Painting Up Sticks

Sometimes I work so hard on a painting

that my poor brain needs a break...but my hands

want to keep moving.  Times like that I tend to default to an

easy paint project that keeps my brushes moving while my 

brain goes on autopilot.  Here's a task for just that time.

For some reason painted sticks are all the rage now.  Just check out Pinterest (if you can open).  Or try a google search.  I am always coming home from a hike with interesting sticks (and stones) in my pockets so I decided that the next time I needed a low-impact job I would paint some sticks.

plain old sticks...but I did

learn that the wider the diameter, the easier to work with

some of the bark will flip off easily, some will need urging; 

where it won't budge just ease the transition with sandpaper

start going wild....I began really carefully attending to edges but soon

found that it really didn't matter.  I used acrylic paint but found my

leftover or sample wall paints really easy to put on; again, the skinny

sticks were a bit hard to add much decoration to

My grands are still a tad young to be trying this but I think it might be fun to do with kids, you could even do a hiking stick to use later on.  Other ideas are to "plant" in a potted plant for color, put in the garden as a marker or pile up in a glass jar just because.  I did it mostly for mental relaxation but here is what I ended up with:

poised in a kenyan they almost look like dancers

simple colors that might end up in my flower bed

these are my favorite

curtain call for the afternoon

So this gives me just one more reason to gather sticks, and I'm hunting some fatter ones so I can go crazy with designs.  Most likely these will end up in the garden as temporary decor while waiting for the flowers to bloom.  And the fact that they probably won't last will give me another reason to experiment again next spring.  

Whether you do this to make an orchid support, to entertain some young ones or just to occupy your hands: have fun.  There's no way to go wrong!

STICKING WITH COLOR,

Cindy

Feeling Grounded...with art

I wondered last week if I could ever salvage my "mixed media gone poorly."  Making several more passes at it, I think I have decided to call this one done.  The photo does not show the small ties of raffia on the sticks because I have to make the picture before I spray a finish on the canvas or I get a huge glare. And the ties, alas, had to be done after the finish.

Nature's Floor

24 x 12, gallery wrapped canvas, mixed media

Have you ever slowed down long enough to just sit and study the ground?  I am always amazed at how much can be found in such a small space of earth if I take the time to closely look.  Sometimes, when I am pondering deep and wide, I find myself picking up a stick and drawing patterns in the dirt or mixing up all the contents I've discovered.  And, left to my own devises, I often will begin arranging and re-arranging the sticks and stones into little no-nonsense patterns.  My wish is that you have some time to do likewise this weekend.  Enjoy.

Doodling in Color,

Cindy

STICKS and STONES and...MIXED MEDIA??

(it ain't as easy as it looks...)

The term "Mixed Media" is all the rage right now.  Technically, it is appropriate to use the term when more than one media (i.e. oil, acrylic, collage, pastel) are used in one piece.  Popularly, it has come to also include lots of non-traditional art materials such as nuts, bolts, wires and scraps of wood.  When someone gathers up lots of "found" materials and creates something intriguing, it is appropriately referred to as "assemblage" (easily enough, they assembled the piece not painted it).  

This is just to put us all, painters and non-painters, on equal footing.  In case you haven't noticed, there is a lot of crappy mixed media out there.  The phrase "my grandchild could do that" comes to mind.  Just because it is fun to make and frees one's inner spirit does not mean that everyone else will consider it art.  Whether something is photo-realistic, abstract, or mixed media it should still adhere to the time proven ingredients of decent art: composition, color, eye direction, range of value etc etc.

So are all those wonderful, carefree and intriguing pieces easy to replicate? Well, just try it!!  I needed a change of pace this week so decided it would be "mixed media."

Here are two beginnings: 

both are on stretched canvas

12" x 24"

begun in similar styles with two differing color palettes

I wanted go "organic" and I wanted to do two at a time with different color palettes and yet with the similarity of starting with a canvas divided up into equal squares.  The beginning stages are kind of fun...just let the ideas flow because ultimately you are going to cover up most of the early layers anyway.

Above you see acrylic, spray ink, and papers on a gessoed canvas.

As pieces and parts come together it gets slightly more complicated.  In other words, suddenly you have a compositional dilemma to contend with...if the eye does not flow, if there is no center of interest....uh oh.  I am not satisfied (therefore not finished) with this one.  It has no real depth or direction.  Admittedly, the parts that I am attaching (sticks and rocks) are only glued right now, I want to draw attention to them with more interesting ways of adhering.

This detail shows wire wraps on the stones and I think raffia will tie the sticks.  Still, nothing really pops out of the piece or holds your attention.  Definitely needs more editing.  But the nice thing about mixed media is that corrections are part of the visual intrigue, so a few more layers is not a bad thing:  I'm not giving up yet!

My second piece got ignored for a while as I concentrated on the other. It will be a challenge to stay organic in this color palette but I did find some feathers I had from a parrot in these exact colors.  As you can see, it is still a hodge-podge of interesting parts all waiting to be brought together into some cohesive layout.  

I don't know if mixed media is my "gig" because I tend to fall in love with little parts that I  can't bear to cover up for the sake of harmony.  I prefer the method of working out a composition first and laying down only whats needed to achieve it.  But now and again it is nice to change things up and start with a bunch of "pretty" editing to achieve a composition.  Not easy!

So don't be fooled: like any other field of art there is great, good and baaaad (and debatable) mixed media.  Above are some examples of "bad" headed towards "good."  I'll let you know when they get there.

MIXing it UP,

Cindy