Be Careful What you Wish For

Yesterday, I was thinking and saying to friends that I thought we needed more snow so that the forests would get more moisture and, maybe the forest fire danger would be less during the summer. Well, guess what?

 Yesterday this little bush was clear almost to the ground now it is hiding again.

 The snow on the roof shows how much snow we had (I figure about 7 or 8 inches) because once, again the roof was clear.

I do love the look of fresh snow, especially on the cedar trees. However, shoveling is a real pain! They are forecasting more snow for the next few days so I guess we will get more of the snow I was asking for.

On a more creative note, I have done it again! I have gone over-board making those wire, glue and polish flowers.

I have used up all the right weight of wire that I had on hand so unless they sell like hotcakes I won't be making any more anytime soon. And, if they don't sell, I have enough houseplants that can use the extra zing.

Thanks for stopping by!

A Short but Sweet Visit

This morning we had a charming visitor who had so much fun bouncing around the yard that I wished for a video camera. No such luck and besides there was a bit too much shade. I had to be happy with a few photos taken from inside the house.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed my sweet visitor!

The photos aren't great because this little guy kept moving too much - so much fun! Mom was either just behind or just ahead of this little one and seemed  very calm about the gallivanting.

I was taking some photos of my yard and flowers to send to my daughter and it made me think about the comparison between my yard this past winter and my yard today.

the courtyard in winter

the courtyard today

I know which I prefer - in spite of the heat!

Always something to do!

There is always something to do when you are an artist and teacher. I had an email last Thursday from a past student wanting to know if I could fit her in for a lesson on Saturday. Of course, I agreed!

Theresa wanted to do flowers and had some of her own wonderful photos as references. She had two major concerns: backgrounds and portraying the delicacy of flowers.

#1012 - Bloom & Bud - 5 x 7 watercolour

I used the leaves to show wet-in-wet blending followed by liner brush work. For the petals we used a wet-on-dry technique with damp brush blending. The background was straight wet-in-wet using a variety of very strong colours blended on the paper, painting carefully around the flower. And finally, I demonstrated lifting out colour from the background and adding a few more leaves and the bud to help balance the composition. There isn't time in a two hour class to do a complete painting so I jump around from subject to subject so the student has had instruction on every element. We work on a few leaves, a few petals, a bit of background and lifting and then the student can (hopefully) complete the painting at home.

Bloom & Bud started off just as a demonstration on a old spotted piece of watercolour paper. In spite of the jumping around, I could see that my demonstration piece was looking pretty good so I cleaned off the few spots that showed on the petals and completed the painting.

To top of the weekend, I got a surprise. A few weeks ago, my friend Sheila was doing a give-away on her blog (Sheila's Blog) of some niftily textured foam. That is what I picked up at the post office on Sunday.

The timing was perfect as I had just started work on a quilled dolphin and wasn't sure how I would finish the card but one of the textured foams was perfect. I will probably be playing with these foam pieces for some time.

And finally, here are a couple of photos of winter in the valley. Today started off with 6 more inches of snow, grey skies and a 20 minute blizzard but by 11:00 the sun was shining in a vibrant blue sky.

Hmm, I got more cloud that I thought. Some day I should paint some winter scenes of the valley but for now, I would rather think Spring and paint flowers.

Promotion and Snow

This is a long one - lol.

It seems that this year a number of my artist friends are thinking about promoting their art as well as creating.

Last week a friend asked me about having a Facebook art page or a web page. Another friend is finally sharing some of her paintings on Google+. One of my blogging friends has started a web page with FASO and is also trying out Canva.com for design stuff.  Then on February 1st, Leslie Saeta wrote a blog about blogging.

All of these things got me thinking (again) about how to promote my art and how to get my name out there. How do we go from being artists to being business people AND how to we do it cheaply? Lets face it, most of us do not make enough at our art to spend big bucks on promotion: neither do we have the skills to do the work ourselves. Plus, do we want to spend a lot of our time on promotion?

Is social media the answer? Here is an excerpt from Leslie's blog on blogging,

"Another big difference is that social media has made it a lot easier for bloggers to build a following. Create a blog and then share your message on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Find followers and entice them to follow your blog. Ask your followers to share your message and the next thing you know your blog has thousands of followers. With some work you may end up with tens of thousands of followers. For the hard working bloggers you may end up with over a million followers."

I think the key word above is "entice" which is not easy to accomplish.

Out of curiosity I decided to do a Google search of my name. Then I did a search for Mellowood Studio which is the name of most of my social media pages and my home gallery. I found my name 11 times in the first 5 pages and the Mellowood name over 10 times in the first 2 pages. BUT, the questions remain: how do people know what name to search for? and, how do you get them to follow you, once they do find you?

These are a few of the links where people can find me and my art. BTW, my Etsy shop is empty but is still getting new followers which I find amusing.

Link2Creston, My Handmade at Amazon store, my GoBC entry, my Facebook Art Page, my Blog,  my Pinterest page, my Web page, an entry in artsillistrated on-line magazine, my Esty shop, my Google+ page, my Creston Arts Council profile

I could probably spend many hours a week on promotion but I think I would rather paint!

On another note, I haven't been doing any painting lately as my time has been used shovelling snow or recuperating from the shovelling. Here are some pictures of my yard.

the courtyard last week

the front walk 3 days ago

icicles hanging from the snow above the courtyard

the courtyard from the kitchen window 2 days ago

the view from Bob's office 2 days ago

the front walk today after the snow came off the roof

the view from Bob's office today after the snow came off the roof

the courtyard today

 This past week has been a real challenge; trying to keep the 200 metre long driveway through the forest clear has been the hardest part. Here is a picture of part of the driveway from a few years ago.

heading to the road

And, a couple from the same spot today.

heading to the road today

Heading to the house today

I am so looking forward to spring!

30/30 January Challenge #19

Once again I have done a piece from my miscellaneous file - at least I have tried to do it - lol. I think this is one of the hardest subjects I have ever done.

#997 - Hats - 5 x 7 watercolour

First off, it was mostly fabrics, but rigid, not flowing. Second, it was reds and pinks and similar colours so I ended up adding a few extras for variety and to make it easier to distinguish the hats. I even had to make up a few things because the hats in the photo sort of blended together and I had trouble figuring out 'What was in that corner?'

On another note: I took some photos of the snow. Bob and I have diligently been clearing the snow off our patio all winter long but the snow is melting and sliding off the metal roof.

by the greenhouse

the courtyard patio

In the courtyard photo the bigger mound of snow is about 5 ft tall, 15 ft long and about 6 ft wide. The smaller mound is what came off the roof last night - I don't think we will be shovelling it - where would we put it?

We are going to clean the area by the greenhouse but we are keeping our fingers crossed that the snow is pretty much finished for the year - (fat chance!)

Don't forget to check out Leslie's 30/30 page and check in tomorrow to see another of my paintings for the challenge.