Pikes Peak

Life has been full, and constantly evolving, and in the midst of all my beautiful, busy, crazy days I've been able to fit in just a bit of art, and absolutely no time to document the creation of it on my blog.  But my good friend was asking how I do what I do, so I'm taking a moment to update.  I created this piece for this winter's juried show at Outside the Lines Gallery, and surprise! I won one of the three best in show prizes awarded at the artists' reception.  So here's my drawing's journey from about the start to sale on opening night.

Todd took this photo on a day trip we took our first fall out here, up to Pikes Peak State Park to see the fall colors.  I did a watercolor study of it, but, as art-making generally goes for me, I wasn't satisfied with how my work turned out, and in the back of my mind I always had the intention to try again...

This year's theme was Portraits of the Tri-States, and it seemed the perfect opportunity to revisit Todd's picture.

 

I sketched in the trees and hills to set the composition of the piece, and then I started working on the foreground.

Which in this case was lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of little circles.  A lot of them.

(See the color difference in the image taken while my camera is in macro mode?)

And then more on the other hillside, and then even more as I began to put in the beautiful yellow leaves still on the trees.  I try to work in sections, and I try to keep my style going across the whole piece, which can be difficult.  Some days I'm pressing hard and making little tiny circles, and other days I'm feeling more loose and my style relaxes a bit.

So here I am, many hours into my drawing and I'm questioning my color choices, and feeling like it is pretty blah.  Art angst!  But finally, art joy!

Once I get the guts of the piece all in, I can take a step back and figure out what needs to be brightened, what needs to be deepened, and what needs more clear definition.  I put a hard outline on all the trees, which I think made the piece lose a bit of depth, but gave the background interesting texture.  I love pulling out my darkest pencils and letting the corners deepen (called vignetting, it's an optical phenomenon that's part of the way cameras collect light) and I tried to give the gully more contrast against the front hillside.  At some point I have to call the piece done or I'll keep picking at it forever, but that's another tricky thing to decide.  Deadlines do help with that!

And what a surprising, and confidence building, and motivating thing to win my first art prize and be honored with another opening night artwork sale.  I hope the piece brings a lot of pleasure to its new home... and I guess I'll have to make another one for us to enjoy around here!  So much art... so little time.

And a sneak peak at what I'm working on next:

Queen Anne's Lace

Towards the end of January, I had the wonderful opportunity to create a surprise birthday present for a dear friend.

 First sketch...

 

 Final sketch...

It was an interesting process, taking ideas and feedback and turning them into a piece of artwork that was my own, but that also reflected others' artistic vision and personality.

I hope that I was successful, and that my artwork becomes a treasured part of their home, as well as a lovely shared memory between my nature-loving friend and myself.

Back in late December, I started on a new drawing of wildflowers against a hazy sunset sky.  That was put on hold to work on my friend's birthday tree, but I have finally, finally finished it up, after several interruptions and artistic missteps and a minor amount  of teeth-gnashing and some deliberate use of my longest, sharpest, scissors.  What began as this 12"x18" beauty,

became several smaller pieces and a bit of scrap paper,

but I think I salvaged this one rather well, considering at one point I wanted to throw the whole mess out.

February can be a tough month for a lot of reasons, but I've been trying (successfully) to keep myself busy and happy.  I can tell the days are getting longer, the sunshine feels more deliberate, and mud season is looming on the horizon...

P.S.  I learned my blue tree silhouette is hanging in the home of another local artist who was also part of the 'Trees' show, and who bought my drawing on opening night as a surprise Valentine's Day gift to his wife.  Love that.

Tree

I submitted one drawing to the OtLAG juried show this year; I think my best one yet.

It was a wrench to let it go, and I had to call my mom and hear her say 'put it out there!' before I could finally click the send button on the submission e-mail.  The show's opening reception was last Friday night, and surprise! I'm now two for two on opening night art sales.  It's a confidence boost, but at the same time I am torn about the idea of becoming a professional artist, and taking something so unique and meaningful to me and showing it to the world in hopes that someone will pay money for it.  Hmmm.

Maybe that gets easier when I produce a larger volume of artwork, and each individual piece seems less of a heroic personal effort.  Maybe I also need to think about the balance of making artwork slowly and steadily whilst still feeling completely engaged in my regular occupation of full-time Mama.  Raising my smalls is my best and most important work, and the time I spend with them is what inspires the beauty, joy, and wonder that I try to communicate in my art.

Coming off the excitement of the show opening and sale, I'm coughing and snuffling my way through some nasty feverish virus and I also think I might have just spoiled the next drawing I'm working on - you can't erase colored pencils! - so you know, life keeps rolling along.  It's good to have some quiet time with the smalls at home today, with math games, and reading, and Legos in front of the fire, while schools are closed due to the frigid temps outside.



(Pre-spoilage.  It started off so well...)

The downy woodpeckers are still out visiting our peanut butter and sunflower seed pine cones, and the juncos and chickadees are foraging for dropped seeds in the snow.

Hope you are warm and well as we begin the New Year!

33 Robins

Whether or not I manage to submit to this year's juried show at Outside the Lines, it's nice to have a prompt and a deadline to kick-start my studio time again.  Life has been busy, and just when I think that I have a sort of routine set up, then suddenly my violin-playing skills are in demand, and then the smalls get sick, and there's always the grad student support-team role that the smalls and I play most weekends.  Plus, a 4th birthday!  Halloween!  My laptop, cell phone, oven, and clothes dryer all going kaput within weeks of each other!  Surprise eye surgery!  Listing it all here at once, I am somewhat amazed that I've been getting anything drawn at all.

But there have been moments, and first some robins appeared.

And then it started snowing.

And the light was all dim around the edges.

Finished and framed.

Meanwhile we had our first snow.  Halloween pumpkins were procured and carved in the nick of time.

Halloween night my two coughing and feverish smalls still bundled up and made it to the neighbors' homes for a little bit of trick-or-treating.  This year we had a 'Jumping Spider/Monster Spider/Zombie Crab' and a 'Blue Octopus,' which temporarily sported pink vampire fangs.  Hopefully when everyone is recovered we can reconstruct the costumes for a photo shoot.

I've started my next colored pencil.  When I work on it, all I can think about is the digital images of my cerebral vascular system, flashbacks to Moo's birth and my hospital adventures then.  Here I am, four years later.  Happy healthy boy, happy healthy Mama.  Still holding lots of gratitude for every day.

Where We've Been

For the past four months is Outdoors.  Absolutely as much as possible.  And even now, with school back in session and our days framed by a few firm numbers on the clock (8:20am; 3:05pm), we're picnicking at least once a week, and stopping by the park on the way home from school, and taking every in-service day and early dismissal as a chance to roam and ramble and wade.

And the family camera is behaving temperamentally.  So documentation has been light, as well.

But we've had a glorious summer.  And now, as the weather cools and the garden winds down, I hope to center my days around a bit of studio time again.  There are endless trees to imagine, and some more native moths and butterflies to explore, and maybe the flock of chickens needs expanding, and I sense some rumblings along the lines of heirloom vegetables, or maybe just some favorite local scenes.

Not to mention a fall crop of violin music-making opportunities.  And cozy, gift knitting, and a much-anticipated visit from Grammy come October.

I'm looking forward to it.

Posy!

Hello vacation to Seattle and Kauai.  Hello coming  home to budding crocuses.  Hello daffodils that opened yesterday.  Hello finally hitting 70 degrees for the first time this year.  Hello birthday picnic for a newly turned 6 year old.  Hello studio, hello Spring!

It's good to be back.

More soon.  Right now, there is Friday afternoon sunshine and the Beans to collect from school.

Have a good one.

Wintering

Time for a few pictures from the last month or so around here.

Roo made a crown for herself.

A round of viruses has finally made it into and around the family, and this, coupled with Moo's recent variability in the nap-taking department, has made art time slide to the back burner.  Time for a new routine.  One that does not involve (finally!) falling asleep (from utter exhaustion!) at two-thirty p.m., since we have to go pick-up Roo from Kindergarten at a smidge-past-three.

A mild and temporary frustration.  This too, in time, shall pass.  In a blink of an eye, really.

Wintertime visit to the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, WI

Also, Michaels has suddenly stopped stocking 12"x16" mats.  Huh.

Density experiment: honey, corn syrup, maple syrup, milk, dish soap, (blue) water, canola oil, (red) rubbing alcohol, (and a metal screw, plastic die, beer bottle cap, and a blueberry).

 
But really, we've been wintering very happily here.

What greeted me when I returned from orchestra rehearsal a few weeks ago.

Hope you are all warm and well!

Luna Moth

Also back in January, I started working on what I hope will turn into a larger series of colored pencil drawings of a few of the many amazing varieties of moths that live in North America.  I suspect it might also digress into native butterflies at some point.

 Here's the wikipedia link to the Luna moth article.  And here's another great site for information on these (and other!) moth and butterfly species.

So far this month I have tried twice to create a satisfactory drawing of an Io moth.  In a few days I'll try again.  Here, at least, is a zoom on a part of the Io moth that I think I got right, (on my second attempt...)

Those eye spots are all right, but those upper wings?  Seriously people.  Bah!

Have a great week!

More January Art

The smalls and I went sledding after school earlier in January, and while Moo and I waited our turn I got to look around and enjoy the artistry of the late afternoon sun on the snowy slope.  Our side-by-side shadows stuck in my head until I had a chance to sit down and draw.

I seem to be endlessly fascinated by the colors of shadows as they fall on the snow.  Or maybe, being from Western Washington, I am just still bewitched by the novelty of a climate where sun and snow can coexist.

In any case, right now it is brilliantly sunny and -1 degrees Fahrenheit out, so sledding is out of the question.  I know, because we tried it yesterday when it was 7 degrees out, and we lasted about 10 minutes.  It is much more comfortable to just think pleasantly about it while sitting in the warm sunshine at my drawing table.

Wintertime is going much better for me this year, probably due in part to the wonderfully kind response I've been getting to my recent studio output.  Thank you!  It really means a lot to me, and has kept me happily occupied through these quiet, cold days.

Remember the Mushrooms?

Back at the beginning of the month I picked up my brushes and started a little watercolor.  And I was really not sure where I was going to take it.  After the excitement of the Chickens, I came back at it with my colored pencils, to see what sort of interesting texture I could add.

And I decided it needed a moth.  So I put one in.  And there, once again, it languished, as I started another drawing.

I felt like I was taking it in all the wrong directions.  I had an idea in my head, and this was not it.  This happens a lot in the creative process.  In fact, I think the most inspiring part of making things is how you keep trying, even when things never quite seem to work out the way you intend them to.

So, in the end I went back to my watercolors and added a few more lines and this is where I am going to let it sit.  Until I decide that I like it after all, or I have another brilliant idea to subject it to.

Maybe it's not so bad, and I've just been staring at it too closely.  But also, ever the artist's conundrum, when is a finished piece done?

Many Hats

Well!
Since I posted last, I've gone to my first artists' reception as a featured artist, made my first gallery sale, and celebrated with Stam chocolates and an e-mail to my mom. Her reply?  "Atta girl!  Love, your first cheerleader, M"  That makes a whole lot of smile in my heart.

 Time to resolve that this year will be my year to learn how to be an Artist.  Another hat to add to my collection of varied occupations, interests, and activities.  Still, I am encouragingly reminded that being Mama to my family is my top priority right now.  The littles are my best creative output and my deepest source of inspiration, and I get so much loving support from them and Todd; it's going to be a great year for all of us to grow into.

Since the juried show is now up at Outside the Lines, I thought I would post all the art I worked on for it.

(After attempted repairs... but you can still see the purple 'tornado trumpet' in the background.)

 After smaller small got into the studio and added his creative contribution to my first drawing, I switched gears and style and ended up creating two sketches that I felt enough confidence in to submit to the gallery.

They accepted one of them, the hen, named Mildred.  Henry, the rooster, is still up on the wall here.

And I ended up drawing one more piece, but besides liking the background, we all felt that the hen as a central focus fell rather flat.

 And those're the ups and downs of it, huh?  There isn't a lot of studio time, and sometimes things just don't work out.  And that is why it is so good to have the smalls, and family life, and the violin, and knitting, and baking and cooking and gardening and hiking and canoeing and reading and dreaming to keep everything balanced.

And on that note, it's time to go make some bread.