DIY hanging rack from a baby crib!

Taking off the pegged top piece on rail

As professional artists, we have 2 art studios on our property. The larger one is big, beautiful and built from a torn down 1910 house!
Our smaller one is my "cabin in the woods" and was a tired 10 x 20 storage building that we renovated for additional room in our ever expanding art business!

 So in my small Art studio that I use for my silk making, I needed a place to hang my scarves while I worked on them. I use an outside clothesline which is perfect for drying. But in between some stages of my techniques, I needed a place to gently hang silk without folding it or dropping it on the floor :-)

Crib rail hinged to wood attached to wall.

 The solution came in the form of parts of a free baby crib! Used cribs can be found at yard sales for next to nothing and the sides can be used for any number of creative projects!


My idea was to attach hinges to the bottom , attach it to the wall of my small studio and have it fold down from the top.  When in use, the lightweight chains would let me lower it to pretty much any height I wanted. I did not want it level, just out a foot or so from the top of the wall. When not in use, it folds back up to the wall and hooks with regular latch hooks :-)

Small chain, latches and hinges are easily found in any hardware store!

A little paint on the wood the piece is hinged to will make it look finished :-)

As you can see, the lightweight silk dangles easily from the rack away from the wall. It could be closed as well if I choose.
A perfect solution for everything from fabric to paper to your laundry room.

Raise the chains higher if heavier items will be hung. The ceiling is barn style so hanging this from the ceiling where the lights are was not an option-too high and the lights were in the way so this "Murphy style" rack was the perfect solution!

An easy DIY project accomplished is an hour or less.

50 Shades of Green

Gray landscapes...even when the sun comes out the many shades of gray that form my vision of winter, linger.  The first spring flowers and the early blooming Bradford pear trees pop out to brighten the landscape but their background is still gray.  Then, as if overnight, the barren landscape turns into very subtle shades of green. At first it's just a filmy green; Like someone placed a green filter over a black and white landscape.  Then it becomes more and more obvious-almost as if the dark shades are being absorbed into the softer greens. And that is what it is-soft gray greens at first. Fifty shades of green.
Within a week, the maple "helicopters' are dangling from the trees and the honeysuckle leaves are opening.....
and then everything begins to announce that it is April in North Carolina and time to renew that glorious feeling that only comes with Spring!

Crab apple tree

Spring plowing and 50 shades of green

Maple Tree seeds

The wild dogwood under the sycamore

A Woman and her Beagle shared

  A Woman and her Beagle

 {I'm sharing this from my other blog www.mtheresabrown.blogspot.com simply because it is part of my artsy journey. Portraits are who I am. But art in all it's forms is where I like to be!)

I'm shipping out a pastel portrait this week and I must confess that I love it :-)

Now as you can see, it is of a beautiful woman and her equally charming beagle! Wow-the memories....my very first dog, my buddy, my confidant...was a beagle. I was just 7 years old and she occupied a time in my life that no other dog ever will. At 20, I honestly thought my world was going to end when "Tippy" passed. It was serious grief.

Ah but years later, and many four legged best friends later, I know of course that wasn't true :-). So I totally understood the bond between this woman and her dog!

Her mother commissioned it and sent me a huge pile of photos and ideas! After looking through them, I said what I say to everyone "Got it. Now just leave it up to me to choose!" So she did.:-)

The result is this pastel portrait-about 14 x 18 of Sarah and Bella and it will be the family's treasure for many years to come!

Of course, no one ever says it better than a happy client:

 Theresa....I have just had to retrieve the Kleenex box.....this is absolutely perfect!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I am blown away....

Inspiration in creating your own designs

Creating your own designs

Adding my designs to a silk/wool blend shawl

I have always carved. Mainly wood and even earlier-block prints on linoleum blocks. Both are time consuming and labor intensive-not problem normally to an artist but sometimes I just don't have the patience!
So with a "softer than linoleum" product on the market (for years apparently!) by Speedball, I started carving my own stamps to use on my scarves. To say it was fun was an understatement-it went fast, I was impressed and most of all I was enthused! My own designs-not mass produced ones from the craft stores....what's not to love? :-)

Using Speedball tools to carve away my design

A few carved in just a day (and used!)

I realize with the exception of the heart, these are all horses but that's where my passion lies when I am trying new ideas. Plenty of time to come up with other designs as I become more proficient!

Using the stamps with textile paint was a blast! I have a new batch of scarves to play with so I can't wait to try them but in the meantime I have two collages of what I worked on so far!

Our frigid temperatures have kept me off the hiking trails until today but the cold is coming back around and I'll be ready!

Prototypes!

 

 

 

 

Overlapping the design in layers

Hiking your way to Happiness

Happy New Year!

Well an entire month slipped by...rushed by...and we're already into the end of Dec. 2013. Not sure how that happened but although I missed shouting out Merry Christmas here-it was definitely on my Facebook pages and newsletters!

The rush is over and now is when I regroup, rethink, plan and relax (as much as I am capable of!)
I gave Steve his Christmas present (and the same to me) to enhance our artist rejuvenation..trekking poles! Yep- hiking poles to get us out of the studio and onto the many trails in our area.

It's been in the 30's but the freezing rains and snows across the midwest missed us and went north.

So what do you do with a new backpack and trekking poles on Christmas evening and the following day? You hike :-)

It's a good place for an artist.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The path less traveled-on a very cold day!

The bread and butter of creating!

No doubt about it-Christmas is a motivating factor for people thinking about a portrait!
Below are two collages with quick glimpses of what this fall has been like so far...I am leaving out the ones that are gifts that could be seen!
My silk art as well as abstracts have sold as well so a collage composite will be along soon.
I love my job!

Colors of Inspiration

Why do we use certain colors? What attracts us to yellows or blues or pinks? Why do we react well with some colors and not with others?
I opened the doors to my studio this morning and walked out with coffee in one hand and a recently completed silk painting in the other.  I paused to revel in the unusually cool morning and admire the colors of dawn. Reds, oranges, yellows and cerulean blue against a backdrop of greens in every hue. The cooler summer has kept the shades of greens vivid this year rather than showing the browns that come by the end of the hot days. 
And then I realized that the silk scarf I was holding in my hands encompassed the colors of all that I was seeing. And I knew then where much of my inspiration was coming from. From within my subconscious came my color palette because it was not until I stepped out of the studio did I realize how the colors around me had influenced my paintings on silk. And that's a good place to be :-)

The colors of morning

the colors of Inspiration

Expanding the Art Studio....again!

 I admit that when I write for one of my blogs, I often "copy and paste" to the other if the information is something I know people would like to see :-). Such is the case for the post below that I put up on my art page blog!  

Frankly, my intent is to move the many art supplies I am using for my art journaling, silk painting, etc into the new space after doing some renovation (needs MORE light and serious sheetrock over the insulation!) and regain our painting studio...well....that's the plan!

Adding a new art studio

We're happy with our art studio.  In fact artists are always telling us how much they love where we are.

Late afternoon in front of Art Studio

As our art expands into new and different directions..what was big enough for two artists with full time art careers begins to take on a life of its own!

It's hard not to be emotionally attached to something you built with your own hands. We salvaged much from a 1910 house, Habitat for Humanity, thrift and salvage stores and with the help of friends and family and much sweat and patience, the 24 x 30 art studio with its 10 ft. high ceilings eventually came into shape! 
We started out SO neat! But the reality of loading and unloading vans, equipment, art supplies
paintings and then storage. Oh my. Storage! We have a pull down attic that can accommodate a lot but only those items we are not using regularly.

We were so neat in the beginning!

They say photos are worth a thousand words so maybe it's easier to show you what I mean!

But a solution presented itself ...we actually fought it for awhile...thinking just one more thing to fill up but scroll down to see the newest addition to our art compound :-)

Salvaged cupboards-I wish I had 5 more!

No, it's not moonshine-just Steve's secret oil medium curing on the front porch railings!

Steve's work table

Working on a silk scarf and oil painting at the same time!

Positioning and offloading the new building.

The newest building was brought here from just down the road-a 12 x 20 vinyl covered, insulated and wired building for a great price...I mean, how could we not?  The previous owner had even wired the building for 220 voltage to accommodate her kiln!  Well we won't be doing any kiln work anytime soon and there is some serious cleaning, fixing and painting to do but I am looking forward to moving supplies from the big studio to the shelves in the smaller studio....and will keep you in the loop of my progress :-)   I just hope it makes a dent in the large one!

Painting on silk scarves and silk!

A detour journey for a portrait artist into the textile world of silk is not as extreme as it may sound. I mean it is still drawing and painting after all.  I am stretching silk-I stretch canvas. I am playing with colors to see what works and what does not-that never really changes. Even after years of painting portraits where by now I obviously  have my favorite combinations of skin tone colors, sky colors, etc, that is still subject to change! (I do have to watch my tendency to drift towards portraiture in silk painting though.) 

What I AM certain of is that as I do more, I am liking my newer silk paintings ones more than my first ones! And I am also wanting to expand from the confines of a scarf (8 x 54, 8 x 72, 14 x 72, etc) into...I don't know squares and such. So having said all that, below are a few of the more recent examples along with some images of my high tech PVC stretching frame that my husband and I put together! 

From earlier post. Painting horses

background colors added, salt sprinkled

I am still out on sprinkling salt on the background for a starburst effect-it has not happened quite like I thought it would (as watercolor paper would react) so having tried it on 2 different dyes...well, we will see!

Onward:

Horses added after I dyed the colors

closeup of embellishments

All of these are on the stretcher bars. The next blog will show the PVC frame and larger scarves. (these are 8" x 54").

On the Model!

Silk Painting explored

The fun of an Artsy Journey is just that: it's fun! For the past few months I've enjoyed various forms of silk painting with more or less a YouTube education. That in itself is another story, but I have played with some pretty basic tools to the more traditional dyes used by the professionals and have just scratched the surface. I think I know now,  how my painting students who come to me and say "I know nothing about painting" feel. :-)

Special markers on white silk scarves

So anyway I've played with resists, different dyes, washing, ironing...wow more work than a portrait!  You never know what I'll create next-keep watching!

Dyed with abstracts drawn by hand onto the scarf

Stretched, silver resist and hand drawn and painted

Same horses but with background dye added and silk salt for texture

Silk scarf embellished

Blackberries and Cobbler and.... art?

juicy blackberries

It took me 30 minutes to collect 4 cups of blackberries. The old pasture was full of heavily laden bushes and the previous year I had vowed to cut trails among and around them in order to access the lush fruit.

Paths around blackberry bushes? For those of us old enough to remember Song of the South and Brer Rabbit, there is an apt line in the story where Brer Rabbit pleads with the bear "Please don't throw me in the brier patch! Please don't throw me in the brier patch!....." and the bear does, not knowing that it's the rabbit's safe hideaway.  I can tell you that IF you were able to get into these bushes, you would never get out...they were the thorns from hell and I picked them with gloves on!  I seem to have two varieties. One is now almost through producing. The other, the one with killer thorns and huge berries is in the midst of producing.

Rosie the Corgi following the path around the thorny bush

So why go to all the trouble to pick berries such as these when they are obviously a lot of trouble?

For the TASTE! How can it not be inspirational to head out on an early morning, before the summer heat sets in and, followed by happy dogs (who also like the berries!) spend a quiet hour communing with nature? I mean after all, plucking nature's free harvest is....liberating!                                                                                

Thorns from hell from a 10 ft high bush!

 But it was not just for the immediate gratification of eating the blackberries-it was for the later treat: Blackberry cobbler!

Now I confess that the image below is not mine but the cobbler is identical in looks and OH SO EASY!' What my mother used to make!

Preheat oven to 375.

4 cups black berries

1 TB lemon juice

1 cup flour (reg)

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

6 TB melted butter

Lightly grease bottom and sides of an 8 x 8 pan/baking dish

Add 4 cups blackberries, sprinkle with lemon juice (1 Tbs)

In an medium bowl, mix sugar, regular flour and one egg until mixture forms a crumbly mix. Scatter over blackberries. Dribble melted butter over flour/sugar mixture. Bake 35 minutes until brown and bubbly. Let stand 10 minutes before serving! Sure you can add ice cream or whipped cream and it is good hot or cold!

Blackberry Cobbler!

And what does any of this have to do with art? Let's just say that cooking is an art so I have, in onefell swoop, captured ALL the sensory elements of art :-)

In just a few days...ART RETREAT!

JUNE 8 ART RETREAT!

LADIES ART RETREAT!

Join Theresa and her special guest, artist Ophelia Staton, Saturday JUNE 8 from 1:00-4:00 at our LADIES ART RETREAT and learn some new and exciting tips in creating or adding to your Art Journals!   Ophelia is a creative and carefree artist whose easy teaching  style will inspire and motivate you to step into the world of art journaling, expressionism and "no holds barred" art. 

HTTP://WWW.ARTSTUDENTACADEMY.COM/LADIES-ART-RETREAT-2.HTML

Read more about Ophelia here:http://opheliasart.blogspot.com
Read more about Theresa here: www.ArtsyJourneys.com

Creativity with Crayons

If you think that crayons are just for "coloring" you are partially right! But see what happens when you challenge a teen art class to take simple perspective a few steps beyond the basics and apply what they learned about shading techniques using paper, a pencil and crayons! Wondrous results!

 Shading and highlighting the contour shapes makes the piece seem to undulate on its own!

Crayons, used in this manner, are a simple, cheap and effective art tool for all ages!

Highlights are the white of the paper, uncolored!

Draw the pencil perimeter first, add the contour lines, then enhance with shading

The Art of Chickens

Artists seem to ponder the most absurd things sometimes.....take the chicken for instance-good for baking, casseroles, frying and yum-lots of eggs.That's about where most people end their thoughts about this versatile bird.
But sometimes the smallest and least conspicuous thing in your day to day world can have the most  interesting history, tantalizing colors and absorbing social scene. And the chicken has it all.
We just added chickens back to our mini "homestead" farm and art studio. We had them 10 or so years ago but lacked the proper fencing.....oh we had plenty of fencing and the bills to show it...just not the type to totally foolproof ranging neighborhood dogs. The numbers dwindled and we gave the last few roosters to a farmer.  
Now I had chickens when my children were small-in fact in another life (it seems) I had a Grade A Dairy Goat farm licensed for making feta cheese. My chickens were the Aracaunas and other mixes so we routinely collected pale blue and green "Easter Egg" eggs plus the white and brown. So I am very familiar with the work and rewards of such a life :-)And it is hard to sty away from!

The first batch 6 weeks old March 1. 10 of them!

So the first batch we picked up locally and they are a trip. Alert, inquisitive-s a few very friendly ones, the others a bit stand-offish. Their treat is bread pieces. A mixture of Buff Barringtons, Speckled as well as purebred.

5 month old Dorkings

The next ones are also local-from a Dorking breeder outside Louisburg, NC. Ancient breed-pretty feathers-4 hens about old enough to lay...5 toes...originally brought over to the British Isles by Romans! Regal aren't they? 



Ah well, the kids interaction with a chicken is no problem! The youngsters below were at an art lesson at our studio and did not hesitate to walk in with the chicks and hold our gentle ones!

So as artists we find ourselves studying the colors.  As humans we find ourselves smiling at their antics.....listening to the multitude of sounds-clicks, murmurings, croonings that are unique to a chicken....and hey, who knows how we, and our many students of all ages,  will incorporate feathers and colors into our art?

I'll keep you updated!