More Playful Paintings

The last post was fun to share, just playful painting, no agenda, playing in the Sandbox of Fun!

So let's Play Some More.

 More scribbles and dibbles, scootin' around the paper. No rules!  Just have PHUN!  I used A LOT of gel medium or Mod Podge!

Phunky Faces!

With all this play I thought it would be fun to create one painting for each of our five grandchildren who live out of the United States.

Personalizing was the fun part: I added their interests, country of birth, names,  little bits and pieces of their personalities.

So much PHUN!

I used a 16 x 20 substrate to glue everything onto. Then finished by painting the bodies and other details with paint, crayon, colored pencil, gouache....whatever seemed fun.

Last they were framed in black frames with glass.

The kiddies were pretty excited to receive them, find all the little details and hidden pictures.

There are still a few more Playful Paintings to share with you. So until next time.  Sign your name with your non-dominate hand!!!!

Or scribble a silly face.

The World's Most Precious Treasure

CHILDREN

Children come in all shapes, sizes, colors, beliefs, circumstances, abilities and disabilities and innate innocence.

Today's children, world wide, are our future, but for now, while young they are EVERYONE'S responsibility and blessing.

In our little spot in North Carolina, my husband and I have been blessed with five children, all of whom were once very young, rambunctious, inquisitive, adorable, not-so-adorable, noisy, while sleeping looked like angels, a true mix-match of energy and joy.

We have been blessed by their beautiful spouses;

which gave us 

ELEVEN GRANDCHILDREN
to love and cherish.

There is a glow in a parent's eyes, that says: This is my child whom I dearly love and would protect with my life. 

In honor of the children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the children of Syria, far off corners of Africa, Cambodia, Afghanistan....places where children, can not protect themselves and are suffering: I wish to share photos of children one could see anywhere and just smile.  May all of our children be protected and cherished.

Children can run and run, and run again. Their energy and vitality are part of their youth....until they are stopped.

In our home a candle burns, the glow reminds me of the need for constant compassion and outreach for others who are in great need.

UNICEF  

if you would like to help a child whose home is Anywhere.

Playful Paintings

Last spring I treated myself to a really fun online class with Mindy Lacefield.  I tried very hard to keep up, who wouldn't want to, when it is  Play Play Play with color, glue, paint, paper, scraps, anything you can get to stick to paper!  

To lend a note of joviality to the holiday season, here is a peek showing a bit of my homework!  I think you can feel the joy and freedom.  My next post I will share how I created all this messy mark making into paintings for some of our grandchildren.

Fingers, hands, brushes, pens, pencils, chalk, sticks and stones, glue, crayons, pastels.......it was crazy chaos pulling out so many mark making items.  

Maybe that is why I kept up with the class, I had made such a mess I didn't want to clean it up!!!

Mindy had many ideas for us to play with.  My favorite was making sheet after sheet of blissful messes! 

Another we used fancy tapes and wrote out words, thoughts, or sentences in improvised handwriting.

 Oops this one is sideways....but it is one of my favorite scribble sheets.

When I finally got down to creating something, I color copied all my work, then tore it up, glued it to another substrate, and scribbled over that.....and so it went.

 This is one of my first pieces that was actually a project.  Using lots of my scribble pages I adhered them to a notebook.

Next I painted the girl's face over the torn papers. Finished with a gloss varnish.

This was a  fun class and Mindy is offering another new class in 2013.

I think you might come away feeling happy and lighthearted if you visit her website.  
Click here:

Hope to see ya' all in a day or two for more 
Playful Paintings......

Candy Grammy's Art

My art path has been varied and long. One of the really fun turns in the road

was painting "fine art" for children.

Full size canvas, same paints (usually acrylic), tons of imagination and

Voila  a fun painting for a child's room that they could pass on to their own children.

Eventually some of the better paintings were licensed with Oopsy Daisy from California who produce canvas reproductions.  I still have some works under license.

After signing a license, and their photographing the work it was my choice what to do with the original canvas...sell it or gift it.

So gifting to grandchildren has been fun.

I love re-visiting the paintings in our grandchildren's rooms.

Ella lives in Asia and attends a Canadian School. 

It is quite the school, everything I wish our children had experienced.

They  do amazing multi-cultural projects, visit unique museums, and study in depth various subjects.

 Ella, our GRANDE-DAUGHTER,  recently had an assignment to choose a piece of art and explain why she liked it, what appealed to her.

Her mommy, sent me her written article and a photo of the painting she "studied."

I was very impressed with how insightful, this adorable, eight year old is....

and yes, she LOVES LOVES LOVES art.

In fact she teaches "art school" to her younger brothers.

And is the curator of the family walls...where art is hung with scotch tape.

Ella's words:

This piece of art is called “Fairy Shopping” by my Grammy, named Sharon Furner.  Grammy started painting when she was a little girl.  Her mother (my great grandmother) inspired Grammy to paint.  Grammy does art shows and sells paintings.  Some paintings she gives to us.  Most of our paintings from her are what happend in my family in the past.

I like this painting because it fills up the whole space (there are no blank spaces) and it has really nice, bright colors.  I like the fancy pumpkin house.  Everything is fancier than normal life.  Even the trees.  I like how each of the houses look different and are different in colors.  I like how Grammy used depth.  I like the little fairy because she is so small.  I like the title “Fairy Shopping” because I love shopping.  I wonder what it would be like shopping in the Fairyland with this type of fairy.  I wonder what kind of things we will buy.  I wonder what kind of fairy she is.  I think she’s nice.  I think she probably likes shopping for clothes and fancy different things.

A Photo Tutorial/ Mixed Media Cherries

A few weeks ago I shared a photo tutorial on a painting,

Damask Sunflowers.

At the time I worked on D.S. I was working on Life is a Bowl of Cherries.....love that quote by Mary Englebreit.

This painting is mixed media:  paper products, acrylic, modeling paste and oil.

20x20 cradle board substrate, gessoed.

In the beginning all I knew was I would paint a bowl of cherries.  Sketching with thin oil paint, the bowl and broad shape of cherries was put in place, plus a horizon line was drawn
.  

Having worked on Damask Sunflowers with patterned paper, I decided to use the same paper on the downside edge of the table and the crescent bowl shape. The paper was applied with gel medium.

 Next a multi-colored wash of acrylic was painted over the gessoed surface. Working over this mottled background, two layers of stenciling were applied. Modeling paste was added to lavender paint, and pushed through the stencil with a palette knife.  When that was dry, modeling paste with light blue paint was stenciled, changing the direction of the stencil.

The table surface has a different stencil, using purplish-blue.  Once dry the pink pattern was lightly over-stroked in a lighter shade of the pink to give more contrast.

Using acrylic paint in shades of darker red and lighter red were brushed around to start the general shape of individual cherries.  Finally starting to look like something!!

This close up shows the amount of depth the stencil creates.

For me the best part is painting in rich, luscious oil.  Heavy shading, and bright highlights gives shape to the cherries.  

A pitcher of daisies in thick paint completes the painting.

Going back to the painting a few days later,  and taking a critical look, I decided to add a handle to the pitcher and glazed some of the shadows around the cherries one more time. You will also note that I empathized the shadow under the bowl with scribbles of graphite.  

Then it is time for THE BIG DRY!!!

Damask Sunflowers has sold and this painting is available at a show at Christ Church Art Gallery through the end of January.

If you are interested in it, you may contact me.