News — experiments

Breaking Through Fear

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Breaking Through Fear

In the interest of "work smarter, not harder" & "done is better than perfect" in 2023, I'm resurrecting some blog posts I started months (or even years) ago and posting them in whatever state they're in.    One sentence in my "kitchen sink" mantra I've been saying 21 times a day for a couple months now is: Fear no longer rules my decisions. Despite that, I've been living with a fearful scarcity mentality when it comes to art supplies, and it took a challenge from my coach to finally break through it. Despite meaning to paint on a full sheet...

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Ooh so shiny!

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Ooh so shiny!

Black watercolor paper--heard of it? Tried it? I have some (because I have an art supply addiction, you see) but I've struggled to use it over the past year or so I've owned it.  Recently I found a way to use both my black watercolor paper and another supply that was gathering dust: my mica powders. I mixed up a small batch of 5 different interference mica powders with gum arabic to make my own custom watercolor paint that looks great on black paper! Interference paint changes colors as you move it around in light. It's another unusual supply that's...

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Secret Artist Pet Portraits

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Secret Artist Pet Portraits

I recently offered my time, supplies, and talent to the Friends of Parkville Animal Shelter's Secret Artist fundraiser. A neighbor of mine is heavily involved in the group and had asked me to participate this year. Painting pet portraits is totally out of my wheelhouse, but I decided I was up for the challenge! I was assigned two commissions: a dog and a cat. I did 3 thumbnail sketches for each one, working out what colors I wanted for the backgrounds and for their fur. Then I used the fancy LED light pad my husband got me for my birthday to...

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Revising My Opinion

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Revising My Opinion

I may have to eat my words: I have loudly protested that sketchbooks simply weren't for me, but over the course of a little over a year, I completed 5 sketchbooks!  It seems sketchbooks are a thing for me, as long as they have a theme; I completed 3 of these because they were used for a very specific purpose. Two of them were used solely for my 100 Days Project to keep it all together. The third was used to paint skies and sunsets.  Having multiple books available also seems to help. My palette knife painting process is very...

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What is "Palette Knife Watercolor" Anyway??

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What is "Palette Knife Watercolor" Anyway??

I talk a lot here on my blog and Instagram about how I prefer to paint without a brush. In particular, I do a lot of painting with a palette knife. But I realised recently that I probably assume people know what the heck I'm talking about but they actually don't! Just because I do this multiple times a week doesn't mean you know what it is--and I'm bad about documenting my process after all!So I took a short video of me painting a very basic watercolor palette knife landscape and thought it might help to see the process in...

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