Behind on my Paintings

As you can see, it's getting harder and harder to finish a painting a day. I'm going to have to abandon the project. The rest of my life is becoming unhinged because I'm behind on so many things, and now it looks like we may have to move. I can barely keep up with the daily paintings in a stable environment.  And I want to finish all the paintings I started on my trip, some of which I'll show down below.

Unfinished abstract

Unfinished abstract

Unfinished abstract

Unfinished abstract

Unfinished abstract

Unfinished abstract

Unfinished portrait

Unfinished abstract

Roses Meet Darwin

I needed to do something simple for today's painting so I did some roses with a double loaded brush. They looked a little lonely so I added the lilacs.

Yesterday's painting was a mixed media affair with Darwin from a PBS special I was watching at the time.

Strange Gourds Still Life Painting

I tweaked yesterday's painting a bit. The right side Italian cypress tree was leaning too much.  I made some other minor improvements as well.
Then it was on to today's painting. I bought some of these strange ornamental gourds to paint before going on my trip, and sadly, one of them was already moldy.  So I tossed it and figured I'd better paint them today before the other ones get soft. It was more challenging than I thought. And I had a brown background which just wasn't doing a thing for me so I repainted it blue and white. When it's light out again I'll have to do some minor fixing, but it's as done as it's going to get tonight.

From the Train

On the train coming home I made some composite sketches of views along the train route.  This was a collection of images I saw between Simi Valley and Chatsworth. I used the sketch to make this painting tonight. And once again, cypress trees show up in my art.

Home From My Trip

I managed to start a new painting every day of my trip. Circumstances did not allow me to finish any of them, so I have my work cut out for me this week.  I postponed my Etsy shop opening until Dec. 15. 2011 so that I could get more descriptions written. I really need to get a laptop so I don't get behind on work when I'm traveling. My family just doesn't understand that I need at least 3 hours a day on the computer, not the 3 minutes they were allowing me while visiting them. I think I got photos of all the paintings except the one I did late last night.  I haven't had time to start a painting today yet.

Painting With Strange Shapes

I have spent many hours today on a painting that is still not finished. My hands, however, are finished, as well as my shoulders.  Time to give it a rest.  Sometimes it may not be possible to finish an entire painting in one day. I just have to accept that and not beat myself up for it, right?

And tomorrow I'm going out of town. I'll take my paints and stuff with me, but I won't be posting them until I get home in a few days.

Miniature Horse

I always thought if I could paint horses and people I could paint just about anything, but both are still a challenge to me. Next time I'll need to be careful not to get the nose so close to the edge of the paper. This is going to be difficult to frame.

100 Faces

All these daily projects are really ramping up my creativity.  So I starting a new face project here: 100 Faces
Every time I draw or paint a face I'll post it on that page until I reach 100. It won't be daily (I can't take on anymore daily projects), but I'll do my best to keep adding fresh material.

'Red Hat in Winter' Original Painting

"Without Meditation There is No Mediumship"

Here are yesterday and today's paintings.

Fletcher Painting

Today I got to paint outdoors, in public, from life. People mostly ignored me. So I didn't have as much performance anxiety as I expected.  I did get interrupted a lot so it took me most of the event to do one painting. And I didn't get to work on any of my other projects.  I like how it came out though. I'm learning more each day.

Girl With a Rose Painting

Trying to get the hang of this new style. New to me anyway.

Portrait in Acrylics

I sure struggled with today's painting.  The inspiration was Modigliani. I finally got it at least moving in the right direction, but the day was over and so was I. Maybe it will grow on me but I think it sure looks funky now. I think it's hard to finish a realistic portrait in one day.

Study in Turquiose White and Purple

I keep thinking about the Vogels and their Minimalist painting collection and decided to try a painting in that vein tonight. It's still wet so this is the best photo I could get.

Fourth Panel in Gold and Purple Semi-Abstract Series

I hope I can find some square foot frames for these. Maybe black frames with black mats. And someone to hang them for me since hanging up paintings is not my forte.

Gold and Purple Series 3

Today got away from me and I just now finished tonight's painting. Truly, I didn't feel like painting, but sometimes you have to just do it and now I'm glad I did. I'm barely a week into it, I can't be slacking off already.

Here is what some of the panels look like next to each other.  I have one more panel to go.

Dancer 2 in the Purple and Gold Series

It's about to rain so I had to paint indoors today.  Feeling a bit under the weather and not quite as happy with this one. Maybe it will grow on me.

Mask and Pearls and Dancer Paintings

Here is square foot painting number 5. There will be four paintings in this series.

This is square foot painting number 5, featuring mask and pearls.

Square Foot Paintings One and Two

I started my first paintings today for the Square Foot Art Gallery project.  I did an abstract painting I'm going to call Ribbons.  I put gesso on a piece of Bristol Vellum.  Then I painted it with gouache and water color sticks.

For the next one I wanted something a little down home and friendly so I painted 2 folk art chickens.  I love painting chickens for some reason. It always makes me happy. It took me most of the day to do these two paintings. Part of the reason is the gesso kept fading into the paper. I had to repaint the stripes and dots three times.

Belly Dancer Mixed Media

I'm working on a mixed media piece of a belly dancer. I did the foundation drawing in crayons. I went ahead and scanned it, just in case I destroy it while doing the watercolor wash over it. Now I have to let it dry completely before I can scan it again.

Thou Shalt Not Buy

I'm so tired of commercials trying to push us into buying bigger TV's, fancier cellphones, and cars 'we just can't live without'. So I made this sign.

New Hypno Kitty Logo

I've been playing around with a new logo today. I am learning to use Photoshop. It's frustrating because I'm used to paint shop pro.  For example, I couldn't find how to make a negative image so I had to look up a tutorial.  That's because on Photoshop it's called 'Invert' not 'Negative'. Anyway here are some of my attempts today. I also can't figure out how to meld two photos together to make a banner. So much to learn, so little time.

Up until now I've just been putting my photos on a Flickr account in a wild and abandoned fashion.  But in an effort to get people to take my photo skills a little more seriously, I made a whole new Flickr account where I'm only going to post photos that were my best effort. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypnokitty/

I'm also watermarking them. I know, tedious, right? But I've had too many friends complaining of pilfered photos and I've had a few stolen off my other account as well.

Mixed Media Watercolor Bear Painting

Last Sunday at the archery range I drew a cute archer bear in my sketchbook. I wanted to add him to my collage so I traced him with a permanent pen on tracing paper, and glued the tracing paper right to the project with gel medium. Then I painted him with gouache. The funky birds were stamps I carved. I stamped them onto lined paper. Then I had them printed onto plastic. I glued the plastic to the watercolor base with the gel medium. If you look closely you can see the Korean text underneath the other images. It adds so many dimensions. To see the details, click on the photo. Then once it loads, click on it again. The shiny paint is some pearlescent watercolor that I picked up at Art Supply Warehouse.

Laguna Beach Sawdust Festival 2011

Last night we went to the Laguna Sawdust Festival. They are running specials, and Anaheim folks got in free last night, so we couldn't resist.

I had rather a strange night though. I admired one artist's chainmaile booth. She heard me say 'chainmaile' and rolled her eyes and then I got the big speech on how 'only idiots think it's chainmaile and they go to one Ren faire and think they are experts." I thought it best to just smile and nod and move on. I'm not sure how she expects to make any sales with that attitude.

I did look around for some of my favorite artists from years past and spotted some of their booths but they weren't in them. I'm sure Tuesday is a slow day and they might take that day off to take a break from the busy weekend crowds. You can buy stuff from their booth even if they aren't there. They have registers at the front.

The glass blowing demo is always one of the highlights. I'll share photos when I have time to get them off the memory card.

Cuteness Sign

I made this because I get so tired of everything being so 'cute' to the point that it's lost all meaning. It's like a steady diet of cotton candy.

Oil Pastels by FAYME

When using oil pastels I get effects and feelings that I don't get from other mediums. I'm not sure any of this is art anyone would actually bother to buy, but it makes me happy and I love to experiment.

Most of my art can be put up for sale. I have too many things to list so if you want something, just let me know in the comments.I can also add the images to items on Cafe Press or Zazzle, so if you can't afford the original, you can get it as a pin, magnet, t-shirt or something else.