Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Studio Set up

Hum....gotta re-think the electronics in the studio for the encaustic. My hot air gun is knocking out the breaker on my electric strip and I have two electric strips going. I was being careful but, even on low speed, it did it again today. SO...I moved the gun work area over on the other side of the table and plugged directly into the wall there. SO far, so good, but I'm worried. I got DH to come in and tell me where he added new breakers for this garage when we made it into a room so long ago. HE ONLY ADDED ONE BREAKER......so the one on the wall over there is on the living room breaker and that knocks out some from the strips but I've got some thinking to do here. Maybe like call an electrician if I can get DH to let me. He's one of those DYI people but he really has no time lately as he has to spend so much time over at his folk's place doing things there. ...and they have 200 acres to do on.

Well...what did I expect when I plug in a griddle, a pro warming tray/palette, 2 crockpots, a heat gun and don't even mention the tacking iron.

I did get to work about 30 minutes (after heating wax for 45 minutes) before the storm warning came in saying it will be here soon. So time for lunch, huh!

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Tripping the breakers!



Tripping the breakers! That's what happened this morning as I heated up the wax and got ready to play around again with the encaustic. Guess I had one too many appliances plugged in so it tripped my electric strip. I guess I'll just have to get a stronger strip wattage wise or spread some of this energy about some way in the studio.

My friend, Pat, came over the other day since we never did make contact as I came through Louisiana on my way home from MS. She wanted to see what I was doing with the wax... and see it in person.

We had a good time playing around in the studio Wednesday night and Thursday morning. I, also, took the first ones I decided were finished out and took slides and digitals.

Here are two more that I think I haven't shown yet. The red one is all wax and oil pigment sticks and the other is a combination of wax, pigment stick and collage elements. When I got almost through working on it, it dawned on me that I was painting that tree line base that was showing from my space at the upper pavilion at colony. It's not often I know what I'm painting until a long time later, if ever.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Waiting and the LULL

I'm still waiting for help on the studio lighting but in the meantime, I've got all the new encaustic painting stuff arranged on my 4 x 8 ft work table. My goodness, it looks like I'm going to cook in the studio with a griddle, the heating tray palette, and two crock-pots...where do I put the panels to paint on I might wonder....AND where will the big panels go when I finally ever get to doing some that are larger than 12 x 12"?

I just found an email from Creativity Portal with this article I need to take to heart and paste right out there in front of me all the time when I think I should be DOING something ALL the time. The LULL.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Accidents do happen, ya know!

X^#)&^%H^....has anyone else every dropped a fluorescent tube ? I just did a short while ago and am trying to cool off from the frustration. One of my studio fixtures started blinking before I went to Florida....so when I was out the other day at Lowe's I picked up a couple of tubes of the daylight replacement tubes. Should I try to install them myself....I have in the past??? DH was over at his folk's house doing what he has to do there every week and I wanted to see what I was doing in the studio......so, after waffling around for awhile about whether I would fall while installing I put two chairs up that were about the right distance apart.

Needless to say....IT WASN'T MY FAULT one of them fell out and shattered clear to the next county. And to think I'd spent the morning vacuuming around here in the house and now I may have tracked some of the glass shards on my flip-flops. I'm taking a break right now from gathering up the big pieces but I'm afraid that these tiny little pieces may show up FOREVER over and under every nook and cranny in the studio and beyond.

Just what I get for needing to get in the studio... but what can I do but whine and gripe about not having a helper around here some days

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Goofy picture



Where to start, where to start. I really don't know. If you want to go stay at a large resort outside Orlando (and have a large wallet)...go to GrandeLakes. Beautiful grounds, many places to eat, spa, golf, etc. and near the Disney attractions. It is outside the city so have a good map and a car. This photo was taken from the 18th floor and shows a lot of the way the back looked from that viewpoint.

Since I'd never been to a Disney theme park, Linda said we MUST go to the original park and off we went one day to make a day of it. It was fun and I can imagine how much fun it would be to a kid....of any age. We happened upon Goofy and someone to take a picture so here you are.......kinda a Goofy shot of Linda and me and our friend.

After three changes in the departure schedule we finally got back to Dallas last night and then on home today. I'm now unpacked with lots to do..........oops no mother's day cards went out since I was out of town. The phone will be busy tomorrow.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Orlando

I had a great time visiting the Gee's Bend quilt show on exhibit for the last week at the Orlando Art Museum. We watched the video where they interviewed/talked with the women who made many of the quilts. It's amazing how they describe their process of creating and designing the quilts....different words for the same way most artists describe theirs, whether it's painting, mixed media, sculpture, etc. Some worked with a plan or vision of what they wanted to do....and then strayed away from the original idea and went with what they had and felt would work. More than that, for these women was that they had limited materials available and used what they had so they wouldn't waste anything. This is just a reminder that we should all do this more, for creativity's sake as well as the sake of our planet.Beauty from the detrius that would be filling landfills.

Just as much or more fun was visiting with artist friends, Martha Marshall and Linda Stanley. Martha drove up past my hotel coming from Tampa to Orlando. We then went over to Linda's house and visited her studio there. I envy all the outdoor "rooms" she has there around the pool and the Koi pool.

Bummer, I just looked and found I left the camera cord at home so I can't download the pictures I took yesterday at the resort .......fantastic place here and our room is on the 18th floor looking out over all the pools meandering around between the two hotels here at GrandeLakes. The only bad thing is no free internet access in a high end hotel (and the more moderate and low lend in these companies have free)....go figure, huh! Guess I'll have to pay for a day here and there to check email and what's going on out there. Too bad I don't play golf and I'm a wimp at the spa workout stuff. If I get really bored, I can go work out over at the Ritz spa.....or maybe better just put on my walking shoes and walk up and down stairs, and around the grounds which would be more interesting than a treadmill or elliptical machine.

A big storm blew through yesterday afternoon here...and maybe another tonight. Orlando needs the rain though and it's not storming all the time...in fact bright sunshine right now so no complaint from me. Linda and I will probably take in a theme park tomorrow since I've never been to one. You can't come to Orlando without thinking of theme parks...especially if you've never been.There aren't a lot of art galleries here....maybe that's a good thing. Sometimes all I do is art at home in the studio and visiting art galleries and museums when I travel. There are other things in the world besides art. I tend to forget that some time.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

More encaustics



More encaustic paintings. It's been hectic getting being gone for a week, coming back, unloading and doing all the stuff around here before heading for Orlando in a couple of days. I just put the first encaustic up and now have a couple of more to put up from my first efforts. I came home with 7 panels in various states of finish. I think only one needs a little more...and one other is finished, maybe or maybe not...still thinking on that one.

I still have a lot to learn manipulating this medium......well heck, I could learn more every day about the mediums I use all the time. But still there is something to learn when it comes to putting something hot and fluid on a brush and it's already cold and thick by the time you quickly move the brush to the panel. No hesitation allowed. That's good....hesitation is a killer.Confidence is right, even if it's wrong.

At colony, my intent was to try out several methods/styles of painting with wax....different grounds, or adding collage elements to some and not to others, etc. I used the Evans Holy Grail for the first layer on the first one. It dried looking somewhat like a couple of layers of gesso...although you can't use acrylic gesso under encaustic since it is not absorbent and your painting could pop or slide off later. So this gives you a nice white surface to work on. I, also, tried gluing down rice paper with PVA.....that went on well and stayed down through out the process. The part that didn't stay down was some of the collaged papers. I'll have to work on that piece again. It is a challenge to get collage to stay stuck since when you re-heat the surface, it gets re-heated and can come up again. The other pieces were just to paint/melt/spread the medium on the panels ( a couple of thin layers) and then start painting. Encaustic isn't affected by the wood panel surface the way straight oils might be.

Well gotta get back to packing for Orlando. I'll be meeting up with artist friends there at least a time or two ...........Linda Stanley and Martha Marshall. We're going to have a fabulous time Sunday going to the Gee's Bend show at the Orlando museum before it closes.