Who Would Have Thought Overpopulation Was A Good Thing?!

Overpopulate your canvas. Paint with your hands to begin. Don't start with an idea, just see where the paint takes you.

These were some of the suggestions given by the amazing JESSE RENO last weekend at CAROL PARKS STUDIO. Jesse is an amazing artist - this I knew before taking his class! But he is also generous, real and truly interested in guiding other artists! What an amazing soul, I tell you! If you have a chance to take a class from him, absolutely do it! But make sure you give yourself AT LEAST two days with him! One day was not enough by a long shot and I truly wish I had more. But I have a feeling that there will be more opportunities in the future. :)

I took only a few pictures because I was too wrapped up in the energy of all those creative souls! But KELLY, AHNA, TALLY and PILAR, as well as others, all have some great pics and descriptions of the class. Make sure to check them out!


My Santa Cruz Soul Sista MIJA working on her FANTABULOUS painting here! I kept reminding her that Christmas isn't far away! Heh! I don't want her to give it to me - but if she sells it, I hope I'm the first one in line to buy it! Mija has a wonderfully bright and creative spirit and it was a delight to finally meet her in person!

Kelly and Mija at the work table. I think they were complaining about the overabundance of broccoli in their food! See the swirly painting on the left? That's Jennifer's and is SO COOL! I wish I had a close up of that!

The beautiful and smiling JENN hard at work on her painting! And in the background, Jesse's super-duper awesome paramour LANA GUERRA! Check out her work - she's so talented! AND, she has the courage to express on the outside what I feel like on the inside! It was truly awesome to sit by her and watch her create! It was like a two for one class!

Jenn's hands full of paint - just like Jesse suggests! He said that it's good to start out your paintings just adding color to the canvas with your hands and see what shapes come out that spur you onward. I can tell you that Jenn and I really liked that part of it! Heh!

There's my wonky hands after adding purple to a canvas. I can tell you that canvas is now shades of blue and green with a whale. That whale apparently is trying to show up in several peoples' art. Is that Jesse's doing? Hmmmm, I wonder.

The super-talented TALLY O. showing her hands! Her palate of colors was so beautiful! I feel like I learned from watching her there, too! She's so confident in her work, I think!

Here's me holding up my very first painting. The bird came out from the hand painting technique. It looks different now and I'm still working on it. I'll show it some day when I'm done!
And here is my cat Figaro when we got back home. I'm pretty sure he is saying "You will have to take me with you if you leave again!". And honestly, I think it's about FOOD not ME, cuz he had to miss TWO WHOLE MEALS of wet food!! Heh!

Gremlins Are Alive And Well On Blogger...

...And they ate my blog for a few moments there. Apparently they thought it was SPAM! I didn't think anyone still ate SPAM! Hopefully they have had their fill now and will leave my blog alone! IT ISN'T SPAM! It's more like...baked tofu with a light peanut sauce! Heh!

As I didn't announce the winner of my Bird Gothic Arch publically, the winner was: MAIJA! You can see her blog on the list to the left called Maija Lepore (I'm too lazy to list the link in this post!). She has a picture of the giftie that arrived. Congrats Maija and I hope you enjoy your birdie! Don't worry folks, I promise to have another giveaway very soon and I hope you will think it is just as great! :)

Without further ado (well, too much ado), I give you my latest art. A Gothic Arch done in the theme of YOUR FAVORITE BOOK. Choosing just one was torturous, so I ended up choosing the one that changed my art in a positive way: POEMCRAZY by Susan Wooldridge. I adore this poet, author, artist, woman, wandering soul quite a lot! Pick up her books to read - you will not be sorry! Anyways, here is the art I created around that book. Hope you enjoy!

Sometimes The Words Are Enough of A Picture

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace.

The pasture gleams and glooms 'Neath billowing skies
that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82)

"Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink. Know What I Mean?"

The title of my blog has nothing to do with this post. We just watched Monty Python's Flying Circus on BBC America tonight and the sketches always stick in my brain for a long time afterwards. Kinda explains things, doesn't it?!

Anyways, as always, these scans must be looked at with one eye closed and the open one sort of blurry in order to see past the crusty scanner. ;) These pages (8x8 each) were done for Dorothy. I think they turned out pretty well. I liked the nice color combination (her choosing).

Obviously I liked this combo so much that I also did these pages for a round robin book belonging to the very talented Teresa Stebbins of OH:

They are oriented in the book just like you see them here (top and bottom). I liked working in this perspective, with the spine of the book horizontal. Although, it did take me a little while to get going on them. I really wanted the top page to be of the sky and the bottom to be of the earth so they would mesh together well. I would like to explore making something like this with painting.

So...if you are STILL here (bless you if you are, my friends!) then I have a surprise for you! While on my blue and brown kick I made THIS gothic arch:

Do you like it? Would you like to have it? Well, I am giving it away to a lucky reader who leaves a comment on this post! Yay! Or at least, I hope you are saying yay! Heh Heh! Just leave a comment about anything and I will put your name in a drawing next FRIDAY July 25th and pick the lucky winner! If you don't have a blog, please email me your email address (scomerford@comcast.net) so I can notify you if you win!

So that's all for tonight, my sweet poppets! I will leave you with a quote from another one of my favorite British comedies Thin Blue Line with Rowan Atkinson: "I once possessed a whoopie cushion. I never deployed it, of course, but the capacity was there."

For Michelle

I think it's definitely time to invest in a new scanner. The background is white and at the top of each page is a piece of torn white-decorated paper. The translation of the words is: Springtime in Paris...Fills my heart with flowers! Thank you Linda K. for the translation! Merci!!

I did something completely different for these pages, but I wasn't liking how it was turning out at all. So I just started playing with some torn paper and some flower stamps and this is what came out. I liked these a lot better - even if the scans make them look yuk. :(

The Latest Buzzzzzzzzzzz

Are you having a BEE-utiful day? I hope so!

If you would like your day to be even more BEE-utiful, you should go check out the blog by my friend PATTI (click her name to go there!). She is having a BEE-lightful giveaway of some art she made! Of course, I know you don't really like those pesky bee's, so you don't have to enter! In fact, I think I heard a rumor that if you entered you would be chased by a swarm of angry bees all the way to the ends of the earth! So, you know, better to be safe than sorry, right?!! Besides, I'm going to win! Muwahahaha!

Shield Your Eyes & Call Ripley's Believe it Or Not!

I actually made some art this week! Yes, I know! I cannot believe it either! Heh! Unfortunantly the scans are HORRID! Ugh! But I will upload it in the hopes that all you wonderful artists will know that it is really much prettier in person. Or at least I HOPE it is! :)

The first two scans are of a gothic arch for the wonderful Debbie J. in Milwaukee! Her theme was "Shirley Temple Movies". I decided to do Little Miss Broadway because I love musicals. The words on the back are the song "Be Optimistic" from the movie. I chose to do it in pink because, well, Shirley just says little girl pink to me! The netting on the front is supposed to be representative of stage curtains. You get that, right? Right?? And I think I'm going to cover up the brad prongs on the back with shiny stars. But I'm too lazy to do it tonight and don't want to rescan. So you'll just have to use your imagination to figure out what it'll look like! :)

This second set of scans are book pages for the lovely Mama Peggy! Her theme was flowers and we got to alter a victorian style flower album, which was fun! I used pink because that was the colors of my pages to work on! Yes. You don't have to tell me I'm a sharp cookie - I am quite aware of that! Heh! And honestly, these scans do not do justice to these pages at all. I'm not saying they are the most amazing pieces of art ever - but they turned out very soft and sweet. The border around the pages is actually a pink glitter and looks very pretty. The angel wings also have glitter on them. I added some pink vellum flowers and a tiny white vellum butterfly to the pages as well. I felt guilty for not doing "more" to them. But since the carnations were already printed on the page, I really wanted to incorporate them into my design. So that meant keeping it somewhat simple. The words in the oval say "The flowers have their angels". It is a quote from around the 13th century that they found in an old manuscript of a writer. And actually, they say it is the first time the idea of flower meanings (which was very big in the victorian age!) was first written down. I hope you like your pages Ma P! The book will now come home to you! Yay!

Now children, I must go tuck myself into bed. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!