Inspired: Wayne Thiebaud

Toward the very end of last semester I learned of Wayne Thiebaud, a contemporary painter who is known for painting cakes, ice cream cones, and other bakery items. I love his use of color. Look at the shadows. They are blue and orange, yellow and green!  Plus the outlines of his plates are super colorful too. There is no black at all in this painting.

Meringues by Wayne Thiebaud, oil on canvas

Well, I was inspired, and I had some birthdays coming up, so I made some cards.  Here they are. They started as painted backgrounds of colors that I love. I just kept adding color upon color, like Thiebaud does.

This was the first one.

I had  to make one of a cake, of course!

Didn't have time to make a scan of this, just a snapshot.

More cake!

Inspired by the Memory game I helped to make in December.... 

I can't wait to make more!

Art Desert

An art desert is how it feels when I have done much less art lately than I would have liked.  Today is art day and I'm off to the studio as soon as this posts (and oh how I can't wait)!  But for now, I don't have much to show for the last month. The last four weeks weren't entirely art-free (which would have been like the Mojave!).  In fact, I visited several art museums for inspiration, including an especially great time at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona and the Oceanside (CA) Museum of Art.  And I had a few little projects here and there for Christmas and a friend's baby shower.

Until I have something of my own to show you, here are some lovely photos from Phoenix, my faves of the things we saw.  Really great stuff in their contemporary exhibit, and then a treasure from a professional female painter of the late 1700s in the museum's European painting section. 

The view heading into the contemporary gallery (they were setting up for a wedding to be held that evening, thus the chairs).

Mass (Colder Darker Matter), by Cornelia Parker, burnt wood, wire and string, 1997 (meant to represent the moment lightening strikes a building)

Untitled, by Robert Irwin, 1969, acrylic paint on cast acrylic (to show what happens when you don't let the edge of a canvas restrict your work; obviously I am not a part of the artwork!)

Upside Down, Inside Out, by Anish Kapoor, resin and paint, 2003 (this is the same artist who made "The Bean" in Chicago)

Guillotine of Sunlight, Guillotine of Shade, by Peter Wegner, die-cut paper, 2008 (a second half is in on the other side of this wall, in the color spectrum's cool colors)

You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies, by Yayoi Kusama, mixed media installation with LED lights, 2005 (probably my favorite in the whole place, an interactive experience! You walk into a room and this is what you see. The lights surround you and slowly change colors, turning on and off).

Madame Adelaide, by Adelaide Labille-Guiard, oil on canvas, 1787 (I studied her work last summer in Art History and admire her ability to represent fine, shiny fabrics using plain ol' paint).

"Magic Yarn"

For once, a break from painting!  In art class we recently spent two evenings in small groups making a stop-motion video. My group consisted of just three of us, and we were all relieved to find that we easily worked well together.  The assignment was "Chaos To Order," to see how adding the component of time affects a 2-dimensional work of art.

It took approximately 7 hours for the three of us to make this video. It is a total of about 515 images!  Special thanks to Cydney and Jaque.  :)

Memory (Game)

Over the weekend, my friend Ambra was in town, visiting from New York!  She appears on this blog from time to time, and in fact you can see our last art collaboration (in 2009) here.  This time, we were inspired by these stamps (I bought them long ago and love them so much they are forever displayed in my studio):

So we thought we would make a set of Memory cards for her daughter Sonia, who is six!  Here is us just finishing the base for the front of the cards. 

Then we flipped it over to make a pretty pattern on the back, one that wouldn't give away what was on the other side. This took a lot of time, but with two people working on it over the course of an afternoon (and with plenty of talk to keep us entertained), it wasn't as tedious as it could have been.

Once it was dry, we glossed it and cut it up into small squares...

... and painted fruit designs on them, two by two.  We even asked Sonia (via Skype) for suggestions on which fruits to paint. That is how we got a tomato and an avocado in there.

Wanna play a round with us?

Portfolio

If you take an art class, at some point you have to turn in your body of work, which is called your portfolio. Of course, to keep it all together, you have to put it in a large folder of some type, also called a portfolio!  This second type of portfolio is something you can buy at the store for too much money and it is usually not very interesting-looking.  Or you can buy the components and make one that is MUCH more attractive!  Thank goodness for sewing skills!!

I bought foam core at the art store, big enough to contain my giant multi-media paper. Then I used three types of fabric for the cover: the green/red stuff is outdoor decorative fabric (like for patio furniture). The black on the external side is canvas. The black on the inside is flannel, which makes for a luxurious, professional backdrop for the artwork one then sees within!

Over a year ago, I ordered $100 worth of black webbing from a wholesaler (for bike bands) and so have enough to last me a lifetime.  There is a tie on each of three sides, made of thinner, non-slippery black webbing.

You'll notice in photo 1 that there are two black bits sticking up on the top. If you look closely, you'll see there are D-rings attached to those. I intend to make a shoulder strap for this to make it easier to carry, but before I can do that I have to go back to Joann Fabrics (for the 27th time in three weeks) to buy clips.

Most of it is machine-stitched to create two big pockets to slide the foam core into, then I used hot glue and some hand-stitching to close up the one long edge.

I was thinking of creating a tutorial for this. What do you think?  I also thought I could make them and sell them on Etsy, but shipping might be troublesome. Opinions?

I think my portfolio will be the most attractive one on the table when we turn our portfolios in next week!