved, small, shaped printmaking blocks.

Its title is not all I would wish, but will do for now-- Two Little Birds.


There's lots more to show and tell, but I will save it for later!

If A Red Hand

Not too long ago one of my artist friends shared some very old pages of a Sears and Roebuck catalog with me. Having used some pages from a magazine from the early 1960's in a recent work, I figured I would find a way to use these as well. It would need to be soon, however, because the pages were so fragile, just touching them made them break apart. I took several sheets, including some advertisements and what looked to be newspaper articles and stories, and as you can see above, some ads for ladies and children's clothing and undergarments from the turn of the last century. The only date I could see on any of the pages was 1899.

I spent today working with the pages, beginning with a page of ads and articles, one of which began in larger type than the words around it, "If a red hand..." That was just too intriguing! So I took a sheet of printmaking material, 9 x 12 soft block that my husband had given me for Valentine's Day (he knows the way to MY heart!) and traced my hand and wrist on a piece approximately 6 x 9. See the delicate thing below!



I also used some Butterick dress pattern paper along with the very old catalog paper to create the first layer of my piece, using matte medium to coat the back and front of each piece. Birds had to come into the design somewhere, so you see them perching on my thumb and pinkie, and I made a larger bird block which I also printed in red on the collaged papers. Here is what I have done so far. I will let it be for a while and listen to it tell me what's next!



In case you are wondering, "if a red hand" appears on the first page of your newspaper, it is time to renew your subscription!

"Spring Cleaning"

Yeah, I know it's not spring, and I'm, for sure, not cleaning, so let me explain. Every year, about this time, when other people are making resolutions to change their lives, I want to paint over all of my canvases. For the most part, I try to restrain myself and only pick a couple that need refurbishing. The one I picked this year had some nice colors and some interesting shapes, but really was only part of a painting. I have been watching it for some time, trying to decide what its next life will be. I think I have found it.

I have been doing a series of mixed media pieces (printmaking, collage, painting, anything else that doesn't run faster than I do!) with birds as the subject. I showed the first piece I did on the last posting. On Saturday, I rifled through our recycling bins at LibertyTown and found some aluminum cans. I removed the tops and bottoms and cut out fun bird shapes. My friend Sharon has brought me several kinds of adorable buttons with brads on them, so I punched a hole where a birdie eye would be and used the brads. Here are a few of the googly-eyed birds.


Back to the painting getting a makeover...I plan to pair these birds with that painting. I prepared a tree for them to roost in today. The tape sections with sharpie writing tell me which birdies will sit where. I'm still working out how they will attach to the canvas. (By the way, there is more canvas and tree than shows in this photo. I took the photo at an odd angle, so had to crop it in a funky way!)

Funny Rabbit

Funny Rabbit, oil

I present Funny Rabbit for your enjoyment. This is a picture of progress up to yesterday, and today I touched up the butterfly and signed it. I am waiting for an order from Jerry's with the proper sized stretcher strips. I plan on leaving him unframed because the painting will continue around the edges.

Yesterday, my buddy,Elizabeth, asked me to show the piece I had been working on when she stopped by my studio. I have stretched it, finished size 8 x 8, signed it and varnished it. Done! See below.

Dreams of Summer, mixed media with acrylic and paper

I'm pretty pleased with the results of my work, and it inspired me to work on collages all day today. I even cut up aluminum cans. But more about that later!

Phase 2 of "Watched Swatch"

To recap: Phase one of the substrate for my painting was a gessoed piece of muslin which had been given a black underpainting and then printed with a variety of my hand cut blocks in grays and white. I had also done some experimental painting in red, but stopped when I realized it was not turning out the way I wanted. If you look closely, you can see some of that red revealed in the image below.


Since all my previous layers had been applied with acrylic paints or medium, I decided to go ahead with a titanium white acrylic paint to cover all but a few windows of the printed black layer underneath. I was pretty sure I wanted to complete my work with oil paint, but at this stage, the acrylic paint would dry faster, letting me get on with the fun part sooner.

I love being able to see the previous layers peeping through in some way in each layer of a painting. I like it in my work, and I LOVE seeing it in other people's work. This is proving to be the most obvious of those layers (foreshadowing, for those of you following along at home!) What I wanted at this stage was to reserve as much of the revealed printed layer as possible.

Next, I scored lines in a fairly random way into the titanium white with the end of a brush, drawing "swooshes", shapes and spirals into the drying paint. intending to help create future form in the finished piece and textural interest in succeeding layers.

Thus begins the part of the painting process that I call the ugly phase. This can last as long as the moment the final stroke of paint is put on the canvas, requiring from the artist a great deal of patience, faith and hope to outlast it.

Shot in the Dark, or A Creative Process?

OK. So I've been working on this piece whose creation has been very organic. I have hesitated to put it up here because it is not finished, and it could turn out to be crap. But if I am going to take one of the creative avenues I like to take in painting, I have to assume the risk that it will turn out to be time ill spent. (So may reading this journal of the experience--a warning to the reader!) Today's entry is the back story.

I began last fall working on the idea of using my small, hand-carved soft blocks as the actual builders of form in my paintings. I knew I didn't want to work on paper; I wanted the finished works to be on canvas. It is very hard to make a good print on a piece of stretched canvas, so I decided to gesso my own cloth (bought as scraps for cheap at fabric stores.) I gessoed three layers on the cloth at least, leaving the fabric to dry between coats. It made a great surface on which to work flat, because I might press with as much firmness as I needed to transfer a print. (Of course, it meant I had to stretch it when I was done, but one must suffer for one's art.)

Below is one of the several paintings using this process that I completed last fall. It sold in November to one of my local collectors.

Under Cover, acrylic

Then I began playing with creating gessoed "cloth" for the making of other items. My friend and longtime printmaking student, Inge, took several pieces of this "cloth" and has been using it to create purses and covers for notebooks. This is an example of our collaboration.

She is an interior designer and has many samples of cloth, buttons, etc. The square in the center is a piece of the gessoed cloth I printed. She made all the other design and constuction choices. I have several of these for sale in my studio.

This is all preface to say that I had been pondering what to do with a sheet of this "cloth" that I had left over from Inge's efforts. I taped it up on the wall of my studio and left it hanging there some weeks while I "watched" it. I will often do this when I don't have a clear idea of the direction a painting should go. I leave it where I may look at it out of the corner of my eye, without pressure, until the solution emerges in my head.

This is the trimmed end of the watched swatch...


More later, for those who dare!