Sunday, January 31, 2010

Little Red Door


I have discovered this fellow-Canadian seller on Etsy and I absolutely love the creativity of her shop. She makes little figurines which are absolutely adorable! If you have a minute, you should check it out!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/thelittlereddoor

Friday, January 29, 2010

Concert Tonight


Tonight I am performing with a brass choir in a concert and I'm a bit nervous about it. It's going to be a great concert. Pieces by Mancini (the guy who wrote the Pink Panther theme), Handel's Queen of Sheba (always a challenge) and then 'A Londoner in New York--made famous by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. Of course, being a band geek, I know who that is, but if you don't, just imagine your childhood heros and that accompanying feeling of wanting to be like them.




Anyways, this piece, 'A Londoner in New York', is HARD and I'm nervous about one solo in particular in a part called 'Radio City'. The music is supposed to sound like an old LP record and occasionally the record 'skips' Well, my solo is the skipping part. - insert a funny face here- I've learned that it's hard to skip on purpose!


Thursday, January 28, 2010

Artist Trading Cards


Not too long ago, I got into the world of making ATCs (free artist trading cards) and now I have to admit I AM ADDICTED! It gives me the same kind of warm, fuzzy feeling I used to get as a kid when I got a letter in the post from my pen pal.

All of the cards I have received are so unique and the online community I've gotten involved in is so friendly and most of all it's FUN! (and not too expensive either).

I've been putting the cards that I've received into an album. It makes a great coffee-table book and conversation piece. This is just one of the pages from my album.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Tweeting & Twittering

I have avoided Twitter for quite some time now mostly because I felt the need to keep away from yet another social networking site that could rob me of time (my addiction to Facebook is already bad enough!). I aim to keep my twittering strictly linked to the goings on of my crafting and my etsy shop. Wish me luck!

Spam Hammer

Sometimes we just get days when we are bombarded by Spam. It's on days like this when it is time to get out the spam hammer!


Horn Cat is here...

In the spirit of giving my shop a facelift, HornCat is here! Formerly Smiles Forever, the name has been changed to better reflect my personal style and give the shop a more memorable name.

I am currently workin on a new design/ logo for the shop too.

Concept for a Painting- by Kirby :)

Here is the original concept, as I understood it.

On a very large canvas, create a background of opalescent colours in horizontal stripes. The stripes should have a modern, streaky, non-blended feel to them, but be aligned so that they have a sunrise/ sunset feel to them. The paint should have a shimmer to it that is similar to the inside of a seashell.

On top of the background, there should be a silouette image of cherry blossoms, or of a tree in bloom.

I think the background will be the trickiest part. First off, I wasn't quite sure what Kirby meant by opalescents. When I think of opalescents, I think of the 90s and its love of pink, PEACH, cream, white and beige. Our RV was done in those colours and I didn't realize that they had returned. :S

But after doing some hunting, I found some items/ photos that have interesting colour palettes which might work. Have a look at these.



I think that this one has a great sunset in it and we can follow this order of colours to create the background. I love this colour palette, but the easiest thing to do would be to have Kirby grab some paint chips in the colours she wants.



I also like the colour scheme of this arrow pendant (ignore the black). I also like the look of the streaking. Maybe we can apply this streaky look to the background?

Next is paint; I don't think oils will work. I have never seen pearlescent paint available as oil. I've only ever seen it in fabric paint so it might be available as acrylic. If we go with fabric paint, it will take a LOT of paint to cover it. It would probably be easiest to do a base layer of acrylic first and then streak over top of the base with the shimmery paint.


Cherry blossoms: full tree or partial tree?





Monday, January 11, 2010

Painting Sketches





















Here are some initial sketches for the project.

I am thinking of 2 separate pieces, rather than one piece made of two canvasses. This way if you ever move, you don't have to keep them together if you don't have enough wall space. I am thinking one piece will have a large peacock feather coming around from the left. The second piece will have two feathers coming from the bottom right/center. One feather will have an eye, the other will one of those long tail feathers. One piece will have have brush strokes going horizontally, the other vertically.

I've put them up side by side…what do you think? In my mind, the feathers will be more colourful and brilliant than how they look here. The camera doesn't pick up all the shades of colours Plus I really want to add some coppers and gold to them too...possibly experiment with some leafing. I think it would look neat.

I experimented a little bit with oils and came out with this third sketch. On top of a gold (acrylic) background I did a blend of browns from the outside inwards (getting lighter towards the center) with a palette knife. I really like the texture that came out of it. It seems to add a bit of character. Oils also have a natural lustre to them (you can see the reflection of the light in the upper corner). They also can be glossed later if you want them more glossy. I don't think oils would cost much more than acrylics and it really is very easy and fast to do with a palette knife. For this idea, I would do both canvasses with this type of background (one with vertical knife strokes and the other with horizontal-the one pictured has vertical strokes) and bits of gold leafing embedded in the background. Then have the colourful feathers painted over top-- same positions as I mentioned for the first two sketches.

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