Also known as the suicide tree, pong-pong, or othalanga. It is native to India and other Southern Asia parts. The seed is rought 5-7 cm large, or should I say, small. The seed does have a shell, but once it has fallen from the tree, it decays and leaves the fibrous tissue that I found interesting enough to paint. I like the juxtaposition of the rough inside fibers and the smooth outer fibers. I think that is what drew me to the seed. The painting is done in neutrals, a color scheme I don't normally work it. I toyed with painting the background a hue, but in the end felt that black was the most striking and would really bring the seed forward the most. Cebera Odollam, Acrylic Paint and Texture Mediums on Canvas, 22"X28", Dec 2014-Jan 2015.
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I started a Facebook page for MissJarbarArt. I am not sure why. I thought it would be nice to have it all in the same place. Also, if I decide to start selling or be more public about commissions.
Here is the link if you want to like it. This past October, a friend, T, had a very unfortunate event happen to her. She lost her full-term baby girl. The doctor's couldn't find a reason why the baby stopped thriving at 39 weeks. My heart was broken for her and her family. I am part of a collection of women, mostly moms, who are part of a message board. There was a collection for her to help with meals and anything else her family would need. I gave as much as I could, which wasn't very much. It didn't feel like enough. Then, a mutual friend contacted me and asked if I would like to create a painting for our friend. She said that the other day, T had mentioned that the pretty pinks in the sunset had reminder her of her baby. And, would I do a painting of a sunset full of pinks and oranges? Of course. I don't normally do scenic paintings, and because of the meaning behind this, I was nervous. I didn't want to screw this up. I wanted it to be just right. And, I wanted some of my style to be included. I am happy with the results. I hope T is too. Briana Marie, Acrylic Paint and Texture Medium on Canvas, 16"X20", Nov-Dec 2014.
My friend Jess just got a new job in a new school district. With that job came a new job title, new responsibilities, and a new office. I was touched when Jess reached out to me and asked if I would paint something for her office. Of course I said sure, I would love to. She sent me the color palette she was going to use in her office and I sent her my pinterest link for images of pods and flowers/plants that I am interested in. She narrowed it down to 3 or 4 and told me to pick from there. Amongst the choices were a flower that reminded me of home...the dogwood. It would be a challenge as I hadn't really painted flowers in my current style. I've stuck mostly with pods of one kind or another. But, I gladly took it on, and I am glad I did. I created my background first, then laid down the composition of the branches. Then I stopped. I wasn't quite sure how I would do the flowers themselves. I thought back to the chinese lantern and decided to put the petals onto wax paper and glue them on after painting.
Did you know that if you write in sharpie or marker on the wax paper and put the texture medium on top, when you peal the dried medium off, the sharpie/maker remains on the bottom. I didn't either, but I do now. Anyway, I painted the petals, glued them down, and once again, stopped. I had to create the center of the flower still. Then I remembered the extra corse pumice medium I still had from the milk weed pod. It worked out perfect. I am happy with the artwork and I hope that Jess smiles every time she see's it in her office. For the past 3 years I have participated in a Halloween Charity Photo shoot with an amazing group of women. Kelly from Happy Soul Photography sets up a day in October where she photographs our children in their halloween costumes. In addition to the photo shoot, there is a raffle. Donations range from a photo mini-session to wines from Twin Liquors to a spa retreat to crafts made by the women of the group. Almost all the money raised gets donated to a charity that Kelly chooses. This year the money raised was donated to help MS research because a dear friend of ours had been diagnosed with MS earlier this year. I like to participate in this charity photo shoot by donating a painting I create. In the past I have created the paintings first and people would bid on the finished work. These are paintings from the past. This year I did not have time to complete a work before the event, so I thought I would try a different approach. I would give the winner of the painting 3 choices of canvas sizes and let them choose the color scheme and the subject matter. I would then do what I do and create a custom work. The canvas size choices were 16X20, 20X20, and 22X28. My winner chose 20X20 and after looking through my pinterest inspiration page, she decided she liked the Queen Anne's Lace. We discussed color schemes and I was off. Having just completed my Chinese Lantern painting, I had a good idea of how I wanted to create the flower. I would use a lace or crocheted doily to act as a mask. I had a doily from my grandmother that I liked, but thought it would be great if I could find something else. I bought some lace and did samples of both. I showed both samples to the client and some other women and everyone liked the doily version best. I painted a red/red-orange scumbled background and was on my way. I laid down a couple of flowers from the side view and was very happy. However, things didn't go as I had planned. See, my sample was a small version of the flower from the top. But, when I made the flower from the top view, I had gone much larger. I hated it. I ended up scraping off the texture and was surprisingly pleased with what was left behind. It was a happy mistake. When I tried to replicate the happy mistake, I just couldn't. I tried in two different places on the canvas, but it just wasn't working and I was completely unhappy with it. So, I got our my red paint tubes and painted over the background, leaving the first two flowers I had painted. You could still see some of the texture under the reds, but I wasn't bothered by that. I came up with a new composition and began painting. It took a while to do all the flowers because I only had the one doily and could only use so much of it at a time. Another problem I was facing was that every time I rinsed out the doily, the age of it began to catch up with me and it began to deteriorate. Luckily it held up long enough. I was close to finishing, so I thought I would give a teaser on facebook for all to see. I still had concerns about the texture that was left behind from the happy accidents, but once I had all the new flowers in, I decided I liked the texture. It added another layer and some more depth to the painting. My last step was to add a little bit of depth to the flowers themselves, so I went over the texture with some white and some iridescent white. I was happy so I called it complete. I showed my client a picture of the final piece and she said she really liked it. I have been staring at it for about a week now. I am a little sad to let it go, but I am excited for my client to see it in person as photos just can't capture the texture quite right. Queen Anne's Lace, Acrylic Paint and Texture Medium on Canvas, 20"X20", October 2014.Last weekend I finally decided to take the plunge and try something new. I had been pinning photos of Chinese lantern pods for a while, but couldn't figure out how to create it in an artwork. My biggest problem was figuring out how to do the lacy pod. I kept thinking that I could put the texture over lace and then pull the lace up. It eventually dawned on me that I would be leaving the negative space from the lace, which is the opposite of what I wanted. Then it finally hit me that I needed to put down the negative spaces and fill in the rest. As I was cleaning out my studio, I found some plastic mosaic pieces from a long time ago and thought they would be perfect. It was going to be a learning experiment on creating the lacy pod. I drew out the pod on the canvas, then I laid down some wax paper to glue the pieces to. Once they were all glued down, I took the wax paper mosaic and laid the blended fibers texture medium over the pieces like I was putting grout down. I tried to wipe off the extra with a wet paper towel, similar to how I would treat grout, but I soon found it was wiping too much away. So, I refilled and scrapped as much off the tiles as I could with a palette knife. Next I had to wait until it dried. From there I removed all the pieces. It took 3 evening to get rid of them all. It was very hard to push them out. Some of the texture ripped. Here it is days later and my finger tips still hurt. The last part all consisted of painting. I painted the canvas. I painted my lacy pod. I glued down the lace. Then I finished by painting the stem.
I learned a lot from this experiment. Next time, if I were to do something like this again, I would use bigger mosaic pieces. This would allow more of the painting to show through. I would also put more space in between the pieces. I think that will help with the ripping. It was a fun piece that took patience. Many times I wished for an assistant to either glue the pieces or at the very least remove them for me. I am super happy with the piece. I love the color scheme I went with. All the colors work so well together. I am also glad I put some gold over the lace to add just a little shimmer. Here is the final piece: Chinese Lantern, Acrylic Paint and Texture Medium on Canvas, !6" X 20", October 2014. There is just something about the sense of touch that I love. I love being able to run my hands across the canvas and feel the textures. I know that is a big no-no in the art world, but I say eff that noise. Touch my paintings, please.
I have found that over the past 2 years that I have been working with texture that I have fallen in love. There are just so many possibilities on what new places I can take the mediums. And I am discovering new textures that I haven't used before. And, the bonus for me is that the process of working with the textures fits into my schedule. I find that I usually only have an hour or so in the evenings, more on weekends, to work. And, I can only do so much work until I need to let the texture dry. It is all perfect. Plus, having to work in stages really gives me time to reflect on what I am creating and where I need to go. It's time for a change. While I have loved my blog, it wasn't doing what I wanted in terms of a website to showcase my artwork. I think this site will be that. I can update the blog with what I've been working on and thoughts about my process. And adding pictures to the pages with slideshow options will be so choice. This site is still a work in progress
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