Hello Humans!
I AM SO CLOSE TO SUMMER! I can almost taste it (lemonade, fresh cut grass, hot dogs, and pool water in case you were curious). I have a ridiculous amount of stuff to do...so much...so much stuff guys...I'm terrified. I have about 6 or 7 paintings to finish up for my oils class, so many papers, and a vessel for metal smithing (and guys, I am no metalsmith...it's not my thing...).
HOWEVER, I am super excited to be closer to summer cause that means more time for the art I wanna do! Huzzah!
Some of the stuff's I'm working on. The two copper bowl looking images are my vessel project for metal smithing. The one with all the black lines is for my chasing. Which best I can tell is when you fill a metal vessel with wax and then punch in bits of it. It's a good stress reliever.


The green and pink/blue paintings are portraits I'm working on. The green one was a study and I'm beginning the final piece tonight. The pink one, the painting portion is done and I'm now adding a bunch of texture through embroidery...so we'll see if I like it...













Finally this loveliness on the bottom is my figure in the environment piece...still majorly in progress..

Overall I'm super happy with the volume and quality of stuff I've been churning out this year. I'm not to a point where I feel AT all like I know what I'm doing, but it's a lot of fun :).

  Well, after today I am officially done with my freshman year of college. Exciting and also extremely scary because next year I need to get all my crap together and really buckle down.
  The past couple of days have been a sort of summer for me. I've turned in all my projects, I've hung out with my son, I've worked on some art. Which has been really nice. But I haven't allowed myself to totally let it all go and be in summer mode because I knew I had a test today. My only final and the last thing tying me to this school year. Art history.
  Don't get me wrong, I love art, and I honestly enjoy history. But those two combined aren't always interesting. I've just been cramming for it and now I'm taking a break before my sons asleep to tell you guys about some stuff I've been working on.

  So in about 17 days I will be going to spend 3 weeks with my grandparents. Just me, my son, and my family who I don't see often enough. I am extremely excited, yet sort of stressed. Besides figuring out all that we need to pack, I also need to finish my grandmother's birthday present. Her birthday has passed, but I promised her I'd bring it with me when we came to visit.
  For her birthday I'm creating my grandmother a sort of art journal/book. What I do is I take a book that is either too boring or too awful to read again, I paint the cover, and I go nuts on the pages. With hers I'm stitching about three pages together each time to give them some strength to hold the paints and other things I do to them.

 I'm honestly super excited to give her her gift and it got me wondering, could I sell these art books? I'm always in the market for a new idea. But here's the question. Would it sell? What do you guys think? I am honestly asking for your opinion here. Would you buy a book that had handmade art inside, quotes, photos, and paint and the like. That could be customized to you?