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ophelia's nocturne 6x6 mixed media on canvas panel ©the enchanted easel 2016

this summer i wanted to try my hand at some small mixed media pieces. i decided to start with a theme of sorts as far as a color palette went....i chose just a few to start with...red, orange, teal and brown. from there two little creatures were born. ophelia here is the first.

mixed media was kind of new for me. i have so many art supplies laying around my home that instead of looking at all of them, well i wanted to try to actually USE them. my paintings/commissions are acrylic on stretched canvas so i never really get to play with my oil pastels or my inks (OMG-can we say "obsessed" now?!) or my tons of scrapbook papers and supplies, etc.

one day i sat down in between commissions and said "what the heck...let's give it a shot!" and so i did...and had a blast doing so. i used everything from paper to water soluble graphite pencils to palette knives to my fingers for this piece. even got some old sheet music from my keyboard ("ophelia" from tori amos to be exact-hence the name of this little owl) and went to town with that. a total blast this was-from start to finish.

PRINTS are available here and the ORIGINAL painting is also AVAILABLE. contact me here if interested. hope you love her as much as i do...owls just say "fall" and "halloween" to me. one of my favorite times of the year!

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A painting for Mother's Day 2016!

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Just bought a new house, well an old house, new to me. Besides some of the mechanical things that need to be fixed, I am going to decorate it so it becomes mine. This blog is about my experiences while I do that and maybe some recommendations down the road.

You know, these days it is very difficult to even think of decorating your home. I have some great ideas which if you adopt; you will be able to decorate your home within the limit of your budget.

Paint Your Home

Just painting the walls. It is the most inexpensive way of decorating a room or your home. You can get by with just the cost of the paint. If you don't like all that hard work, just ask some friends over to help.  Don't forget to serve them lunch or dinner after you are done with the paint though. And wine or a six pack can go a long way in easing the labor.

Look For Secondhand Stores

Put your own stuff, or new-old stuff in the house. There are many online stores as well as real stores in the market which sell secondhand goods. When you are going to buy any furniture, first be satisfied with the quality and construction.

Do It Yourself

Most of all do it yourself. I just search from the internet about decoration ideas and follow the step by step instructions. You will have the inner satisfaction of decorating your home as well as will be amazed in seeing the results. It is the most inexpensive way of decorating. In the end you will have the inner satisfaction of decorating your own home as well as be amazed in the results.

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moonlight mavens 11x14 acrylic on canvas ©the enchanted easel 2014

truly this week's IF theme was created just for me....and little maggie. ;) two little insomniac BFFs painting themselves a whimsical night sky. ' cause while the rest of the world sleeps, we paint. :)

{throwing back to last july 2014 for this one...my website's home page image and the *face* of the enchanted easel. a bit more about this painting here....}

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matting and framing donation prints....

peeks, peepers and petals....

backgrounding blues and greens....

black and blue....

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By Chloe

Lizzy Stewart is an illustrator and artist currently based in London. She is inspired by writers such as Tove Janson and Doris Lessing, as well as museums and galleries. Her work is highly narrative and full of character. This is aided by her use of traditional media which gives Lizzy Stewart’s work a unique, quirky quality. If you’d like to find out more about Lizzy and her work please visit her portfolio here.

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I won't have much time at all to do the artwork for this book, but that's fine. I know how I want it to look, and it will be a lot of fun.
At the moment I am painting with brushes made from horsehair. It seems to suit it. - I'll need to dig out my lightbox so I can follow my roughs a bit more closely. This drawing was made free-hand on top of a rough colour sketch, which explains why the crocodile is skipping more than he usually would - I was following the jaunty watercolouring I'd put down first.

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moonlight mavens ©the enchanted easel 2014

©the enchanted easel 2014

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©the enchanted easel 2014

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Another sketch for the Turning Japanese series.
Ink and gouache A4 size. Click to enlarge.

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The latest image from The Triumph of Pupik. Sometimes a cicada is just a cicada.
Watercolour and gouache 30 x 49cm. Click to enlarge.

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There is so much involved in designing.  One must be up on the trends for color and pattern and more. I always have my eyes open to finding things I love to look at!

Here are the Pantone color trends for 2013.

http://www.pantone.com/pages/fcr.aspx?pg=21005&ca=4

I had to take a close look at them. . . some of them bore me unless they are paired with an “eye-catching” color.  Color is so amazing!  It can make your day!  It can bring a smile to your face, and warm your heart.  It can also bring you down. Why else do people get depressed when they experience too many gray rainy days?  All that because of color? Yes!  Think of the feeling you get when you take a walk and come upon a beautiful scene.  Do you ever “OOOOoooh and Aaaaaahhhh?”  Do colors grab you?

Colors can calm the soul.  One of my favorite movies is Miss Potter.  I like her spunk, I LOVE that she talks to her cartoons,  and I also love the scenes of her beautiful English countryside.  The colors speak peace and tranquility.

One might want calm and peaceful and serene colors for the baby nursery.  So why did I decorate my first child’s nursery in bright sunshine yellow with brown and Kelly Green accents?  ha!  Because I crave bold colors!  All I could think of was that my baby would wake up and want to be inspired by what she saw.  The room had to be warm and happy and that is was!!

As the room progressed to fit two more daughters into it, we moved to pinks and browns. I loved it, but the girls were not really drawn to it.  Interesting.  In my house, you will find that colors change often.  If I could, I would paint my house every year!  My husband jokes about our bathroom being smaller because of the many times I have painted it!  I am thinking of a new color as I type!!!  I am leaning towards a beautiful blue with just the right amount of purple in it!  Baby blue is okay, but I always want something with a little PUNCH in it! I like to walk into a room and hear my heart sing! La la!  Wall colors can be muted but if that is the case, in my house, the paintings must sing!  Oh how I love a noisy house filled with color.

So what am I to do?  Follow the trends?  Or start my own trends?  Am I brave?  These are the questions every designer must face.  I always lean towards being a renegade trend setter!  ha!

Filed under: All Things Artsy, Art is FUN!, fun

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Dreams die quickly and magic fades in the cruelest way possible in John Cozart’s (aka Paint) latest a cappella medley. Focusing on the fates of some of Disney’s most loveable ingenues, their post-happily ever after lives take a grim turn when blended with political issues of the modern day like environmental destruction, the war on terror and bestiality. In a recent interview with the Huffington Post, Cozart explains his motivation for the song and video, which took five weeks to record and film, “To just put those characters in our world — our dark, terrible, sad world; hilarity ensues.”

Dark, terrible and sad, yes. Hilarious? Sure, ok.

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Ever wonder what I work with?
I am always curious to see other artists' studios, the tools they use, even down to how they brush the paint on. It fascinates me.

I'm working on a project right now that has forced me to look closer at what I work with and why I work with it.

You can find commentaries on blogs, forums, and Facebook about how one artist will voice their favorite pencil, while another artist in the same field will swear by another brand. Call it the sport of art if you like (I'm sure there's an artist out there with a rabbit's foot).

Most of my tools have a story or memory attached to them. 

The oldest tool I've used every day in the studio is my kneaded eraser.

My dad is an art teacher most of my life, so I grew up with this wonderful tool laying around his art studio coiled up or made into small pyramids. Something to do while thinking or working. I was introduced to it very young.

The next tool oldest to me is a retractable Tuff Stuff! The moment I discovered this eraser years ago I fell in love and haven't gone back. It gets into the little spots and is always a clean erase. I don't go anywhere without it!

My pencils are newer to me. I have worked with mechanical pencils for at least 15 years now, but the one I used as a teenager...well....was great for a teenager.

Two years ago I did some research and tried Pentel GraphGear 500 on a whim. Love them! Great body weight, good lead selection, amazingly priced! The green Pentel is their most standard. Pentel P205...still a great drawing pencil!

Sketchbooks are personal, in every sense, like a diary. I have always favored the large Strathmore or Canson spiralbounds, 9x12 inch. I have several moleskines too that are smaller....and I adore them, but I like space for my hand when I draw, this allows it.

Color Theory wasn't around in the beginning for me, so I just picked colors that worked to my eye. This did not help in finding the best palette for me, or how to lay it out even.

All of my palettes up to several years ago were rectangle and felt rough to me. Nothing progressed fluidly for me, only manageable.

There was a teacher of watercolor where I work (The Des Moines Art Center) who had a round palette out during one of her classes, and I was introduced to the Stephen Quiller Palette. A circle! Imagine color on a wheel!

I took her class, several times, and have since learned how to better use my palette effectively.

The paints I use are a blend of  Daniel Smith and Winsor Newton.  I always have a messy palette, it's cleaned maybe once every two months. I also paint on primarily Arches Hot Press and Cold Press 140lbs. It's a comfortable inbetween weight and their brand is one of the oldest. I'm open to other papers, but I'm a snob about Arches. The brushes? Cotman series 666.

If you know my work you'll notice my use of white. This started in the phase of trying to keep the white of the paper and failing. I taught myself watercolor, so I turned to problem-solving (an illustrator's best trait).

First it was FW liquid acrylic. I would brush it on, but it cakes easily. Nowadays I usually water it down.

The other partner in crime is the white gel pen. Discovered this while watching watercolor videos on YouTube. Genius! I don't think I use the best one, your basic Gelly Roll, but will be ordering a UniBall gel pen and I'm looking forward to seeing how it works!

Last but not least, the infamous indigo colored pencil. 

I started using this prominently last year while working on Tangerine. I was first introduced to Verithin Colored Pencils by Prismacolor a couple of years back. They're fantastic because of the harder lead with less wax. Because I'm not a colored pencil artist, this worked great for sketching!

The indigo was an accident. I was sketching with it, and as I added color (without thinking of the muddiness it could create) I noticed how it's more dulled tone worked. After Tangerine I continued to sketch with it. The hue is attractive to me, mixed with graphite or color. It helps to provide me my shadows.

Although indigo can create mud very quickly (it's not for the inexperienced), it does create a more earthy visual of color hues in the painting. I trust it so much I paint with indigo as well.

I try to sharpen always with a blade so that I don't go through the pencil as fast (taught by my dad), and the electric eraser was a gift to me. Never knew I would have a need of it until I discovered it erases the indigo colored pencil wonderfully!

Do you have a favorite pen or material that you use a bit religiously?

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The model didn't show up, so drew the other punters.
Watercolour 36cm x 28cm. Click to enlarge.

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