Mosaic

Fall Leaves

I went wandering around Pacific Grove one day during my second month living in Monterey. Generally looking for something to see or do. My stated purpose was finding someone who could send me in the direction of a raku kiln. Instead, I found Charlsie. She is a watercolor artist, as in she makes money at it, and has a studio in PG. Every thursday, she opens up her studio for watercolor classes. To be perfectly plain, we pay $10, she brings brie, bread, wine, and snacks, lets us use her paints, paper and brushes and provides entertaining stories. No actual teaching is involved. It's lovely and I'm now a regular. Last month, she asked me if I'd be interested in putting something up for her fall-themed exhibit at the florist for the PG ArtWalk. I figured, that's as good an assignment as any I'm going to get, which is none. see below. So I whipped out some fall leaves. In my happy world, I'd have sold one. Maybe next time.

open season

this year, my watercolor class doesn't fit into my schedule and it seems that i can't be bothered to come up with my own art assignments. so, i come to you, my few and loyal fans, begging a favor. give me an assignment. an interesting one.

mini pictures

window cutouts

This is the view out my kitchen window. If I were a little taller, you'd be able to see the vacation house next door. I was playing around with Photoshop and discovered the "cutout" filter. That's the second image. Once I saw that, I thought, "huh, I have lots of extra time this week. Maybe I'll try actually cutting the whole thing out of paper. Yeah, that'd look neat." And twenty hours, one season of Lost and two movies later, here's the result.

Finding paper in enough different colors was a problem. I had to resort to raiding Home Depot for a 3-inch stack of paint chips. Unfortunately, they didn't have the really big chips.

Red Couch

'Tis the season

... for Christmas stuff to start appearing everywhere. Why break a trend? Besides, Christmas lights are pretty all year. Marguerite demonstrated wet on wet watercolor last week. Now that I know what it is, it all makes much more sense.

More Trees

Sorry Nana, I still haven't gotten around the making a tile from your tree print yet. It could still happen, though. A friend in town just got a kiln. Once we figure out how to use it, maybe I can fire all the stuff sitting under my table.

Here's some watercolors of your trees instead.

Negative Space

No, not that kind... I found a book in the library of watercolors I thought were pretty neat. The artist uses a LOT of masking fluid and a wet on wet technique. Not having any idea what that was, I tried to copy one anyway.

Sex Pot

I swear I didn't come with the name myself. That just seems to be what people come up with. Both my pottery and watercolor teachers called these "organic". That must be an artistic euphemism.