New Art and Cute Kids

Here is my latest piece.  I know I said I was enjoying working without collage elements, but I sort of wanted to do a more personal piece about my family right now.  So I included the bunnies to represent each member, then wrote words around the "path", detailing some of the things I want to remember about this time.

I think I really like the piece.  I loved choosing the colors for the little triangles, coming up with the perfect balance of cools, warms, lights, darks.  But I can't decide if the piece is too busy as a result.  There's a lot going on, but maybe it all just works.  I don't know- I'll have to let it sit for a few days and see what I think then...

( The reason the one bunny is on top of the smaller house is because Noah loves climbing on top of our little playhouse in the backyard!)

I realized I haven't shown that many photos of the kids recently.  Partially because stupid Blogger still downloads all my vertical photos sideways.   I take 90% of my photos vertically, but I was able to find some good horizontal ones to show so that I don't have to go through and manually save each one as a JPEG!

Someone turned 4!

As you can see, Avery gets lots of extra help (and rides!) from her big brothers.  We're all really enjoying our weather here lately.  It's GORGEOUS out in Florida right now, and we're taking full advantage, before the hot summer comes!

Hope you're all enjoying the beginnings of Spring as well!

The Boys' New Shared Room

As I've mentioned before, when Riley turned five (October), we moved the two boys into a shared room and turned Riley's old room into a playroom.  Which meant I had some re-decorating to do in both "new" rooms. Here is the reveal of their new bedroom!

The color scheme of the room is inspired by the painting above.  I found it a couple years ago at Goodwill (for only $12!), and couldn't pass it up!  It's an original painting depicting two boys flying kites in a field-perfect for their room! We got navy blue bunk beds, and I chose orange and green colors from the painting for the walls.

This is the view of the room as you walk through the door.

And here's the left-hand wall and the bed.

A closer shot of the wall. As you can see in the previous photo, it's pretty tight next to the bed, and there are drawers over there, so everything on the wall had to be pretty shallow.  But it turned out to be the perfect place to put a book sling!   There are tutorials for these all over the web, but I just sort of made up my own version, and it turned out great!

 

The beds again...

This chalkboard was another fantastic thrift find.  It's wonderfully aged, and has the chalk ledge attached.   I found it while I was in the midst of doing the room, and it was the perfect addition!  You can see a couple of our chore charts up there!

And wouldn't you know it, but probably a week after finding the first chalkboard, I found a second, identical one in half the size!  I had to get it.  For right now, I propped it behind their little table, but it will probably end up in the playroom soon...  As you can see, I also made a valance to match the book sling.

 

Here is their shared dresser.  I considered repainting it (it's had the same finish through four different room re-dos!), but I'm kind of too lazy, and it actually matches pretty well!  The large letters are just repainted from their old rooms, and then I display their current scrapbooks/journals up there as well.

 

Wrapping back around the room...

Then, we end up back at the door.  I repainted the little shelves from Riley's old room, and have various little mementoes displayed there.  You can see the shoe hanger from a while ago- it's still in use, although their shoes barely fit into the pockets anymore!

These last two photos just show the boys' individual spaces.  Riley's on the top bunk, since he's oldest. 

And Noah's on the bottom bunk.  I got them each the little wall pockets (from Ikea), so they can store various things in their own space.  It's funny what sort of things show up in the pockets!  Their bedspreads are both secondhand.  I found Noah's at a thrift store, and found Riley's on Ebay to "match".   I loved the idea of vintage bedspreads that didn't match (like in Danielle Thompson's sons' room), so this was my version.  At some point, I may make quilts for them, but for now, this works great!

And that's it!  We're all really enjoying their new room.  It's grown-up enough, yet still fun for them.  And having most of the toys out of their bedroom makes it so much more peaceful in there as well.

Hope you liked it!

Get Your Paint On- Week 5

I'm a couple weeks late getting my final painting done for my class, but I have good reason.  Jason and I were in Hawaii!  Luckily, we missed all the tsunami drama by a few days...  But anyway, here's my final painting:

We didn't really have an assignment for this one, other than to use some of the things we've learned in the class.  As I stated in a previous post, one of the biggest things I've taken away is the idea of mixing all my own colors.  So for this piece, I think I only used one color straight from the tube- I mixed the rest of them.  As hard as I try, my paintings all seem to come out with a similar palette, but I definitely think this one looks just a bit more sophisticated, color-wise, as a result.

The other thing I experimented with in this piece is the balance of geometric designs and organic shapes.  I am enjoying the introduction of harder-edged elements into my work.  It's something I hadn't tried before this class.

If nothing else, this class renewed my excitement about painting without collage elements.  I've had a lot of fun just painting.  Unfortunately, I think I enjoy it more than doing the scrapbooks for my kids, so I'm going to have to find a balance during my limited art time!

Get Your Paint On- Week 4

Here is my latest piece from the online class I'm taking.  We were supposed to concentrate on composition with this piece.

I usually feel like balance and composition come pretty naturally to me, but on this piece, I specifically paid attention to it- making sure the weight and colors worked well.  

It was another fun one to do! Although I'm having a little too much fun doing these pieces for the class, and not working on my kids' journals, unfortunately!!  I'll be playing catch-up in those once this is all done with!

Get Your Paint On- Week Three

This week, our assignment was to pick four (I cheated, and only picked three) objects from our life, and match their colors in our painting. 

I chose my three kids' "lovies":  Riley's puppy, Noah's giraffe, and Avery's blankie.  The chairs in the painting are the paints I mixed.  In reality, they match a little better than the photo shows, but they also dried a bit darker than the mixed paints. 

 One light bulb moment for me this week was Mati and Lisa's recommendation to never use paint straight from the bottle.  They recommend always mixing your paints to get more complex colors.  While I can't say that I followed that 100% this week, it did really affect the way I used my colors, and I did a lot more mixing than I usually do.  They did an interview with Matte Stephens this week, which further cemented those ideas.  His pallette is SO AMAZING- I look at his work, and think my colors look so amateur-ish comparatively!

Anyway, this piece took a while to come together.  I'm really wondering about my use of the arches.  I can't tell if I use the shape as a fall-back or not.  But they just feel so "right" to me, that it's hard NOT to use them.  And I sort of feel like I haven't completely explored them to their fullest yet. 

What I'm enjoying is using some of the more geometric shapes in combination with the organic shapes of the arches.  This is new for me, so I'll play with that for a while...

Okay, that's all. Avery's banging on the porch door with a golf club, so guess I'd better go attend to my kids!!

Get Your Paint On- Week Two

Here is my piece of work for the second week of Mati and Lisa's class.  We were asked to use a favorite painting or artist as a starting point, and go from there.  I am a great admirer of Jennifer Mercede's work, and especially this tryptich.  I love how she paints lots of details, then covers over large portions of her painting, leaving only glimpses of the underpainting. 

Jennifer doesn't tend to use many collage elements or photos in her work, but I wanted to try to merge her style with my own, so I decided to put photos of my kids in, so I felt an emotional connection to it.

This piece was so much fun to do!  I didn't really think about what I was doing for the majority of the time I worked (don't you just love it when you can get into that sort of zone while you work?), and I just let the shapes emerge.  The movement and forms of the painting just felt very "right" and comfortable to me, and I kept getting a sense of some sort of protective creature carrying the kids within it as it lurched along.  The whole thing also sort of has an outer space feeling to it, and I have no idea where that's coming from, but I guess I just need to go with it...!

I always do well with "assignments" when I work- it gives me a starting point, and a different way of thinking, which can really help if I'm feeling in a rut.  So I'm loving that aspect of this class.  Additionally, I've learned about so many new artists already, which is always great inspiration!  Will keep you all posted of my upcoming assignments!

Miss Avery's Painting

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you may remember a few years ago (wow, has it been that long?) when I did painted portraits of my boys.  Poor Avery hasn't been well represented on the walls until recently, so I finally have gotten around to remedying that!

Here is our newest piece on the wall, done from the photo below:

 Just look at that face- what a sweetie!!

 It's been a while since I did a realistic painting, but I'm very pleased with the results!

It came out a little different in tone than the boys', but I don't mind.

As you can see, she is equally enamored with herself, but I guess that's what to expect from a little girl!!

Now, my next task is to do a little silhouette of her to complete the arrangement!

Get Your Paint On

I'm taking an online painting class taught by Mati McDonough and Lisa Congdon, both artists whom I've admired for a while.  Our first assignment was to do a piece inspired by the Gee's Bend quilts. Oh my, are there some gorgeous pieces there!!

This particular one especially caught my eye.  I LOVE the mixture of the dainty feminine patterns with the bolder geometric patterns- SWOON!  The above painting was my piece inspired by the quilt.  Looking at the two side by side, I definitely prefer the quilt, but I'm fairly happy with the painting as well...!

I'm looking forward to the remainder of the class- I love both teachers' work so much, I'm hoping to glean some of their carefree, whimsical style to incorporate into my own work!

Journal Pages Roundup

I finished Riley's latest journal, and did the cover.  As you can see, it covers an entire year of his life.  As he gets older, I just don't seem to get to his book as often as I'd like, but I guess that just goes with the territory of having three kids!

 Noah's book got a spread about his wonderful relationship with his baby sister- they really seem to have a special bond!

He also got a page about SUPER NOAH!  Boy, this kid is into superheroes lately!  So he really loves this page!  I had a lot of fun making it, trying to get that comic book vibe, yet still stay within my own style...

 Miss Avery learned to walk a few months ago, so this page is about that milestone.  I love the vintage baby shoes embellishments I found (probably by Joleen's) at Michael's.  I don't often use premade scrapbook embellishments, but every so often, I find the perfect one!

 Here's a spread about the dress worn by both Avery and myself as a baby.  The photos themselves were posted on my Flickr site, so if you'd like a closer look, you can see them there.

And one about her learning to talk.  I really love this page!  I love the vintage girl illustration with her pigtails! I've been putting Avery's hair in pigtails lately, and the drawing really reminds me of her...

Okay, hope you're all having a great start to the weekend.  We've got a teacher's workday here today, so are spending the day home playing.  The kids haven't even taken off their pajamas, which is not like me at all!  But we're all loving it!