Mercedes, Amanda

Mercedes

Amanda

I think I just hit on the proper paper/pen combo with Amanda.

Oscarina

oops the pen dripped right in the middle of the drawing. we'll see what I can do with the magic of photoshop. This is another one for Art on the Move.

Art on the Move Process work

The layout, more or less

The concept. My ink portraits (this is Nubia), the paintings framed in speech and thought bubbles, and words and stories woven throughout.

The first portrait: Tereza

It's March break so I have some time in the studio to work on Art on the Move. Art on the Move is cool. Arts Etobicoke and Lakeshore Arts are in charge; they match artists with community groups and with local business owners. The artist (in this case, me) conducts a series of workshops with the community group (the Senior's art group at the DPNC), takes the resultant art work, mashes it up, and turns it into a cohesive work of art to be printed on the local business owner's vehicle (the truck Brian uses for his contracting business).

We finished our painting workshops a couple weeks ago and I'm now working on bringing it all together. The theme we were working with was story telling and personal histories. I'll be combining their paintings with my own portraits of the participants themselves, and with banners woven through of words and stories recorded during the seven sessions.

I'm still working on the technique for the portraits. Feedback?

Black and White and Gray all over (grey? gray?)

I haven't had too much time to paint recently, so when I had a few hours in the studio this week I decided to just paint without thinking anything through too much. I have some larger projects in mind, but these are just games I'm playing with found images. I was angry painting on Monday so her face got a little abused, but aside from the aggression I was taking out on the wood panel, I've been thinking about how to dissolve the figure into the background, or rather into the painted space around it. Draw attention to the illusionness of figurative painting- it is just paint, gooey luscious oil paint (try to refrain from tasting it). So the just paintness of it.

These will get further abuse (or love) with wax and glazing once they're totally dry. I'm hesitant to pour the beeswax on before that oil film has really set- I think the shifting oil and wood could probably crack it. microcrystalline would work but it's not what i'm going for here.


I was at the Artist Project last night with my mom and I ran into Zane Turner. Listening to him talk about how pivotal Susan Scott's class was and the discovery of Tony Scherman's work was funny, it was so similar to my own narrative (although his painting is INSANE).

We were down there to see Tamara Weller, a super impressive young sculptor in the emerging artist section. Check her out this weekend if you get a chance, she was already getting chatted up by gallery types on opening night.

And another one from our weekly drawing session:

Our laziest studio drawing session yet.

Encaustic Monotypes

Liz's monotypes

My examples done for Tuesday's encaustic class

The fancy new hotplate (fantastic birthday gift from the parentals).

Custom counters (bathed in heavenly light) built by yours truly, with lots of help from Mike MacCormack. Mike, you should know that Hanna was impressed by your patient carpentry teaching methods. Also on the topic of teacher reviews, the five-year-olds I work with told me this week that I'm becoming very charming. Just bragging.

Liz was here at the studio a couple nights ago working on some encaustic monotypes. The process goes a little something like this:

1. Paint directly onto the hotplate with cakes of encaustic paint, or melt the encaustic paints in tins and paint onto the plate with a brush.
2. Draw into the wash of paint using oil sticks or oil pastels.
3. Press your paper (any medium weight paper suitable for printmaking) onto the mess of pigment and hot wax.

Tada!

If you clean off the hotplate and lay your print on the hotplate face up, I bet you could manipulate the wax on the warm paper , and add some new layers as well (just a hypothesis, we haven't tried that yet).

Nice work, Liz.

New Session at La Muse

From top to bottom: 'The Dead Flower' by Lindsey, 'Untitled' by Emma, 'Funky Animals' by Poppy.

We're starting a new session this week at La Muse Art Studio on College St. W. The class is Painting and Drawing, for 7-12 year olds.

I'm really excited about these kids. The last pieces they did were Nick di Genova-inspired mutant animal ink drawings. Wow.

This session we'll be continuing with ink into comic books, then jumping off of comics to pop art and graf.

The deets:
Painting and Drawing
3:45-5:15
Thursday afternoons
La Muse Art Studio, College at Dovercourt

Email me if you know a creative kid who'd like to join the class!