The Fourth installment of 50 Art-o-mat III paintings
And if you are interested in seeing the previous posts:
Archive for the 'My Artwork' Category
I’m back with a third installment of Art-o-mat III paintings
And if you are interested in seeing the previous posts:
Here is the second installment of Art-o-mat paintings, 11-20.
And if you are interested in reading the previous posts:
I’m participating in the 100 Day Project again this year, after sitting out last year. I’m doing a similar theme asto what I did 3 years ago, and trying to finish up a lot of big projects that I’ve had in progress for a long time. It’s been about 20 days and I’m still feeling very excited and energized. The first major thing checked off my list was wrapping up Pattern January, which I let drag out for almost 4 months. I also finally ordered fabric samples from Spoonflower with my original designs, which was a BIG part of the 100 Day Project for me 2 years ago, but that I never actually finished. I also want to post more to my blog, AND give it a facelift, but more on those things soon.
In the meantime, I need to catch up on sharing my current Art-o-mat series, as promised a few posts back. Here are the first 10 of 50 acrylic paintings, made on handbuilt and stretched tiny canvases. When I started this (my third Art-o-mat series) I really wanted to go super fast and explore all sorts of things and try different ideas to hopefully develop as an artist. In the end I went through a handful of purely experimental pieces, but with 3 solid mini series/styles (grass quote paintings, blades of grass, and paintings of collages made from my own designed and decorated papers (gelatin prints made from handcut paper stencils).
And after I finished all my paintings I had the idea of taking a picture of each piece with a different and unique background.
Thank you for reading! Here is the introduction post for this series.
If you are interested in seeing the paintings from my previous 2 Art-o-mat series, you can click through the Flickr collection and albums here
I’ve been in a funk for the last couple days, and the fog has lifted! I’m adding things to my t0-do lists and feeling pulled in so many directions. When updating my list I accidentally crossed off that I had already posted about sending out my third Art-o-mat series, so here I am making it right.
When I started my third series I fully intended for it to be a very fast series. My first series was mostly paintings based on images that caught my eye, the second series was paintings based on collages I made. The third series started at the beginning of a new year and I decided that I was just going to explore and paint random things that came to me at the time, and hopefully it would help me grow as an artist quickly. I even aimed to send out multiple series in one year! Years and years later I finally wrapped up 50 paintings with a few smaller series included (grass quote paintings, grass profile paintings, and paintings based on collages from my gelatin printing).
If it hadn’t taken long enough to build each mini canvas, and then paint each piece, once I was done then I started out on a whole new set of obstacles including photographing each piece with a unique background. For almost a year I carried a bag of a few paintings around with me everywhere I went, looking for the best opportunity to chronicle each piece. THEN, once that was done I photographed each piece again, and the collection and mini collections and then needed to design the packaging and insert for the series. Then package it all up, and make sure they fit the requirements. To say I dragged the whole process out is an understatement.
Each series needs to be at least 50 pieces, and Art-0-mat may send 5-10 pieces to different machines and they can sell rather fast. I won’t know where my artwork sold until I get my coveted little green card. Machine owners can request artists and Art-o-mat will try and fulfill those requests as they can. I’m soooo looking forward to seeing where my pieces sold. I also have a new series that I want to work on already.
I’ve been sharing each painting down one column of my instagram feed, and I’m crossing my finger that maybe a buyer or two will spy the artwork they purchased and leave a comment. I think I’ll share a post for each 10 paintings. Meanwhile, feel free to check it out on instagram and follow me over there.
Also, feel free to click over to Flickr to look through all three of my previous Art-o-mat series.
In August I got it in my head to make a little art book filled with Circle Series pieces. I hadn’t done any Circle Series pieces for a while, so I thought I’d do some mini ones to get the ball rolling. When I started making Circle Series pieces over 10 years ago, it was meant to be very loose and free, but as more and more pieces have been made, I started to be more intimidated that they had to be perfect, which was the direct opposite of the original intention. Working in a small size would hopefully be less intimidating and I could combine it with another love, small art books.
I went to my studio and grabbed a piece of watercolor paper, cut it and folded so each page was a square, accordion style. The pages are 4″ and I think I just jumped right in without any expectations and somehow it ended up in a blue theme, which is not a direction I would have purposefully gone in. I’m just not normally drawn to blue. Greens, reds, yellows, yes, but not blue.
This piece was definitely inspired by my stencil stacks, which have been creeping more and more into my work.
This piece was definitely a nod to how my circle series pieces first began.
I had been cutting from a stack of 60s men’s magazines a lot at the time
and I was working on practicing my embroidery stitches at the time
I saved this one for last, as I had a general idea of what I wanted to do
Here’s a little video, to show it in action and give you an idea of size.
January 2018 was my third year participating in Anika Starmer (aisforanika)’s #PatternJanuary project. Anika shared the following list of 31 prompts for the month and participants make patterns.
I’d like to share the patterns I made in 3 posts and I’ll try to keep the commentary on each to a minimum.
Day 1, Pop. I made this cute and quick theme digitally, a combination of the Paper app, as well as photoshop on the desktop, and used my hand lettered font.
Day 2 – Ultraviolet. 2018’s Pantone color of the year. If you click over to this instagram post, you can read more (and slide through more images) to learn more about the development of this pattern, including referencing old images in my flickr archives.
Day 3 – Aquarium. This piece was inspired by the Wilco song I am Trying to Break Your Heart, AND the Heather Ross goldfish patterns. Once again, you can visit the instagram post to sroll through more progress images and inspiration pics.
Day 4 – recipe. For this pattern I ended up using some elements from a pattern from last year, added new and created a recipe card. See Instagram to see a flip video of the recipe card in action.
Day 5 – Tourist. I thought of Hawaiian shirts and made my own Hawaiian pattern. See Instagram to see progress pictures and the most adorable dress made from this pattern.
Day 6 – Shoes. I referenced a picture I had taken of a bunch of Chuck’s and made this pattern. You can see that reference picture and progress shots at instagram.
Day 7 – Plant Lady. This piece is a work in progress. I have actually made more plant patterns and so I need to scan and put them together still.
Day 8 – Winter. I’m sad to think this was actually my only pattern all month that was made from cut paper stencils.
Day 9 – Spirit Animal. I drew a Bison, scanned it and added watercolor. I would like to adjust this, but we will see.
Day 10 – craft. What says craft more than the variable plethora of adhesives. I made quick sketches of a few from my collection.
I’l be back with the next 10 patterns shortly.
Earlier this year I read this where a person said that before falling asleep they think of the people they like, receiving good news. I think about that occasionally ever since reading it because 1. it is such a sweet and altruistic idea, and makes me so happy. 2. Maybe what we think of in those moments before we sleep can be seen as a snapshot of our inner thoughts and true being. and 3. Now I like to ask people what they think about in the moments before they fall asleep.
Matt said he doesn’t think, and I believe it. His head hits he pillow and he’s out (sometimes even before that point). Matt’s Mom said she counts.
I almost always like to think of art and making. Creating, art materials, concepts and ideas around art.
When I was young I used to have insomnia. When I was in college we were required to keep a daily sketchbook (a page for each studio class each day). I slept with my sketchbook in the bed next to me, and that is probably when I started thinking of art before sleep, and also when I probably stopped lying in bed all night watching the clock of doom tick away. Often, I’d reach over and scribble out ideas or sketches that I had in half (or full) dreams. It’s where I had the idea for my ongoing Circle Series. Actually, at that point, I didn’t have my sketchbook in bed with me, so I rushed into the kitchen and drew this out on my dry erase board on the fridge. I had been wanting to work in a way where I could use a lot of different mediums and styles, and still incorporate them into one cohesive body of work.
Earlier this week I had another one of those ideas right as I was falling asleep. I grabbed my phone this time and used an app to scribble it out. I had the idea of the “Bright” pattern I made (above), but cutting the circle in half, essentially making it into a rainbow shape. Originally, in my head I think the half circle rainbows would become like a scallop pattern, rainbow next to rainbow, next to rainbow.
On the left the idea I scribbled out at night, and on the right, one of the final “cloud rainbows”
I’ve been thinking that I should try some patterns that are not so tightly fit. A lot of the patterns I make are pretty packed because when I use fabric and sew I know that if things are too spread apart, and fabric is cut small, you don’t get to see much of the pattern. I’ve just long preferred tiny patterns on fabric, ever since my first days of making yoyos as a teenager.
When I thought of this new pattern, I thought it might be nice to switch it up. I thought of it more in terms of larger fabric pieces (fashion or upholstery), perhaps because of the influence of Society6 and Spoonflower on me. I also have been working on a different scallop pattern series already, with gelli printed papers, so I decided to really go with a “rainbow” feel. Since the rainbows would be more spread apart, I thought I needed to add another element, so I thought of adding clouds to the background, and that was when I had the idea to add an actual scallop, cloud-like edging, to the outside of each rainbow.
The whole pattern feels kind of dream-like, so it was appropriate that it came to me the way that it did. Here is a 3×3 repeat of the pattern, so you can see what it looks like on repeat overall.
Last night I had another idea, only, stupidly I thought the idea was concrete enough that I’d remember it in the morning and of course, it’s gone. Word to the wise, dream ideas are never concrete. Maybe it will come back to me again tonight.
What do you think of before going to sleep?
Day 21 Folk Art – I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this one. This is probably my favorite from the whole month. Last year the barn quilt author and artist Suzi Parron came to speak at my mom’s quilt guild, and then we did a workshop with her as well, where we got to make our own barn quilts. My mom has been obsessed for years and it was so interesting to learn about them. The most fascinating thing being that they are a brand new art, as in this century! Don’t they seem like something that should have been around in Amish country for hundreds of years? This pattern is going to be made into a fabric, for sure!
Day 22 Bicycle – This pattern was kind of a cheat, in that I made it years and years ago, but I don’t think I ever shared it fully. Maybe I posted a pic of a bike or two, but never the full thing. I have even made little pinback buttons of the bike illustrations pictured here. I penciled in the bikes, then inked them, then painted very wet and loose watercolor around them. In case you don’t know, I love bikes. My own bicycle in particular, and if you haven’t heard it before, I have bought my same bike FOUR times because I love it so much!
Day 23 Pomegranate – When I think of pomegranates I think of my mom and how she seems to take pleasure it preparing a pomegranate. She’ll prepare everything, gathering the fruit, a bowl, a knife and towel, opening it up and peeling it and filling a bowl full of the juicy gem like fruit pebbles. I also think about how much I love pomegranate too, but have way less patience and thus end up buying Pom juice in the fun shaped bottles for a rare treat. This pattern is a nod to the fruit and the juice in an abstract form, in a little art book.
Day 24 Rain– If I remember correctly, I had a different plan for rain, but it didn’t really pan out, so last minute I just did this with my Aquash water brush pen, and navy blue watercolor, and finished it off with splatter, and voila. It’s one of those patterns, that I wish they all could all be so quick and easy-peasy.
Day 25 Black and White – Last year I won a set of Gelli Arts mini shaped plates, and this rectangle one was my absolute favorite. I decided to make a pattern using just black on white paper, with my hand cut paper stencils.
Day 26 Turquoise – I was trying to go for that silver and turquoise ring thing. Turned out more meh than I had hoped for.
Day 27 String – I thought of this picture of handspun yarn I made years and years ago from fiber I dyed with koolaid. This also turned out more meh than I had hoped for. 
Day 28 Floral– Floral is another one of those pattern themes that I would love to explore, more, more, more and more of! This was just a quick pattern that I imagine being reproduced on fabric, but in a way that is reduced so the pattern is fairly tiny.
Day 29 Kaleidoscope– This pattern started out from the picture on the bottom, and then I assembled into kaleidoscope circles on the top on the computer. It came out way more busy than I had envisioned. That is funny because I restarted once when I deemed the first pile of collage papers to be too plain and basic.
Day 30 Plaid – Last year I had the idea of making a greeting card for Christmas with “buffalo plaid” that I would make from loose watercolors. I never got around to it, so this theme let me finally make that pattern that I wanted to do.
Day 31 Fruit Salad – I’m pretty opinionated on my fruit salads. There are few things worse than ordering a fruit salad at a restaurant and when it arrives it is just cantelope, honeydew and a grape. That is NOT a fruit salad. Fruit salad needs to have a LOT of variety. I built this sketchy fruit salad pattern on the computer and I rather liked how it came out.
And here the full collection. At the end Anika asked people to answer a questionaire on how the month went:
- 1. My favorite pattern – the barns/barnquilts for the Folk Art theme for the detail and subject matter being close to my heart.
- 2. Favorite prompts – swan, home, and floral. These are prompts that made me overflow with ideas and I want to go back to them and do more, more, more. The swan and floral themes were ones in particular that I already had plans for in my head prior to starting patternjanuary.
- 3. Biggest challenge – sleep. It’s something that I struggle with regularly anyway. My natural sleep habits would have me up late because I’m most productive and creative late at night, but I have to work at 6 a.m. Last year I finally stopped fighting it and started going to bed around 9 p.m. but the week before January I was on vacation so I slept like I wanted, meaning up late. Then working on patterns, wanting to do them justice, I ended up staying up late furthering the bad sleep pattern. I have been surviving on little sleep for the month (and being late to work more often than not, as well 😱)
- 4. Most frustrating moment – had to be the times that I allowed myself to fall behind schedule because I was so overwhelmed by the prompts that I really wanted to do amazing stuff. I still haven’t finished the dollhouse pattern.
- 5. Most popular pattern – rain. Funny because it was one of the simplest and quickest patterns I made after my first idea flopped. But I have to say that almost all of my patterns this month out perform my average posts. Thank you everyone, for the support!
- 6. Biggest surprise – citrus. It felt like the biggest dud, especially since I was feeling so rusty AND because the picture of it was taken at night, but it got so many likes and comments.
- 7. Proudest moments – being featured on other accounts and people reaching out to me about future projects due to these patterns ❤
- 8. Patterns I want to redo – almost all of them need additional work, and as stated above the dollhouse one was never completed, and I want to do additional swan, house and floral patterns, but as for completely redoing, there aren’t any I’d scratch and start over.
- 9. Goals for next time – maybe stick within one medium? My pieces were all over the place from digital and hand drawn, to watercolor, and collage. Although I do think that allowing myself to mix it up helped me to stick it out. I worry that if I limited myself to one medium that I might get bored and throw in the towel. I just thought of another goal and that would be inspired by @jessee_artschooldropout who made her patterns, finalized them and then uploaded them to spoonflower all in one go. That is amazing.
- 10. Plans for February – catch up on all the things I neglected during January. I have so many things that I need to do that I’m a little overwhelmed where to begin. But number one should be to clean off my work table so I can get back to serious work
Back for part 4 of my 100 day project. First part, Second part, Third part
Another one of my goals for the 100 day project was to get my etsy shop back up over 100 listed items. In my shop’s glory years (when I averaged a handful of sales a week over several years) I had around 100 items listed in my shop at any time. When I let things slide I realized I had gotten down to less than half that. I’ve been working steadily at bringing it back up again and I think I was around 80 items when the 100 day project began. I did get up to 100 items, but with sales and items expiring, it has dipped below and comes back up again. Now I’ve realized that I really need to get it closer to 110 or so to stay above 100.
This is a little out order, this was my post for day 100. When we bought our house there was a whole wall with pegboard in our basement and one day when I was down there I had the idea of hanging up some of my stationery sets to get a group shot. The lighting is not so great down there, but this was fun to put together. It’s really satisfying to see the collection.
This project was long overdue! Last Christmas my nephew (5 at the time) wanted stationery because he has a couple of pen pals. I designed this “adventure” set for him.
I painted the headers in watercolor, based on things I thought would interest him, dinosaurs, space and treasure maps. When I gave it to him at Christmas, I just printed a few sheets of each and gave them to him loosely. My intention was always to have them in a large notepad for better stability when a little kid is writing in it, so I did just that for the 100 day project. I finally made it into a notepad. 1 single notepad, for my nephew. The bottoms are lined for littles who are learning to write, and the pages alternate with illustrated headers and fully lined sheets. I’d love to design a companion set, and I would love to offer these in my shop, but they would really need to be printed commercially because it takes a lot of time printing and assembling, since each header is significantly larger than the types of headers I print on my regular stationery sets.
I painted some large watercolor patterns to use as additional backgrounds for taking product pictures over. A few years ago I drew out a large scribbly grid in a graph paper style and have been using it a lot. I wanted to make a few others so I’d have some variety.
I made these checkered watercolors above and a black and white stripe in watercolor too, but I still end up using the old grid one mostly anyway. I think they are too busy and too colorful/saturated. Oh well.
A simple lined stationery paper set with the tiny posie theme
I made it using elements from my tiny posie pattern I amade during patternswithanika earlier in the year. This set is available in my shop here.
Inspired by flags during a battle scene on Game of Thrones, I decided to make a notepad. I painted a few of these flag posts before settling on one I liked.
And tested it out to see if I’d be able to write my own messages over the printed black. Success!
For fun I cut down a few of the headers and made them into stickers, where the gel pen was printed on the protective coating, so it can be wiped away and changed as needed.
And the final notepad, which was printed on a natural speckled paper. These notepads are available in my shop. LOVE how it came out. It’s rare that I am inspired and then able to start working on something immediately. That helps so much! I need to make a bar graph that shows how the likeliness of a project coming to fruition declines rapidly as time passes.
Another goal I had for the 100 day project was to update some photos from some classic oldies from my shop, like my recycled envelope stationery sets. They used to be a top seller and I had a lot of returning customers for just this product, but when I let my shop slide they kind of got forgotten about. I still love the product, but I think I need to breathe new life into the listings.
I made a bunch of new envelopes to replenish my stock. I use an old shoe box (as pictured above) to sort and categorize the envelopes. It helps when assembling them, so I know each pack gets a good variety.
And here was an attempt to take a new product picture. One thing people have told me before on a number of occasions is that they don’t understand or know what this product is, and even though I love this picture, I don’t think it helps clarify that. I detail what the product is exactly in the listing, but I think most people look at the picture and decide from there if they are interested or not, and so many may not even get to the details of the listing. Maybe the craziness of this pic would make people click just to find out exactly what is going on? I just don’t know how to photograph this product in a way that makes sense, because all the envelopes are different and the stationery designs are a variety as well. If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear it. Another item on my list for the 100 days (but that I never got to) was of a video that would show what the sets are like.
Looks like I will be back with one last post to wrap things up. Catch up on the previous posts here:
First part, Second part, Third part
