30 Day Art Challenge

Oct 8-Nov 7 was the time frame of the annual 30 canvases in 30 days art challenge here in Seattle.  This year my friends Mish, Julie and Kristi joined me in the venture.  We all slaved away every night after work to crank out 30 canvases each!  Once again, life threw in several curve balls for each of us.  Zombie's health problems, my car problems, etc, all just added to the challenge. 

I didn't start with a game plan this year- just decided to try a few techniques/materials I hadn't tried before and to just play around to see what happened.  I decided not to focus on what might be of interest to the public, so this year's batch is not as pretty.  :)

This one is called "The Eyes Have it". Yep, a whole canvas covered in googly-eyes!  This looks deceptively simple but it actually took quite a while to do.

I designed this robot digitally and then used golden's digital ground to paint some foil and then printed the robot on foil.  This was fun but a real challenge with my stupid printer.  Alas, the scan isn't very flattering but the robot looks pretty cool in person. 

Mish, Julie and I formed a band called the Dried Up Brainy Dead Chicks.  Only one of us can even sing and none of us play an instrument.  But why let that stop us?!  Especially with the lovely Iphone App called Songify.  One of the songs we've recorded so far is one I wrote based on the original Fly.  It is a whopping 35 seconds long but its catchy as hell.  This is the accompanying "singles" cover I created for it. 

This is my favorite piece from this batch of 30 paintings.  It started as a rant- with me just writing ferociously all over the canvas board- I was unloading my feelings of frustration and hurt and anger about all the crap that's happened in the last year/ year and a half.  Then I covered the rant with paint using a credit card to smear black, red and white paint all over.  I played around with it, still didn't like it, so I decided it was a good time to just try an ink jet transfer (of Jack Webb of course!).  The transfer started to work but I think I was too impatient or the image was too old (printed awhile ago)- it started to rub off.  I almost gave up at that point but ended up liking what little I could salvage of the image.  I then used some old flammable tape I had and a lip print rubber stamp to add the final touches.  I call this piece "Jack Webb is Flammable, baby!"

I used leather and string to create this one.  This was a riff on one of my previous digital pieces:

. 

However, the new one says "You Were Here".  A reflection of the past year perhaps? :)

Using the credit card technique again, this time on black paint.

My self-portrait- me as Medusa. 

I created some silly haikus, partially using a random haiku generator.  I decided to meld them with a few collages using old 70s catalog photos. 

This piece started as an abstract that I then covered in glass bead gel to see if it would "pop".  It didn't (the original was a bit faded) so I decided to roll with it and just see what happened if I painted directly onto the glass beads.  This is the result!

Just having a bit of fun with this one.

My first Ode to Joe- later I followed up w/ the better piece "Jack Webb is Flammable, baby!".  But it was fun trying to paint something like this.

Another Haiku collage. Read the L first then the R.  Or not.  :)

Joan Crawford is my muse once again for this painting.

One of my attempts at painting with beeswax.  I kept redoing it and redoing it til I ended up with this, which I liked.  I call this one "Midnight in the Garden"- it looks like a tree and black wrought iron fence to me.

I started with a photo of Russell Crowe and tried to draw him with charcoal.  Obviously that failed miserably!  But then I added beeswax and played around with trying to "erase" things, add things, etc, until voila, I ended up with this piece.

I had the yen to make some giant eyeballs. 

Jean Harlow is my other muse.  I created a hand-cut stencil of her and used acrylic (instead of spray) paint to creat this piece.  Like Cotton Candy.

Practicing painting men.  This is "Peter Cushing Haunts me".  I was happily surprised that it actually looks like him.  In green.

I was really happy with this piece. I loved the haiku and then fell in love w/ the background I was creating accidentally.  The rest fell into place. 

Another Haiku piece. 

Tried my pop girl techniques and added a little bit of a monster twist.  I'm enjoying the look of these "pop" paintings.  I need to do more of them- I need to practice my drawing skills.

No sparkling vampires here!

A couple of Devilish Divas!

Dabbling with my oil pastels, acrylics and paint pens again, ala some of my previous hollywood-inspired pieces.  This is once again Jean Harlow of course.  Joan and Jean- two of my muses.  I decided to try purple despite my intuition and decided in the end that purple is not always flattering (which is the title of the piece!)

Clara- a vision in green!

One of my favorite pieces- and yes, it is Jean Harlow again!  I really love how this one turned out!

This one I created just for me.  Not only do I have a lifelong crush on Martin Milner (Pete Malloy in Adam 12) but my car (which I named Malloy) was in the shop at the time, so I decided to make Saint Malloy, patron saint of Orange HHRs.  I plan on making a smaller version of this to put in my car!

That's it!  30 canvases in 30 days. The gallery show will take place in December.  Supposedly there are over 100 artists this year so there will be thousands of paintings!  I am really looking forward to it.  And I'm glad that I took the time to use up some long-standing supplies and to try a few techniques/materials I had been intending to try for awhile now.