What a great class today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It never occurred to me to photograph any of my oil paintings before I took the class today. Michelle is right....it would have made a great before and after. Too late now!
Today's class was all about edges. We learned 5-6 different ways to make them, and this was an aspect of oil painting that I never thought much about. In watercolor, yes....there I had a lot of attention on those edges, but not so much in oils. Very interesting class!
So we have covered Form, Values, and Edges and next week we do Color....my favorite subject. I'm really glad that I can continue on with these oil painting classes for this next 4 week period as we continue covering the basics.
I THINK I finished a 9" x 12" oil painting today, but tomorrow I might not feel the same. You see, there are these gremlins that appear in the middle of the night and they change paintings. So what you think is a wonderful painting one day, becomes a piece of doodoo the next day or so. Either those gremlins change my work, or they change my vision and I see them differently, I don't know which.
Judy came along today and suggested that I had a touch of color here, and a reflection there, and it made a HUMONGOUS difference in my little painting. Wow. Immediately I could see this change with a flick of the brush.
Larry came by at the end of the class and said "Don't change your style". He said this a couple times, and I was standing there thinking "????? I have a style????" He even told me that he couldn't paint the way that I paint...from pictures in my head. He says he's a representational style of painter and admires my ability.
To say that I was flattered is putting it mildly....I was in shock! He made a few suggestions for my little painting and I came away from class today feeling much more professional than when I went in. Oil painting is an absolute ball............
How lucky can one girl get???
Tomorrow is my oil painting class with Larry and Judy Pumfrey. I am so excited, I feel like a kid waiting for Santa Claus to arrive. I absolutely adore this couple and this painting class that they do every spring is phenomenal. I wish they lived down here in Florida so that I could take classes with them year round.
They are NICE people. I mean really, really nice people. So kind and so sincere, and their goal is to help you improve your painting skills. One of them does a one hour lecture and demonstration, and then the last two hours of the class are devoted to the students painting and Larry and Judy cruise the class so that you see each of them at least once in that two hours.
We have about 15 people in this class, and that would be too large for one instructor to make the rounds and keep the students learning. Plus, with Larry being a specialist in landscapes and Judy specializing in portraits, they each have a unique eye and viewpoint no matter what you are working on.
Currently I have 5 small paintings in progress and I'm planning to get at least one of them finished tomorrow in class. With some luck, I could get two completed. Impressionist style painting is really a blast, I think. To me, it has some similarities to Abstract artwork and that's definately up my alley. And I never thought that I would love oil painting as much as I do, either.
Yep, I am one lucky, lucky girl. I get to live my life as an artist. I have surrounded myself with creative and wonderful people. And I actually sell my work. Imagine that....the whole package in my life. WOW.
322 Postcards..................................
I first began this project on Saturday Jan. 6th, 2007. Nineteen days total. And I had a computer meltdown in the middle of it, so the muse has been with me this month!!! I am officially taking a break from this Postcard Project as of tonite. I'm sure that no one will be upset by this, but an announcement that I am moving on now seems like the right thing to do. I've gotten a bit too far behind in my other artwork, my newsletters and my vlog and it's time for me to focus on these other areas.
My package is now ready to send off to Somerset Studio about this Postcard Project. I might pick up the idea again at a later date and continue moving on thru my snail mail list, but only time will tell on that score.
I lucked out!
 I had signed up to do an art swap over a month ago which consisted of some type of ornament and some artwork. Promptly forgot all about it. This past week a member in the group posted something about the deadline being in 2-3 days and I went into a complete panic trying to get this package ready to send to my swapee. As luck would have it, my swapee was also running behind schedule and hadn't posted hers yet. I'm not very good with deadlines and when I get myself into that type of situation I miss the deadline about 90% of the time. I think that for a while I will refrain from getting involved in swaps, trades, theme weeks, etc etc. I was just lucky this time. Most artists are way cool about running behind schedule, fortunately.
Somerset Studio
 Aside from the wonderful artwork appearing in the pages of Somerset Studio is the fact that they accept submissions from artists, run contests, and even publish letters and emails to the editor. How many fine art magazines do this? Make me laugh.
For years I used to subscribe to American Artist, Watercolor, and other magazines like that, but the artists they showed in there were all fairly successful people who had galleries and publicists and all that working behind the scenes to get articles done on them. It looked to me as if a major miracle would have to occur for me to ever get published in one of them.
I have entered dozens and dozens of competitions over the years that various magazines have held, but never once was my work even honorably mentioned. I even entered some really bizarro competitions in which I submitted some of my most wild art and had no luck with those, either. So it isn't going to be any big deal anymore for me to package up a few more items and ship them off to the publishers of Somerset Studio. I'm sure they are inundated with submissions, but I figure that if I keep trying to get onto their pages...one day I will be successful! At least they give us all an opportunity!
TWO HUNDRED
 Okay...I finally made the big 200 on this postcard project. I never intended to get as involved with this thing as I have, but it has taken over my life almost completely now. They have all been mailed out to people from my snail mail list. I have 800 people on that list!!! It seems rather unlikely that I would ever make it thru all 800 of those people, but in the art world anything is possible.
Now when I say this project has taken over my life, I am not exaggerating. I have been ignoring sending out my newsletters, adding to my vlog, 2 other blogs, and almost all social interaction with other artists on eBay. I felt pretty good that I went over to Borders Books yesterday and had a latte and enjoyed looking at the latest issue of Somerset Studios.
It was then that the light bulb appeared over my head....why not send some of these postcards to Somerset Studio and do a write-up of my Postcard Project? So..........that is something else that I need to add to my To Do list. In the last issue of Somerset Studio from 2 months ago, several Clearwater area artists were shown in the magazine. I even know one of them--Dottie Clark. Wouldn't it be fun to appear in a magazine like that???
Utah Sky
This 8 x 10" oil painting finally got finished today in my oil painting class. I've had some difficulties photographing it tonite and after taking about 15 different shots, I finally popped it onto my scanner. It still doesn't look the same as the original but this is the best I could do.
Oops!
No, I haven't completed 200 of the postcards....more like 140. That last blog title was a bit misleading. I'm 'working' on the second hundred.
The Second Hundred
 I have no idea how long I will continue on this current vein of work, but as Michelle pointed out to me....it's letting inspiration run its course, rather than a fixation. I like that a lot better as it makes me feel more creative. And not obsessive.
There are times when art does become a compulsion. Something that the creative types of people MUST do...and that's not really a bad thing, either. If I could sing...believe me, I 'd be in that line-up at American Idol singing my little heart out!
Wilde-Ideas
Sharon Wilde (of Wilde-Ideas) and I had an interesting conversation today about artists and their lack of confidence. Here is a link to her online store: http://wilde-ideas.com/
Anyhow, this is a majorly huge problem for most artists---lack of confidence. It's so bad that they don't even consider themselves artists and many feel that they have to study art in a school someplace in order to be considered an artist. Wow. I know all about this phenomena because some years ago I felt the same way.
"I have a family" is often a reason that people will give you for not creating their artwork. "I'm not good enough" Time, money, career, etc etc. Everything seems to take on more importance than the creation of the art. Even professional artists sometimes get caught up in the marketing of their artwork and running their businesses that they can't create more art.
If there is anything that I have learned in my life, it is that being a professional at anything that you do is entirely different from being an amateur. It all comes from self-confidence and the sky is the limit from there. Professionals work hard to get to the top of their game....it isn't an accident that they got to where they are.
This was a hard lessson for me to learn. I used to whine and cry and moan about how hard it all was to make a living as an artist....costs are going up. Yap, yap, yap. The only thing that this proved to me and to anyone else who was watching---I was an amateur. Being a successful artist is a business and as such one must take a professional attitude about it and learn from the mistakes. Over 75% of new start-up businesses fail within 1-2 years. That's just a fact of life.
An Artful Life
 I am so fortunate to live the life that I do, and days like today serve to remind me of how lucky I truly am. It took me a long time to get to this point and along the way I struggled and flailed around like a bird with a broken wing. And in many senses, I was a bird with a broken wing because I didn't have art in my life.
It was always about making enough money, and I didn't have enough confidence in my abilities as an artist to commit to that life. Nor did I think that you could actually make a living as an artist. I was so miserable for so many years of my life and I never quite understood why. I always thought it was because I didn't have enough money. Well, sometimes I don't have as much money as I would like to have, but that doesn't deter me from enjoying my days as much as I possibly can.
Now there is art in my life. And it is THE SOLUTION for any and all problems that I encounter. If I hit a snag, the best thing for me to do is to make more art. Sales down, expenses up? Make more art. Creating the art keeps me happy and when I am happy, things go much more smoothly for me in my day to day life. It would have been nice to have had this realization about 40 years ago, but some of us bloom later in life....that's all.
More
I didn't get any oil painting done today, but I did get some more postcards completed. I think I have a fixation problem.
I was reading a blog today from the Artbizcoach and she was talking about how so many artists end up spending a great portion of their time working on marketing projects and admin and anything else besides art.
This really does become a problem at some point in time as you struggle to keep promoting yourself, while also trying to produce the actual product that you are selling. I'm not complaining, though, because I wouldn't change my life for anything at this point. I love what I do and I basically have to make my own decisions about how I'm going to work my business. If only I could paint faster!!
The first 100...
 No, I won't be posting all 100 postcards in the blog. I am a quirky person, but even that's too wierd for me. I'm only showing some of my favs and even then, some of them were my favs yesterday or even last week, and now they aren't. See how that works?
Postcard Project
 I have now created over 100 of these collage postcards in the past 2 weekends. I had no idea that I would go completely nuts on this project, but the juices are flowing and I'm not stopping. I'm actually mailing these postcards out to people...so not only am I getting more practice with my design work and practice on my compositions, I'm cleaning out my collage scrap bag big time.
I started an oil painting class last week, and it became abundantly clear to me that I need to improve my skills dramtically this year. The class that I am taking consists of a husband and wife team, Larry and Judy Pumfrey. She specializes in portraits and figures while Larry goes for the landscape themes. I have already learned a lot from them just from my first 3 hours and I am excited about going again this week. I want to make some Impressionsitic paintings, and I don't know of any better way to do this than to take a weekly class and practice in between.
Keep Those Postcards Coming!
Postcards.....................
Enough postcards for this weekend!!!
More Postcards
 Here are a few more postcard art pieces from my next batch of 9. Why so many? I have this Windows wizard gizmo on my computer that will duplicate the same image into wallet size photos 9 times per page. I'm not listing or selling these postcards, but I'm using them for another project. The sideline benefit to me is that it is keeping my creative juices flowing at high speed and I don't have time to get overly cerebral about what it is that I am creating.
That's another way of saying there isn't a lot of planning going into these postcards. One of my favorite things about Abstract art is the spontaneity of it, so I like to utilize the abstract whenever possible. It's really good practice for me to be doing these 9 small pieces using the same image repeatedly just to stretch my imagination a bit. A couple artists that I was studying from last year (books and videos) highly recommend these miniature exercises each day in order to get the juices flowing.
That is another side benefit to the ACEO movement, too. As an artist you can learn a lot about painting, collage, whatever by doing these miniature pieces regularly without huge sums of money, time or supplies invested. I'm only doing these postcards for now because I had a box of Avery postcard paper hanging around in my studio forever unopened and when they are finished, I can mail them out if I want. The postcard paper is horribly flimsy, which is also presenting another problem to be solved...how to make it more stable and thicker.
Postcard experiment
  I have been making postcards today...9 of them to be exact. Using an image from a small painting that I did last year, I simply repeated this collaged image over on all 9 pieces and worked to see how many different ways I could present it. These are my 3 favorites. I plan to continue doing this for a while yet, using some other images from my past inventory. Just to experiment................
To Debbie P.
I have known Debbie for about 23 years. We met quite by accident in a parking lot at a local church when I was down here visiting on my annual visit. Over the years, we have met and chatted and spent a few minutes here and there exchanging ideas or even having dinner together.
Our lives have somewhat paralleled each other in that we have both moved back and forth from one coast to another multiple times. We even had chance encounters in LA when both of us lived there, which is no small feat when you consider how many people live out there.
It had been almost a year since I had last crossed her path when I found her standing in line behind me at the post office yesterday. I had planned to complete various projects in the afternoon, but when I heard that her Mom had died on New Year's Eve...all that changed. I asked her to join me for coffee at the local Borders Bookstore and we sat out on the patio in the sunshine & perfect weather and began to chat.
I wish that my time lapse photographer had been with me yesterday so that you could see the 5 minute video of what occurred out there in the next 9 hours. Yes, that's right....9 solid hours. I never left my chair.
Time stopped and the only way that I could tell that time was passing was because the bright sunshiney day became nighttime and dozens of other people had come and gone on that patio. A wonderful springlike breeze was blowing, music was playing in the background, and we were unaware of hunger, pain, world suffering, etc. It was a magical experience.
Get the picture of a camera behind these 2 tall blonde women sitting and chatting under an umbrella at a table outside. Large groups of people with kids speaking foreign languages swirling around and about, groups of teenagers hovering at nearby tables, and a continual parade of Borders books customers parading in and out. Three different street people stopped to ask Debbie and I things like "What time is it?" "Where is the closest homeless shelter?" and "Is there a shoe store here?"
Neither of us had ever noticed street people cruising this mall area in Clearwater before....ever. So that, too, was wierd. The entire experience will go down in my record book as a pleasure moment. She made me feel so alive and wonderful, and I made her laugh and got her attention off of the huge loss that she was experiencing. I couldn't even tell you all the things that we talked about or the ideas that we exchanged, but it was pure magic. Serendipity times 10.
Doodles 114 & 116
 I have been trying to analyze the creative process today, while I was working on some ACEO collages. It's laughable, really, and anyone who is an artist can understand it. For me, it goes something like this: I get frustrated beyond belief, and think I can't create anything new ever again. I become innundated with images from looking at other people's artwork and I start salivating at the beauty of their creations. I might even think, "Boy, I wish I could create something that beautiful." Or "Why didn't I think of that?" I might even be to the point where I think my head is going to explode because I have so many ideas and images whirling around in my head that I can't function normally. So I sit myself down at my painting table and think that I am going to create cats, or astrology signs, or something that will fit in with one of my other series that is already in progress. Then the Twilight Zone music begins to play in the background and I don't really have any idea how these things get started, but today I grabbed my collage bag and started shuffling papers around. I was clueless as to what exactly I was going to make....but like I said, I thought I had a direction I was going. And once again, that mysterious muse takes over and I have no idea where these things come from. The colors or the textures of something seems to trigger an idea, and more shuffling occurs, some cutting, pasting and drawing or painting........voila! They start popping out of the oven like little muffins in a tin. And they have NOTHING to do with what I thought they would...they don't fit into any category. Which is why I use the Doodles name on so many of my ACEOs. I have #117 finished as well, but it wouldn't load into this post, so I will post that in here next. All 3 of these popped out of me today....I sure wish I could be this prolific EVERY day.
debcoart.com
I'm proud to announce the grand opening of my second website: debcoart.com.
I don't have a link posted in here for it because when you type it in, it redirects you directly to my eBay store. My website gal suggested this, and I think it's mighty clever. I was going to have it linked to my other website: debcompany.com, but what is the point in that? This way I hope to have more traffic moving thru my websites and store and this will cause an increase in sales, I'm sure.
I've been working feverishly on new items to add to my store and now I have a lot more interest in building up the inventory in there than I did last fall. I bought into some of the black PR about the increase in fees on eBay and cut my inventory to about 25% of what it had been. What was I thinking???
However, rather than simply plopping all the same stuff back into the store, I am making some new things to spice up the shopping process for the customers. And once again, I am finding myself in overwhelm with all the ideas that are flying around in my head! It's great to have an active imagination, but it's even better to have active hands............
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Doodles 124
6:30 am on a Sunday??
Black & White image
Florida 59
Viacom vs Google
Tour de Chaos
Pet Video Contest #10
Klimt revisited
A lot to be grateful for....
October 2005
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