Playing with some new mediums

My potluck critique group meets once a month and each month we paint (create, actually) "to" a different topic. We select topics about once a year and each months' is different. This month the prompt is to "use a medium you haven't used before."

I have so many things I've bought and not yet tried that I'm going to work with some of the Golden and Liquitex mediums that I have on hand. I got some unusual canvases and used a pallette knife to spread the "lightweight" medium on them, in a thin, fairly smooth coat. I read about it before hand and discovered that once it's completely dry, it makes a paper-type surface that you can wet and drop paint and ink onto and it spreads out in an interesting manner, almost like working with watercolors.

So far, I'm having fun experimenting with it wet and dry and with paints, inks, and metallics. When I finish the panels, I want to coat them with gloss medium and self-leveling gel for a different, glossy look than I usually finish with. Fun, so far!

Ficklin Vinyards Event last night

I had been asked a couple of months ago to display my art at Ficklin Vinyards at a special event. Thanks, K.c. Pomering for inviting me! And thank you, Peter Ficklin, for your hospitality! It was hard work--preparing, setting up by myself (which I don't often have to do, luckily!), talking, talking, talking (which I've been told I DO often do!) to lots of people, tearing down alone and driving home very late. But it was a LOT of fun! Good wine, good food, friendly people, excellent hosts and hostesses, and a lot of wonderful contacts for me, as an artist. I talked to restaurant and hotel owners, winery owners, wine and food and art lovers--and more!

Mostly, I took things related to wine as you can see in the photos. I took 3 large wine paintings, some prints, cards and a couple of small paintings. I sold a small matted original and a small painting so it was a nice evening in that way also. I have some exciting news to share in the near future, but that will come in a future post.

                                                                                                   
In the photos you can see the basic set up. The photos, done on my iPhone, aren't the greatest because of the way the lighting was. But it was interesting because of all the wine barrels surrounding the huge tasting room and because I tried to use the nearby barrels as part of my useable display space. It is always fun and challenging to try to create a welcoming and attractive display area when you are going to a new setting that you haven't previously shown in. I felt comfortable with the way it looked and I really enjoyed meeting a lot of new people from the Madera area. I hope I'll continue my new friendships at the Madera Wine Trail event on November 14-15. That weekend I will be located at Birdstone Winery so you can stop by and say hello!

In closing, I'd like to say that I am going to try to add a little video taken on my iPhone and see if you can view it, hear it and make any sense of it. It is very short and the content is limited. It's more an experiment to see if I can get a video from my phone to my blog successfully. So far, I haven't been able to but maybe today will be my lucky day. (NOTE: It was NOT my lucky day. I'm still struggling with that, though the video is fine on my phone and my desktop. I WILL overcome, but not right now.)

And speaking of "experiments", the last month has been very much a learning process. I love being on Facebook, especially now that I've started a "Fan Page" where I can more easily display my work and invite "fans" and friends to my art events. If we haven't connected there yet, please look for me. My blog is feeding over to Facebook and my Facebook posts are going to Twitter. This is all VERY high tech stuff for me! But it's a lot of fun and it's going well except for Twitter. I am just not tweeting well, as yet! But that will come with time, I suspect.  Well, enough for one post--I'm dying to see if the video works or not!

Another Experiment

Tuesday was a sort of quiet day, but not a very productive one. I've been struggling with organizing my long art mailing list, trying to consolidate a lot of lists into one master list. It has taken me forever and I'm still not "there" with it. I have a March newsletter done and past due to send, but I'm trying to finish cleaning up the list first.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try posting it here and see if you can view/access it. Would you please let me know via a comment if you can get to it HERE on my aDrive storage place and see it. Click HERE! Does it seem like you could print it if you wanted to? My plan is to send it to everyone on my email list plus post it on the blog. I wanted it out on March lst and I failed miserably at that. The Art Stand Gallery event, last Saturday, wasn't sent out as a reminder and the ACA show in Visalia is there too, but it's up all month.

Well, see what happens and please let me know, OK? THANKS! :)