ACEO's again! Ebay remember me?

OK two posts in one day - but this is an important one! I haven't put any aceo's (those are miniatures - baseball card size if you don't know what they are) up for auction in a long time. Well I'm ready to start again! I'll be posting several this week starting with this one above of a little girl at the VT Renaissance Fair all dressed up but too tired and hot to do more activities.

Get to the auction by clicking here!

Later this week I'll be posting my Alaskan landscapes aceo's for everyone to bid on. I did the landscapes out in the cold sitting on the deck of a luxury cruise liner! Woe is me! Really it was a bit nippy! So I'll let you know when I post them as well.

You may have noticed my aceo's are a bit different from my usual larger still-lifes. Well its a great way for me to try new things - keep up with portrait skills, landscape skills or just have fun. Take a look at other miniatures I've done in the past here on my website . I've done everything from master copies of Vermeer to peanut butter cups and bushels of apples. I plan on doing 1-2 aceo's a week, so if you would like to request a subject for me to offer up for auction, email me I may give it a try!

Lemon Fiesta!

I guess the oranges needed some company! This is Lemon Fiesta, & again I am happy to have used one of my fiestaware mugs that look very cute hanging up in my kitchen not being used for drinking. :-O I probably will do some tweaking to this still but it is pretty much finished.

This one as well is marked for the Monadnock Fine Art Gallery in Keene, NH. They opened their doors last week and, although it is not finished, they have their website up @ http://www.monadnockfineart.com/. I just sent them my images so they will be up in the artists section soon.

I just wish I had all my frames, which I ordered last week, so I could have my things in the gallery for their first full week open. I'll be getting them soon though!

the Golden Pear

This is 8" x 10" on Pastelbord. I'll be back to my favorite format (6 x 18") for the next one! I scanned it in so it is doing something weird to the edges and the grain appears larger - but oh well it AGAIN gives you an idea of what it looks like.

I just was inspired looking through my latest copy of Pottery Barn. I know its not a magazine - its a catalog - but I can thumb through it just as long. For summer they have all the beach gear displayed and along with it was a little grouping of light green/aqua/light blue bottles that would look so good in my favorite format with a couple of white seashells. Well now I guess I have something to hunt for at the thrift stores and garage sales where I get most of my still-life models.

I'm on a roll with these drawings but unfortunately I have to take a break tonight and fold some of this laundry that is accumulating. I've been putting it through the washer and dryer but not folding it and putting it away. Back to drawing tommorrow!

Fiesta Orange

Here's another one for Monadnock Fine Art Gallery - one step closer to that 6-10 pieces I need to bring in. I'm starting to get tired - I guess this momentum can't last forever. I love the rendering of them all, but coming up with the compositions and lighting them just wipes me out. I set this still-life up the day before I did the sidewalk drawing and then yesterday when I got back from Art Walk until I went to bed and today all day I've been working on the rendering.

I am terribly excited however to finally use one of the fiestaware mugs that I purchased on ebay. I bought 10 of them in all the different colors and they've been waiting impatiently to find a spot in one of my still-lifes. :)

I'm ready for a real coffee now! :)

Sidewalk Drawings!!

We did it! Jess Ventura and I made chalk drawings/paintings on the sidewalk in downtown Keene, NH for our town's Art Walk artist demonstration day. We weren't the only artists there, there were a lot of demonstrators, but we were the only ones kneeling on the sidewalk and getting filthy. Yes filthy. Not only downtown regulars got to see the work but many of the schools in town had field trips to come see the artists and artwork and they really enjoyed the chalk drawings.

This was the first time either of us had done this and I haven't even used pastels besides once in high school, so we were both a bit worried about how it would go. We learned some tricks though so if you ever want to do one and need some tips email me!

Check out that image above all this babble - up there - a caterpillar somehow appeared and was crawling through my drawing in progress. I was really surprised at how much he smeared as he went through!