Closing Down the Blog

Closing down this blog for now, so please come visit me at my NEW (and improved) home on the web: Facing the Lens! Here you can find info about my new photography business, which I am super excited about. Please also visit my NEW (and improved!) Etsy store, where you can buy my deliciously yummy paintings!

If you are interested in any artwork on this blog, please contact me at facingthetrend @ gmail.com (remove spaces) and I will let you know if it is still available.

Let's Focus on Macro Photography

Feeling the need to focus on photography right now, maybe as a way to cleanse my palate from all the painting and drawing frustration I've been feeling lately. Definitely going to spend some more time reading my craft business books this week and focusing on opening up Facing the Lens on Etsy with some really outstanding prints. I Took the above shot this evening with my beloved macro lens. More to come as I sort through the jumble in my head!

And Now For Something Completely Different

Once again checking my brain at the door, I reveled in NOT painting food today as well. Using one of my deliciously smooth 9 x 9 inch MUSEUM-wrapped Dick Blick canvases, I painted the lady you see above. At the last minute, I decided to add the 3-D puffy T-shirt paint to a good portion of the image, to make it kind of funky. I tend to do this with a LOT of my paintings. Who knows, maybe I should focus more on texture as opposed to subject matter to achieve what I want?

When Life Gives You Lemons, Paint a Bird

Decided to check my brain at the door and hang my anal-retentiveness on a hat-rack yesterday. I painted the above bird quickly (within an hour) and without too much thinking. It's cute (only 4 x 4 inches), and it was nice to paint something without feeling like it needed to fit in some kind of "theme."

Drawing FAIL

The one area of art that I have always felt I'm best at is drawing. I've been drawing my entire life, and if you were to go back to my earliest attempts and compare them to where I am now, you would be amazed at the progression. I can't even begin to calculate the hours I've spent drawing this or that. I think I have a real skill with drawing. And so, you can imagine how deflating it was last night for me, when all of my attempts at drawing failed miserably. I want so badly to have consistency in my work, to find my NICHE, but last night I just was not able to capture it. I feel like I have this nebulous goal out there of being a certain kind of artist, but that it's a goal I'm never going to achieve because no matter how much I try, I'm. Just. Not. Good. Enough. I know they always say that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, but I'm starting to feel that no matter how many eggs I break, I'm never going to achieve what I want artistically.

Sorry for the rant. Hopefully the rest of this week will bring better art and more confidence.

Yummy Pie - My 100th Post!

Yes, I've reached 100 posts! It only took several years. Hopefully I'll hit 200 much, much faster as I increase my output and hopefully become a more cohesive artist with an actual style.

In any case, I decided to go full-on Thiebaud this week with the pie painting above. I realized that I hadn't painted anything all week and that it was high time I got back in the saddle. I rather like it. I wanted to do something with very simple shapes and even though it looks like I probably dashed this one out in a matter of minutes, it took quite a while to get it together, as I reworked the layers several times until I was happy. Hope you enjoy it!

I Scream, You Scream

....we all scream for ice cream? Eh, I think I need to look at some paintings of ice cream, because I'm not sure how much the above actually looks like ice cream, although it does look like *something* I would enjoy eating. The ice cream itself started out as more of a vanilla color, but it wasn't very eye-catching, so I painted over it with the pinks, for a tasty strawberry flavor.

Off to go look at my Wayne Thiebaud book......

A Weekend of Painting

I ordered a ton of canvases and colored pencils and paints that I had been in need of from Dick Blick the other day, and it all came in on Friday in two HUGE boxes. The blank canvases represent to me a new beginning, a new path to follow. Like I said in my last post, I've been thinking a lot about my art and where I want to take it. I am looking for some cohesion in my subject matter and style, and I think that for now at least, I'm going to work with food as my subject matter. aybe that's because I'm doing Weight Watchers and can't eat this kind of food and it's appealing to me to paint it. :) I guess I mostly like the fact that food is bright and colorful and life-sustaining. I painted the above two paintings this weekend and I like them. Along with my last painting, they look like they BELONG together, and that's something I'm desperately trying to capture right now.

Food and Art and Focus

So, I've temporarily closed down the Etsy shop. I'm wanting to refocus and figure out what I really want to paint and draw. Right now, I'm feeling very much inspired by Wayne Thiebaud, an artist I've loved since college. The above painting (which I did last night) was painted in his style, and I really do like it a bit. I feel like I need to rethink my approach to art if I want to be serious with it, and to plan my output a bit more. I don't just want to throw up any old piece of crap on the wall and see what sticks; I want to only show my best pieces and offer only those pieces for sale. I want everything in my shop to be of a single theme; I want you to be able to look at everything in my store and see how it all links together. I want to find my niche as far as subject matter and style go, and I plan on doing so during the month of May. I'm hoping to reopen the shop next month, with a new direction, and a really distinctive style.

Wish me luck!

New Collage

Not much to say tonight, apart from the fact that I'm taking tomorrow off to spend the entire day painting and collaging and doing MORE ART! I'm very excited at all of the possibilities. I made the above collage tonight; it features a picture of my grandmother from 1941 and is mounted on top of a museum-wrapped 6 x 6 canvas that I painted several weeks ago. This canvas has sat on my work table for weeks now, untouched. I think it was waiting for just the right moment, don't you?