Notes From The Artist

When you're looking at a finished piece of artwork, it's hard to step back and consider what was involved in the creation of it. I think this can be especially true online. So here's a glimpse...

Yesterday my daughter and I had a conversation about what it meant it to be an artist.

”Don’t you need a studio space or something?
You can’t just work from our house.”

Apparently that disqualifies me.

Incidentally, she also assumed having a studio space would be free and didn’t take into consideration that I had a studio space, I wouldn’t actually be around when I was working.

Oh, and she wouldn’t have access to my supplies anymore, which in our house, would be a big deal.

So ultimately it was decided that perhaps a studio space is not only unnecessary but ultimately a bad idea.

What a relief.

This conversation was partially brought on by me working to finish up a piece Saturday when she wanted my attention. Sometimes it’s hard to balance it, being an artist and a mother. Especially when you work from home. The lines can get fuzzy. In the end we end up creating something entirely new together that she took the lead on and discussed having a museum showing at our house with her work being showed alongside mine for our family and friends to enjoy.

Now lets jump back to the start of the week:

I decided to try something different…

I chose to not make any posts last week and just focus on creating and documenting the process as I went. My creative process is slow and far from linear. There is a lot of bouncing around from one thing to another but if I just show you the finished piece you don’t see any of that. None of the messiness, the ugly, awkward layers, the experimenting that goes on… all the things that make up the whole.

So I spent the week photographing as I went to document the process and share it with you. Sort of a week in the life, focused solely on my art. All together I worked about fifteen hours last week. Most of which happened while my kids were at school or in bed for the night supposed to be in bed.

I went into the week knowing I wanted to get at least one piece finished (in part because I have about 10ish in progress) which meant I needed to finish up some houses I had pieced together from plastic a few weeks ago. I also knew I really wanted to get started on a new, larger scale piece.

Tuesday:

I began my morning by applying pressed flowers to the inside of the houses and then covered the outside in hand dyed coffee filters. While all of that dried I finished up some cardboard cloud shelves I had also started on a few weeks ago. (Are you noticing a theme?) The cloud shelves are what the houses will ultimately sit on in the finished work.

I ended up with just enough time to get an initial layer of paint down on the new, large sheet of watercolor paper I bought over the weekend before it was time to head out and pick up my son.

When we all arrived back home both of my kids gave their hearty approval of the initial paint layer.

-For reference sake, the initial layer is a mix of Fluorescent Magenta, Ultramarine Violet and Titanium White.

The Fluorescent Magenta is a color I’ve never used in my work before. I only had it because my daughter had picked it out at the art supply store over the weekend for herself. After playing around with it some, I can tell you with absolute certainty my daughter is in fact a wizard and it was the color I didn’t know I needed.

Lucky for me she’s happy to share.

On Tuesday night while the kids were in bed and definitely not running around like hyenas outside I lit the little houses up in the garden with some battery operated candles to get a good feel for them.

After actually getting children to bed I decided I wanted to try something different with the houses because they just didn’t feel quite right.

Wednesday:

I experimented with glazing fluid mixed with acrylics and added a layer of paint to add some more dimension to the houses. Lucky for me this worked really well and thanks to the glazing fluid the houses were still translucent enough for light to shine through.

Newly painted house

While the houses fully dried I did about ten minutes of writing on my front porch when I noticed the shadows from some butterflies dancing around the garden. I watched the butterflies and the shadows they made for a few minutes before heading back inside to add a few more layers or paint to the new piece.

Common Buckeye enjoying the Blue Mistflowers

Since the paper is a good size, I used this Creative Mark paintbrush for all my layers up to this point. I can’t express how much I love this brush…

I also used my vine charcoal to sketch some Ironweed Verona from photos I took on my solo trip.

I knew the Ironweed Verona was a native plant to the US but I didn’t realize just how amazing it was until after I drew it. I learned that it’s a host plant for the Ironweed Borer Moth whose larvae are eatin up by woodpeckers, as well as a host plant for American Lady and Painted Lady Butterflies. The seeds are a nutritious option for native birds and it draws Great Spangled Frittilary’s, Monarchs, Eastern Tiger Swallowtails and Leonard Skipper’s.

This is a great book to use as a reference for native plants and find native alternatives

It’s a beast of a plant and certain species of Verona are becoming endangered in parts of the Midwest.

The build up over three days

Thursday:

I continued progress on the larger piece (see bottom right photo above) roughly cutting in with some paint and adding in some Bush’s Poppy Mallow with vine charcoal along the bottom portion.

After that I spent time playing around with different layouts to finish up another piece. I have stacks of cardboard glued together and reuse my painters tape till it’s dead while I arrange and rearrange everything.

Once I had a layout I liked I took it down and cut a rough cardboard backer to start building out from. These final stages of a piece take a good amount of time to get just right, building the layers, cutting cardboard, gluing, making sure everything is sitting just right, sealing things up.

There’s a lot of back and forth, from the counter, to the wall and making small adjustments. I use coffee filters to finish the edges of everything.

Sometime Saturday:

It’s a bit like doing a puzzle but not having all the pieces cut but everything has to fit together just right.

Sometime Saturday night I got it finished though. Including a bit of smoke in the chimney of the house (courtesy of my daughter).

The photos of this piece really don’t highlight how magic it feels, constructed from the most basic, mundane materials that would otherwise be headed for the recycle bin.

I’m curious to hear what you think? Do you bounce around from one project to another? Let me know in the comments or send me a DM.

Have a good week,

Bec (and Juner)…

(and Gus)