Kat Eye Studio

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Arriving

It’s done! It’s done! My latest painting is done. I see it as a wave. A never-ending wave… it’s always swirling around, moving, pulling in and breaking out. There is energy in the motion. I’ve entitled it “Arriving” because that is what I see it doing. Always arriving, never arrived. Just like us. Any time we think we have “arrived” we start on a new journey. Any time our wave breaks on shore, we have but a brief moment before we are pulled back into the swirl of life and creativity. That’s just how it works.

Arriving, Acrylic on Canvas, 16×20″

Getting back into painting has been fun. I’ve enjoyed seeing this image emerge, letting it tell me where I wants to go. I’ve enjoyed getting paint on my hands and under my fingernails. I’ve enjoyed gazing at the end product up on my easel. I’ve also enjoyed what I’ve learned from the contrast of this painting, which I love, and the other one that I was hating last week. Thanks to your advice, I’ve set that painting aside and I will come back to it later. There are some distinct difference between my approach between “Arriving” and the painting-which-shall-remain-nameless. The biggest is in the gestures I used. For Arriving, I was playful and free. I did not try for clean edges or precision. I found interesting things to stamp with. I circled and swirled, layered without trying to be smooth or clean. The interaction of the layered elements is what I like best. In the painting I hate, I got wrapped up in clean edges and even coverage. The gesture, the texture, and the interaction of elements got lost in the precision. So, for my next paintings, I’m going to go with the looseness. Open gestures, stamping shapes, allowing imprecision. See what emerges.

Here’s the painting in it’s process of “Arriving”… Just in time for Paint Party Friday! Starting with shades of blue, lots of fingerpainting and a spray bottle to drip:

Adding more blue and some circles with a foam brush, more dripping:

Adding green and beginning to define the swirl:

The white enters, using various random things to stamp circles:

More white and layering of the circles with other colors to further blend and define the regions:

A few minor additions of light/dark to blend the swirl with the “bubbles” and the work is finished:

Arriving, Acrylic on Canvas, 16×20″

I took a few closeups of my favorite parts:


And a new question for all of you experienced painters this week: How do you sign your work? This painting is, as yet, unsigned. I’ve always had this struggle of wanting the signature to be small, neat and unobtrusive but I am paint-challenged for small details and it never turns out right. I find myself wanting to sign it with a fine point Sharpie and be done. Any advice is appreciated, and thank you so much in advance for sharing your tips! Last week’s comments were so helpful.

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And it begins…

It starts with a trickle, and will end in a flood. Not water, but mail! The Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap becomes official for me when the first postcards arrive. I’ve received four envelopes so far, one from our first international participant, yay! There are 210 artists signed up so far for the swap, but there is plenty of room for more. Please continue to share with your artist friends! Send them to the Liberate Your Art page on my site or share the Facebook Event. So exciting!

One great thing about a swap with artists is that they sometimes like to decorate envelopes! As they come in, I’ll share a few here on the blog. Today’s beautiful mail art is from Marie Johanson. I love the bright colors and the glittery symbol for beauty. Thanks Marie, for this little bit of happy mail!

And it’s time to share some of my own painted art, for Paint Party Friday. I continue to work on both paintings I started two weeks ago. One of them I love how it’s going, I’m sharing the progress on that one here. It’s not done yet, but I feel like it’s getting close. I know what to do next.

The other, well, I’m really not happy with it right now so I’m not going to share until I push past this point. I just want to stab my brushes through the canvas I so dislike it at the moment. Maybe that’s what I should do! Any advice from you regular painters, on how to move forward on a piece you do not like?

PS – And would you like to help me win a Vespa? Read more here.

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Mail Call!

It’s time for an update on the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap! As of this week, there are 181 people who have signed up, and I’ve received my first two envelopes. Yay! That may seem like I’ve reached my goal, but if last year is any indication, only about 70% of the artists who sign up will actually participate. That means I need a lot more people to join up to increase participation over last year! Can you help? Share about the swap on your blog, twitter or facebook page. I’ve even created a Facebook Event to make it easy to share with your creative friends, click here.

Won’t it be great to have all of that art reaching mailboxes around the world? I can’t wait!

I can imagine some wonderful art coming to these rural mailboxes, can’t you? They were so cheery, with the riot of flowers surrounding them. I played around with the processing and created another Lightroom Preset called “Mail Call,” which you can download here. It’s got a similar feel to Your Art Here, but the result is a little bit warmer with less desaturation in the reds and greens. I like the sunny feel of it!

Today is also the day I’m sharing my painting progress this week for Paint Party Friday. I’ve continued both paintings from last week, but this is the one I’m happiest with at the moment. It has a definite aquatic feel and I’ve continued to maintain the wave shape that originally appeared on the canvas as I build the layers. I think I’ll add some white next and see what happens. Happy Paint Party Friday to all!

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What? Me? Paint?

Yes, I’ve been known to paint once in a while. It’s just been a looooooong while. Months and months. I had to search my blog for the last time I painted, and it was September of last year! Yikes. But this whole time, my easel has been set up in my studio and my paints have been right there, ready and waiting. A few months ago I even primed some canvas. There they sat, ready and waiting too. What would it take for me to paint again?

Apparently, the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap is what I needed! I had a lot of participants in last year’s swap from Kristin and Eva’s Paint Party Friday link up, so I contacted Kristin to see if she would help me get the word out about this year’s swap to the Paint Party Friday participants. She suggested that I could be the “Featured Artist” for the week, and get the word out about the Liberate Your Art swap at the same time. Ack, I thought, but I haven’t painted in forever! She assured me that it was okay, but I might want to have some new painting to link in for the week. Hint, hint.

So here I am, with new paintings in progress on my easel. Leave it to Kristin, who encouraged me to paint more when I was in Italy, to get me back into it again. I think she must be my personal painting fairy godmother. So hello Paint Party Friday participants! I’m back! It looks like it’s grown a lot since I last participated, and I look forward to visiting you all this weekend.

And… I hope you will all join in the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap! You can find out more info and sign up here. There are ~130 people signed up so far… not nearly enough to reach my goal to increase over last year’s 170 participants but well on the way! Yay!

So here we go… two paintings in progress this week… it will be interesting to see where these go next!

For those of my readers who are not involved in Paint Party Friday, you can visit my “Featured Artist” interview here. Be sure to come back tomorrow to for the June Exploring with a Camera post. More creative fun!

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Why We Need Art


I was so excited last weekend, visiting the Saturday Market here in town. I found the first American image for my market/wheels series! Yay!

When I applied the standard “seventies” processing used in the series to the image, I got chills. I had this amazing realization. This series transcends place and time. All over the world, farmers are bringing their delicious wares to markets on wheels. They always have, they always will. I can go anywhere in the world, anywhere, and find images for this series. I could be in the middle of rural China or my little town of Corvallis and I will find a market. In the market, I guarantee I will find wheels. Within this commonality, I can see the differences too. The unique elements that tell the viewer where I am.

This is why we need art. Art is a way to equalize. Artists find connections, and commonalities. We speak in a language that transcends words. Anyone, anywhere in the world can identify with a piece of visual art. It can move us, bring us together in a way that nothing else can. 

And each of us, with our unique vision of the world, has something to offer that conversation. Whether it’s with a camera or a paintbrush or pieces of glass. Each individual point of view adds depth and dimension to the world we live in. We share our differences, and in the process, find the similarities between us. Don’t you think, if the everyone in the world participated in the conversation this way, the world would be a better place? I think so. I hope you’re joining in too.

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What’s going on around The Kat Eye View of the World…

  • Linking in to Paint Party Friday today, with these two works in progress started this week. I’m loving the colors! I’m picking up some new liquid acrylics in similar colors tomorrow at our new art supply store in town. (Check out the bottom of the page – I’m featured!!) I can’t wait to play with the new colors, and see where they go next.
  • The current Exploring with a Camera theme is The Color Wheel: Part 1. Check out the post and join in the exploration. 
  • Do you want find your unique vision of the world through photography? Registration for the fall series of the Find Your Eye e-course is open! Visit here for more info.
  • You can subscribe to the Kat Eye News to stay up-to-date on all the happenings.

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Finished!

The Garden
16×20″, Acrylic on Canvas

Finished! Two months in the making, this is my first finished painting, since returning home from Italy. It is my first finished painting since Flora Bowley’s workshop in May too, and really my first painting completely “on my own.” No teacher, no photo to guide me. Just me, paints and paintbrush. It feels good to get to this point, but I’m stretching out of my comfort zone here to actually lead with the painting as the main image of the post. Have you noticed how I usually lead with a photo, even when I share a painting? Photography is where I’m confident and secure, painting is not. I have so much to learn.

The recognition I have much to learn was brought home this week by my attendance of the Corvallis Art Guild meeting on Monday night. This art guild is for 2D, non-photography artists. (There is also a local Photo Arts Guild, which I’ve joined too.) I decided to join because I want to continue to learn about painting, and be part of the local artistic community. At the beginning of the meeting, some of the artists shared their work. It was amazing, the talent in that one row of people blew me away. It made me feel like a complete and total fraud to be there! I have so far to go. The meeting was inspiring and intimidating all at once. I don’t think I’ll be sharing in that front row for a quite a while. (Why is it I’m ok with sharing here and not there? Thought to ponder…)

Here’s the progression of the painting, from start to finish. I know I posted most of this before, but I’m posting it here to have it in one place.

At this point, it needed to be turned…

It was here my husband asked if I started a new painting, he didn’t recognize it…
And, done!

Happy Paint Party Friday! Have a great weekend.

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What’s going on around The Kat Eye View of the World…