Another Magic Painting Shirt

Meeting with Edna Colazzo

Edna came down south with her family earlier this year and we got to meet in Orlando for an afternoon. I did entirely too much rambling at the beginning of the video, so you might want to skip over all that part and get to the final 2 minutes where I show Edna and her work.

Michelle's Portrait

This was a portrait that I did on commission earlier this year. Rarely do I do portraits. I made this video to show to the customer prior to shipping so that she could see what it looked like before I shipped it, in case she wanted any changes made.

Speedpainting Self Portrait and Art Journal

This is an oil painting.

Flower Art Journal

Art Inspiration from the Beach

At the time, I wasn't consciously aware that my trips to the beach influenced my art much, but based upon the colors and landscape views in this video you can see their connection to the landscape in the following video.

This was the collage landscape piece that was created two weeks after the prior video was made.

Painting Lamps and Furniture

I love painting bright and colorful designs on furniture pieces and lamps. I am a huge fan of MacKenzie-Childs pieces and I saved an old 2004 catalogue and continue to use it for inspiration and ideas.

Flower Art Journal

At least 18 months ago, I had been dreaming of making some dolls. But I never began anything even remotely like that until the summer of 2012 when I began my Small Faces series. At the time of this post, I am also creating another new series that I call Bottle Babes. I will get into these more later.

Flower Art Journal Flip...it is now completed!

Kelvin's Cookbook

Girlie Girl Zentangles

In my Girlie Girl Art Journal I began experimenting with Zentangles.



And here is the Girlie Girl Art Journal flip....it is finally completed!



Art Montage

Easy Peasey Faces

It can't get much simpler than this one!



If you wish to improve your portrait skills then practice, practice, practice. Using the loosey goosey method shown in this video will get you moving in the right direction. There are many formulas available for making faces and when I was first doing them 10 years ago, I used lines and thirds and suchlike to create my faces. THEY ALL LOOKED ALIKE.

People do not look alike. If you study them carefully, faces do not look alike. Let's forget Vogue models and the Beautiful People...real people each have a unique look.

Pen & Ink Girlie Girl Drawing

More Artwork for Girlie Girl Contests

These were the final three pieces that I created for my GG Contests:

Artwork for Girlie Girl Contests

I did several contests on You Tube and here is the artwork that I made and gave as prizes in 3 of the contests:

Art Journal Cover and More Art Tags

I had a little contest to help me decide what to do with the Art Journal cover and this video shows the winner and their suggestion along with the final results of the cover. I also went a little crazy on making the gift tags and there was a whole pile of them before I was finished!

Art Tags and Another Art Journal Flip

These little tags are easy and fun to make. At this time of year having a pile of them on hand makes your life much simpler when you are gift giving. You get to showcase your artistic skills and enhance the gifts for your favorite people on your list by gearing your tags toward a specific theme.



This is the completed journal....at long last!

Glass & Wire Rose Tutorial

Easy Peasy flowers that I have been making for years. I did a series of vases about 14 years ago from Frappucino bottles and polymer clays. It was during the development of this bottle series that I came up with the idea of these glass and wire roses. When you add half a dozen or more of these to a vase, it looks really cute.

More Magic Painting Shirts

These are two more quick videos of shirts that I made:

Girlie Girl Art Journal

Here are a couple pages from one of my Art Journals:



This is an Art Journal Flip:

Collaged Gifts

Another Mixed Media Painting Demonstration

In this image from my Florida series, I used acrylic paints, opaque ink, and spackle to add the painting to the surface of this recycled painting. By putting heavy layers of gesso over the earlier painting, I was able to transform it to a new painting.

This video is time lapse, so it plays quickly and there is some music to dance to as well!! In this video I am recycling another painting and giving it a fresh new look.

Aluminum Foil Tape

Adding a Girlie Girl to one of my art journals using collage, stamping, drawing, and painting.

Page of Pain

When my son moved out of state 2 years ago, I had an extremely difficult time dealing with it. I used my art and journaling to help me to work through my upset about this. It truly helped me, and so did the passage of time. This is to all you mothers out there!

Collage in an Art Journal

In this video I show an earlier Water Soluble Oil Pastels image that I had in my collage bag, and how I took pieces of that to enhance a collage image in my art journal. Also show some other pages in this journal.



And in this video I show some additional art journal pages using collage and stamping techniques. One of the things that I have noticed is that my saved collage papers will bring back memories from earlier years when you see them. You can remember where you were, what you were doing, and often how you made your collage papers.



This final video shows you how to paint over a photo or magazine image that you have applied to a page of your art journal. This is great practice on becoming comfortable with painting portraits. Use of fixatives will be necessary on the surface of your image prior to painting it. This will prevent any bleeding or beading of your paints when you apply them in the paint over method.

Languishing in Love Art Journal Page

Here I took an image from a fashion magazine, sketched it into a journal, painted and collaged the page all in a whimsical style. It became Lounging for Love somewhere along the way.

Also shown are some other pages done with hearts, faces, and whatever came to mind. When I do my art journals, I prefer to use children's board books because the pages do not buckle and warp.

Gift Wrapping for Artists

I have almost always used my scraps and collage art supplies to create packaging for gifts in my adult life. It takes longer to get the gifts wrapped, but people LOVE getting uniquely wrapped packages. In some cases, people have enjoyed my wrapping more than the gifts inside...those would be occasions when I didn't shop correctly, but my wrapping saved the day.

Still Life Acrylic Painting Demonstration

In this video I demonstrated how to recycle a painting. I am a huge fan of still life paintings, so I will routinely paint one or two of them to add to my inventory. They might be acrylic, pastel, watercolor, or oil....OR even mixed media. This one is an acrylic and I show you how I did the charcoal underdrawing, as well.

Daily Painting

Several years ago I did a 3 month stint of Daily Painting. This was a Painting a Day experience and during this time I completed 70 small oil paintings plus some acrylic pieces and Magic Painting Shirts. There is an incredible amount of discipline involved with doing a Painting a Day, which is why I only lasted for 3 months.

Out of those 70 oil paintings, about half of them were worth keeping. The other half has since been recycled into something else. There is much to be learned from doing a Painting a Day, so if you haven't already tried it I would recommend it highly.