Yummy Green Beans

This is one of those non-art random posts I warned you about in Blogs, Business, Books & Beaches. I bought some Texas green beans from Sprouts yesterday and made up this recipe as I cooked them. It turned out great!

Ingredients:

Green beans
2 Tbl butter (or olive oil would work)
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 Tbl Red wine vinegar
2 Tbl brown sugar
1/4 cup pecans, broken up and lightly toasted. (or skip the toasting and toss them in anyway)

Clean, trim, & break green beans into 2" pieces. I'm not sure how much I used but it filled a 9" saute pan. Probably a bag of frozen would work just as well. Don't used canned green beans...canned green beans are very gross!

Bring 1/2 cup water to a boil, add beans, put on lid, turn down heat and simmer for 10 minutes (watch the water to make sure it doesn't boil away)

Remove lid, add butter & olive oil. Cook for 2 minutes, add remaining ingredients and cook for another 2 minutes.

Yummy!

I don't have a painting of green beans but I did a quick search on Etsy and found these adorable earrings from a French artist. Glutamate's shop carries these earrings and other quirky designs.

Self-Portraits continued, Grades 2-4

Grades 2nd - 4th, including one advanced 1st grader. I also forgot to mention in the last post that they could do whatever they wanted for a background with 2 colors plus white. Some kids sweet talked me into another color and some used their color-mixing skills to made a secondary color. ALL of them demonstrated a wonderful amount of creativity!

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First Grade Self-Portraits

Spring session is when we study animal and people portraits. Towards the end of the session the students paint a 20" x 16" self-portrait in acrylic. The work this year has been fabulous!!

This 4 are from my K-1 class, but all 4 happen to be 1st graders.

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Reflecting on Reflections

Reflections took about six months from beginning to end. I took photos along the way to share my painting process.

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Step 1: I apply flexible modeling paste mixed with a little paint (the blue) with a palette knife to create a stucco-like surface on the canvas. Then I use paint thinned with water to draw out the basic composition.

Step 2: I block in the major colors in a medium value (except for the figure).

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I started with a photo of my son I took right at sunset at Topsail Island, North Carolina several years ago. I always liked the very monochromatic (one color) look of the painting. It is that point in the evening where all the light turns blue and everything is very calm and relaxing.

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Step 3: Working from the background to the foreground, I work the painting into a loosely, realistic state.

After getting the back waves painted in, I decided I didn't like the composition of the diagonals. I added another layer of water in the middle picture. I felt it also helped keep the focus on the boy in the center to have the waves converging behind him.

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For most of this painting I kept my palette to a bare minimum: Cobalt Blue, Cadmium Orange, Titanium White, and Mars Black. When I got to the shading on the boy, the orange was just too harsh, I add several more colors at that point to get the look I was trying to achieve.

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Step 4: The figure. The first image is getting the shape and middle value blocked in. In the second picture, I correct some proportional imbalances in the arm on the left and the shape of the stomach & hips on the right. In the 3rd picture, I realize that my limited palette isn't going to give the depth in his body so by the 4th image, I've expanded the palette to sharpen the focus on the boy and his reflection on the shallow water on the sand.

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Reflections is about reflecting, the light on the ocean, the wet sand & the boy. The boy on the wet sand. The final painting, Reflections, 36" x 24" acrylic on canvas.

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Blogs, Business, Books, Beaches

Blogs...

This one is going to be more active, maybe not always about art, but, hopefully, interesting. I've wrestled with the personal vs. business and the getting-to-know-me vs tmi (too much information for those not...um...blessed?...to have lived with a teenager).

I've learned over the past 4 years that my customers are not just interested in a pretty picture for the living room, they want to 'know' about their art and about me as an artist and person. I've also found myself drawn to art or other things based on getting to know the person. So after picking the brains of some close advisers, I'm going to get a little more informal (but not tmi!) with this blog.

Business...

Art classes are almost over for the Spring Session. The kids have done some fabulous work. I'm taking the summer off and will have Fall's schedule up in July.

I've re-arranged the gallery portion of my website to showcase my work by medium. I've also removed smaller paintings and put those on my Etsy Shop, Cobalt Blue Dreams. It is easier to add new work as I finish it and I have a lot of work from my flip bins to add so there is something new each week in the shop!

Books...

I've been reading a lot this year and want to share..some book reviews coming soon. I'm also up for any suggestions, read any good books lately?

Beaches...

Summer is almost here! Can't wait for my annual trek to visit my family in North Carolina. As always, I'm expecting to take a zillion or so photos to inspire me in the studio. Speaking of studio, I finished Reflections, a 36" x 24" acrylic painting of my son right at sunset walking on the beach. This painting is available for purchase on my website.

Does Your Love Have to Be Your Life?

I have a cousin who was an unbelievable swimmer. When we were kids, his mom signed him up for the swim team each year and he always won medals and ribbons. Just as soon as he was able to choose his summer activities, he dropped swim team like a rock. I never understood why, because he LOVED swimming and was so GOOD at it. He told me being MADE to swim instead of CHOOSING to swim took the joy out of it for him, regardless of how many ribbons he won.

I've been struggling with this love/hate relationship with my art. I LOVE doing art, I'm fairly GOOD at it (won ribbons, sold paintings), but I've not enjoyed DOING it for over a year now. I don't want to rant or whine about my art career during the past year, but I can wrap it up in two words..It Sucked. By a business definition, it was a "successful" year: I had more art students and full classes than ever before, plus my art sales almost doubled from the previous year. In terms of personal satisfaction, it was out of control freight train careening down into the canyon. Art became work, not joy. Every act of creation was second guessed and analyzed.... "Will it sell?" .."Is is too big?..does it need to be smaller & more affordable?" .."Can I paint this subject or do I need to paint more flamingos/chickens/etc?" .... whoops... sorry, the whining is slipping in... but you get the picture.

I decided last fall to take a good look at my life and do some thinking, praying and researching. I realized that I didn't like the art I was starting to create or the way I was trying to make a living at it. The guilt was (and on some days..still is) overwhelming..here I was living most artists' dream...nice studio space, supportive spouse...but maybe it isn't this artist's dream.

I'm still creating art..better art now that the pressure is off. I'll still be selling my art, but I'm not worried about business terms of success anymore. Art can be my voice again instead of my living. As for teaching, I've found I have more time to concentrate and I enjoy it more than ever. The students are an inspiration to me and I'll continue teaching as long as I can over the next couple of years. As for my making a living, I'm heading back to graduate school for an entirely unrelated career (another post..another time!).

As I said, I'm still selling my work. The walls of my house don't seem to expand at the same rate my art creation does! Instead of art shows, I'll be concentrating on internet sales and word of mouth referrals (always my best source!). I'm shifting my website to showcase my large (and more expensive) pieces and Pet Portraits. For my smaller works and reproductions (prints), I've opened an Etsy shop. It is called CobaltBlueDreams and I'm adding work weekly to it. I'm starting with new works and prints and going backwards through time. I chose Etsy mainly because it is easy and fun. I love browsing Etsy and my smaller works and collages fit the "browsing" style of shopping at Etsy. My larger works will remain on my website, not many people impulse buy a $1200 painting or Pet Portrait.

So check out CobaltBlueDreams today, and then check back next week, and the week after...you get the idea! If you see something disappear off my website, check out the shop..I may have moved it over.

This painting is a fun piece inspired by an amaryllis that was given to my daughter for Valentine's Day. Valentine is a 12" x 6" acrylic painting on gallery-wrapped canvas and can be purchased in my Etsy shop.

By the way, CobaltBlueDreams isn't just a random name. Cobalt Blue is my favorite painting color and appears in most of my skies (the ones that are intensely blue!) Dreams got added on because it fit. I'll send a random pack of 5 of my notecard prints to the first person who can tell my what else is significant about the name of my shop!