Summer Reading

A friend from work moved back to Ontario about a month ago. It's been strange not having her as part of my morning 'check-in' routine or a friendly ear for when I need a movement break but I'm sure she'll be much more productive at her new job without me interrupting her and hovering in her office doorway!

Before she left, we had a team retreat at my place and she fell in love with Connemara Berries. Sadly (for her), I had already promised it to someone else. And so, I decided to paint her something as a going away gift. She chose this one from a photo by my friend Ky.

A little note about the lovely Ky. She's the most wonderful photographer. She has this uncanny ability to take something common and make it extraordinary. Things like a single rose, berries, leaves, a dew drop, a rusty fence, or a book. Makes for an abundance of options for painting!



Summer Reading (9x12)


Since my friend and I share a love of singer/songwriters & CBC Radio2 tunes, I HAD to make a playlist of my current favorites.

1. Early April Morning - Brendan James
2. Dreamcatcher - Elizabeth & The Catapult
3. Victoria - John Mayer
4. Tightrope - Green River Ordinance
5. When You Find Me - Joshua Radin
6. Awake My Soul - Mumford & Sons
7. Come Home - OneRepublic & Sara Bareilles
8. Forever & Always - Parachute
9. Winter Birds - Ray LaMontagne
10. Set the Fire to the Third Bar - Snow Patrol & Martha Wainwright
11. Perfect Heaven Space - Travis
12. Drifting - Tyrone Wells
13. Can't Go Back Now - The Weepies
14. Distance - Christina Perri
15. This = Love - The Script

ETSY!!!

I opened an Etsy shop! It's still 'under construction' but I'm super excited for it to be up and going.

Today, I visited with my friend Erika and we talked about our respective Etsy shops (among other things). We discussed banners, avatars, names of the shops, all the extra work involved (payments, return policies, how to list, what to list) and how to make our shops stand out against all the other art shops. So much to think about!

The plan, once I'm done all the promised paintings to friends and family (which are the next 5 or so), is to paint some small ones to sell and to use any money I make to travel. And then take pictures while
I travel to all those exotic places, paint them, list on Etsy, lather, rinse, repeat.

Erika's shop, The Passionate Pencil, is going to be awesome. She's an absolutely amazing artist and she'll have some fantastic art for sale soon. Go check it out!

Sprocket

Oh my goodness!! It's been almost 2 months since I posted anything and longer than that since I've finished a painting. Which also means I broke my New Year resolution 4 months in.

Fail. Major fail.

Except this is painting #6 since January, so if we average it out, I'm ahead of the game. Yeah. Let's do that.

Anyway. I finally finished Sprocket, the surprise dog painting I was commissioned to do. It really took forever to complete. Not because I didn't want to work on it, but because I was so absolutely exhausted from the rest of my life that I couldn't bring myself to work on it.

My friend took a picture of the almost finished product to reveal the surprise last weekend. It was hard for me to give her a picture when I wasn't done yet and couldn't stop myself from telling her to make sure Pat (the birthday girl) knew what I still needed to fix. My stomach was in knots and what little fingernails I had are now gone. And it was all for naught.

I just heard the surprise was a big hit and that there were happy tears & major excitement - especially because Pat just painted her basement and Sprocket matches perfectly. Big sigh of relief from over here.

Sprocket (20x24)

Now Sprocket strikes me as a Joss Stone & Amy Winehouse kind of girl, so I listened to Introducing Joss Stone, Mind, Body, & Soul, Color Me Free, and Back to Black while I painted. Lovely tunes

Work with No Results...

I painted and sketched practically all weekend and haven't finished a thing, so no pictures to post yet. I've got 4 different paintings on the go at the moment - the most I've tried to juggle so far. I don't think it's working. I have a hard time figuring out which one to work on when. The one I should be trying to finish first isn't the one I want to work on and so on and so forth.

I worked on the dog painting the most. It took forever to sketch out because she kept ending up looking like a hyena instead of a dog. I really need to vacuum up all the eraser bits all over my floor, but she looks like she's supposed to. I hope.

Fingers crossed I finish at least one this week!

Days Off

The best part of having a day off work is the hours and hours of uninterrupted (provided the on-call phone doesn't ring) time to whatever I want, whenever I want, for however long I want.

Today, I want to paint. I also want to read, watch movies, sleep, and ignore all housekeeping/errands that need to get done. Which is exactly what I'm going to do.

I've been missing my free time lately, since weekdays were full of over-time and weekends were more of the same. I may still have to be on-call this weekend, but the bright side of that is being required to stay within city limits. A reason to decline plans and stay home to paint some more. It's nicer than saying I'd rather be alone.

I've done a lot already today. Painted the outer border of Baby Clothes, Freud, and Connemara Berries (1/2 of it anyway), worked on Fall Leaves (that one is going to take FOREVER), and sketched out a couple new ones.

I'm sure there will be more to post soon!

Connemara Berries

My day job has been killing me lately. Research proposals, weekend workshops, meetings upon meetings upon meetings, plus the regular stuff. Stress x social anxiety = nutcase me.
Relaxing activities, as minimal as they've been lately, did inspire some painting. The weekend workshop was in Banff and our afternoons were free, so I had oodles of time for exploring and picture taking. Which, of course, didn't happen but I at least got a couple pictures when I wasn't networking. Ugh. I hate networking.

My one reprieve was Sunday night. An evening out with like-minded friends to see Joshua Radin with Laura Jansen and Cary Brothers. Such fantastic singer/songwriters! As my friend Jen said, it was the best $25 I've ever spent. It was the perfect wrap to a busy weekend.

Happily, painting just seemed to flow from there. This is another one of Chris & Kelly's from Connemara, Ireland.

Connemara Berries (9x12)

A few weeks ago, I noticed the list of J names on my iPod is quite a bit longer than any other. And they're all fantastic! Does anyone else have this? Maybe it's because my tastes run one direction and that's what they all sing? Anyway, the discovery just screamed for a playlist for painting.

1. Jack Johnson - Dreams Be Dreams
2. James Blunt - Into the Dark
3. Joshua Radin - Sundrenched World
4. Josh Kelley - Opposite of Me
5. Joss Stone - Free Me
6. Jose Vanders - Blue Notes
7. Jim Bryson - Freeways In the Frontyard
8. Joel Willoughby - Museums and Churches
9. Jeremy Fisher - Goodbye Blue Monday
10 Jamie Cullum - London Skies
11. James Morrison - Broken Strings
12. Jon McLaughlin - Beautiful Disaster
13. Jim Cuddy - Pull Me Through
14. Jason Mraz - Conversation With Myself
15. John Mayer - Perfectly Lonely

A Piece of The Puzzle

This has nothing to do with painting or music (though Cara loves both) but it's important to share.

My friend Cara and her husband are in the process of adopting a baby from the Democratic Republic of Congo and after months and months of working and waiting, they just found out they're #2 on the waitlist. Yay!!!

It's unbelievably expensive to adopt a baby from the DRC so they've set up a few fundraisers to help bring their baby home.

Right now, they're selling puzzle pieces of this 1000 piece puzzle and they plan to hang the completed puzzle in their baby's room. Makes me all weepy thinking about it.

Please take a minute to check out their site, A Piece of The Puzzle, and donate if you can.