i love pomegranates!

this is the season of many pomegranates at the store and I love to eat them! As I was peeling open my last snack, I couldn't help but admire the little seeds! They're so beautiful! So I painted them. This is in my kitchen now =) Sorry for the crappy image, I need a new camera!!!!!!

fed ex day

So my mentor teacher has his students do "fed ex" days where they have one day to deliver an artwork and they can make whatever they want. It's been really successful and they have made some awesome stuff. I want to do it in my own classroom. Today while they worked, I made something too. I have decided I LOVE watercolor and ink.

oh and my two paintings i submitted got into the springville museum exhibition. =)

Wax museum

At the high school, we have a heat gun that blows really hot air. You can use it to melt wax like crayons and such. I have been playing around with it and I love melting wax! As a kid I think I got crayons for christmas ten years in a row. I wish I had all of them now to melt and make things out of. I've made these two things so far:

On both I used a sharpie to go back and outline all the cool swirls that happened. The second one I went over it with watercolor.

Transfers

In student teaching, I've taught the students how to do gesso and gloss/varnish transfers. I made some examples to show the class and am really LOVING doing transfers. It is SOOO fun and easy. If you yourself would like to do a gesso transfer, there are lots of online tutorials on how to do it. This next painting is acrylic. I started with a gesso transfer as the ground base and painted over it. I'm still going to paint some more, it's not totally finished. The assignment I gave the students was to paint a memory. This is my memory.

Treehouse, Acrylic on board, 11" x 14"

This image makes the transfer above look really crappy cause of the reflection. But it's actually really cool! Instead of having white behind your image, if you use acrylic gloss medium and varnish, it will dry clear! The saying "happiness is a journey, not a destination" has been on my mind a lot and I wanted a place to see it all the time. I'm all about being happy now and not waiting til some other stage of your life to be happy.

The above painting is having some growing pains. I love it but also am struggling with it. My husband is not fond of the colors, which happens to be my favorite part. I'm not sure what to do it. Any suggestions? I notice now that all of my paintings have that BRIGHT blue. I just love it. After living in the caribbean blue waters for a year and a half, I just really really love that color. I reminds me of good people and the most beautiful places on earth.

Exploring....

I have a done a little bit more on my earth/body painting. I also had a day off this week and wandered around provo taking pictures of cool corners on the old buildings in downtown. I combined a few and hope to paint them soon. I'm thinking about a theme of turning points...

New and old projects

On the way home from my sister's wedding in August, my husband and I were driving through incredibly beautiful areas of the US. We drove past HUGE fields of sunflowers, saw rainbows, saw rainstorms from a distance, and lots of windmills in the middle of texas. My husband was asleep so I had time to think and stare at the landscape. I have always struggled with how to make art including all the things that inspire me. I've been wanting to pursue some "medical" art, if that makes sense...but also be able to express my faith in God. It dawned on me driving in the middle of New Mexico what I could do...ideas just started flowing and I had to make my husband drive so I could sketch them. I appreciate the body and the earth so much because of who created it. So combining these two concepts really appeals to me. I got started on a piece today, it's looking a little like camoflauge but it won't when it's finished.

I also took extra paint and returned to my old GIANT painting from my oil painting class. I've changed it some more and will continue to, it's an old friend I can't decide what to do with.

I'm back!

I'm posting! I kind of of left this blog a while ago, but I've been doing art so much with these little kids at the elementary school, I can't resist not doing some art or thinking about it all the time. I decided to post a recent oil painting done for jessi and ryan for their wedding present. I was pretty happy with the results. I've painted temples in the past, but I discovered it's hard to make it perfect. I discovered a new method that made the temple just right. Anyway, I think I'll paint more of these, but maybe when student teaching is over and I have more time to do what I want with my art.

Don't kill creativity!

I absolutely love this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson. He's hilarious and makes a good defense of why the arts should be taught in school and why we need art in general. Watch it, it's totally worth it.

fire power

I haven't posted in a while...mainly because of technical difficulties in getting images of my artwork and such. Well here is a a video of an artist named Cai Guo Qiang. A lot of his artwork his does with fireworks. Just goes to show you that art isn't just painting anymore =)