A Frida Doll

I have not created much art in the last few weeks. With summer and a determination to lose some weight, I have been outside a lot. I finally finished a doll that I have been working on off and on for a couple of months. It's a Frida Kahlo doll. I am enjoying making 'portrait' style dolls.

This Frida is a folk art doll, and is made of cloth and clay. She is currently listed on ebay. This auction ends June 29th in the evening.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260624320650&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

A Sterling Edwards painting

During the Western Federation of Watercolor Society's show and conference, we had a visit from Sterling Edwards, a well known watercolorist and instructor. I was fortunate enough to get one of his paintings! It's the landscape with aspen trees.

Sterling is a very generous instructor, we had him do a workshop for the Utah Watercolor Society last year. What I liked about him was that he shared everything he knew about art, his techniques, his marketing strategies, etc. Sometimes you get instructors that will protect some of their techniques, but not Sterling! He was very sharing and is a lovely, kind southern gentlemen. Everyone who attended the workshop was just thrilled with him.

His style of painting is very loose and colorful. My own style is very controlled, but it was really wonderful to take this workshop and loosen up abit! Since I acquired Sterling's painting recently, I thought I ought to try painting a bit looser in watercolor. For me this is really quite difficult! So I have been practicing on 18" x 24" sheets of paper. I admit I am struggling to get the beautiful clear washes that Sterling does. It's going to take a lot of practice for me! My study pieces are going on ebay, like this poppy one. Tomorrow I will try, try again!

Quick! Paint a daisy before it gets cloudy again!

Do you ever get so involved in something that you forget to eat lunch? I do that all the time, creating art absorbs me totally.

Today I painted a daisy, on a 17" x 23" piece of watercolor paper. It's quite colorful. I listed it on ebay tonight. I thought it would be fun to do a series of summer flowers. This is the second of the series. The first one was a poppy, but I was using a different brand of paper and I am not used to the way it handles paint, so it didn't turn out like I wanted. So I called it a poppy study and I will probably paint another poppy. Gee. I should have started at the begining of the alphabet to see if there is a flower for every letter. Hmmmm. That sounds pretty ambitious. I will have to think on it.

So what do you eat for lunch at 4:00 pm? String cheese anyone?

It's Summer - I think?

We have had a lot of rain, even snow this past May. This week the weather has finally turned a sunny face our way and it's been in the 80's the past couple of days. Hooray! It has been lovely to walk in the park in the evenings.

Yesterday I painted a cat face on 17" x 23" sheet of watercolor paper. I thought I would do a few larger paintings for ebay. This one was first done in acrylic and then I pulled out my pastels and colored! It was quite fun. It is sealed with a spray acrylic finish. I have it listed on ebay this week.