Still Alive

I had hoped to bounce into 2015 with the same energy I had as we finished 2014 but I was flattened by a cold virus in January that put me off my stride a bit. But I'm feeling much better now and working on all sorts of new things. As usual I'm flitting from one piece of work to another and only have 'work in progress' shots to post.

I'm sketching lots of mice, building up a sketch book of poses and ideas for more Little Mouse paintings

My bobbin collecting frenzy continues. The old Silko threads are so much nicer to sew with than modern ones, and the 'Bobbin Man' at Tynemouth market always smiles now when he sees me because he knows I can't resist adding to my collection every time I visit.

I'm working on lots of new bears for the Teddy Bearzaar show in May (the site is currently showing last year's details but I'm sure they'll update it soon). I didn't realize quite how many bears I had 'on the go' at one time until I lined them all up to be jointed and have their noses varnished.

That's all for now. I hope to get some painting done this month. It feels like an age since I last finished a watercolor so I'm treating myself to some new quinacridone colors to inspire me back to my brushes. I've also got some 'experiments' planned for new things I want to make, and what has turned out to be the most difficult single bear I have ever made - more of that next time, assuming it doesn't fail in the final stages. :)

Oooh, nearly forgot!! I've listed 10 THINGS for sale in my new Etsy store. Each one is unique and labeled with its own number. These are some of the first THINGS I made including number 001 so get 'em while you can :) http://etsy.com/uk/shop/TheWildWoodArtsCo

Busy, busy, busy (no, really I am...)

So very long since I last posted anything here. You could be forgiven for thinking I'd disappeared in Faeryland but I have been working on a whole lot of things. A whole lot of things that I just haven't quite finished yet. And a few things that I have. I'm so rubbish at keeping all these web pages updated. I had a little exhibition of paintings at the MADE Cafe in Whitley Bay throughout July. I probably should've mentioned that. Told you I was rubbish.

I've started making THINGS and set up a facebook page for them HereBeThings I probably should've mentioned that too. They look like this (though as you can see, every one is different)

But I seem to have spent the best part of the year thinking about what I want to create and trying to gather around me all the tools and materials I might need. My workroom is bursting at the seams but I'm hoping my strategy is going to work because there's nothing that kills my enthusiasm for a project more than not being able to try out my ideas straight away to see if there's a chance they'll work. So if I just absolutely need felting wool or florists' wire at 2 in the morning, I know now that I've got it.

Now it's time to really start work. I've got lists, scribbled ideas, construction notes, patterns and sketches all waiting to go. No sleep till bedtime for me.

First up, as it's only 6 weeks away I've been making some new bears for the Hugglets show in Kensington next month. Following on its heels is Miniatura in Birmingham. Now I make small bears - usually between 3 and 6 inches tall - but at Miniatura they like them as small as we can get 'em. So, with this in mind I decided to miniaturize my current pattern. I was aiming for an approximation of this little fella. He's called Little Blue and he's 3 inches tall:

  

So I shrunk the pattern down a bit and created Littler Blue who is 2 inches tall:

Then I shrunk it down again and created this guy. He's 1.5 inches tall and at this point I ran out of talent so he is called Littlest Blue because I can't make 'em any smaller that this:

And here are all three of them together:

Just another half dozen to make - if my eyes last that long :)

Finally, and most importantly, I've opened an Etsy store. I'm just getting started and have only listed one item so I can get things set up but I'll be selling paintings, bears, polymer clay sculpts and all kinds of random sewn stuff there from now on. I hope you can stop by and have a look. I'll get the link added to the side bar soon but for now its at TheWildwoodArtCo (yes, I know, but all the best names were taken already....)

Way overdue an update

It was the height of summer last time I wrote. Unbelievably for the UK we were sweltering away in a heatwave and I was in a post-acrylic weird place, trying to figure out which direction to take. Six months on and I'm kind of resigned to the idea that I will NEVER figure it out. I love to paint but I also love to sculpt and at times I love making bears and sewing things. I've been like that most of my life - drawing, painting, making things - so I don't feel able to give up one for the sake of another, even if it means never being truly successful in any of them.


So, now we're into another new year and I have lots of ideas for new pieces of work of all kinds. I want to open an Etsy store this year, I hope to have a small exhibition of my work at some point this year too, and, having cut out as many bears as I could from all of my remaining mohair stash, I have about 90 bears to complete. And I've even made a start at being organized:

The top of the dresser in my studio is now displaying a large selection of my sewing materials. This makes me very, very happy. No more rummaging in bags or through drawers and cupboards looking for that thing I'm sure I've got but don't know where. Ribbons are in rainbow color order (of course), bobbins of twine neatly arranged and there are just, well, lots of pretty colors :) and a big basket of buttons (£3 for half a pound at Boundary Mill stores).

Okay, so enough waffling - on to some actual stuff I've been doing. Aside from the bears I've started some more pencil drawings.

 Not sure how this happened but at some point I realised I was drawing every stitch!!

I have some Daniel Smith watercolors so there will be iridescent faeries.

 Some of the 'practise' heads I sculpted last year got turned into baby Christmas elves.

There are more faery creatures on the way.

 Some will be complete figures with hands and feet and clothes.

There may be some oil painting.

There will definitely be more bears.

On to less fun things...

As those of you who use Facebook probably know, the new 'pay to promote' system is driving people away, especially artists and craftspeople who simply can't afford it and have seem the number of people they reach per post shrinking to next to nothing. With that in mind, I'll probably be using this Blog and Twitter more ( @shonammacdonald  ), I'm sorting out a Tumblr account, a Pintrest account and may even venture into Google+. I'll post all the links as I create them and will add them to the side bar too. The facebook page will be staying but it just won't be the first place I post anymore.

 Please feel free to comment or ask any questions about my work. 

Thanks for reading.

Shona

xx

Bits and pieces

I should really post more often, with deviantart and facebook I tend to forget that I've got a website too.
A few little snippets of bits and pieces to show you this time. Having recovered from my acrylic brain fog I completed a new painting in watercolor just to get myself back into the idea of not failing :). It's called The Shaman's Child and is a combination of two sketches. I just love painting rocks!

The Shaman's Child © Shona M MacDonald 2013
All Rights Reserved

Next up is a little bit of scupley-ing and fimo-ing. I bought a big chunk of flesh-colored fimo, hoping to avoid the 15 minutes per quarter inch sculpey complications I had with my troll. But I've found I'm not so keen on sculpting with it. It has a springy-ness to it that makes it harder to shape tiny details so I went back to the sculpey in the end. I'm wondering if a combination of the two blended together might work - that's an experiment for another time. So, anyway, I made a bunch of heads, just for practise really and to try a different painting technique to the 'cover it all in thick paint' method I ended up using on Troll. Using a very watery mix of acrylic and wiping most of it off between layers I managed to keep some of the translucency of the sculpey's flesh tones which made me very happy. I did complete a couple of fimo heads too but I haven't baked those yet

 

Other things I'm working on include a companion piece to the 3 Hares Yuletide painting I did in December. This one is for Lughnassadh (or Lammas) and celebrates the first grain and fruit harvest of the year. I've sketched out a further three 3 Hares pieces and intend to create 8 in total for the eight festivals of the wheel of the year. Or perhaps 12 and make it into a calender, I guess it depends on whether I can cope with painting 36 hares :D

And finally, the thing that's been occupying my brain for the last week, was the sudden urge to paint some ACEOs (an excuse not to paint another hare, I think. At first anyway.) It started innocently enough. A little 2.5 x 3.5 inch bear on an off-cut of watercolor paper. I tried out some new white gel pens I bought, and dusted off a tube of metallic gouache tempera I'd forgotten I had. One became six and now I'm seriously considering the idea of making an oracle deck - bigger paintings, more details, but based on these little ACEOs at least in part. It's another mad idea that will probably never get finished (I know what I'm like with things like thing only too well), but I always think, with things like this, that while it may start off as a grand 'big' idea, even if I don't finish it, at least I'll probably get a couple of decent paintings out of it...

I'm an idiot!

You might have noticed that I haven't written a blog post for quite a while. I took a long break from the web starting in February because I was feeling directionless and overwhelmed by too much imagery and information, unable to concentrate. I wanted to spend some quiet time, to think about my art and what I wanted to do with it. I had also decided, for a lot of stupid reasons as it turns out, that I was going to learn to paint with oils.

But, y'see, I have a watercolor brain. Years and years of working with my W&N paints and I know every pigment in my palette like the back of my hand - which ones stain and which can be lifted out; which ones granulate, which ones streak; the opaque; the transparent; the best mixes. I know just how much water to hold in each brush. And I know which brush strokes to use to create the effects I want. When I look at one of my drawings on the paper I know how to start painting it. I'm by no means a master of my craft but I'm fairly proficient, I think.

When it comes to oil painting however I know very little. I did a couple of oil paintings when I was in high school - they were terrible - and in the following twenty-odd years I've never used them again. But, undaunted, driven by all the wrong reasons, I started finding out about oil painting. It has RULES that I didn't know about before, rules you can't really ignore unless you want your paintings to crack, dull and yellow in a few years time. And you have to plan your work. Oil paintings take a long time to dry. You can't just keep noodling away at them or you'll end up with a smeary mush of color. Which means waiting for days for layers to dry before moving on. My watercolor brain isn't used to that. It isn't used to any of it.

But despite returning to Deviant Art and announcing (rather prematurely as I since realised) that I had found my focus again, I was determined to perservere with this new oil painting thing. I cut and primed some boards and began a series of four little paintings. But I had to let the backgrounds dry before continuing. 2-12 days it says in the books, depending on the pigments used. So what to do in the meantime? I turned to the acrylic paints I have stored away, thinking they would be good practice for me in blending, getting used to the consistency of the paint, working with white as a pigment. For a week I worked and worked every spare moment I had. I must've painted the sky six or seven times. Once or twice I thought I might be getting somewhere, most of the time I just despaired of ever figuring it out.

Then late one night, trawling the web for tutorials, I found another artist's blog, an artist who does the most exquisite acrylic paintings, and began reading. But it wasn't advice on technique that I found. Instead I read her story of dreaming of being a successful artist, her struggle to find her way and the advice given to her by one of her friends. That advice was quite simple - learn one thing well. Those four words got stored away in my brain as I went back to the painting, to work on that damn sky for the eighth time. They took a few days to really sink in but then the full force of them hit me.

So you see, good people of the blogosphere, I am an idiot. I mean, seriously, WHAT was I thinking. I've invested years in learning to paint with watercolors and I was going to put it all aside to start at the beginning again for no other reason than because I'd seen some artworks in oils that were so enchanting and beautiful, created by artists who no doubt spent at least as long as I have learning their craft. The little trickster voice that lives in my head had whispered to me, "You could do that. You could learn to oil paint." This is the same voice that is now laughing at me. "It was only a suggestion," it tells me. "I didn't mean for you to get in such a mess with it. You didn't have to listen."

The acrylics have now been consigned to a drawer, where they belong. The oil paintings are still unfinished and drying. I haven't decided what I'll do with them yet. Perhaps I'll photograph and post them one day so you can have a good laugh. And if you ever see me threatening to divert from my beloved watercolors again you have my permission to yell at me and call me an idiot.

Because that is what I've been.

As a result of all of this stupidity I have no finished pieces to show you so instead I urge you to visit Ravynne Phelan's website and emmerse yourself in her beautiful art and wise words.

So here comes 2013. Where did last year go? I think I said that already, didn't I? I had to wait until the cats had worn themselves out battering fabric baubles up and down the hallway to get some peace to finish the Three Hares but here it is with it's digital background - the original, in white looked okay but I prefer this one:

3 Hares - © Shona M MacDonald 2012. All Rights Reserved

There are lots of 'how to' books and tutorials out there in book and on the net full of great information and techniques for artists, but few people write about the thought processes behind creating a painting. So I  thought for the next couple of posts I'd talk a bit about what goes on in my head when I'm starting to work on a new painting. The inside of my head isn't always a good place to be but I'll try to keep to the stuff that might be useful :)

Sometimes ideas, usually the simpler ones, arrive in my head fully formed, sparked by something I've seen, a few lines in a story or a poem. But at other times an idea will grow more slowly, building up from a sketch, to become something I had never imagined when I started doodling. That's the kind of painting I've just started working on so I thought I'd take you through the thinking process I went through to get to the final drawing stage before I began painting.

When I set out to start my (less than successful) August Sketchbook Project last year I'd gathered together a bunch of images I thought might be helpful - stock photos, magazine clipping that might be starting points for drawings. I picked a stock photo by kebehut-stock that seemed to suggest some possibilities but with no real idea of what I was going to do with it. I just liked the pose:

After quickly drawing the outline of the basic pose I began changing some of the facial features. Although I didn't quite know where I was going with it I at least knew I wanted it to be some kind of faery creature. As often happens I hit a point of a sort of auto-pilot while I was scribbling away. I LOVE auto-pilot. I do my best stuff when my conscious brain is worrying about other stuff and lets my sub-conscious have a go with the pencil. So it wasn't an entirely conscious decision to make it a woodland spirit but that tends to be where my brain veers off to when I'm not concentrating. I love the intricacies of branches and twigs tangled together. As I was drawing I was already looking forward to the pleasure of painting those strands of twisted bark.

The one entirely conscious decision I did make was in choosing which type of tree she would be. This wasn't, at this point at least, anything to do with the pose but more because  I love painting those little berries, so she became a Hawthorn. I noodled away a bit longer on the drawing, shading, adding detail and filling it out. As I was doing this the lines of Kipling's poem from Puck of Pook's Hill came into my head:

Of all the trees that grow so fair,

Old England to adorn,

Greater are none beneath the Sun,

Than Oak and Ash and Thorn.

Sing Oak and Ash and Thorn, good Sirs

(All of a Midsummer morn)!

Surely we sing no little thing,

In Oak and Ash and Thorn!

And that was when the idea for a much larger painting started to form.

Next post I'll go through the next phase of the process - working out the other elements, lots of staring into space and the drawing of a hundred leaves... 

 Snippets - bits of things I'm working on

 

 

 

Yuletide Greetings!

Just wanted to send my best wishes to all of you for Yuletide.

Thank you for visiting and commenting on my site/blog over this past year. I had hoped to have a new painting to show you - a festive version of the ancient Three Hares symbol - but my cats had other ideas. It's hard to concentrate on painting while the Christmas tree is being demolished in the corner and there are baubles flying past my head.

So, another year almost over. I don't know where the time has gone, I really don't. It doesn't seen all that long ago I was starting the paintings for my Enchanted Alphabet project. It doesn't feel as if I've created a lot of art this year. I have to keep reminding myself that, if nothing else, I published a book!!

Here's to next year and (hopefully) lots more art!!

Shona