A Look Back At 2014

Geometric Flowers.  Watercolor.
Approximately 11 x  8 inches.

Today is very nearly the last day of 2014.  I'm looking back over my blog posts from the year to see if I can find anything constructive to say, or things that I'd like to try, or even handle differently.

I really like my crayons.  I bought them last December, and I use them a lot.  They were well worth the money.  I'm also still painting trees--frequently from my imagination.  There one included in this post, too!

Oranges and Grapefruit

Oranges and Grapefruits.
Watercolor.  

Yesterday, I got together with a group of fellow artists for critique.  It wasn't the whole group, but Marilyn Bishop, Rama Desai, Nancy Wisely, Sherry Stoffer, Margie Carleton, Diana Marra, Andrea Chemero, Barb Smucker (fearless leader and organizer), Roxanne Brett, and Taylor Bush were able to be there.  Many of them aren't online, but if they are, I've tried to include links.  A lot of them read this blog--big grin.

Before Coffee

Before Coffee.  Watercolor and Crayon.
10x8 inches

I set up a still life, and then it went all abstrac-tish on me.  I'm not sure why, either, which as the painter, I'd sure like to be able to articulate why I'm doing what I'm doing.   

Oh, My Gosh...

I was just messing around on Spoonflower, where you can turn art or designs into fabric, gift wrap, or the like and.....well, look what I turned this painting into:

It was quite fun to do!  True confession--I could not get the design to copy properly from Spoonflower.  So, I recreated the effect using Scribus.  Scribus is open source application for for pc's that is very similar in principal to Indesign. Lifehacker did a comprehensive article on inexpensive to free substitutes for some of the Adobe products--it's quite useful.  (I also use Gimp instead of Photoshop....)

I must have hit the symmetry just right for this!  I'm going to try it with another painting soon....if you haven't tried it, you should!

Now I'm debating about whether to go back to Spoonflower and print gift wrap.....  Of course, fancy gift wrap would be different than my usual mode where I'm frantically wrapping in whatever paper product (think newspaper) two minutes before I walk in the door....

I can sense you're laughing!  Have a good one, and try not to let your December get frantic.

Amy

Turning World

Turning World.  Watercolor and crayon.
Approximately 11 x 9 inches

If you've been reading this blog, you've probably noticed that my work is tipping more and more abstracted You can see examples, here, here, and here. If you check those links, you'll notice that those are some of the earliest abstracts and that they're laid out in squares and rectangles. Lately, I've been going more and more towards circles and curving shapes, which you can see here, here, and here.  Not always, but often.