Do you have a favorite color? You know, the one you always seem to choose for your wardrobe ... your home ... maybe even your car? Or do you have a different color preference for each of those areas of your life? I used to think that last description fit me best. My wardrobe is predominantly blue and black, my home leans toward neutrals with an occasional splash of blue and green, and my car is a silvery tan color. When I looked at collections of my paintings and other artwork, I saw the same color choices, with a very strong preference toward green. I was pretty sure that my paint palette needed some brightening, but I had no idea how much until I used Year of Color on my Instagram feed! I expected to see lots of green since my tubes of sap green hue and chromium oxide green are always needing replacement, but all these grays, tans, and browns took me by surprise. It's definitely time to brighten up my palette! The little circles of chartreuse, bright blue, and red gave me hope and a place to start, so I came up with an action plan for the new year... For this first week of 2020, the focus color is YELLOW. Bright, clear yellow ... soft, yellow with a hint of orange ... maybe even a little chartreuse to liven things up! If I stick with the plan, in six weeks I will have added a rainbow of colors to my paint palette and a much brighter look to my Instagram feed! Truthfully though, I am looking forward to "green week"! Follow me on Instagram to see if my plan for colorful transformation is successful ... and have a very happy, colorful 2020!
Are you looking for an easy and budget-friendly way to display small prints without spending money on frames? This technique is perfect for your personal photos as well as prints to sell at your local artisan market or your online shop. Check out this video from my YouTube channel for an easy DIY thanks to Miriam of Miriam's Nature on YouTube and Alex of MatboardShop on Etsy. Note: This video was formatted for Instagram Stories, so it is not wide screen. There's more in the works now that summer has arrived here in Ohio!
Follow me on Instagram or join my email list to get a monthly update on new YouTube videos and Skillshare classes. We've been in the deep freeze here in Ohio the past few days. Temperatures have dipped into the single digits with well below zero wind chills from time to time. So I decided to make the best of the weather and use the cold snap to artistic advantage. One of the women in my Thursday watercolor class had told us about what she called "ice painting". Her samples looked quite intriguing, with crystal shapes and lovely blended colors, so I decided to give it a try. The results were mixed, depending on variables like paper, amount of watercolor paint, and temperature, but it was a lot of fun and a great way to spend some time outside in wintery sunshine! If you happen to live in a wintery part of the world, try this out yourself. This is also a perfect activity to share with kids of all ages. Just watching the crystals form in the paint in fascinating! Post a photo on Instagram and tag me with @cboggsart. I'd love to see what you do!
To see how I turn these frozen watercolors into mixed media paintings, follow me on Instagram or sign up here for email updates when new blog posts are published. My "one word" for 2018 was JOURNEY, which I divided into two primary focus areas: FAITH and CREATIVITY. Looking back at my journey through the past year, I can note some successful times and some not-so-successful times. Of the 12 books I had selected for my FAITH journey, I only managed to read four. A few of the others are begun, but not finished, so for 2019, I am going to reevaluate the selection and continue the journey. To keep myself on track, I'm going to block out 30 minutes every morning before I open a digital device or pick up a paintbrush. For me, it isn't enough to "just read"; I need to actively do something with the reading, so as part of the 30 minutes, I'm going add a quick journal entry to respond to what I have read each day. My CREATIVITY journey went considerably better. I began taking watercolor class through the local community college in February and returned for the fall semester in August after a summer break. I'm signed up to return in two weeks and have even added a second painting class for this coming semester. In addition, I've taken online classes and workshops on Skillshare and other sites, as well as started teaching my own Skillshare classes. To keep myself on the CREATIVITY journey path, I've joined The Circle, a six-month online community of artists led by Carrie Brummer of Artist Strong. I've taken two of her short online workshops and really like the way she encourages artists and helps them wherever they are on their creative journey. So for 2019, my "one word" is CONTINUE. I have an unfinished JOURNEY to explore more of my FAITH and to add to my adventures in CREATIVITY. How about you? Do you choose a "one word" for the year, or are you a "New Year's Resolution" planner? Leave a comment here or chime in on Instagram, Whatever your preference, have a very Happy New Year!Yes, it's true! I finally took the plunge and set up a YouTube channel for CBoggsArt. Creating classes for Skillshare has been fun, but sometimes I don't really want to design and create an entire class, I just want to share a quick tutorial or technique in fifteen minutes or less. I'm starting out with just a few fun projects for the Christmas holiday season, like this one for creating simple chipboard ornaments: And this one for adding hand-stamped and hand-painted tags to your gifts: I'll also be publishing art projects for parents and caregivers to do with children using my "grandma" name, Mimi. This first one is an easy Christmas tree project that can be completed in about an hour. It was a favorite with my first grade students when I was teaching art full time! Take a look and if you like what you see, subscribe to my YouTube channel and my email list to get regular updates when new videos are uploaded. This new venture is a work in progress, but I'm looking forward to sharing more art tutorials and DIY project ideas in 2019. Until then, best wishes for a very Merry Christmas and Holiday Season!
Now that the holiday season is upon us, it's time to start thinking about the children... and not just what they have on their six-foot long "All I Want from Santa" list! Christmas time means longer breaks from the school routine in most places, with an accompanying chorus of "I'm so bored" once the glow of electronic toys and gadgets fades.
I can't promise an end to the "I'm bored" chant, but having a few basic art supplies on hand can certainly cure some of those post-Christmas blues in your household!
Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting demonstrations to go with the supplies listed below:
How lucky was I for this one? Recently, I was in Orchard Park, NY, to watch my oldest grandson play in a baseball tournament. While I love watching Aiden and his friends on the field, it's also refreshing to have a little break from all that activity in the hot sun. Fortunately for me, the Cougars didn't play until afternoon on Saturday, so I had the morning free to explore on my own. A quick trip through the entertainment guide provided in my hotel room landed me at Buffalo's Albright Knox Gallery and this fabulous exhibit! Usually I don't bother with the audio guides when I visit an art museum because I just like to view the art and read the labels at my leisure. However, the woman at the reception desk assured me that the audio guide would provide a fascinating backstory to the artwork, so I let her hold my precious Ohio driver's license hostage and took the audio guide. Good decision! I learned so much more than I would have just reading along. My favorite room in the exhibit also proved to be the most difficult to photograph. Nine of Indiana's "LOVE" sculptures, each from a different type of marble formed a circle facing his iconic "HUG...EAT...DIE...ERR" mantra, which was lit up with hundreds of bright bulbs that flashed in a variety of different patterns. The final piece in the room, a gleaming metal rendition of "Ahava", the Hebrew version of these famous LOVE sculptures, stood alone in the middle of the circle. The room was so large, the lighting was constantly changing, and other museum visitors (and a very diligent museum guard!) were constantly in my viewfinder. Not a single one of my panoramic photos did this room justice, so the one above is the best one I have to share. Having the audio guide was truly a gift since understanding the story behind Indiana's work added so much to the experience. The repetition of the words "eat", "die", "hug", and "err" are references to the artist's mother and the phrases he remembered her saying. Some works are direct references to literature, such as Moby Dick, and others, such as the one below, connect to the work of other artists. Before viewing this exhibit, I had no idea that Robert Indiana had created pieces inspired by the work of Charles Demuth. I was a bit startled when I walked into one of the exhibit rooms to find myself in front of the painting pictured below! Demuth's painting "I Saw the Figure Five in Gold" was inspired by a William Carlos Williams poem "The Great Figure", which describes the sight and sound of a fire engine racing to the scene of a fire. This may be the first time since my retirement from teaching art that I wished I had a classroom to return to in the fall! I had been using the poem to inspire art by my fourth graders, which we then compared to my large print of Charles Demuth's painting. Robert Indiana's work was also part of my fourth grade curriculum, so what a connection this would have made! Two hours later, it was back to the Orchard Park Little League Fields to cheer for my favorite 8U Cougar and his teammates. For the record, the Cougars ended their tournament run that weekend with a second place trophy!
If you happen to be near Buffalo, NY, or have plans to visit the area soon, the Robert Indiana exhibit will be on display at the Albright Knox Gallery until September 23, 2018. I highly recommend a visit! Right on the heels of my fabulous experience at the Dayton Art Institute came another wonderful art experience, the Art is Magic Creative Retreat. I was able to participate last year (see post here) and was thrilled to learn that Galia Alena was once again bringing together an amazing group of creative women to share their insights and techniques for mixed media art.The weekend retreat flies by quickly! Eighteen classes are released over a two day period, each only remaining accessible for 24 hours after its release. There is an option to join the Ongoing Creative Retreat, which I did last year, but this year my funds were limited and I had to come up with a strategy for making the most of each class offering.I knew that I couldn't possibly watch each class and complete each project in the time that was available, so I took notes and made a few quick sketches as time permitted, then bookmarked the websites of the artists so that I could find them later.Now my plan is to work through the various techniques and see where the explorations take my own creative work. I'll be sharing my creative adventures here and on Instagram in the coming weeks.
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