The Trials and Tribulations - and Completion! - of a Painting...Plus a Really Cool Real Cake!

So here is the process I went through for the "Let Them Eat Cake" painting.  I started out taking photos of each step, and did really well for a while; unfortunately, once I got started on the actual picture, I got so caught up in it that I forgot to take photos!  Oh, well.  

Okay, here's the blue on the red.  I didn't like the blue paint that I had on it, so I tried mixing another color.  Here it is with the two separate colors.  After it dried, I did another sketch right on the canvas.  This one I did with watercolor pencil.  I like using watercolor pencils for sketching on paintings.  They're so easy to erase and don't leave residue for the most part.  Sometimes I can't get charcoal pencil off the paint when I make a mistake and if I've custom mixed the background color, painting over it becomes a hassle.

After I sketched it I realized two things.  One, the cake plate was way out of proportion to the rest of the cake.  Two, I still hated the background color, waaaaaaaay too bright.  (It's hard to tell in the photo, you'll have to take my word for it!) I started to wipe off the sketch and then realized  that it didn't matter if I was just going to paint over it - plus I still needed to take this photo.

You know what that meant, right?  Shopping!  Oh, yeah...  Took a quickie trip to Michaels because I was sure I had gotten Golden liquids there before.  Wrong.  The good news about that is that I didn't have to make a total decision on the color there at the store.  The paints they had were cheap enough that I could pick out a couple colors to try and pick up another bottle of my favorite green.

Here is me throwing a couple sample strokes of paint at the painting.  Even though they both looked quite blue in the bottles, against the brightness of the blue underneath one looked gray and one looked green!  Agh!      So I decided to mix them together and see what happened.  I didn't mind it, it need a little somethin', somethin, but overall was happy with how the color was turning out.

But then, ack!  I realized that there were some very unsightly bumps on the canvas!  (Help!  Canvas ProActiv, STAT!)  So I tried sanding them down and painting over them.  While the bumps felt smooth, as soon as I put paint on them, they showed up big time.  Sigh.

So I was like, "Okay, I'll put some molding paste on the canvas!  No problem!"  Oh, lordy!  So far from even, it just started creating more oddness.(That's wet paint from when I was painting over the sanded part and the white part is the molding paste that I gave up on.)

So I just pulled out another canvas and picked one of the new paints - the aforementioned grey looking one that looked perfectly lovely and blue when it wasn't on top of the other, brighter blue - and painted yet another background.  Which, yes, I forgot to photograph!

Then, while that was drying, I sketched, cut out, and outlined the vintage dictionary page that I was using for the cake plate.  I love my vintage dictionary!  It is one of those gigantic, 6 inch ones from the late forties and has awesome color pictures of different species of animals, birds, reptiles and the solar system.  It also has maps of the world, and charts for the moon phases and other fun stuff.  It belonged to a boy that lived next door to my husband when he a little kid.  One day my DH took me on a drive and showed me his old house - he hadn't been there in years - and the neighbor was having an estate sale because she was moving into a nursing home.  It was the same neighbor, the boy's mother, after all this time!  Her son had written his name in his little-boy handwriting on the cover, so I think of the coincidence of that day every time I pick it up.

I also went over to the computer and experimented with fonts for the "Let Them Eat Cake."  I printed it out and, because I have an ink jet printer and it will otherwise smear with the slightest moisture, I sprayed the printout with a clear, matte, quick-drying finish.  I cut out the words and inked them up a bit so that they didn't look so starkly white.  Then I outlined the words with a dull-ish charcoal pencil.  In some sort of elven magic way, if I write on the paper soon enough after spraying, the charcoal seems to meld with the spray and doesn't smear when I run my finger over it.  I've no idea why not.

Then I got to painting - and forgot to take any pictures!  So here is the finished product.  I know it doesn't appear that the original blue and this blue are all that different - but they really are quite different from each other!  And isn't this cake plate so much more in proportion than it was in either of the sketches?

The other thing I was going to show you was this amazing cake I saw at a 6 year-old's birthday party that we went to.  It was FANTASTIC!  The little girl's grandmother made it and she is NOT a professional.  Can you  believe it???  She made each and every thing.  5 little fairies and each one has completely different hair!  One of them even has ringlets!  There is a teeny, tiny, little tea party on the stump; teeny, tiny teapot, teeny tiny cups, and little pinwheel rolls and a tiny cake.  Each cupcake had a big flower, 2 little flowers, and 3 leaves; and each flower and leaf was hand-painted!  Besides what you see here, there were 30 more cupcakes lined up on 3 long tables for the kids.  I talked to Hollie, the little girl's mother, and she told me that her mom had always made amazing cakes for birthdays.  Can you imagine the amount of work that went into this???  Geez!  It was all I could do to get to the store to pick up the cupcakes for Rexy's class on her birthday.   I mean, I can sort of see doing it as a grandmother or an aunt (my sister makes really awesome cakes for Rexy's birthday parties) but when you actually have children at home???  I would be calling for cocktails before the third flower was painted - frankly, before it was even iced!  I'm thinking of sending this to Cake Wrecks for the day she shows the pretty cakes (Fridays?  Sundays?  I forget.).

Lastly, a quick reminder that we're having the Art at the Speed of Life Blog Tour right now!

Here's the schedule:

Art at the Speed of Life Blog Tour

1-Mar   

Crescendoh - Jenny's Blog: 

http://jennydoh.typepad.com/

2-Mar   

Suzi Blu: 

http://www.suziblu.typepad.com/

3-Mar   

The Altered Page/Seth Apter: 

http://thealteredpage.blogspot.com/

4-Mar   

Suzan Buckner: 

http://www.thriftycollageartist.blogspot.com/

5-Mar   

Sue Pelletier/Laugh*Paint: 

 http://www.suepelletierlaughpaint.com/

6-Mar   

All Norah's Art: 

http://allnorahsart.blogspot.com/

7-Mar   

Faerie Enchantment: 

http://faerieenchantment.blogspot.com/

8-Mar   

My Collage Art: 

http://nancylefko.blogspot.com/

9-Mar   

Always Chrysti: 

http://alwayschrysti.com/always-chrysti

10-Mar   

Lisa Bebi's Art Blog: 

 http://lisabebi.blogspot.com/

11-Mar

Jodi Ohl/Sweet Repeats: 

http://www.sweetrepeats.blogspot.com/

12-Mar

Living Out Loud (Hey, that's here!): 

http://loudlife-laurieblaumarshall.blogspot.com

13-Mar

The Feathered Nest: 

http://the-feathered-nest.blogspot.com

14-Mar

Paulette Insall: 

http://www.pauletteinsall.com/blog

   3/15

   The Art of Julie Bergmann

   http://juliebergmann.typepad.com/pinkparismatch 

The Perfect Post or...?

Where have I been?

Where have I been? I have just been here.

After the Christmas craziness, my house fell into rack and ruin (wrack and ruin?). More so than is usual for me, anyway. First, I had the brilliant notion that I wouldn't allow myself to go online or make any art until I got everything done around the house that I wanted to get done.

Hmmph! You know that saying, "If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it?" Well, I think there must be something to that. As soon as I wasn't overloading myself, I stopped doing anything. So I guess if I'm not being a part of the artistic community or making art then I'm not doing crap, basically. Add to that, if I'm not making art then I'm depressed. So that was a bad idea.

Then, it had been so long I felt like I had to give a rundown on all that had gone on in my life up to the point of my blog post. Which is silly, it's not like I had a baby or won the lottery or anything. I struggled and struggled, trying to write the perfect blog post. You know the one; it's the one where you show yourself in the very best light while also being personal , where you show great feats of artistic accomplishment, domestic aptitude, beautiful children, and a spotless

home.

Then more time had passed and then I felt like I really had to write a great post. This idea grew and grew until it was one big, ginormous, 300 ton boulder in the way of my blog writing. I think I gave myself writer's block.

Finally, finally! I gave up on that idea.

So here I am. Just me; perpetually behind, fairly slacker-ish, intermittently artistically inspired, mom, wife. Far less than picturesque. Completely lacking in the schedule-following department. (I always think that if I could come up with the perfect schedule, I could get everything done that I want to get done. Hah!)

I'm just a seeker in life. A seeker of my truth. One that doesn't necessarily include perfection.

That's a hard one to let go of. Like most of us, I love the idea of perfection. But the reality is, I don't love it so much that I'm willing to sacrifice other things in life that I love. Even if some of the things I love in life are kind of silly (like computer games).

In a perfect world I would get up early, serve my child homemade something-or-other for breakfast, effortlessly clean my house, blog, contribute to my forums/groups, and then put in a 6-8 hour day of art making while also serving a homemade lunch and dinner to the family, exfoliating, giving myself a mani/pedi, and exercising for an hour; thus leaving the evening free to spend quality time with my husband discussing art and politics. (apparently groceries magically appear in this world)

In my real world I stay up too late playing computer games, read my book in the morning after serving my child some kind of cereal or store-made pumpkin bread item, feel lucky if I either do the dishes or get a load of laundry going, seldom leave the house before noon, and if I have to go grocery shopping while Rexy's at school you can just kiss art-making good bye for the day. I do spend time with the husband in the evening - but we usually just watch TV. Forget about personal grooming - any extra time I have is spent playing with my girl, going to play dates, and struggling to keep the fallout from our pack rat tendencies at bay.

(All that being said, I still think I should create some kind of schedule...)

With all this in mind, I came across this week's Melange on Etsy Challenge. This week's challenge prompt is "Bliss." What that immediately brought to mind is Joseph Campbell's phrase, "Follow your bliss..." What does it mean to "follow your bliss?" For me it means really coming to terms with exactly who I am and what I want and then arranging my life to accommodate those things. More poetically put, "Be a seeker of truth and a builder of dreams." And so I painted this last painting. (Our 2 (!) tripods have been misplaced by the DH, so I couldn't get a full frontal pic. Above is the scanner image and below is the best I could do without a tripod.)

I so love my friend Pam Carriker's color palette that I thought I would try an homage to it. I don't think I achieved her beautiful, subtle layers. I may try to sneak some more texture into it later.

Lastly, I'll leave you with a picture of my beautiful girl. She's turned 5 and graduated from preschool since I've been blog-absent.