Creative end spurt!

The week before Christmas got me into a creative frenzy! First I decided to make some small gift bags, to put little presents in like chocolates, soap, roasted nuts etc. Splitcoast Stampers had a lovely design, which I used with double-sided designer papers. You will find the instructions here. (not sure if you might have to sign up for the site, but it is certainly worth the trouble!)

Then I had a vision at night of my Zentangle drawings, combined with the crow images and couldn’t wait to try that out. I used 3x4x1.5 cradled wood panels, which were primed with encaustic gesso. The Zentangle drawings were glued on and coated with several layers of medium. The next step was adding the birds, partly transfer, partly painted with wax.

I really liked how they came out and sold all three as soon as I had posted them on Facebook!

Another project which I had put on the back burner was playing with my screen print set again. My profile picture used to be a screen print from an old photo, but now my hairstyle changed, so I’d wanted to get a new profile picture.
This is what I came up with: one of them is now the new profile picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the three small crow paintings sold so fast, I made another three, this time 6x6x1.5″. The middle one has already found a good home! The other ones are available from my fine art site. Just click the image.

700 sheets of chiyogami paper!

In my series Hills & Trees I’ve been using chiyogami paper, a wonderful Japanese paper which I bought in Tokyo many years ago. Meanwhile my supply is quite low.

A friend alerted me that www.thepaperplace.ca is giving away  one 8.5×11 sample sheet of each of the over 700 patterns they offer online! Imagine the paintings I could make with those….

I’ve entered their draw; please keep your fingers crossed for me!

New! 8 small paintings + 4 little treasure chests

During the Lobby Gallery show at the Lakeside I painted a whole stack of small paintings as demos and some turned out quite well. Nice enough to put in a mat and cellophane sleeve; now they look like a million bucks!

The 4 little treasure chests are 7x5x3″ wooden boxes, which I decorated with encaustic. Each one is a painting by itself, don’t you think? I want to sell them at the next Lakeside show. Now, how to price them…??!

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Isn’t that nice? I just discovered this slideshow function on wordpress!

 

More sales at the Lakeside!

Today was the second  Sunday of the Lobby Gallery at the Lakeside Resort and it was very busy indeed. At the same time Community Market was held in the ballroom, with many vendors, so lots of traffic through our area. Gay Ross sold her beautiful painting of the geese to a gentleman, who had visited her the week before and had left without buying it, but apparently couldn’t get it out of his head and had to come back for it!
I got to speak to many nice folks and did some demos.

Thanks for taking this nice picture, Barb!

Bill Hibberd was there also, painting a portrait of Bethany Handfield. I got some nice shots of him working:

Bill in action, with Bethany sitting unusually quiet...;-))

Very exciting was that I sold 4 paintings today! The first one was an 8×10″ matted work, painted with the iron.

Those Copper Hills

And then a lady bought “Rift”, plus my last two 3×4″ crow paintings!
Actually all of the crow paintings got lots of attention, as did “We Are Not Alone”, which I had displayed at the front of my table, and people could actually touch it. This painting is very textured and I know it is just soooo tempting to run your fingers over it, so I had a little sign saying: “It’s OK to touch the paintings, just don’t scratch them…;-))”

This is “Rift”, a painting I really loved doing and I’m glad it went to such a good home:

Thea Haubrich,Rift, 8x24, encaustic

And here is “We Are Not Alone”:

Thea Haubrich, We Are Not Alone, 16x20, mixed encaustic

Who knows, I might sell it next week…;-))

 

The morning after…

Well, it seemed there was one offending thing in the last painting and think I’ve corrected it. Can you see what I’ve done??
I might still coat the shellac parts with medium, to protect them, but the edges are already finished and I’ll drop it in its frame tomorrow!

Before...

Made one little change...what is it??

I also prepared a bunch of panels for future paintings with encaustic gesso and coated some small boards for students to use in a private collage class later this month.

Don't you love those pristine boards?!

More Hills & Trees

Finally some real studio time again! Yesterday I was preparing for the Nov. 12 Tissue Paper Techniques workshop and came up with some neat projects for the students to try out.

The offending painting....

Today I started fiddling with an older Hills & Trees painting, which I did not really like. It also sat in an ill-fitting frame, 3/4 ” instead of 1.5″, so it was sticking out: awkward! What was I thinking as I put it on display in one of our local wineries this summer….;-((

My first line of attack was covering the lower part of the painting with a good layer of wax, not very concerned about colours, as I was planning on using a different sheet of the chiyogami paper:

Looks pretty awful!

After collaging in the nice paper the colours of the sky were all wrong, so I had to come up with some alternative.

Some charcoal-coloured shellac to make the clouds more interesting

I wanted to emphasize the diagonal from the lower lefthand corner towards the tree. the paper has some lovely upside down tree shape just below my painted tree and I thought that could make for a nice composition.

So I painted with white, black and gold wax on top of the paper to get the shapes to pop: now I like it!

What do you think?? Suggested title : Connected

Then I started a new painting on one of the prepared 10×10 panels, again intending on using more of the chiyogami paper and the hills and trees theme.

Not sure if it’s finished; will take a critical look tomorrow morning….;-)

Suggestions welcome!

Marketing morning at IEA Retreat

Sunday morning was reserved for all kinds of marketing info: I attended Photographing your Work (Paul Bogardus), How to bring your art to video (Aaron Kelly) and PR/Media/Workshops/Festivals (Robyn Anderson, Judy Wise.
Only a few pictures:

Outdoor setup to photograph your painting

From the excellent talk about packing/shipping

Over lunch the Canadian retreaters got together to brainstorm over a possible Canadian chapter. Stay tuned for more info on that later.

Just before heading home Bethany, Shary and I visited the Encaustic Masters show again. Here are some more photos:

Judy Wise

Bridget's piece: sold!

We had a good ride back to Ellensburg and stayed in the same hotel as on the way out. Bethany was dying to get some real Mexican food and we found a great place.

Mexican restaurant in Ellensburg

More Mexican decor!

...and, just for Linda: our Chicken Enchiladas !

The next day we left really early (about 7:30 AM!) and stopped at Dry Falls, which is a 3.5 mile long scalloped precipice in central Washington, on the opposite side of the Upper Grand Coulee from the Columbia River, and at the head of the Lower Grand Coulee. Ten times the size of Niagara, Dry Falls is thought to be the greatest known waterfall that ever existed.

Dry Falls

At the Canadian border the officer really wondered how on earth we could have spend over $600.00 between us on art supplies, but we explained that we would have bought much more, if only our credit card had allowed us….;-))
Then it started to rain as we entered BC and by the time we were in Kaleden it really poured, with an ugly wind. This is not how I remembered the Okanagan!
A quick, wet good-bye, and our fabulous trip came to an end.

 

Demo Day at 2011 IEA Retreat

Saturday was a full day of hands-on demos. Each participant of the retreat could sign up to sit in at one demo and work at that particular project, then you could move on to watch the other demos.
At the same time the vendors had set up at one end of the room, so it was all quite hectic and loud, but there was an immense amount of information going around, so everyone just dived in and enjoyed the melee…;-))

Here are some pictures:

Yummy stuff from EncausticSupplies out of Portland

Kathryn and Mike from Enkaustikos, chatting with Melinda

Ingredients to make your own cold wax

Mixing cold wax paint

Set up for making monoprints, with neat little anodized plates from R&F!

Karl Kaiser's boards with 30-60 layers of wax, ready for carving

Attentive audience at Karl's work space, with balls of wax in the foreground

Ellen Koment demonstrates working with graphite powder on wax surface

Peter Rossing from Muse Art & Design about What's new in encaustic.

 

First full retreat day

Well, we definitely had a better sleep last night! Must have been due to extra glasses of wine, the soak in the huge saltwater hot pool, AND the fact we closed the window this time…

Yesterday was a great day with presentations. I’ll write later a bit more about the topics, but for now will just upload some pictures, for we want to get breakfast soon!

Bethany acting as the inquisitive fairy from her hide-out...

Food for the restaurant is grown in the local garden!

Some paintings from the painting exchange; ours are at the top.

More paintings to drool over!

Manuella, Melinda and Robin honored for their hard work

Diane Erickson and our lovely roommate Pat Holton at the banquet

Here is Diane with Chantel Greene

...and littl'old me with gorgeous Bethany!

Sorry, no pictures from our soak in the hot pool…;-))

Getting ready for our road trip!

Two more sleeps, and Bethany and I will be on our way to the IEA Retreat in Portland! I’m getting ready by using my netbook to write this blog post, so it feels comfortable to use again. As Carol Munro and I went to the Encaustic Conference in Montserrat last year I managed to blog in the evening and share my pictures.
The intention is there: just hope there will be enough time to blog!

We are supposed to each bring a pound of medium, so yesterday I made 4 pounds from the new Swans Candles wax. Great stuff!

Everybody should bring a small painting for the painting exchange. I’ll take one from my 36″ A Day in May project from last year: It’s called My Canada:
Also on the list: some non-encaustic item. I decided on my favourite scraping tool, (it’s actually used for Japanese doll-making!) and some scrapies with rubber tips to work in soft wax. Great for mono print making. I’m also going to take my Aqua waxes, which I got from Michael Bossom.

The car has been checked and the navigation system programmed; we will leave on Wednesday afternoon, overnight in Ellensburg and drive on to Portland (Troutdale) the next day. I can hardly wait!

Stay tuned for updates in the coming days.