Friday Egg Pot

Wha?

Yup. I was asked to donate a terra cotta pot painted in the style of my artwork to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden for their annual Garden Party fundraiser. Quite an honor for me and I was happy to oblige. Let me just say that compared to an egg, a terra cotta pot is HUUUUUUUGE. It took a lot longer than I planned for just because there was so much more ground to cover. I started by painting the pot white with matte acrylic paint. For the eternity band around the top, I eyeballed itand made tic marks with a pencil, but they were all off and not even in the slightest so I had to resort to cutting a piece of string that was the exact diameter of the pot, then marking halfway then half of that, then half of that, until my string had marks every 2 inches or so. I used that as a guide and it worked much better than my eyeball!

Of course, instead of wax and dye, I used paint pens and sharpies. The black outlines were done with a very fine line black paint pen and I filled in with mainly different colors of paint pens, though there are some areas where I used sharpies in different colors.  I used stylized animal images for the body of the pot: a blue elephant,

yellow deer,

red ram,

and orange peacock.

Finally, I painted the inside of the pot with gold paint just to make it more finished looking:

I coated it with Krylon Triple Thick Clear Glaze which really helped to bring it all together. Amazing what a little shine will do.

If you like it, you are most welcome to bid on it at the Garden Party auction. Check out the Umlauf website for tickets to the event!

Friday Egg

NO COLORS FOR YOU!

Today is a black and white egg. It is based on an interesting website called Zentangle that a friend turned me on to.  It is basically a shortcut to the zen of creation and is a very clever idea.  Starting with a basic doodle on a small piece of paper that they call a "tile" that looks like this:

you simply fill in each space with a different repetitive pattern.  It is only done with black pen on white paper so you don't have to worry about color or shading - everything is black and white!  Here is what the finished tile might look like:

One interesting project they have is a larger doodle drawn over a series of nine tiles. If you have a group, each person takes one tile and draws patterns and then after all are done, you combine them to become one collaborative work or art.  Here's what it looks like before you start:

and here is one finished:

I really like this idea because it makes creation accessible to literally anyone.  I have done a few "tiles" but then decided to take the same idea and do it on an egg.

Here we go!

One with scale object:

In this one, you can see that I made my signature a part of the design.  I'm so sneaky.

Doodling can be productive!  Try it on your own or go check out Zentangle!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Investing in Artists, not the just the art

A friend of mine posted this Barron's article on her facebook page. It is an interesting take on patronage in the arts. Tell me what you think...

Friday Egg and Calendar Items!

Hello all...

It's a busy busy day today with lots of different items on my to-do list, not least of which is the Friday Egg! First, I will mention a few business items. To the left on this page, you will find two listings to put on your calendar. The first is for my annual charity sale/demo at Sweet Charity Gifts in the 26 Doors Shopping Center on 38 1/2 Street in Austin. This sale is the week before Easter, on Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. both days. Half of all proceeds go to the Seton Fund, which provides charity care at Seton Hospital. The second even is on the Saturday before Easter at Artworks Gallery on 6th Street on Gallery Row in Austin from 12 noon to 4 p.m. I hope you can come out to one or both of these demonstrations to say hello and check out how I create this art (and I wouldn't mind it if someone bought something too!). I am also offering a workshop on March 27th from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. For $40 (plus $20 for a take-home kit if you want), I am offering a Pysanka Basics class. I will walk you through marking an egg with basic divisions and then waxing and dyeing through at least three dye baths. You should go home with at least one finished egg, and possibly more depending on how fast you are.

And now, on to the Friday Egg - Banksy Blue Elephants!  This is a goose egg with an elephant train (okay, two elephants) going around in a circle. I am on the fence about it, but will withhold judgement until I get some varnish on it. Sometimes that helps.  I think my main problem with it is that the blue of the elephants is too dark compared to the background.  I just kept thinking about the artist Banksy and his blue elephant when I was doing this, so I just had to have that blue.  Were I to do it again, and I probably will, I would make the background yellow or even white so that they stand out more.  My favorite part is the striped tusks.

If it is nice out on Sunday, we will be going to the kite festival! Hope your weekend is a good one!

Friday Egg

It is a beautiful day today.  The sun is shining and the sky is blue and I am inside my dark little studio working on eggs!  But here is a lovely little iris egg in honor of spring.  I started with a white egg, as you can see from the outlines.  I like the mix of traditional patterns on the bottom and and the free-form flowers on top.

Here's the entire thing, finished with one coat of varnish (I will do a couple more in the next few days).  I will start including a scale object (penny) so you can easily see the size of the egg:

Here are a few more detail shots of the egg:

Happy Friday, everyone!

Friday Egg

I really enjoyed making the Friday Egg today!  I used blue as the background color which I haven't done in a long time and it made for a completely different feeling. Sometimes I feel that the blue isn't deep or dark enough to set off the bright colors, but combined with the golden yellow, reds and green, it makes for a circus-y feeling egg.

Following the theme of using traditional designs in non-traditional ways, the eight-pointed stars/roses float around the egg, accented with small flowers and leaves.  I enjoyed the opportunity to experiment with different patterns within the roses themselves.  Normally, I try to match any sets because I like the balance of a traditional egg, but since this didn't have to be balanced (at least in the traditional sense) I could have a bit of fun.  I started with the Pysanky Showcase Golden Brown, then went back down to white and back up again. I will be trying this one again with different patterns and color schemes.

Thanks for looking!  Have a great weekend.

This is my future...

At least I hope this is my future! I now officially need an iphone solely so I can have this app for processing credit cards: Square

There's no merchant fee or contract just 2.9% of sales.  And the processor itself is a beauty: looks like about an inch square that plugs into the audio jack of your iphone.  Never more would I be embarrassed about dragging out my gigantic machine with (shudder) the carbon copy triplicate receipts that look so 1982.

Want.