Garden Blooms Collection Releases Soon

I am so ready for spring.  Montana spring is full of the occasional snow.  Gardens full of peas and lettuce will be a welcome sight.  And flowers.  I am excited for flowers.  The year 2020 has brought so much unpredictable and strangeness for daily life.  So while we might be feeling impatient for some beauty in the garden, I can bring you some blooms earlier than they will bloom locally.  Color so vibrant and touches of playful watercolor effects are on the way.  They are titled, in my art inventory,  have been photographed and now being uploaded on the website!

It has been my goal to remain  creative.   I find that even if no one needs my art, I need it.  I crave and heal through the process of creating art.  This outlet helps me cope with what is happening around me.

There are roses and sunflowers among the artworks coming soon to my website.   Nearly twenty in all, ranging in sizes from miniatures to 5" x 7" with prices that are super budget friendly.   My target date is May 21st, 2020 for these to be available online to purchase. 

I would like to add a few larger pieces to this collection though that may take a few weeks.  I have limited time available now.  I have returned to my seasonal nannying position on weekdays.   The small pockets of time available are key to making art and getting it ready to release online.

Would you like early access to see new artwork? 

My plan at the present is to release an art collection every 2 or 3 weeks.  That is dependent on a lot of things but it always helps to have a target.  There are seven collections ready to be released.  I will need to create the listings on my website which takes a few hours for each collection.  At this time, the collections are as follows:  Garden Blooms, Ethereal Expressive (landscapes), Summer Memories (landscapes), Waterfalls and Rivers, Trees, Autumn, and Winter.  I have plans to add two more collections, Wildflowers II and Prairie.

My website is www.christysheeler.com so go visit and you will be invited to sign up for my mailing list.  I have not been brave enough to actually try sending out a newsletter...until now.  Do it scared, right?  I do plan to send out an announcement for the release of each collection.  Sign up and you'll know before I publish it on social media!  What can be better than that?

I have two private commissions in the planning stages.  These will be larger pieces considering the sizes I have been working in lately.  I have been trying out studies in watercolor to prepare myself for working out the composition and values and color pigment choices.

One of my goals for this season is a better morning routine,  with about an hour reserved for being in my art room.   

Along with this, I have been bringing a small bag of watercolor supplies to work and I can find time to paint one or two times a week.  Even 30 minutes helps my outlook so much.

The two palettes shown are the Cornucopia Empty Watercolor Palette Trays.  They come as a 2-pack with 72 empty half-pans.  I ordered them from Amazon and they were under $20 total.  Dick Blick sells a larger variety for sizes of empty palette and full pans or half pans.  I chose pigments that would be lovely together, either just the one palette by itself or both together.  They have primary pigments and other favorites for pairing and mixing.  The sketch journals are Global Handbook Artist Journals.  The collapsible water cup is the Faber-Castell Clic & Go

I have been searching out a small and medium size bag perfect for organizing and protecting my art supplies.   Another of my goals is to have a perfectly packed for small quick day trips and longer ones as well.

It's great to be able to post this update and I will be working hard to make this spring and summer productive.  Thanks for stopping in to join me for this chat and let me know if you have any comments or questions.  You can comment below or send me a message through the link off to the right.

Christy

-She must make art.

Hollyhocks Blooming on Paper

I've got an attraction to hollyhocks and it started quite a while ago.  Years ago...before I was a mom...I painted with a group of artists.  It seems like another lifetime, really.  On one of our artist get-togethers, we met at Pat's place.  With art supplies and lawn chairs, we scouted out our subject for the day.  We sat out in the sun, sketching and painting while we visited together.

The subject was an old house on the property...with hollyhocks in the front garden.  Unexpectedly, I found delight in painting the hollyhocks.  They weren't detailed but more of a suggestion, their form and creating them was so fluid.  They were more effortless than I imagined they could be.  This was a nice change from my need to be so detailed and exact.  Turns out, this has been a theme in my creative time...letting go of exact.

Reflecting on days spent with artist friends.

This very painting now hangs in my art studio and it's dear to me.  A little house with so much charm that's been maintained and cared for...like a little bit of quaint beauty that takes the viewer back to a different time.  There was so much about it that I loved, which is how I hope it is described it on paper.  A lovely day with artist friends, captured here, has a lot of sentiment attached.
Do you see the hollyhocks all loose and fresh as they welcome you onto the front porch?

I was just walking along, minding my own business.

Fast forward quite a number of years to summer of 2015.  I was walking down our alley and there are reseeded hollyhocks in all shades of pink.  They just grow untended along the backside of a storage shed.  I remember how the view affected me.  The tall stalks and blossoms against the weathered wood out building with full sun.  I quickly retraced my steps back home to grab a camera because this was perfect art reference material!

Undeniably, I am an artist.  It's a crazy process.

I have been able to find more time and energy for my love of watercolor.  The art studio is no longer an abandoned place without life.  My life, in my mind, is described in seasons tied together with whether I was able to spend time with watercolor painting.  Does that sound crazy?  I was created with this deep desire to create and watercolors just hit the target like no other medium.  When I must place it further down on my priorities list, I feel it deeply.

I have been all over the place with several different subjects.  Hollyhocks, a black beach on Maui, and several mountain landscape views.  The hollyhocks keep drawing me back to study them, capture them with paint one more time.  There's been joy mixed with frustration.  In certain moments, I was tempted to toss the current one aside and call it unsalvageable.  Sometimes, I would rather start again than keep making more effort on the same painting.  It's hard to say which is the wiser option.  I've learned that it's worth pushing through and seeing what another hour's effort will do.  Undeniably, I am an artist.  It's a crazy process.

I am trying to communicate through my brush what my mind wants to communicate.

In a frustrated state, I'll state out loud to no one in particular, "I guess that flower does NOT want to be in this painting?!"  And I regroup.  I rethink where I would like to go with this effort.  It happens.  It happens often.  With time I have gotten over thinking this isn't supposed to happen.  I can shrug it off and start again more flexibly than my younger self would have done.

Sometimes I'm just loving where the brushstrokes are moving and mixing on the paper.  Other times, I'm wondering what just happened and how should I move forward next.

Artists may work in a way that appears to be easy.  From an onlooker's point of view, the artist may seem to do it so well that we suppose they never struggle in the process.  That's just not true.  If it were, we'd probably find the art process very boring.  I don't think the level of skill matters...artists will continue to strive for improvement in their skill.  Artists want to develop and grow and capture more.  Artists have an intense need to communicate what captivates them better than they did in the past.

I've been working on Yupo synthetic surface and watercolor paper both.  I'll share my results with you.  There are pockets of joy in the results.  There are areas of struggle.  Petals and shadows that I didn't fully capture to my satisfaction.  I didn't describe it all in the way it affected me.  I'm growing in my ability to change up the composition and the forms.

Something exciting is happening.

These next artworks show something changing...I am not sketching at all.  I am letting myself have freedom from being so married to the art reference photo.  Get the music playing, spray down the palette and then I explore the emotion these flowers draw out.  Their shape, the space they fill, the colors created by sunlight and shadow.  What is a pink blossom in the sunlight?  What is it in the areas of shadow?  What type of yellow green captures the leaves and stalks?  Add some water for a bloom and then some spatter of color.

The learning comes in the doing.

If you are itching to pick up a brush and have a go with the watercolors, do it.  Go.  Don't hesitate.  You'll find a joy in the movement of pigment across the paper.  There are so many opportunities for learning now.  Order a book.  Watch a YouTube video.  You will fight fear and hesitation.  The learning comes in the doing.  The doing brings a peace and relaxation.  It's a therapy.  You will grow and understand it a bit at a time.  You'll never master it.  That's okay.  You'll be excited and challenged and alive.

What subject or art medium has hooked you so strongly?  What have you felt you must try creating one more time?  What do you desire to capture on paper, on canvas, or in clay?


-Christy

She must make art.

Lush Fields of Teton County Giclee Print in the Etsy Shop!

Etsy Shop Announcement!

Lush Fields of Teton County

8" x 10" with 1" white border, signed in pencil within white border.
Packaged in a clear cellophane sleeve.

$45.00 plus shipping and handling.

Lush Fields of Teton County Premium Giclee PRINT
A Montana Landscape by Christy Sheeler

A view of the Rocky Mountains, dimensions are 8" x 10" with 1" white border produced with archival grade inks and media.

The premium Giclee paper is thick, heavy weight with a texture very similar to watercolor paper
and a natural white, matte finish.

This is a high quality Giclee print of my own original watercolor artwork.

This view caught my eye as we drove home from an Independence Day parade.  The bright clear day and the verdant fields were alive with color.  The wheel tracks worn into the dirt along the fence line led my eye to the mountain range with its blue and purple grays.  I picked up my camera, knowing one day this would become a watercolor painting.

For the creation of the original artwork, the pigments are laid on in transparent layers, drying in between and this causes the individual layers to become vibrant.  I plan carefully the mixes of pigment to prevent muddy results.  Some palette knife work is used to scrape back color as well as paint in fine details.  There's delicate spattering in the dirt wheel track areas.  The mountain details are very loose, allowing the paint to be more uncontrolled.  This gives the effect of distance and I love the softness achieved there.

The views along the Rocky Mountain Front are just spectacular!
I never tire of the landscape with changing skies and seasons.

If you have any questions, please comment below or message me privately!

Thanks for stopping in today!

Christy
-She must make art.

The Vintage Tractor in Watercolor

Virtual Studio Tour!

It's taken a while now but I'm happy to reveal
The Vintage Tractor watercolor painting.  After so many landscape and floral subjects, it's been a treat to take some time with the faded paint, dents, and rust!

More than ten years since my last mechanical type subject...
So many years, I'll have to check with my car-guy husband to know for sure which one was most recent before this one.



As I've shared often, I love the hunt for all variety of items from a time gone by.  It's like these items have a story to tell.  They tell about the culture and the daily living of that time.  When I saw this old tractor sitting out in the elements, it seemed to have character all its own.  Only later did my husband explain to me that it was pieced together with some real ingenuity.  Automobile parts were used by the skilled hands that put this tractor together.  He tells me how someone who knows cars will recognize the unconventional parts used for making it a tractor.  My untrained eye did not see that.  There was just something unusual and interesting about it...that's all I could figure when I chose this as an art reference.

Have you ever seen a completed project and wondered, "how did they do that?"  With artwork, I believe that happens so I enjoy sharing the behind-the-scenes progression of artwork.  Well, here goes!

Sketching Subjects with Mechanical Details

The Beginning of The Vintage Tractor in Watercolor

My subject matter for the current watercolor painting is different than recent paintings.  The vintage tractor has sun-faded paint,  rust, dents, and wonderful textures!  Add all that color and it's practically begging me to put it on paper.  It's a big change, not quite the same as a landscape or flowers.  While the flower has its own tiny details to conquer, there is more wiggle room for the artist.  If the petal moves a little to the left, it's just fine.  If the stem is a little longer, no problem.   I can always add a few more leaves.  Well, I'm not giving myself an easy challenge here but I still can't resist.  That -and my husband is really, really excited about watching this one come together.  

What about subjects with more mechanics, pieces and parts?  You see, if it's a subject matter that others know well and proportions are off, there's a problem.  This is something I've faced before with subject matter like vintage automobiles.  Now, the current watercolor painting in progress, a vintage tractor is the same.  The sketch used is the foundation of the painting.  Careful planning is necessary for the sketch to be completed.  Are you curious about how that drawing begins?

How does an artist plan out the detailed sketch?  

Are there tricks that help make it more successful?  

That's what I'd like to share today!

First, I'll show the original photograph, where this all began.  On a Saturday morning, my husband and I were checking out all the great finds available at Timeless Tom's.  We both enjoy the hunt for something we must have...it doesn't matter that we weren't really looking for it.  I've got a love of searching through all the variety of items he brings from farm and estate auctions.  The tractor didn't come home with us.  With my camera, I was able to snap a few photos of this one-of-a-kind homemade tractor.

Once the photo is imported into photo editing software, I can make any needed changes for using it as an art reference photo.  That might include cropping, adjusting the fill light and highlights, and increasing the color saturation.  I save that version.  Then, I create a version with some more noticeable filters applied.  This version has more artistic license.  It's my rough draft guide to where my creative juices want to take it in the final painting.  Let me say, if you really like that version, I could order the photograph as a print on fine art papers or canvas.  Let me know.  We'll talk.

I have my reference photos printed online or at a local photo kiosk.  For this project, I have a printed copy of the second version with the editing done.  These tips can be followed with photos displayed on a tablet as well.