There Used To Be A House Here

I belong to an on-line watercolor artist group and our September challenge was to paint something related to an "abandoned" theme. Here is my painting. It is entitled, "There Used To Be A House Here." It is inspired by my neighbor's lovely old rural mailbox. Her mailbox has the beautiful rust patterns, but is far from being abandoned. I used my "artist imagination" to lean it over, added a broken hinge and broken flag etc. Then I was inspired by the same neighbor's prairie restoration garden and added samples of prairie plants, as if the house had disappeared, and only the mailbox remained and the prairie started to reclaim the land.
It is a glorious fall here in Wisconsin and I love seeing the old prairie plants.

I really love Daniel Smith watercolor paint! He has recently produced a group of new pigments which are inspired by old Mayan colors found on old paintings etc. on Mayan objects etc. I got some of them and just had to try them out on a South West scene. While I made up this scene entirely, I have admired the gates and garden scenes of old adobe homes in the South West.
This is "Blue Garden Gate". It is painted on a 300 lb. Cheap Joe's Kilimanjaro watercolor block with Daniel Smith Mayan watercolor paint.

It has been some time since I have posted on my blog, but I have been painting all along. I'll try to get some of my more recent paintings posted and do a little "catch-up".
This is an experiment using Daniel Smith watercolor ground to prepare the surface of a standard canvas to paint on with watercolor. The surface is not quite the same as watercolor paper, but does present an interesting surface to paint on. I've been doing some Chinese brush painting and so I tired out some bamboo in that manner.

Edge of the Waterfall

I'm finding that those times that I allow the paint to do the work, when I'm open to suggestion from the painting as it develops, I'm often happier with the outcome. This watercolor painting started from simply floating some colors on to the wet paper and letting them do some mingling. I tilted the paper a little to start the action, then watched what happened.
Actually, I applied the paint thinking the painting would be upside down from what I used! After the paper dried and sat for a day or two to "cook", I came back to it and started turning it around, seeing what suggested itself. As it came into this position I could see water coming down and the suggestion of rocks. Then I just started working with the shapes, adding definition. Soon I noticed that there was a falling off at the bottom....I played that up and the waterfall started to appear. Yes, water and rocks are two of my favorite subjects.

Rainforest Lily Pads

I've always loved pond lilies and lily pads. They evoke a feeling of peace, quiet and a pretend world. This painting is mainly in watercolor, but the area of the lily pads are in paper collage and acrylic paint. For paintings like this, I'm having difficulty photographing them because the texture of the raised collage area is lost. I guess the viewer has to imagine the texture!
If you click on the painting, then use the magnifying "plus sign" to further magnify the painting, you can get a sense of the texture.

September 11th Feelings

In September, I was touched once again by the sorrow of the 9/11 experience and got to thinking about my response. Feelings of sadness, of loss, of terror, of the senseless loss of life and wounding that continues, even as the years go by, somehow has to all be dealt with. As war rages on in the Middle East, as mistrust continues, we have to start building bridges of understanding and of hope for peace. My response was this painting: "Out of Destruction, Hope Rises". It is in acrylic on canvas with oriental paper and gold foil collage.

Here is my favorite little artist! My grandson, Ben, is shown here last year enjoying finger painting!

I've been promising to give some ideas on my blog about encouraging children in art. As you look at the delight on Ben's face and the hands all paint covered, you know this is where the action is with little artists. Ben's mother, my daughter, Julia, was " into" art from an early age, also. She now has a studio in her home and Ben shares that area with his mother. Not only is he encouraged to work on a flat activity area, he also, has an easel of his own.
This love of art is multi-generational in our family. My mother was an artist and I grew up doing my art next to her in her "studio" (our dining room table, that had to be cleared for dinner each day!)
Finger painting is always a great way to get little artists going!

When I was a child in school, finger painting was a once a year deal, and then only with some teachers. My standout memory there was that I was all excited to do finger painting in the afternoon with the traveling art teacher who came once a month to our classes. Late in the morning I developed pains in my stomach and tried to ignore them, but soon the teacher discovered I could not get up from my seat, the pain was so bad. My mother was called and I was whisked off to the hospital with appendicitis. The doctors told Mama that I kept saying as I was put under, "I want to finger paint!" over and over! LOL!

Doing finger painting with little kids in my teaching years (pre-kinders to second grade), the thing is that they so enjoy it that they will not give up until they wear right through the paper and have nothing to save, to take home or hang up. So, to help with the mess and to help them have some paintings to hang up, I bought a stack of old cafeteria trays at a flea market and would give each child who was painting a tray to paint on instead of paper. They had just as much fun and whenever they got a picture they liked, I would press a paper down on the tray and they had a "print" of their design and could go right on painting!
Also, as another lark, when we were highlighting the letter "P" in reading, I would let them "Print with Pudding". Now that is fun! Same trays, (washed completely clean!!!!), and I gave each kid a little tub of their favorite flavor of pudding.
We would not do any prints of this! Soon they would "eat" their "paint" ! Finger licking good art!

I've been known to do some finger painting in my watercolor washes....great fun!