Prints and originals (when still available), can be purchased on Etsy here.
Down the Old Farm Road
Down the Old Farm Road, Oil, 8”x10”
Author: Picking My Battles
Rorschach, Eat Your Heart Out
Red, Yellow, Blue & White
Some famous painter once said that the colors on his palette looked like they were at war with each other. I think it looks more like they’re dancing, but I dance when I paint.
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What Color is Your Sky
Connecticut River, Brattleboro,VT, 8”x10”, Oil
I had to go to Brattleboro for work this week. It was a long day of driving, especially when the rain made the shortening day even shorter. But the trip gave me a chance to enjoy Vermont’s end of summer storm glory.
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Commando Parenting
I always said if any kid of mine where is the teeniest bit artistically inclined, I would encourage the heck out of that inclination. Thing2 is, and I do, but I swear that if there is a God up there, he or she has finely honed sense of humor.
I was a slob as a kid. I collected everything and threw away almost nothing. I had drawings on little scraps of paper and stole my mom‘s scissors for drawings and creations. She never expressly said she hoped I’d have a kid just like me, but I think in the back of her mind she must’ve known that it be a pretty good revenge.
She’s getting it.
Thing2’s room has gone from being inspirational to hazmat training ground. His creativity has gone high-tech, so boxes of pencils, markers, and half-filled sketchbooks share space with a DIY Recording studio where he swears he’s going to make animated films to make George Lucas drool. It’s also filled with empty popcorn bags and scraps of paper and – you guessed it – Mom’s stolen scissors.
I have drawn several lines in the sand to get him to clean it. Carefully delineated boundaries worked beautifully with Thing1, but, despite his volcanic colon, he can be pretty obsessive about keeping his space organized. It took only one full-scale clean out of his room to help him make the jump from messy tween to fastidious young adult.
One thing I’m finding about artistically-inclined offspring, however, is that simply bulldozing the room doesn’t get the point across. It just creates more canvas. So I’m taking a new tactic today.
As I carried out a little clutter control this morning in the rest of the house, I noted that my creative kid had left “his” iPad and ten-year-old computer in the living room, presumably after shooting footage for a fan-fiction movie he’s been scripting. The iPad is old, but it still works so it wasn’t going into that sty of a room where we might invent the first human to iPad virus. I decided to hide it in ours until the room gets clean.
Hiding precious objects gets rooms superficially clean quickly, but today I mean business. I want it actually clean. On my next trip back to the living room, I picked up the laptop to find a hiding place for it. I had almost passed his room when I thought of the perfect place. I went into his room and moved some of the carnage away from the bunkbed. I put the laptop in the safe little nook behind the bunkbed and then put the carnage back.
I figure about 4PM, I’ll either be up for parent of the year or getting a visit from child protective services — right after he hears he can the laptop back when he can find it.
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Picking My Toons
this is the time of year when I start doing quite a few more art fairs. I’m not doing many this year because I’ve started working my day job on weekends, but the Etsy store has become my online art fair.
When my favorite things to make and sell at the fair are magnets of my cartoons from the last few years. The Big Guy built me a spinning display out of black stove pipe (the kind that, along with the wood cook stove dominates our kitchen), And come out when it’s covered with magnets, it’s the centerpiece of my craft fair booth.
To be sure, people like buying notecards. They’re the ultimate impulse item. their validation of artwork. But nothing beats sitting behind the table, momentarily camouflaged by the spinner as I listen to people giggle at my magnets. They’ll never cure cancer, but being able to give people a little giggle on a Saturday afternoon is pretty good.
I’m putting the magnets up on Etsy soon, and it won’t be quite the same. I’m hoping, though, that this part of the online art fair will spread a little silliness around.
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Familiarity
This is the horse farm I pass every morning on out road when I drive down Minister Hill to take the boys to school. If I zoom out, there’s a pond, and, of course, horses enjoying the mountains.
I have photographed
and painted
and sketched
this road a hundred different ways, and not only do I never tire of it, I am more obsessed with the view every time I drive down into it.
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Start Your Engines
I’m getting to that place with oil’s, we’re having a practice now to have an opinion about how I want my workspace to function.
I’ve been using an old table easel that had a drawer built into it. It was great for hauling my plastic cups full of brushes and pencils, but was kind of a pain when it came to working on smaller canvases.
Tonight after work, I packed the boys into the car and made the hour drive to Saratoga to one of the big art supply stores to get a good table easel. It’s sturdy and will even get small enough to hold the little 4 x 6 pieces I like when I can’t(shouldn’t) paint past midnight. It’s a little higher than the old one, but I think painting oils with it is going to be like adapting to a performance car. Once you start getting used to the medium, You want to open the throttle and see what you can do.
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Something Old and New
One of the time honored methods of learning to draw and paint has been the copying of the works of the old masters. Wanting to try something new last night, I went back to something old and did a short study of a painting at photographed at the Clark a few weeks ago.
Like all the other paintings in that exhibit, the example for my study was done by a woman in Paris between 1850 and 1903. I love the mother and child theme. Even more, I love knowing the person who painted this cut her creative teeth copying the classics and working in a supportive community of her peers.
I know I’ll be coming back to this work with better brushes and skills for the practice and the inspiration.
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We Time
Equinox before Fall, 5” x7”, Oil
I was talking with another painter friend this morning about our creative routines. I said I tend to do my nonfiction writing or programming in the morning or daylight hours after work when my brain is an analytical mode. as much as I want to paint plein air outside, I always end up painting at night, starting when the kids go to bed and ending when I can’t hold my eyes open anymore.
He laughed and said, “I’m the same way. I find I write fiction best at night.”
We both marveled at how the different avenues of creativity seem to open up more fully at different times of day (or when your brain is at a different level of exhaustion and, possibly, open). It was pretty clear that you don’t have to exactly pick your creative battles exactly, but you may have to get just as creative with your scheduling.
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Did Someone Say Pumpkin Spice?
So, I know it’s almost midnight and still over 70° in Vermont and the first week of September (when it’s supposed to be 70 during the day), but somebody at the country store said the magic words, “Pumpkin Spice,” and it was time to take a whack at painting some foliage.
Prints can be purchased on Etsy here..
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Grand Opened
Originals out the Door
In high school one of my best friends and I love planning parties. We both loved the details — decorating, planning the food and guests. We had similar tastes and strengths that complemented each other. More than once, as we figured out food or color schemes, we joked that someday we ought to open a boutique together so we could plan a daily party.
Last week, I realized part of that fantasy when I opened my own boutique in earnest on Etsy. A friend and mentor, best-selling author Jon Katz, wrote an incredibly nice post on his blog that turned my little kick-off event into a true grand opening.
I will admit, I was a little overwhelmed at the number of hits and orders that appeared in the first 24 hours. I always keep some stock handy for craft fairs or art shows, but it had been a while since I had flipped on the switch of my mom cave print shop, now turned boutique.
Suddenly, I was back in the one part high school I really liked, planning how to wrap up paintings, designing and printing labels, and having a virtual party and my 10 x 10 office/studio.
The Etsy store it is definitely about turning my stash of art into income, but I’m finding it’s also about making new personal connections. Over the last couple nights as I have stickered and packaged, having a little virtual party, I’ve been thinking about how the better old dreams do come true. It took a few decades, but I’ve got my boutique (I’m hoping my old pal would approve).
Now one dream is a step to the next of working artist — an old dream that got me through my more frequently humiliating school days. It’ll stay part time work for a while, but the it’s suddenly becoming a lot more real.
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Out of Control
Dust Devils
Under the heading of ‘Things I can’t control’ – putting down the brush at a decent hour. In all fairness, I don’t usually get to start painting until kids are in bed, but there’s no such thing as picking up a brush for a ‘quick touch-up.”
Picking My Battles 