Stuff ...

Don West is back at his blog at Idle Minutes. Unfortunately, his blog was hacked and he's had to start over so you won't see his past work but his future work is well worth visiting for! The painting above is NOT MY WORK. It's a beautiful postcard / painting that Don sent to me in June of last year after I won it at his blog. It's watercolour applied very thickly and it's of McClure Pass in Colorado. (There's a bit of a smudge above the mountain peak from the post mark but other than that, it came through the mail pretty good!)

I went to the Focus Art meeting last night where there was a great presentation by Gerald Swift, Co-Ordinator for Artwork at The Abbey for the Arts. Gerald walked us through a list of introspective questions about our artistic goals. He also gave us some invaluable insight into gallery workings and sales. Each of us there not only learned about selling our work but also about ourselves as artists.

I've always been (so far) one of those artists who does not want to sell their artwork. I have a full time job already and I just want to create art because I have this need to create. I know that I don't want to sell it because I cannot sell my own work and I learned last night that this is very common among artists. Maybe one day I will. But for now, I'm concentrating on creating only. There sure seems to be a lot of hassles in the selling process, though.

I'm hoping that once the warmer weather gets here, I'll be able to get out to the Abbey to maybe just sit and paint (if they allow that). It's a beautiful place.

For Teresa

My good friend, Teresa, asked a few questions that I thought I'd answer as a post rather than just answering in the comment section. (Teresa's blog is awesome. Go check it out!!)

Here are her questions;
Deb, what do you mean with gel "transferring"? I need to learn all the techniques you're using for these pages! I use a gel mat medium (deSerres brand) and sometimes soft gel glossy (Golden). Just paint it onto the page, lay a photocopy, printed copy or magazine page down, rub hard, wait for about 2 minutes, then rub off the back paper. You're left with an image on the page. It takes some practice though. I just ruined a photograph of my parents on their wedding day that I wanted to transfer onto a page. Grrrrr.

Also, why there's no the same risks with fluid acrylics than with normal ones? is it because they dry faster or what? When I painted the pages with the fluid acrylics, the paint dries to permanent just like regular acrylic paint. It won't lift at all. Being fluid acrylic, it can be treated like watercolour only while you're painting it and it's wet. After it dries, it's permanent. If I did the background pages with watercolour, and I used non-staining paints, think of the mess it'd make when I put something wet over it. There are ways of getting around it (i.e. using staining paints, putting on a light layer of varnish, etc) but I have all these fluid acrylics and thought it'd just be a whole lot easier to get where I wanted to get. Btw, fluid acrylics do dry faster than the watercolours also.

I wasn't too crazy about them when I first got them and tried them out but I'm slowly converting. Guess I don't take to change very easily. lol. But soon, I'll try Nick's way of painting again and see if I'm any better at it. (I've totally given up on that fluid acrylic waterlily. I cringe every time I look at it.)

aaaaah I need to know lol, sorry for pestering you with questions :) Tsk, tsk, tsk, Teresa! What a statement! You KNOW you never pester me! LOL!

Don't forget to check out Teresa's blog - Lost in Wonder. She's an incredible watercolourist!!! Look for her portrait of Tim Burton while there! Wow!