Painting Doors

This project has left me pondering why most doors are painted white? It seems we are missing an opportunity to decorate our lives. Painting murals on walls is reasonably common but doors, for whatever reason are not common mural locations.
We got tired of looking at an ugly door. Most of the walls are filled with art but amidst the paintings is a sad looking dilapidated door. This door was never painted properly and was missing large chunks of what used to be white paint. It was also duct tapped together since the front panel decided one day to separate from the rest of the door. It was a sad situation. So I suggested that it should be painted....with something cool! After a little discussion I bought some paint and we started. Sebastian was really excited about this project and when I returned from teaching one Saturday he had painted more doors and had drawn out his designs for them.
The first door I completed was the one on the inside of the room. The hook is real so I painted a hanger and the shirt (with our initials logo) and the weird alien guy with loooong arms. Haha
The next one is based of the newly discovered prehistoric bird: Llallawavis scagliai. Painting bones is fun so even though this took me many hours I enjoyed the process. 
The third door took me much longer to finish. I don't really know what to say about it. It's fun and interesting even though I'm not quite sure what is going on! lol

Entwined

I have finally completed this painting. I sketched this image in the first page of my new sketchbook at the beginning of the year and started the painting sometime in February, and now three months later it is finally complete!!! I worked slowly and carefully on this painting but was constantly interrupted with other projects which was the main reason it took me so many weeks to complete it. 
Dancing en pointe is not easy. It hurts ans requires a ton of hardwork and dedication. Some days you dance till your toes bleed, leaving blood in your shoes to remind you of the effort you put into each and every class. Dancing en pointe is not easy, but is should look effortless. That`s the real art of it. Duisguising the work and pain behind the motion, leaving the audience in awe of those carefully rehearsed steps, elegantly effortless in their presentation. 

Entwined is 11" by 14" painted on watercolour board mounted to a cradled wood board. I used ink for the background and feet and then watercolours for the snake.
Originally I wanted the snake to be based off a real species but the coloured ones I liked weren't pythons and therefore are not prone to wrap themselves around trees and things. In the end I made up my own mythological snake because I wanted the bright colours to contrast with the black and white feet and background.
Entwined can currently be found in my Etsy Shop!

Custom Pink Journal

This past week I had the honor of creating a custom book destined to be used as a wedding album/scrapbook. I enjoy custom work although there is always a little bit of extra stress involved in getting it completed on time.

I had to work a few late nights and early mornings but I got it completed and into the postal system within a week! It took me about three hours to paint the gold on the covers and approximately 2 hours of cutting, folding and gluing papers for the ten signatures. Sewing it together and gluing end papers took another hour. It probably took me a total of 6 hours to make....not including drying time etc. I used thicker paper because it will be used to glue photos and memorabilia and stitched it together slightly looser than usual to make room in the binding for the paper that will be added to it.
I am quite pleased with this particular journal and will be making more like it as soon as dance ends for the year!

Dealing with Pain

Spring time in the dance community is slightly chaotic with ballet exams, dance competitions, extra rehearsals and the preparation required for June shows and recitals. I have been teaching/dancing 6 days a week this month and my back pain is at an all time high. My chronic pain is caused by inflammation in my hips and back from a bunch of minor injuries that tend to twist my hips to uncomfortable places. Since I do not have time and am not really willing to take a break from dancing I am forced to figure out how to deal with this pain. Because of my achy back I have not been overly productive with my art this past week as it makes concentrating rather difficult. Ironically my chronic condition is the reason I began to pursue my art in the first place.

This week I am trying to take it easy for a few days and get myself back to a better state. I am reworking my diet to include foods that are supposed to help with inflammation and joint pain. I read an article about a study where shiitake mushrooms were shown to reduce inflammation. In the study people only ate one mushroom a day for 4 weeks, at which time the doctors could measure a reduction in the immune systems inflammatory response. My diet now consists of Shiitake mushrooms, salmon, tofu, apples, kale and a few other things including organic red wine! 
Hopefully these small changes will help me feel better and make more art!
I have been attempting to finish a whole bunch of projects this week. I'm getting close, but so far nothing is done. Which means, in theory, I will have lots to share next week!
In the meantime I did paint this sketch in my sketchbook.

Handmade Paper at Das Buch

 As you may remember I have recently become slightly obsessed with making homemade paper. When I cut paper for the pages in my journals I am left with odd shaped scraps. Making paper out of these scraps gives them a new life! 

I have been making paper every Wednesday for a month now and I finally have enough to start bundling it up and selling it. So far I have three different types of paper. I made a whole bunch of coloured paper that is embedded with coloured flake sparkles. My family and friends have been complaining about the trail of sparkles that has been following me around so there might not be any new sparkle papers for awhile. :P

I have also been wandering around collecting flour petals and pressing leaves for a more botanical looking paper. These ones are my favorite! I plan to collect wild flowers at my cabin this summer and create a whole line of floral papers. These papers have tulip petals, myrtle tree leaves and some pressed ferns from the side of the house. 

These paper packs are listed in my Das Buch Etsy site alongside my journals, bookmarks and illustrated Moleskine Journals.

Cost of Being Social

A sketch from my studio sketchbook - working on a painting of it!

I just finished my taxes; and by that I mean that I just finished adding up piles of crumpled receipts, sifting through years of bills and doing more math than I do any other month. Then I hand the mess over to my mom who tries to make sense of my confusing 'self employed' tax situation. (Why didn't they teach me how to do this in school?)

Robert - Just hanging out :)

The great thing about doing my taxes like this is that I get a close look at my yearly expenditures. The amount I spend on gas is always a shocker (over $2,000) but the other surprising number was that I spent $250 on facebook ads. The majority of my audience gets to this blog via my facebook page. When I initially set it up facebook was still a free and open marketplace. Then they introduced ads. Over the next year I saw my posts reach fewer and fewer of the people who had gone out of their way to 'Like' my page. So I started running small ad campaigns. Now every time I post something I have to set up an individual advertisement so that a portion of my audience will actually see my art. I generally only pay $1 or $2 to 'promote' each individual post, and clearly that ads up quickly! For $2 the potential for my post is about 400 - 700 views. I would have to pay at least $5 for my whole audience to see it. The difficult thing is that facebook is still the easiest way to reach people. It would be great if all those fans could subscribe to my blog but I read all sorts of artists blogs and are subscribed to none of them. I don't need more email clutter in my life and I bet you don't either. So I continue to pay to use facebook (the service that will always be free) to reach the wonderful people who take time out of their day to look at the art I work so hard at. I don't like the idea of giving facebook hundreds of dollars each year and if I am trying to make money from art I can't really afford it. If you use other social media sites I invite you to follow me and my artwork! 
I have a twitter account, instagram, Ello  (a new social media site still in the beta stages) as well as this blog and my website!

Illustrated notebooks

This past week I sold three illustrated notebooks out of my Das Buch Etsy shop, so I have been working to restock my moleskine notebooks. The cool thing about the last few sales is that they are going to people that will thoroughly enjoy them. I sold a small kraft moleskine with monarch butterfly illustrations on the cover to someone who raises monarch butterflies and the two notebooks with pointe shoe illustrations are going to be enjoyed by dancers. I love that my passion for art can inspire other people to indulge in their passions, whatever they may be. 
I recently gave the Das Buch website a little bit of a makeover so it is now more up to date with what I am currently making.