Studio is looking more and more hospitable

I have been working as diligently as I can to get my studio in order. Liesl has an easel in there now. She loves to paint and draw on the chalkboard. I am hoping that she gets tied up in the painting and allows me to do the same on my easel or drafting table with my project of choice. I now have a "new" desk in the studio which I am loving. My dad basically created a new desk from an old one. I say this because he did so much more than refinish it. he routed a beautiful new edge on it and refinished and lacquered it to a beautiful new shiny blonde. Gorgeous! I am currently waiting for some new pretty little Martha Stewart handles for it.

I cant wait. Jim brought 2 wonderful dressers into our house from his parents which I am going to try and refinish for various purposes in the house. Currently they are storing Liesl and my craft supplies..... some of them. I couldnt possibly fit everything in 2 dressers! What were you thinking. One of those dressers is going to be put into Liesl's room. I am aspiring to paint her room like Pixie Hollow from Tinker Bell and the dresser too. Some of the drawers have fallen apart and I am toying with the idea of making the top 2 drawers into shelves.

I found a few blogs out there that have great outdoor crafting and activities with kids. really fresh sites and I am really excited to visit them. I am hoping to make a fairie garden for Liesl this spring in our garden. I found this wonderfully simple but gorgeous 3D star to hang for the holidays and I am hoping to make a fleet of them for our house.

I have also been working on felt story boards for Liesl. She now has a Farm board with farm animals and zoo animals and I am working on a princess storyboard for her currently. She now has one at both Oma's houses and at Home. She loves to play with them as she potty trains :)

Getting the Studio in order

I have been doing a lot of house stuff with the move that is not quite done. The "jesus move" as Jim might put it if he was put to the task of naming it. Meaning that the moving is always coming and coming.... I am almost done with the organization and I should be able to paint soon. Hoping I am going to be able to get some framing done soon too. I am going to have to probably put a long table in my studio to do the mat cutting though and I dont know how I am going to put that to Jim yet. He likes how "crisp" the studio is currently. It is in the center of things so I will try and keep it clean and neat but it is gonna get kinda crazy when I get going with things and I am probably going to have to put up the gate to that room when I am not in it which Liesl might not like so much. I am looking forward to lots of projects in there as this was one of the wonderful reasons we picked out this house. It has a great feel and I think I can make some great pieces in there.

Not feeling this one as much

I think I am "fighting" with this painting a little more than the last one. I was thinking of washing off the water last night. Just putting it under the faucet and letting it wash off. I don't know about this weight of paper though. It is a heavier weight and is stranger for me to work with and is sucking in the paint faster and deeper and it is hard for me to tell what it is going to look like and making me second guess myself. I guess that is what is frustrating. Maybe once I get a little depth into the background I will feel a little better about it. Last night when I was doing some detail work on the shore and in the water with watercolor pencils Jim had Liesl in his lap sleeping in the family room. He said " how come it sounds like you are coloring?". I said. "because I am". It was kinda funny. I don't think he knew I did some detail with watercolor pencils sometimes. Here is the painting I am working on currently. I almost didn't want to post a picture because it is at a point I am frustrated with. But here it is.

Started a few more paintings

Liesl went to sleep at 5:30 pm last night and didn't wake up until 7:30 am this morning after her long day at the zoo. Needless to say, I got some painting done. I decided to start a couple more paintings last night. Both of them are a different version of the birch paintings. One of them is quite small and I would mat it on a VERY big mat. Not sure what I will do with it when done but there is a demand for all kinds of sizes. The other is a standard size piece of heavy duty cold press paper that had something on the other side that someone else started and gave me the paper because it was really expensive. I really liked working with it so far. We will see how it turns out when I am done. I wasnt able to start anything else as my roll of paper was where Liesl was sleeping.

Altogether, I have 5 paintings started and at different stages and probably 4 or 5 more paintings that are in the final stages of completion. Which is a very good thing because the watercolor takes a long time to dry and you cant always work on it until completely dry depending on the effect.

Prints?

I found a really sweet company that would do prints. I would send them my original and they would do a high resolution scan of it and color correct the image which would have to be done with watercolor because of the porous nature... it kind of distorts the color when light is applied. the kind of print is called a Giclee, which I have researched before. They would print it on watercolor paper with high quality inks. Looking forward to sending one in. It would be inexpensive to have one printed and I would get a full size proof of it. Example: For the size of this watercolor painting I just did, a Giclee to print 100 would be $80 plus shipping etc. Plus, I can go back and order 15 prints smaller later or more. I see it all coming together. Here is the site:

Crimson Atelier

Ideas on framing

This is gonna be a super big piece of work. The finished size is 43 1/2X 25 1/2 found a place to order over-sized mat board but as always with the over-sized stuff the colors are limited. Not sure I could get something as exciting as I picked out for this on the left. oversized mat board

Standard size mat board is 32X40...way too small. If I can get a good color in over-sized (40X60) for this which would be plenty big I could put a 3 or 4 inch mat around it. If I am going with a mat it might as well be 4 inches in my opinion......which would make the piece total size with overlap 51X33.

If I go with just a frame and spacers to separate the artwork from the Plexiglas it would look nice too. Just depends on what I could get for over-sized mat board colors to make it worth my while. I did find some frames that would definitely do the work justice without a frame. Here is an example of the artwork un-matted.

Betula Magic

Well, the painting is finished now. I don't think there is anything I can do more at this point but flatten it out. I put in the details in the canopy and in the ground cover and I am calling it done. Here are some pics but it doesn't do it justice as the flash tends to bounce back more from the watercolor pencil than the soaked in paint.