I’ve had an 18 x 24 sheet of watercolor board staring at me from the corner of my studio for weeks now. I set it up on my easel so I would pass by it coming and going, hoping that one day inspiration would strike.
Saturday morning, finally, I walked by and thought ‘pebbles. Wet pebbles.’
Overjoyed to finally have an idea for this gorgeous piece of board, I set up on my table with a doughnut and coffee and got to work.
And that was my weekend.
Hope you all have lovely weekends as well – onto the new week!
A murmuration is the name given to the display of avian acrobatics of swirling starlings (and other species of birds) and it is truly a spectacular sight to behold. The birds dash and dive, undulating in strange twisting unisons that form a nearly complete black cloud of teeny birdy bodies. Anytime I’m able to see the occurrence, I just stand mesmerized as the flock travels across the sky, the cloud constantly shape-shifting and reforming — it’s a pretty cool thing to watch.
After seeing a few over the weekend (that time of year, maybe?) I decided to paint a few of the patterns while they were still fresh in my mind.
Mumur I. WatercolorMumur II. Watercolor
I’m pretty in love with how they ended up drying. Hopefully tomorrow I see a few more
Happy Monday folks! Hope you all had excellent weekends!
My weekend seemed to be devoted to the more adult side of life — revolving around taxes, laundry and picking out new floor tiles. No complaints here though, it was all necessary and some of it a good bit of fun. We’re still dealing with some flood damage from back in November, so I am all about with getting the discolored carpet ripped up and replaced with shiny new (flood resistant) tile.
In addition to these pursuits, I was also able to finally color check a run of brand new prints made from my recent abstract watercolors. They passed with flying colors (pun completely intended) so I am super happy to announce that I will be taking preorders for the first 20 prints of each painting! Each work measures 8.5 x 11 inches and is printed on gorgeous, heavy weight fine art paper using archival quality ink.
For all pre-orders I’ll also be reducing the cost from $25.00 per print, to $20 until the first run sells out.
1.) The letter corresponding to print (see below) that you would like to order.
2.) The quantity of each print you would like to order.
3.) The address of where the print should be sent to.
I will confirm availability and will send a paypal invoice back to the email. Payment must be made within 24 hours of the invoice being sent. Once I’ve received payment, the print will ship within the next 2 business days.
Feel free to contact me with any questions on the offer, or for any additional images of the prints
How to make sure that my energy is distributed as healthily as possible : Between my art practice, commissions, freelance and personal projects, as well as my seriously wonderful husband, our fantastic friends and family, and my own mental well being.
If I have time left over, maybe I’ll get to the dishes.
Making sure to budget time efficiently has always been a bit of stumbling block for me, as I can quickly find myself 6 hours into a painting when I would swear only 2 went by. Alarms, are a utterly fantastic invention.
One of the aspects of my life that has helped to keep me organized, keep me balanced, is my yoga practice. Three times a week usually out at Bayfront park in Miami (or at a nearby studio) has been a source of incredible insight and a wealth of personal growth. Beyond the blocking-off of two hours and the schedule crunch that creates, the poses, the breathing, the reflection has developed an inner voice I did not know I possessed.
After a particularly refreshing class this Saturday, I came home and immediately started to paint. I had a slip of an idea as I walked back from the park in my post-yoga haze and wanted to make sure to get it onto paper before ate breakfast and showered.
Three stones, each bleeding into each other, supporting each other.
I titled it ‘Balance’ and it now sits above my keyboard. It serves as a reminder to myself to honor what is truly important and let a natural balance pervade.
What about you? Do you have any tactics or tricks to keep your schedule/life in check? Leave them below, or send me a tweet!
I put in some time this weekend to work on a project for my favorite beauty blogger and beach buddy, Beti over at Makeup Sessions.
The plan was to create an illustration that would be used as a profile pic across several different platforms. Something artsy, maybe a dab of a fashion illustration influence.
It’s been a few months in the making and I’ve still got quite a bit to go — but it’s a start.
I’ve been using the time in between projects to create a new logo for Fin and Feather, and I am so excited to finally be able to share it. I was looking for something that focused a bit more on the “F +F” part of the brand, and something that would be a bit more iconic than the whole title written out.
I also am really excited to make stamps out of it.
With those considerations in mind, I made hundreds of versions of “F + F”, “F&F” and “ff”s, until I couldn’t recognize the letter anymore. Brain was lettery mush.
It’s a really hard thing to design for yourself I think, to design for your own brand. With clients, though each project is always a good challenge (or I wouldn’t have taken it on) I feel like it is a fairly straight shot from brainstorming, to prototyping, to final work. To objectively portray the qualities in a branding system that effectively delights the client has been not easy persey, but definitely straightforward.
To design for me, however. That was a trick.
I couldn’t tell if I actually liked what I was making in that it spoke how I wanted it to, or it was just pretty to look at. My compass was all off kilter.
Thankfully I’ve got a great network of designers to lean on in times like these. No man (or woman) is an island, and it’s never more apparent to me than when I’m struggling with my work.
All and all, I think the final version is what I was hoping for. It also allows for a lot of play within the confines of the logo – so that makes me happy.
It will also make awesome stamps.
I’ll be in the process of updating everything over the next few weeks, so make sure to check back for a new and improved Fin and Feather <3<3
Slowly but surely I’m ticking things off my to-do list.
One of these such things, was to finish perfecting the color output for a run of prints made from this gemstone watercolor. It’s one of my favorite watercolors, so I was feeling pretty guilty leaving it for so long in an unfinished state.
So when I finally found an afternoon free this week, it was first on my list to accomplish. After finishing the color calibrations, (which I’ll admit took a bit longer than average to perfect) I made a full run of 25 prints on my Hahnemule fine art paper.
I am quite pleased with how they came out and may consider doing a bigger run in the future. I’ll need more paper though, I’m almost through my box
Awhile back I was making prints of some of my botanical drawings, and my poor printer had a *really* bad day. For some reason it decided to print everything within a giant square of gray, which was super disappointing. I fixed it (thankfully) and went on to make a run of perfect prints — but was sad that the others were wasted.
Until, I remembered I love to collage.
I spent the whole day cutting the prints out and arranging/rearranging them on various surfaces. I wove the leaves together, made patterns, stacked them other under tracing paper, and just generally explored. I haven’t set a final layout just yet, I’m still having too much fun playing. A final composition is my goal for the weekend
Perhaps it’s because I stayed up too late reading last night (4 am, whoops), but this morning was a rougher wake-up than usual. 3 cups of coffee later, I was still dragging. Rather than work on my current painting with a fuzzed brain, I decided to make a few watercolor washes and just play around until I felt a bit more alive.
I really loved how the pigment ended up drying, one of the reason I adore watercolors. The extra edges that weren’t planned, the spontaneous blooming, the blips of paint that flicked off the end of the brush — it all makes me so happy.
Energized and creatively infused, I went back to the garden painting
Hope you all have a fantastic Friday and a very lovely weekend!
I FINALLY got myself over to the Perez Art Museum Miami last week for the final days of the Beatriz Milhazes exhibition — and I am so, so glad I did.
The first major US retrospective of the Brazilian artist’s work, Jardim Botânico featured rooms filled with her large-scale abstract paintings. Inspired by Brazilian and European Modernism, the Baroque and the Carnival; gallery walls came alive with her patterning and joyful use of color. Milhazes’ process relies unapologetically on the use of acrylic transfers (a process that is very near and dear to my heart), leaving behind delightful hints and clues about the creation of the work in the forms of cracks and bubbles in the surface. The resulting texture is gorgeous, prematurely aged and fell somewhere between a candy shop and the royal bedroom of Versailles. It is a blend that I found entrancing.
I did however find myself more drawn to the organic references of her earlier work. Some of the newer and harder-edged abstracts did not captivate me as completely. Oh well, to each their own.
I wish I could say ‘Go see the show!’ but unfortunately, it has already closed (I was lucky enough to get there the day before). But I will definitely be following her to see where she’ll be next!
