Losing My Marbles ( Just discovered that there are a million font choices available here. Oh, baby!) So . . . What is it like to regress to childhood for a full day? Just play. Zero adulting. Forgetting to eat, drink, and never once leaving my loft studio? Glorious!  Today I played with marbles, acrylic paint, a variety of sub strates, and a litter pan from Dollar Tree (an obsessed artist’s best friend). Papers covered every possible surface in the room, and eventually I ended up with the pan in my lap and very clear signals (repeated accidents) that it was time to stop after 8 hours of play. Now I have 57 papers waiting to be ripped, positioned artfully with peers, and glued into wil d collages. Yahoo!  Put some paint (with a bit of water) in a cup with marbles, swirl around to mix paint and coat marbles, put paper in pan, add marbles, and tilt the pan. Rolling marbles flying everywhere. Escapees fleeing the pan and hiding somewhere in the room. (You’d think they’d leav...

  Drawer of Pens Late night. Dark and foggy. Introspective 🎶. A grid collage lacking something; my least favorite journal entry. A drawer of like-colored Posca markers. Time lost in space.  What once looked like this . . .  Turned into this . . .    Do I know when to stop doodling? Clearly, the answer is no. But, hey, I’m leaving be those last 4 squares and going to bed. 

  Dendritic Collage Papers Another collage paper experiment. I swear, these are so very addicting to create. Talk about cool effects! I think it is the unpredictable nature of the medium and the grand reveal when finally pulling off the paper from the plate. In this case, the “plate” is a sheet of acrylic. The recommended plate is plexiglass, but I didn’t have any. I did, however, have many sheets of acrylic leftover from my father’s foray into his “stained glass” windowlites that he gifted everyone we know for Christmas for many, many years. I have fond memories of making these with my dad and was excited to see him with such a continuing passion for art even into his later years. Thanks, Dad. Now it is my turn to have the art addiction bug bite me in MY later years.  First experiment: heavy body acrylics, both laid down in just dots and then brushed on in a layer: Second experiment: metallic gold fluid acrylic Third experiment: acrylic inks Results: heavy body acrylics work ...

Can’t Sleep Collage On those nights when I’m overwhelmed with pain from this postponed hip replacement surgery and can’t sleep, art is my constant friend. Just laying in bed tossing and turning, trying to find relief is a fruitless endeavor. Doing art, however, is a grand distraction. I get so involved in the creation process, I am thankfully distracted from the pain. This is one of those “can’t sleep” collages. Choosing just a few collage papers to use in varied ways in these 2” square grid patterns is entertaining. I try to keep in mind important design principals of varied size, tone, value, shape, pattern, and substrate, but honestly, it all just happens in a relaxed, organic, and joyful way. 

  Seasons & Life Embrace the current season of your life. ~ Gabrielle Blair Painting together with my dear friend is a profound joy in my life. We have weathered many seasons together, and without her I would be lost. Since we are now states apart from one another, we have discovered painting together in our own studios while chatting on the phone about our process and delighting in our final product reveals via text photos. Our most recent collaboration, at the suggestion of my friend, was painting the seasons of trees following an instructional watercolor video by Paul Clark. This seemed a particularly timely topic since the most recent ice storm which claimed the lives of many trees in my corner of Oregon. This is my homage to those trees lost, those that stood strong through their icy blanket , and the enduring friendship with which I am blessed. Note: Painting trees has always been my nemesis and inhibited my ability to produce satisfactory landscapes. (I think that is par...

Hip to be Square Drawing these tiny, 2” square grids is becoming something I could likely do in my sleep. Deciding to try my fresh new stencils and stencil brush, I started filling in the grid with black acrylic paint. I overshot a couple, but who really cares? It’s just my journal. I had all of these leftover paints from yesterday stored on a damp palette in a lidded Tupperware container, so color was pre-determined. I failed to consider the opacity of these colors, which was painfully obvious the minute the brush touched the paper. Lesson learned. The title struck like a lightening bolt. Remember that song from Huey Lewis & the News? I’m singing it right now.   

  Color Mixing I am now realizing how easy it is to mix the colors I need from just my basic primaries instead of buying tubes of paint in those specific colors. This is an interesting palette of colors - warm earth tones punctuated by that minty light aqua. I’m having fun with the frames around individual collages .