Frida and Sanctuary.....

Yesterday, I got my mini Frida painting finished, photographed and photoed for my Etsy shop.

Plus one other paiting that I finished a while ago.  It's been hanging on my wall for a couple months- sometimes I need to live with my "babies" awhile before I can part with them!

Here's Frida:

For more pictures of her, check her out in my Etsy shop!

And some of you might remember when I started painting 

Sanctuary from my pictures of our local garden tour.....

And for more pictures, it's also now in my Etsy shop!

Both will soon be available as cards too.......

I'll be back soon (maybe even later today- MAYBE ;)) with new projects from art class and SOON current pics of the garden dressed up for Halloween.

Til then...

xx

Stephanie

It's a Frida thing......

OK, I decided the only way I'm gonna get to blog today is if I steal 10 minutes out of my crazy morning.  Every day of every week lately seemed to be crammed full!  But, I am grateful that I've had a little bit of time to paint even if I haven't made time to blog about it!
You might remember that I mentioned wanting to devote a small canvas to Frida.  I did pages for Lisa's traveling journal based on Frida, and enjoyed it so much that I had to do a canvas of her too.  So heeeere's Frida:

I'm actually close to being finished- sorry I didn't manage to share the "in process" pictures this time.  I really, truly am working to get back to my regular bloggity routine!  I miss you guys!
Anyway, I need to soften the moonflowers and "de lime" the leaves, make them a tad more turquoise-y.  And I think I'll be pretty much done and ready to list Frida in my Etsy sop.  For anyone who's interested, the canvas is 6" x 6", will be priced at $69.00 and yes, it's hung on the diagonal.
TTFN,
xx
Stephanie

What's been going on in art class.....

 Hello again, yep it's me, still alive and kickin'!  I wanted to poke my head in and share wat we've been doing in art class.  We just finished another month's session and so, I have two finished projects to share with ya'll.
I've been alternating the kinds of projects I'm doing- first we discuss what they want to do and I create a project around that while choosing an art skill to emphasize.  For this month, they wanted to do something on Mythical creatures, so I had them create a creature of their choice and design an environment for it.  The paper I gave them was broken up into comic book panels and we were focused on telling a story with pictures. 

And here's how they turned out- VERY cool, I think!

 Leila did a fairy......

 and Colson chose a dragon.....

Then for the "me" project, I chose to focus on art history that was also a nod to their LOVE of gold!  We did swirly trees and concentric circles and a brief study on Gustave Klimt and his style.  I love this project, have done it many times and no matter what, it always turns out gorgeous!

I guess you can tell I like gold too?

And voila!  A masterpiece!

I think that's more than enough from me for one day!  I have been doing my own painting (a little ;)) plus cooking for the Farmer's Market and I have fall flowers waiting to go in te ground...I can't believe it's October!  And you know what tat means?  The next art projects will be Halloween- oh yeah!

xx for now,

Stephanie

Homage to Frida~ Finished

Happy Monday, sorry my posts have been so few and far between.  It's been crazy busy around here and most of it not art related!  Anyway, I finished my Frida pages in Priti Lisa's book last week, in fact Maggie should be getting them today!  Only one book left and then all the books head home- I can't WAIT to see mine in real life- what an amazing treasure!

So here is the first page where I cut it so the Frida quote peeks through.  Thank you, Cheryl of Healing Woman for the quote- I thought it was the perfect choice of words!

 Then it opens to the second spread of a Frida shrine amongst moon flowers and the quote......

 

 Some close ups; believe it or not Frida's face is about the size of a dime and I had a REALLY hard time with it, but I'm pretty pleased with it now!

That's all for now, it's gonna be another busy week for me, I have two days of art class plus the Farmer's Market, and I'm thinking of starting a small canvas based on these Fridas I just did, I've got a little Frida obsession going I think!
Have a wonderful day!
xx
Stephanie

Frida Progress.....

Happy Tuesday!  The kids had their Fall break last week, so I did very little in the way of painting.  But today and yesterday, I managed to get Lisa's pages for our traveling books almost done.

 Here's a detail of the page I'm working on now- It will be a "Frida Shrine" surrounded with moon flowers and grounded with a quote- I haven't chosen the quote yet- any thoughts, suggestions?

  Overview of how this page looks with a moth from the piece before it peeking through....

 And the page I shared before with the brown of this page showing through- 

this is where you'll get peeks of the quote...

Hopefully, I'll be able to finish this in time to be part of Paint Party Friday- fingers crossed!
xx
Stephanie

New Round Robin pages in the works!

It has been another hectic week around here!  Between Monday being a holiday and keeping up with assorted doctor's appointments for the kids, I had just enough time to finish planning my entry in Priti Lisa's book and begin painting it!  I almost never paint in water color anymore....but today I felt compelled to.  And then found it a challenge again and again as I'd get one part perfect and then it would dry funny so I'd fix it only to find that I'd messed up another area...needless to say- I've decided that it is finished enough to move to the next page of her book (she gave us permission to do more than one page so I'm running with it!)
Lisa is a HUGE admirer of Frida Kahlo, so I decided to use that for inspiration....

Note: at this point the ears are REALLY overworked- so that I'm scared to add anymore water color to them- I might go back over them with acrylic so the color is better, or should I just leave them alone?

 I don't know if you can tell, but I've trimmed out the bottom of this into a triangle (this was the main reason I wanted to use two pages ;))  and the page behind it will have

 a Frida quote so you can see bits and pieces of it beckoning you to turn the page.......

 Here it is with the top and bottom- at this time, I'm not planning on doing anything else with the top piece, I kind of like how simple it is right now...but of course, that could change at any time!

And one last peek at Frida before I say farewell for now- have a wonderful weekend and I'll "see" you all soon!

xx

Stephanie

Matisse: Room wth a View

For our second project in art class, the kiddos and I talked about Henri Matisse and how he often chose to do paintings featuring many patterns in a room centering on a window and the view from it.  Maybe we'll do another Matisse inspired project- play with collage like he did too....maybe even pretend to be bedridden?  For this project, I had the students explore drawing several patterns and choose 2-3 to create their rooms with.  Also, both girls love cats, so I encouraged them to include a feline in their work as well.  These projects usually require two 1 1/2 hour classes to complete so they can apply a variety of thought and techniques to create really amazing work.

The first week was all about planning their art and then laying in the patterns with oil pastel.  It was important that they get this done the first day so they could do the water color portion the second week and have time to allow it to dry!

  The second week was a race to get finished on time- we even had to skip our wiggle break!  

We'll have an extra long one this week- maybe!

 

 And here's the finished results!

Happy September by the way- I'll be back soon!
xx
Stephanie