minis and miniature art

Blue Blooded mini, copyright Teresa Mallen, coloured pencil on colourfix paper, 6" w x 2 3/4" h

Here are some minis I have been working on this past week. The piece above and the one below are approximately six inches wide by three inches wide. Both are done in coloured pencil on colourfix paper. I had a lot of fun doing these. If you have been following my blog for a while, the mini above might look a bit familiar. It was inspired by my work entitled  Blue Blooded.

Mini # 2, copyright Teresa Mallen, coloured pencil on colourfix paper, 6 1/2 " w x 3" h

My motivation to create some smaller works started last fall. Some of you might recall that I was working with ink and cps and I was dashing off small works of feathers and fruit and such. I eventually got a bit bored with this so I stopped.

Then last November, I purchased the drawing magazine pictured on the left. The cp portrait on the cover is the art of Kerry Brooks. I was surprised to learn that Kerry not only works quite big but she has also done very detailed, smaller works (3" x 4" for example). 

The seeds of inspiration were sown and I soon started pondering doing some cp minis (as I call them). I must confess previously having an aversion to working small simply because I am not that keen on squishing tons of detail into a tiny area, and well, I like detail! But hey, when the muse beckons... :-)

Mini Rose #1, copyright Teresa Mallen
4  3/4" w x 3  3/4" h, coloured pencil on Stonehenge paper

Miniature Art is a very interesting genre. I find it fascinating that people use magnifying glasses in order to place teeny, tiny brush strokes on intricate originals the size of postage stamps. There are miniature art societies in countries all around the globe.

Of course there was the eruption of ATCs (2.5 x 3.5 inches) onto the art scene a few years back. Millions of artist trading cards were created and swapped. Later many artists transitioned into ACEOs (art cards,editions and orginals), selling these art cards during the Daily Painter craze. I saw an enormous amount of bad art back then as people jumped on the bandwagon of creating quickly and making sales. I am glad this fad seems to be over. I am not knocking the Daily Painters out there, the ones still standing are doing excellent work, just saying I had a thing about those ATCs... :-)

So, to be clear, my intent is not to create miniatures in the formal sense of the word and I am not working ATC size nor am I considering these ACEOs.

Mini Rose # 2, copyright Teresa Mallen
3 3/4" w x 3 1/4 " h, coloured pencil on Stonehenge paper

The roses are in the four inch by three inch range.

When more have been completed, I shall create a sales gallery. These minis shall be offered up for sale matted and unframed so shipping shall be nice and easy. I will of course post about that development when it happens.

For now I am hoping to get some good photo references on those apples I mentioned in a previous post (need a sunny day for good shadows) and in the meantime, I have started a new peony petals piece - another one for the series!

where botanicals start and the art of gardening

 The weather was absolutely beautiful this past weekend. A perfect mix of mild temperatures and sunshine. Ideal conditions for a winter barn muck-out! Winter gardening is great - no sweltering heat and no bugs. What does mucking out a barn have to do with gardening? Everything! I am making soil folks. Well nature does the work once I spread the stuff around. And that truly is where all botanical art begins. Whether you draw or paint flowers or vegetables, everything gets started in dirt. (I wish to pause to state that despite what it looks like in the picture, I am NOT six months pregnant! Good heavens...due to a unique combination of shadow and pale green turtle neck colour and I don't know what, one might very well get the wrong idea here, there friends, you do not need to email me, it ain't so...)

The art of making dirt isn't complicated stuff. In the picture I am spreading the animal bedding (which contains goat urine and poo, a fabulous natural fertilizer) over an area of my garden. My goal was to lay down a deep mulch, several inches thick. Once this decomposes, we shall be left with what gardeners call black gold - incredibly rich, black soil. We have lived here four years now and we started building this garden from scratch. We expanded the area last summer to include where I am standing. Fruit trees were planted. On my right you can see our wee plum tree. I won't plant in this area in 2012. I will continue to apply a mulch of bedding material from now until spring and then it will be left alone to rot down over the summer.

Like fine art, the art of gardening is an never ending exploration. There is always something new to learn and new techniques to try. I am excited to implement some new methods of growing food in the coming years. Our goal is to grow as much healthy, organic, nutrient dense food as we can - well, all of the veggies we like. We are not creating a market garden...not yet anyway :-) 

Many people are interested in growing their own food and it really is doable - you don't need a farm. You can grow in containers on a balcony or in raised beds in a city backyard. What stops a lot of people is the idea of committing tons of time and hard work. But what if it wasn't all that time consuming or that difficult???? Sound impossible?

You might wish to check out these two writers. I read One Straw Revolution last year, written in 1975 by Masanobu Fukuoka. This formally trained plant pathologist/scientist spent 65 years developing a system of natural farming that would benefit the world. This book is considered one of the founding documents of the alternative food movement. Specifically, the author teaches a common sense, do nothing technique. He did not plow, did not weed and used no agricultural chemicals or prepared fertilizers. What I enjoyed most in learning about his techniques was how after observing nature, what grew well and where, he started growing vegetables under trees! I had thought this was impossible as vegetables needs sunlight to grow, right? But after reading his book, I am inspired to grow food in and around my fruit trees. 

For a lighter take on the whole subject I have another author to recommend. (Mr. Fukuoka's book was translated into English and it does deal with a lot of Japanese gardening stuff that isn't so applicable, i.e. the climate is different and I am not growing rice crops, but it is still worth reading to get the gist of his philosophies)  The next wise soul is, Ruth Stout, who lived from 1884 until 1980. She lived in cities until she was 45 and then following an unexpected move to the country she tried her hand at gardening. She planted her first garden in the spring of 1930 and for many years she used conventional methods. Tired of waiting for her hired plow man to come one spring she stumbled upon a method of garden that has revolutionized the way many of us think about growing food. After adopting her new method, Ruth said, "I never plow, spade, sow a cover crop, harrow, hoe, cultivate, weed, water or irrigate or spray." Sounds very appealing to me. Her method? Year round mulch. Of course if you don't have access to barn muck, mulch can be anything from spoiled or regular hay, straw, leaves, pine needles, sawdust and vegetable matter. Anyone can do this. Even into her late 80s, Ruth continued to grow a years worth of food for two people, doing the work entirely by herself. Ruth's books are a fun read. I have checked out a couple from the library and I am currently reading 'How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back'. Next up is her book entitled 'Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent'. Love that title! Do try to find her youtube videos. Sometimes her videos disappear due to copyright issues but there is one interview currently still available. She is a hoot. I have learned that she used to garden in the nude as she liked the feel of the air on her body, to which I wonder, does Connecticut not have bugs and what about a sun burn? Regardless, I am keeping my clothes on.

    

Here is what the Christmas trees look like after the goats are done. Notice the stripped bark - we have beaver goats! Eventually, what is left of the trees shall become firewood. The lad on the right is Noah's twin brother, Keeah. His Charlie Chaplin moustache markings are stains from 'beavering' away at the tree trunks. The goats never cease to surprise me.

ideas

 Some ideas are brilliant, others are fine and well some ideas should just remain ideas, not something that actually gets acted upon. 

In recent weeks, this Iris piece that I did several years ago came to mind. I was thinking about how I always liked the look of it - especially the tooth of the paper and how it responded to the pigment that was applied. So after some thinking I headed to my closet to check out my paper stock. I knew this was done on Strathmore paper so I dug up a pad of their 500 series Bristol medium surface paper. Why not do my next piece on this? Good idea.This would be perfect for what I wanted to work on for my next idea.

Now I think this idea falls into the fine category - I am starting to create a series of what I am calling 'minis'. Working small will give my collectors a new purchasing option. Lots of people today are downsizing. If potential buyers already have an art collection well under way then it can be hard to find wall space for larger pieces. Of course smaller translates into not so costly to buy. Not everyone is willing to spend a fair bit of money on a large work and some people simply can't afford a larger piece. In this case, a smaller drawing is perfect. Less money also brings the art into a gift buying price range. Finally, having mini works on the go gives me something to work on while I am in between bigger projects or when I simply wanting a break from the larger works. 

The picture below shows one of my bigger pieces, how I normally like to work. The two pieces below are minis that are works in progress. Well the left rose is a work in progress. The right one is trash. That idea to use the Strathmore paper - turns out it was an idea that wasn't a good one after all. As soon as I started to work on it, I disliked the paper. I persevered, remembering how much I liked the iris piece. Yet I finally had to call it quits. I found the paper got gummy with hardly any pigment down, it was 'dirty' (pencil grime was harder to brush off and forget trying to lift pigment with tape, yuck). I was left grumbling at my muse - or whatever trickster entity influenced my thinking (it couldn't have been me that can up with that daft idea). Obviously I stopped working on that paper years ago and for good reason! Duh... So I am re-doing that wee rose on Stonehenge. Ahhhh!!! Bliss from the moment my first pencil hit the paper.

To give an idea of size, the two minis below, once cropped to the final size, would be smaller than 4 inches by 6 inches.

big rose with works in progress mini roses

Please note my disclaimer - artists are very different in their likes and dislikes, especially when it comes to materials and tools. Just because my experience with this paper wasn't one I liked, it is not my intention to prejudice a reader away from trying their own experiments with it. Oh and my muse had the last laugh...I later checked my records and the iris was actually done on Stonehenge! I had it all wrong. :-)

I hope this idea is a good one. Above you can see a small tub of Blue Haze Colourfix Primer. I bought it a year ago but somehow I never got around to using it. Well now seems like a good time so I have primed a 9 inch by 12 inch cradled birch panel with the product. I applied three light coats, sanding off any stray hairs or whatnot between coats. I think this would make a lovely surface for a cloud piece. Remember all of that cloud watching I did last summer? Well, I have some good reference photos to work from. The panel is ready and I shall get at this piece soon. I have the two mini roses almost done and I will show them in my next post. 

I am excited about the apples you see in the picture. I have plans to do an apple piece, just a row of apples nothing fancy, but it won't be a mini - yippee! I just have to get a drawing worked up. I spent some time yesterday afternoon posing the apples. I love that green colour!!!  

This next idea was an excellent one...just ask the goats! After Christmas my husband hitched on our trailer and headed out to two neighbouring subdivisions. The purpose? Why to nab some tasty goat fodder of course!!! Goats are like deer and they prefer to browse off of shrubs and trees as opposed to grazing like cattle. They love to eat pine trees! Now we have a great recycling program here in Ottawa. All used Christmas trees that are put out at the curb on garbage day are picked up and put through a chipping machine. Mulch is created for the city gardens and parks.

But we had a different sort of recycling in mind...Including our own tree, we ended up with 20 trees for the goats to supplement their diet with over the next two months. Trees do add a variety of nutrients that goats don't get just from eating hay and corn. Of course, everything else is covered in snow and/or dormant right now. In these pictures a new tree is being dropped into their field.

yum, yum...

Below, in the picture on the left you can see Dukah and Jonah butting heads (a favourite goat activity)...this one was a rather lazy confrontation, Jonah is still chewing on his twig. The little guy on the right is my precious Noah. I worked hard to save him last summer. When he was born, he was sick and needed bottle feeding. Some antibiotics and many up in the night feedings got me a pet goat extraordinaire! He thinks I am the greatest thing since pine trees were created (or corn chips) and he follows me everywhere expecting lots of attention. He gets it. :-) He has the sweetest disposition and is truly adorable.


 

coloured pencil info

I have some cp sites loaded with great info to share with you. First up let's talk lightfastness. We all want to create with pencils that will ensure our art's longevity but finding information on all of the pencil brands can be rather overwhelming. Help is on the way! The Coloured Pencil Society of Canada has a new article on their website this month, written by Manon Leclerc. The topic is lightfastness and all aspects of this issue are covered. The best part is that Manon has done extensive research into the pencil brands and has provided all the information we need to check out our favourite pencils. This info is in the middle of the article so make sure you scroll down far enough. I suggest bookmarking this one!

Another site you will enjoy viewing is the home of Colored Pencil Magazine. Issues of this magazine are available in print or as a download. You can also have a have a free preview of the January issue (since writing this earlier today, the February issue is now also available). It is worth checking out the January issue just to see the gorgeous cover art created by Ester Roi. Ester is featured in this issue and if you haven't heard about Ester's work or her wonderful invention, the Icarus Board then you can read the article as well as visit her website. If you don't know, the Icarus Board allows cp artists to work over heat - the wax binder in wax based pencils softens allowing the work to be burnished without solvents and without using heavy pressure. Ester has a terrific website chock full of beautiful artwork in her galleries, she has lots of info on technique and you can link to her blog. If that weren't enough, Ester has youtube videos!!!! Do check out all that Ester has for us to view. You will come away enchanted and inspired!

Okay, back to the Colored Pencil Magazine, well if you are familiar with Alyona Nickelsen's work (she is the author of the Colored Pencil Painting Bible) then you will be pleased to see that Alyona has signed on to answer readers questions every month. Alyona is another woman with a very comprehensive website and it too is worth a look. She offers on-line classes, has a newsletter, etc.

I hope you enjoy checking out these resources. I truly love looking at what other cp artists are getting up to and all of this is simply a click away. Happy surfing folks!

Motivation Monday

Dealing with loss can mess with our motivation.

Whether the loss of a loved one, or perhaps the loss of an aspect of our health, the loss of a job or perhaps the loss of a dream that we have held onto for years...loss comes in many forms. We all experience loss in one way or another.

How do we keep pressing on when we feel burdened by the weight of loss?

George Sand wrote "One knows what one has lost, but not what one may find." That's it in a nutshell. We simply don't know what we may find. The truth is most of us deal with painful situations at various times in our lives, yet it would serve us well to remember that life is also filled with a lot of good. As this year progresses, I am hanging onto this wonderous promise - that right now I can't possibly know all of the good that is coming my way. So, I ask you, are you looking forward to what you may find?

peony petals finished

peony petals, copyright Teresa Mallen, coloured pencil on Stonehenge paper, 8" x 8"

I haven't thought up a name for this one yet but here is my latest peony petals piece, pretty much finished. I will no doubt tweak it here and there before signing my name and scanning it for posting to my website. The contrast isn't as good as it should be in the photo above but once I started fiddling with that then the colours went crazy - you know how it goes, suffice to say it looks brighter in person.

The eleventh day into a new year...I am a gal who loves a fresh start and a new year seems to be the perfect time to wipe the slate clean. Our journals and day planners are bare and I relish the opportunity to embrace a new beginning. 

I must confess that 2011 was a bumpier ride than I would have liked. There were unexpected challenges and loss. Quite honestly I am very ready to see the back end of that year and to welcome a new one.

I have been thinking much in past months about goals and such and the other night I curled up in front of a fire, with my journal and a glass of wine and I got myself sorted. I planned, prioritized, dreamed and dared to visualize a very bright future. As I type, 2012 offers 355 new days, neatly parceled into weeks, months and seasons. Such a delicious chunk of time, of life filled with lush possibilities and gifts I can't even imagine. I am ready. Very ready.

I am not sure what my next new piece shall be but I have some ideas. I hope to get some time later today to sift through my reference photos. In the meantime, I have some volunteer work to attend to. I am on the executive of a group that puts together a twice a year Studio Tour. Today we shall go over last years finances, plan the next tour, jury in new artists, etc. It is always enjoyable to get together with fellow artists and I am looking forward to brainstorming ways to leverage this tour to new heights of success.

Have you planned out your new year yet? Remember to dream big!

new works in progress

peony petals, work in progress, coloured pencil on Stonehenge paper, 8" x 8"

I hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful holiday season. Things are great here. I am not a hustle and bustle kind of gal so the last place anyone would find me is out hitting the shops for after Christmas bargains. Instead, I have been spending delightful days in my studio.

The above image is of a piece that I started this week. It will become part of my 'petals' series. Once again I am working from my stash of peony pictures as a drawing reference. I wanted to work small for a change and this one is just 8 inches by 8 inches. I am also enjoying a return to Stonehenge paper after months of working on sanded pastel surfaces. It is fun to change things up now and again. 

While I normally don't have several pieces on the go at once, the drawing below is one that I am getting back to after a bit of an absence.

Solomon's Seal, work in progress, coloured pencil on Colourfix paper, 8" x 8"

This drawing of a Solomon's Seal plant is rather small as well. It has been shelved for a while as I had tried different approaches to the background and I wasn't satisfied. This morning I erased most of my funky background and decided to try going with something more simple. I have just started adding some replacement pigment and I plan on heating the wax to fill in the tooth of the paper. I shall keep you posted on how this progresses.

Finally here is a fun mixed media piece that I have been noodling with. I am working on a sheet of Colourfix pastel paper and the art itself will be cropped to 22 inches by 15.5 inches. Right now I have a base of watercolour paint down as well as some coloured pencil. Oh, and the image is my interpretation of the underside of a yellow mushroom - something for my abstracted realism series.



mushroom gills (abstracted) , work in progress, mixed media, 22" x 15.5"

So, there is much fun going on in the studio. Winter is my favourite time to log in hours working as I am unable to grow food or tend gardens and I am not distracted by the long lovely daylight hours. Having said that, I am now going to grab my snowshoes for a walk in the forest before we put the goats into the barn at dusk. We had a winter snowstorm yesterday and every branch is coated with snow and topped with sparkling crystals. I simply can't stay inside any longer. :-)

Happy New Year everyone. I wish you peace and many blessings in 2012!