Check out this artist I found while searching for Marie Antoinette screencaps!
“I feel that it is important for me to sell my work directly to my fans, without the needless expenses or pretension of a gallery or middleman.”
- Jasmine Becket-Griffith
Check out her Etsy shop! It’s full of cool paintings like the one above!
So we went to The Square Foot Show last night after debating the idea for the past few weeks, but intensely over the past few days. What it really came down to is that if I didn’t go, I’d probably regret it for the rest of my life, so we dressed the kids up, stuffed them in the car and off we went to The Big Smoke (aka Toronto).
After much debate, I ended up wearing my ruffled Free People dress because it was easier than the other two outfits I had planned. I bought the Free People dress specifically for this show and why it was even in debate that I might not wear it is because when we picked the kids up from Muskoka (up North) where they’d been up visiting Phil & Lisa for the week, we were all outside talking and I got about a dozen & a half mosquito bites. Y’know, I’m not implying that I’m some kind of unique snowflake in saying this, but mosquitoes LOVE me and worse, I seem to be ultra allergic to them in that the bites itch so bad that I scratch them into bloody scabs in my sleep (sometimes I sleep with gloves on to prevent this) and even after they’re gross, bloody scabs, they’re STILL itchy for up to a month or more.
Unfortunately, most if the bites I incurred up North were on my legs so I didn’t really want to wear a dress that showed off my legs because the bites looked like lesions from some nasty illness or something. I tried my very best not to scratch the bites since I got them, but that was impossible and I ended up scratching a few layers of skin off. To prevent further damage to myself, I got Blake to buy me this stuff called AfterBite, which I don’t think is sold in the US, and what AfterBite is, is basically a mixture of pure AMMONIA and “natural oils”. And it stings like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. It doesn’t make my mosquito bites any less itchy longterm, but for about half an hour or 45 mins after putting it on, I don’t feel itchy. But it’s just a temporary solution and I still scratched the shit out of my legs, the result of which won’t be totally healed until, oh, October, because I just don’t heal very fast.
So long story short (too late!) that’s why I didn’t want to wear my dress. My other options were a new pair of jeans that my friend Charlie bought me and this corset-like t-shirt that he also bought me, which is so cute and super lacey and I love it, but the jeans are brand new and about 5 inches too long (which always happens when you’re 5 feet tall) so that meant I’d have to cut the bottoms off, or get Blake to, and then wash them a few times so they’d fray evenly and we didn’t have enough time to do that so that outfit idea was a wash. My other outfit idea was this white tank top I have that’s like, embroidered with eyelets (I forget what that’s called), that I’ve never gotten to wear because I didn’t own a white bra until a few days ago, but the jeans issue was still a problem so I had to go with the dress. (My other jeans are all way too big because of all the weight I’ve lost but I haven’t lost enough to fit into my old jeans yet.) So dress, grey tank top, knee high Doc Martens and my crystal necklace it was. I blew dry my hair to give it more volume but the rain & humidity killed that so I don’t even know why I bothered. Also the lipstick I wear ALL THE FUCKING TIME seems to be missing and I’m really pissed off about that because it’s only ever in 3 places and it isn’t in any of those 3 places, so where the fuck is it? GRRRR. I can’t afford to just replace it either. :o(
The drive to Toronto was pretty uneventful. Blake knew where we were going because it was the same place we dropped the paintings off to last weekend and it’s actually pretty easy to get to. The actual show is in a theatre building a few doors down from AWOL Gallery and you have to go upstairs to get to it. So we went there and a security guard stopped us at the door because they were only letting so many people in at a time as not to crowd the space. (Really, I think they should have been more diligent with this because there were too many people and seeing all of the paintings was difficult with so many people milling about.) There was free food there, like baby carrots and dry bread with some kinds of dip and a fruit platter type of thing that as mostly grapes which I forbid the kids to eat because god only knows who double-dipped and it’s an events like these where people get sick the next day from food poisoning.
The paintings…it was a good mix of awesome and awful. I think my favourite was one of a turd with a smiley face that said “War is poop.” My other favourites were the two Tascha pieces that leapt off the wall. One was a Frida Kahlo riding a bicycle down a hill and the other was a fortune teller with a glittery crystal ball. They were awesome. Everything else was kind of a blur to me. With so many people in the room I was feeling a little panicky and the sheer amount of paintings was overwhelming. I think we should have gone with our original plan to come today (Sunday) instead, when there would be less people. Basically all we really did was do one circuit around the room to try and see everything and we also tried to find my paintings.
“Shimmer II” got NO love at the show as she was hung on the very bottom row (H64 if anyone’s planing on going to the show) which was just about to the floor, where you couldn’t even see her shimmer and shine, but hey, someone’s gotta be on the bottom, it’s no big deal.
“Red & Gold” got prominent placing, just a row or two below eye level (F101) and there were people talking about her, according to Blake when he did another circuit of the show without us, trying to find “Turquoise Love Fairy”., which none of us saw when we were looking at all the paintings.
Here’s the thing with Square Foot: when you give them your $20 participation fee or whatever it’s called, you are only guaranteed to have 1 of your paintings in the show, even though you can submit 3. This is because of the sheer amount of people who contribute to the show and the sheer amount of paintings there are as a result. There’s only so much room. The overflow, they said, would be hung at “an off-site location” where it “could be seen by request”. So with the way it was worded on the application, it sounded like one of your pieces not being in the actual show was a bad thing.
However, I don’t think that’s the case. Some paintings, the supposed “overflow” were hung at AWOL Gallery itself and that’s where “Turquoise Love Fairy” ended up. Personally, I think that’s better than being in the mess of the actual Square Foot Show and when we looked in AWOL’s window to see if we could see my painting, it seemed as though the paintings hung there were less crazy than a lot of what was put in the actual show. So I think being hung there was a good thing.
“Turquoise Love Fairy” is at the second row from the bottom, 4 paintings in from the left (M10).
I wish the gallery had been open when we were there so I could have seen all of the paintings hung there, but it wasn’t so we just took that picture with Blake’s Blackberry through the window. In the pouring rain.
Next year, if we go to the artist’s reception, I’m bringing my camera. I didn’t bring it last night because I think it’s rude to take pictures of other people’s art, but at the show EVERYONE was doing it so I guess it’s an accepted thing? My anxiety at the show was through the fucking roof, so we only stayed about 15 or 20 minutes before getting out of there. And also next year? I’m wearing jeans and a hoodie. NO ONE was dressed “nicely”, so next year, fuck it, neither will I. I also think that next year we’ll go on the Sunday and skip the artist’s reception altogether.
So that was my Square Foot experience. I don’t think any of my paintings are going to sell there, but that doesn’t really matter to me because the whole point of doing the show was to have it on my resume. I would like to do more art shows like that in the future, but I just don’t know where they are or how you find out about them. It also sucks that they all seem to be in Toronto.
The call for entries for Touched By Fire is in a few weeks and I don’t think I’m going to be submitting this year unless I get all 3 of my paintings back from Square Foot, in which case I’ll submit those. I just don’t have time to paint anything new for the show. Square Foot had me so stressed out that I couldn’t paint at all so I spent a lot of this week in my Sims Bunker instead.
Anyway, I need a friggin’ sandwich and I have nothing else to say except that if you want to go to The Square Foot Show an see my stuff in person, the info is here.
And it’s always been my goal to reflect that in my paintings. Now I’m a little bit closer with thanks to Tam for the inspiration to quit humming and hawing and standing there with my mouth open and just try. Like really really try, not just a half-assed attempt.
So what I did this week was I got up early on Monday morning, watched Tam’s videos for this week for her World of Whimsy 2 class which included a video on how to shade girls with darker complexions that was a result of me asking Tam how to do so and directly after watching I took 3 sheets of watercolour paper, drew lines on them cutting them into quarters and started drawing girls in each box. Then I painted my ass off all week until my hand ached from holding a paintbrush.
Admittedly, the first two pages were a bust with a lot of shading mistakes and poor colour choices, but the last 3 girls did I were pretty good so I figured I’d share those ones with you guys now, plus a 4th girl who was intended for a full painting but I’m not sure I’m going to because I’m not sure I like her shading.
This one was done using a dark brown watercolour pencil to do the shading, then painting over it with a mixture of acrylic paint and acrylic glazing medium. The tricky part in doing all of these girls was in trying to get their complexions even and as you can see, this one’s complexion, especially above her nose and between her eyes, is pretty uneven so that particular paint mixture wasn’t optimal. A final wash of the same mix, but thinned with water was put over this girl before I called her “done” and that helped even out her skin tone a lot. She has a beauty mark because some kind of black schmutz got on the page and it wouldn’t come off.
For all of the girls’ hair I had two options for black:
I went with the latter because I thought it looked more authentic in that it appears a little texturized because the pearlizing medium does make it a little bit texturized. The Black Pearl paint would have been too smooth and is also a real bitch to draw on after the fact if you need to do touch-ups on the lines in their hair, which is the main reason I don’t like to use it.
Anyway, the girl above was definitely better than the first 2 pages of girls I did, but she still wasn’t there. The first 2 pages of girls were basically experimenting with colour and getting frustrated that I couldn’t get their complexions even. By the 3rd page I figured it out.
This is the one I personally like the best because her skin tone is even, her shading is a lot more apparent than in the other examples I’m going to post, I like her expression and I like her hair style/colours (the reddish brown colour is called “Royal Ruby” and is a dark metallic red that isn’t showing up well in the picture – trust me though, it looks cool). How I got her skin tone even was that I used the watercolour pencil to do my shading, then I went over it about 50 million times with a mixture of acrylic paint and glazing medium that was really thinned down with water. Like, too thinned down. The next time I use this shade (which is the same shade as the last girl, but she had her problems which I’ll explain when we get to her) I’m going to thin it a little less so I don’t have to do as many coats.
Obviously with this 3rd girl, I was going for a darker complexion and an even one at that. I think I was mostly successful, but I think if I were to do this colour again (I have a lot of practice left to do!) I might try using either a dark purple or possibly even a black watercolour pencil to do the shading because with how dark the skin tone is, a lot of it was lost. In person the shading sows up a lot better, but when I took pictures in natural light you get what you see here. Again with this one, I used the thinned down mixture of acrylic paint and glazing medium, but because this particular colour is a highly pigmented one, she only needed 2 coats to be considered finished. If I did any more, all of her shading would have been lost.
So those were my practice girls, which I’m pretty proud of. Of course I’m not showing you my other 2 pages of mistakes because they were REALLY awful, just know that I made them and we’ll move right along…
This girl was supposed to be “the real deal”, the one I made an actual painting out of, but now I’m not so sure because I don’t really like her hair and her shading got washed out by having to do so many layers of watered down paint. (Granted, her shading doesn’t look as ashed out in person as it does in this picture, but still…)
Originally I painted her to be a white girl that looks identical to everything you see here, but for her skin tone obviously. In the finished piece, she was going to have a black petticoat with red underskirts and a large red bindi jewel on her forehead. The background of the canvas was going to be red, black and gold splatters on a crackled white background with red and gold “chunky” glitter sprinkled over top. But now I’m thinking…should I go through all that effort and use all those supplies on a girl I’m not even sure I like? I have two weeks until The Square Foot Show so realistically whatever I paint right now should be my 3rd painting for the show and I’m not sure I’d want to put this one in because I’m not sure I like her. At the same time, I’ve not liked girls at this stage before and the finished product has ended up being some of my favourite pieces so I should probably just keep going with it.
Being the August long weekend here in Canada, my plan is to forget painting for the next 4 days and play WoW with Blake so in that time I’ll give it a lot more thought and by the end of the weekend I should have my answer. I didn’t mention it but the paper I’d be using for her petticoat (I don’t even know if that’s what it’s called – the outside part of her dress) is black and embossed with vine-y flowers. I think at the very least I should give her a dress, even if she’s only going to be put in my sketchbook as a failed experiment.
Anyway, as far as art goes, I think I have the women of colour thing pretty much worked out and out of all the paint I have, I have 3 main complexions I can do: sort of a honey brown like the 1st and last examples shown, the darker one shown and one I haven’t actually used yet because I just found the bottle of paint this morning, but it’s actually called “Chocolate Brown” and that’s exactly what it looks like. All 3 of these colours can be darkened or lightened. (I have like, 10 different shades of browns, not counting metallics, but these 3 were the only ones that look like realistic skin tones.)
My next art objective is to figure out how to draw and paint Asians without them looking like bad caricatures, but I think that’s going to be something that’s kind of on the back burner while I perfect my women of colour. I cannot even tell you how excited I am to be able to, after the stupid Square Foot Show is out of the way, go back and recreate some of my favourite pieces with girls of darker complexions. And I keep saying “darker complexions” or “skin tone” or “women of colour” specifically because my girls don’t have a race necessarily. They just have colours. Like, the one that may become a painting? She could be Indian or Black or Hispanic or even a multicultural mix of races. I’m not gonna specify. Does it matter? No it does not. I’m just happy to be able to paint them and have them be beautiful, that’s all.
So that’s what I’ve been up to this week and what I intend to be up to for quite some time.
So I belong to a street team on Etsy for Canadian Etsy discoveries and promotion called Oh Canada and they have a blog.
Well last night I got a message on Etsy saying that they featured me on the blog, which was very cool of them!
So check it out!
Also, expect an art post from me later today.
My rainbow girl is finished and awesome and I’m waiting for the sun/light (it’s overcast today) to come through the kitchen windows to take pictures of her
So that’ll be this afternoon at some point…unless I get distracted playing WoW with Blake since we haven’t played all week.
We’ll see.
As I mentioned a few days ago, Willowing/Tam is having an online art class called World of Whimsy 2, where she’ll show you how to make and shade pretty girls, as well as animals, and show you how to make mixed media backgrounds. She’s also going to cover basic things like composition, layout, layering and embellishments. It’s going to be a great class!
It starts on Monday, runs for 6 weeks and is roughly $85 US/$93 CAD.
I signed up last night and I’m really looking forward to Monday. Along with the class, which is comprised of videos and PDF files, you get Tam’s attention and the ability to ask her questions and get critiques of your work.
As I said in my original post on the subject, Tam is a really great teacher and a wonderful artist, so if you think taking an online class is for you, then this is probably the one to take.
You can sign up/learn more here.
Have a great weekend!
(Alex & Ronny get married tomorrow, I’m so excited!!!!! SO that’s what we’re doing this weekend. :o))
I don’t know what I did, but I can’t believe the amount of blessings coming into my life right now. The pessimist in me is waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the optimist in me, who is winning out these days, is just going with it with immense gratitude.
Today a package came from Amazon. An anonymous gift. So a huge THANK YOU to whomever sent it, it was quite the surprise! And much appreciated. If you’ve been reading, I actually broke down and bought Nobody’s Daughter from Wal*Mart last Friday but I kept the receipt in case something went wrong with Wes’ Zhu Zhu pet, so I can return the extra copy. Thank you again though, anonymous person, everything you chose from my wishlist was just perfect and I cannot thank you enough. <3 (The book Neon Angel, which is Cherie Currie’s account of The Runaways and a book about photographing art and collectibles were the other two things, if anyone’s curious. Can’t wait to read both. :o))
Now the next order of business is something that I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, but wanted to wait until the story had reached its conclusion before I did. Do you remember the cat ring that I bought on Etsy in May? I know I linked it but I’m not sure if anyone actually clicked the link.
Well, it was from a seller called Freedom Jewelry USA who went so above and beyond that I couldn’t even believe it.
The listing for the ring was a size 8 and me knowing nothing about ring sizing, used an online ring size converter thing that told me my ring size was 10. So that’s what I asked her to make me and she gladly obliged.
Well when the ring got here, I tried it on and it fell off of each and every one of my fingers because it was HUGE. So I left her feedback saying how great her customer service was and everything and then I convo’d her and said that I must have screwed up the size (which I didn’t, the converter was wrong, we discovered) because it’s too big, but if I took it to a jeweler, would they be able to size it for me? She said that she’d prefer to do it herself and that I should send the ring back, she’d recast it in the proper size and send it back to me. All for the cost of reshipping.
Now, me being a skeptic, I was kinda thinking this could be a scam, but I sent the ring back anyway, along with two ribbons that were the circumference of the finger I wanted to wear the ring on, one tied in a loop, one straight, and waited for her to receive them and tell me what my ring size actually was.
So she got the ring back and told me that my ring size was “about a 9″, so I asked her if there was such a thing as an 8.5 because then I can wear the ring now and still be able to wear it as I lose this extra weight of mine.
So that’s what she did and then she sent it back. I got it late last week, tried it on and while it was a teensy bit too big still, it’ll get the job done (as a faux wedding ring at the Square Foot Show since my wedding ring doesn’t fit right now). I was so in awe of how nice she was and easy to deal with and just the whole situation that instead of the $1.50 postage she wanted, I gave her $15 instead because this was just so awesome of her.
Here’s the ring, my wedding ring that fits INSIDE the ring because I was damn near anorexic when I got married, and some shots of my Hello Kitty wedding ring because I’ve never posted proper pictures of it and I know people are curious about it:
My wedding ring was cast in white gold from an actual Hello Kitty ring sold by Sanrio a really long time ago that Blake jumped through hoops to try to find. The diamond is one of his mother’s. Even if it did fit, I wouldn’t wear it because I actually hate wearing rings, I find them all too heavy on my fingers, like when I’m typing or drawing, but I like to wear them if I’m going out somewhere, like The Square Foot Show. I’m bummed my wedding ring doesn’t fit right now, but I refuse to have it resized because to me, that’s like admitting defeat and accepting the size I am, which I will not do.
Anyway, the girl who is Freedom Jewelry USA was great and totally went above and beyond for a perfect stranger, so definitely take a look around her shop and if you like what you see, add her to your favourites!
Like I said, I’m not sure what I did karmically to deserve so much awesome in my life right now, but I am absolutely grateful for it all and want to shout it from the rooftops. For once in my life, I’m actually loving my life, which is definitely a new thing that I hope continues.
So thanks. To all of you. To the whole world. <3
I’m posting this for those of you who have expressed interest to me in the past in doing an online art class because in my opinion, if you’re going to do one, especially for the first time, this is probably the one you want because it’s 2 classes in 1 and Tam is a great teacher who goes the extra mile for her students:
Pending funds become available to me before the class begins on July 19th, I’m probably going to take this class myself because I think a fresh perspective on things could help me do what I do better.
The class is 6 weeks long and the cost in $57 GBP (I don’t have a lb button!), which converts to $85.68 USD. I realize that that probably seems pretty steep, and it is, but as I said, you get 2 classes in 1, meaning you get all of the files for Tam’s World of Whimsy 2 (along with personal instruction), along with all of the files for World of Whimsy 1, which I wanted to do back when she was offering it but I did another class instead.
As I said, the class begins July 19th and the link for Tam’s classes is right here! Maybe I’ll see you in class!
This is beautiful and I want it.
Nice work, Lia. :o)
Just posting this for a friend. :o)
After two years of closure, I am officially reopening my Etsy account!! I do not plan to turn my LJ into a big ad for Etsy, just wanted to let people know I’m back up & hopefully get some positive feedback under my updated belt. =)
I’m offering free shipping on all purchase – just type “LJ free shipping” in the seller notes & I’ll either refund you the cost of shipping or send you an updated invoice with the shipping removed.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/CreativeLiberties
Thanks all! <3