Two Mixed Media Paintings

More about my two latest paintings.

Cutting Mat Board

One of the purposes of my blogs is to help other artists to learn from my mistakes.
Today I needed to cut two pieces of mat board for my square foot paintings.  So I carefully measured my mat board using a 12" x 12" blank canvas board for my template. Remember, the window in the mat board must be slightly smaller than the piece of art, so it doesn't fall out of the frame. Well, I knew this of course and measured very carefully.  And that black mat fit that 12" x 12" board perfectly.  So I went ahead and used the same measurements for the gray mat board.

The problem came when I took my painting, and laid the mat board on top of it. I had forgotten that every painting has a 1/2" white strip around it from the tape.  So now, a smidgen of that white margin shows no matter how I place the mat board. It's things like this that make me want to run screaming into the night.

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

'Red Hat in Winter' Original Painting

"Without Meditation There is No Mediumship"

Here are yesterday and today's paintings.

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.

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.

Miniature Paintings

As you can see, I was a painting fiend today. I only stopped because my wrist started to ache, and I'm supposed to be letting it heal up.

1000 Paintings

Sometimes when I'm tired I forget my ideas of things I'd like to do. So today after going to an art festival I had the idea to paint 1000 5x7 paintings on canvas. Each one will be numbered and retail for about $50. I'm not sure if I want to do nudes, or landscapes or flowers or animals or a mixture of things.

Update: I am once again working on this idea. Only now I'm doing square foot paintings at the rate of one a day. I opened a new Etsy shop just for this project. I called it the Square Foot Art Gallery, because people can go there to see all the paintings, even if they don't play to buy anything just yet.

Concentrics 1 and 2

Two new paintings that I'm working on.
Acrylic on canvas.