Mandoo

This was a quick tribute that I completed today for a cat I once had named Mandoo (RIP)

Acrylic on Canvas

Colourful Pieces of the Sky by Jonas Lund and Anika Schwarzlose

"The work is a participatory exploration of the relation between objects, images and semantics on the internet. We created a small platform that serves as our set up model, an engine constantly browsing the image sharing platform flickr, extracting the latest photgraph that's tagged with "sky" and displaying the result on the website colourfulpiecesofsky.com – the outcome is a piece that’s forever changing its visual appearance. Sometimes subtle, sometimes radical changes, which altogether reveal operational modes of communication, emerging semantics and image mediation strategies. Photographers all over the world are contributing content to create a shifting, and unpredictable, impermanent but ongoing visual experience. To participate visitors can take an image of the sky, upload it to their flickr account and then tag the image with "sky". The webpage updates every 5 seconds and always displays the latest image added."

Url http://colourfulpiecesofsky.com 
Source http://jonaslund.com/works/colourful-pieces-of-sky/

Bear City

Here's a blurry camera phone picture of a painting I completed with the aforementioned craft paint.

Kirstin Lamb and Her Stackable Objets D'Art

 
Kirstin Lamb is obsessed with creating elaborate gouache paintings of unexpectedly stacked items and that's quite alright by me.  Especially since the objects of interest are a smattering of smiling busts, skulls, and a variety of scrumptious meat and food items.  Taking my routine read of the Jealous Curator (an excellent source for the current art scene btw), I was immediately struck by her most recent post on the artist.  Her work holds a striking juxtaposition of languidly grinning individuals decorated with food (or food decorated with people?) contrasted against a simple flat black background.  I was immediately enamored.  And to hear that a selection of her prints are selling for a mere $35 each on the Little Paper Planes site?  It's almost too much to bear!

You too can purchase her prints HERE

Roller Girl

 

This is a painting I did a while back in oil on canvas.  I noticed that while colors were bright and vivid during the painting process, it dried to a dull finish.  I visited my local art supply store a few days back and asked an employee if they knew what might be the problem.  He suggested the student grade paint I had used (Georgian) brand could be the cause.  He went on to explain that student grade paint consisted of a very low pigment factor with mostly other low quality fillers and thus the colors were not as true as artist grade.  He also recommended that I never mix different brands of paint together.   Have any of you had any such experiences with oil paint?  Is it really worth the extra money to shell out on artist grade paint?  I remember when I first started painting I was using craft paint from Michaels that cost 99 cents a pop.  For some reason those paintings remained vivid and true over the past 6 years... 

Astronaut Suicides by Neil DaCosta

Here are some other space oddities by Neil DaCosta from a series of photographs aptly titled 'Astronaut Suicides'.  

Visit Neil DaCosta's official website HERE.

 

Spaceman Spaceman

I'm rather pleased with the way this one turned out.  After watching a fascinating Apollo 12 program on YouTube which truly created the feeling of joining those brave astronauts on their surrealistic journey, I felt a strong urge to paint one.  I wasn't pleased with the original idea of creating a simple portrait, I wanted to take the already surreal idea of space travel and add an off-beat element to the mix.   The thought was, "Let's send a planet to space." 

Painting from Photographs

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Griffin and Adelaide

I'd like to introduce you to Griffin and Adelaide, two of the cutest pups in the world (in my humble opinion anyway)! 

Griffin is a black and tan half doxie/ half jack russell mix and he is quite the silly character.  You can usually find him most afternoons laying flat on his back with his paws folded down towards his belly snoring up a storm.

Adelaide, or Addie for short, is a jack russell/corgi mix, and is the sweetest little thing.  She prefers to curl up in a tight little furry ball right on your belly for her naps.  The two are half brother and sister sharing the same father.

 They really bring alot of joy to our lives.   We're not the only ones who feel that way, my boyfriends parents are nuts about them too.  So I decided to paint a couple of portraits of these little rascals and gift it to them.  Here's how they turned out:

What do you guys think?

Howdy!

I've decided to launch this new art blog to showcase some of my work.  Hopefully having a running blog will keep me motivated to keep creating as I find it extremely hard sometimes.  I'm hoping to draw inspiration from other like-minded artists out there while improving my own skills and building my identity.

Thanks for popping by!

Cheers,
- Liz