Tag Archives: Creativity

Oct23

What Happens When an Artists Gets an IDEA!

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Wild Poppy!

One day I was sitting in my living room thinking about how to get my MoJo back.   As I wallowed in the misery of not being able to get inspired…no matter what, it occured to me that I had a very large roll of rolled canvas.   What could I do with a roll of canvas?   I know other artists have worked with raw canvas, because I have seen banners of art hanging in coffee shops, even hanging outside.   Can’t I make floor coverings also?

After thinking about the posabilities, I dug through my studio to get the tube of canvas out.  The tube hanging out in the very back of a corner in my studio, and covered in years of dust, willingly hopped out to see me, and let me know it was ready for service!   Now I was getting excited….

My husband, Les helped me cut a large piece of canvas, and in all my excitement I had to  try doing what I had been thinking about for years.  The painting above is the first of my Fantasy Art.

Splash of Happiness was the second of my fun abstract painting.   I’m having fun now….   After that I think i was full of myself and decided to work on a larger piece.   Gingerly I cut a long piece about 26″ X 12″ and painted it black.  This was the end result of my black piece.

A New Day

My Daughter in law came by,  loved it in black, and quickly claimed it for her own.   I wasn’t going to leave it black, however since she loved it so much, I decided to stop while I was ahead.  This was just the start, and I was having so much fun.   I loved the abstraction, and all I am able to think about was how to abstract my art even more.

Happy Poppy was claimed by my Daughter, so I put a frame around it because it was 12″ X 12″ and easy to frame.  No Glass!

Happy Poppy!

The last painting I wasnt to show you I named “It’s Been a Crazy Day!”  It’s so much fun to challenge myself to abstract even more, and because they are on an unstretched canvas, it seems to take the fear out of wasting a good stretched canvas.   Of course, it’s all in my mind, but I have always said, “the mind is a terrible thing to waste!”

It’s Been a Crazy Day!

Thank you for taking the time to stop and check out Karen’s Stone Soup.   See you next time….

Sep18

What’s On My Mind!

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Nothing!

Have you ever reached a point where nothing is there. No Sometimes there just isn’t any inspiration, and my muse is gone. I’m so empty of creativity, I’m having trouble doing things around the house too.
Well this sucks!What to do? If only I could sleep it off. I can’t sleep, and that may be the problem here. When one doesn’t sleep, you don’t function well, and everything you do seems to be difficult.

But since I don’t sleep, I’m going for the World Record . How many years can a person survive without sleep?

The flower above is an attempt at a creative process, one that is simple, easy and doesn’t take too long to paint.
This is the time you are allowed to say, “My three year old could do that!”

Thank you for checking to see if I’m still painting, see you soon.

Aug28

Experimenting again?

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Well Yes!  What’s the point of doing the same thing over and over without different results.  Some people would call me an idiot!  I get bored and need to change things up a bit.  So, there are times when I nose around in Pentrist or my old photos from vacations long forgotten and get new ideas.  I try them, and if i like them, I’ll paint my version of a similar piece of work.   It never looks the same, but looks like something I’ve been working on.  I am an abstract artist, and that means anything, and everything is open for interpretation.  I don’t mean to copy, and I’m not.  But we all share a creative energy, and there isn’t anything that hasn’t been done before, so I say go for it!

This isn’t going so well.  As I paint a color, I’m thinking it’s fighting me.   I don’t know where it will go, but it doesn’t start behaving soon, this little canvas will find itself gessoed over, and it won’t have a voice at all.  Needless to say, it isn’t even close to finished, or maybe it is quite close to finished!

 

Jun26

Working With Cold Wax

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Last year I bought some cold wax to play with.  A friend of mine uses it on her oil paintings, and being a rebel, I decided to try it on watercolor and acrylic.  I had no idea what i was doing, and couldn’t find any instructions for using it.  Maybe I just didn’t try hard enough, or….maybe the timing was off, and i really wasn’t ready for cold wax.  Either way, it sit on my shelf with all the other products that I had to have proudly waving at me from time to time, making sure I don’t forget the possibilities it holds.

This morning I was looking for something else on YouTube when I ran across this video.  After watching it, I now have a better idea of the possibilities, and I do love possibilities.  You know I will be experimenting with cold wax very soon, and maybe one of you will want try it, experiment with it, or even decide it is the perfect effect for what you are creating.

Either way,  I hope you enjoy the information, maybe try it out, and let me know how it goes.

Thanks for taking time to check out Karen’s Stone Soup.  See you soon…

Jun22

How I Get My Ideas…

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Most of the time our creative juices flow easily. However every once in a while we all come to a screeching halt, and we haven’t any ideas. There isn’t anything worse than being stuck without a clue as to how to get creative again.

Sometimes I paint rocks as houses, flowers, faces, or even bugs. My favorite is a ladybug. Our garden is filled with ladybugs, flowers, faces, even one curled up milk snake. I know it sounds crazy, but it usually helps to open up the bottle neck, and let the creativity flow once again.

Since I get emails from Bob Burridge frequently, I thought I’d post one. This particular video started me thinking about my childhood, and how far back I could go. What part of my childhood would I want to bring forward onto a canvas. As I thought about it, I started remembering holding class and teaching all my stuffed animals math, and reading. Or dressing up in my mother’s shoes, and hats with gloves. Maybe even birthday parties, or my “16” birthday party.

What ever I choose, there are always options to make a series from them. Even if you have to pull out your creative license. After all, this is the same as writing a story, just with paint!

When I watched the latest video Bob Burridge posted It got me thinking about all this, and I thought maybe it would help all of you as well.  I hope I’m right.

Thank you for taking time to read Stone Soup,  see you next time….