Things Are Looking Up!

"Things are Looking Up"
Original Acrylic on canvas 24x36

I love this piece. It was one of the first paintings I finished after trying new techniques I learned in Flora Bowley's class.
This painting was absolute intuition and gut reading. If I felt like doing it, I did it with no fear. I only told myself, if I didn't like it I could paint over it and that it wasn't the last canvas in the world.
Those simple mantras kept the critic silent and let me just enjoy adding shapes, colors, and drawing. Tying it all together was sheer joy.
I am still the baby bird looking up to so many of you for inspiration!

This has been an amazing summer. We got a new airplane and have been taking traveling adventures to exciting places. Sweet Farmer wants me to start another blog about our airplane trips. Stay tuned for that

Fredricksburg, Texas

This was on the door of an art gallery!

Sounds like my kind of business.

Have a great summer!

Facing Challenges

This painting did not provide as much joy as previous paintings. I think the times that I intentionally decide to try something harder like clothes, the figure, and hands, that there is a feeling of determined courage as I walk into the new self-imposed challenge. This painting represents all that I face in my own personal life and in my art. I look boldly into the future, and bravely move forward. Though she has no joy evident on her face, hope springs eternal in her heart.






Posted by Odd Chick

Gushing

"Gushing" 24x24 Acrylic on Canvas

I can't stop painting. It is literally gushing out of me. I hope you're not tired of hearing praises about this class because I love the growth and passion I am taking away from it.

Sometimes, there are other artist and classes and books or music that unlock another "number" in your creative spirit that is mysteriously locked inside some of us like a sequence on a combination lock on a treasure chest.

"Seek and you shall find."
"Knock and the door shall be opened."

And you never forget that person or that book that "clicked" another slot to that sacred safe of treasures.
This has been that kind of class for me. It has unlocked and unleashed some heretofore hidden talent that laid dormant in me just waiting for me to find the right moment in time and the right person to coax it out.

And I put my INTENTION out into the world.
There is something to that brave step, I believe.

I have many more "clicks" to go, possibly a life-time of uncovering what God planted inside of me to find and discover and enjoy.
I'm going to do my part in seeking it out because He has proven Himself reliable in providing the abundant treasures along the way.

Tell me about that click for you: a person, book or music.. or pet or whatever....

Tilt

Strange little painting I know. But they don't call me odd chick for nothing.

Needs a name.

Maybe you can see what I was trying to say and help me. I am going through a shift, a transformation, after stepping out on the ledge. Somehow, I think this painting expresses that.  I'm better with paint than I am with words, and I'm still a budding teen with paint.

Most of you know that I've given myself 10 years, or 10,000 hours to practice my art. I am half way through. I keep telling myself that I'm beginning to see half of what I can do, but I must keep practicing as hard as I have for the last 5 years (I have 11 full art journals now and countless paintings under my bed). I'm sure I will have spent $10,000 or more on my art by the time I'm at 10 years, not counting my foreign travel and trips for inspiration.

But I'm sure that's still less than going to art school for 4 or 5 years!

I am sure I will not have ARRIVED or whatever that means at 10 years but I will be painting exciting, interesting, skill-filled paintings beyond what I can do now.  That's really my priority. Not the sale, not the attention, just the flat-out feeling that I am getting a grasp at something because I really, really wanted it and worked at it. I am blessed with the continued opportunity. The gift really is the opportunity.

I will keep experimenting, taking classes, listening and studying other artists and surrounding myself with inspiring people. I will help others along their way too!

Thank you for following my journey and giving me the privilege of following yours.

GANESH, The Remover of Obstacles

So I'm taking this wonderful class, and no, the teacher is not paying me and I'm not a close friend (although I love her from the videos), but I think when you find a good thing on-line you should share it. It may be just what a new artist needs on their journey. This class has been a very good fit for me.

My daughter wanted an elephant. SO....... I got started but had a very, VERY, hard time with it. One of my fellow classmates (thanks KARIN) suggested I ask the elephant because she stated: "In eastern tradition, the elephant god, Ganesh, is the Remover of Obstacles".

So what the heck? And the elephant talked to me. I said, "You're messy, you know".
The Elephant said, "I know, but so is your daughter's hair and her house. Let me be".
I said, "Elephants are hard to paint, geeeez".
He said, "Then let me just step out of the picture. Quit being afraid of me. I remove obstacles, remember?"

And so I named him, "The Remover of Obstacles" and I hope he gives you courage to remove the obstacles in your life today and makes you smile.
Talking to elephants can be very enlightening!

Dancing Your Way Out Of A Scary Place

 art Juice for the soul

I'm having so much fun this summer. I'm taking Flora Bowley's on-line workshop and it has sparked a mighty passion for my art again, almost like the first years of discovery.
 Her book inspired the elk painting (post below), but her workshop is even juicier. I worried about the price, but it has been so worth it and we are only half-way through.
Above is just a plastic plate of  palette colors I used. I love the way acrylics look with glaze added to them.

This is another large canvas 36 x 48 -very brave for me as you know I feel safest in my art journal. The bad art voice says "don't work too big. Where are going to hide them if the are really bad? Big paintings take up too much room under the bed. Who wants a really, big, bad painting?"

But Screw that voice!

After layers and layers and marks and variation from cool to warm to neutral and back again, the painting begin to make a turn around from all the chaos. It was a wrestling match in my mind for days to continue on pass the fear, pass the awkward ugly phase, walking out of all comfort zones and just painting- intuitively and trusting. Just trusting.


Once the imagery evolved, it began to be such a joyful journey- you know that zone where you hear only "paint, my love, just paint". Like your inner child has finally emerged and is playing again with colors with no care in the word and no judgement for her art. Present, in the moment, and just pure joy for the color on paper or canvas. And it is in that playful place that we learn so much.

details of larger painting

And thenAnd she danced her way out from under the bed. I danced. 

Geez, why is it so hard to trust and let go? I'm not sure, but I'm going to keep doing it until I hear that intuitive voice again loud and clear because I love the way she talks to me.


- Posted by Odd Chick

Elk on the brain

new painting took to Perculator app and then to Diptic app

It started with a friend and her new cabin in the forest. It's a really lovely place but it needs some art and she suggested that I do an elk painting to hang in her family room.

First, I started drawing elk in my journal. I tried encaustic wax for the first time.

journal page

Played with some photo effects.

perculator app and then Pixlromatic app - love the colors on this one

Then, I tried a big piece of watercolor paper and massive amounts of fluid acrylics.

Not really happy with that (nose all wrong) so I played with more effects, changed the antlers, worked on the nose, still looking for inspiration.



Finally, I painted over it and started a whole new layer. I got a new book from Flora Bowley in the mail and found my inspiration with the prompts she suggested to keep your mind open and responding to your own intuition while you paint, free of the critic's voice.

Artemis' Forest Acrylic on Watercolor paper full sheet

I like it and think I will also enter it in the juried show coming up. The colors are really more vibrant than I could photograph and there are a lot of details that don't show up. It's not really my friend's style so I'll keep painting more elk for awhile and see where this new passion takes me.

Abel's Goats No. 1    acrylic on canvas

My last post sounded really brave, huh? Well, I was trying to work up the courage to drag out a 30x30 canvas that's been hibernating in my hall closet for months. The above painting is probably my most ambitious work to date. I took the reference photo and worked without a coach and fought the voice that said, "you don't know what the hell you're doing" with "I will work on it until I get what I want".  At some point the first voice grew fainter and the strong voice won out.

I've done goats before. But I'm liking the improvement I see after looking over past work.

It's so important for me to see progress and I know there must be someone starting out there, a person that is new on this journey that thinks their practice is getting them no where. That's the reason I share and the reason I take courage from you too as I watch the brave steps my blog friends make every day.

Wish me luck. It's time for Roswell's Juried Art Show and "Abel's Goats" will be my entry. I still have some work to do on it (looking at it posted I can already see some things I can tweek) and would appreciate any suggestions to improve it to make it my best work ever.

Setting goals and Making it happen.

I use to think that my art needed to look like somebody else's art to be real art.

I still love copying well-known artist to see if I can achieve certain effects and I love to wonder as I paint what they were thinking as they made the choices they did.

But then, maybe only this year, I began to accept that my art never looked like their art even if I tried my hardest. That it always had my "look" to it. And so I said to myself, "SO WHAT!"

Now I'm learning to paint and draw the things I like to see and have some compassion for my own art. To let it be what it is. To heck with what others see. It is my intuition or nothing. If my art never makes it then nobody ever connected to what I see and feel on the canvas or the paper but I did, and I matter. But others have connected already. I've recently sold paintings to complete strangers (rather than people who have an emotional connection to me as the artist). Those wonderful buyers connected with nothing more than the image, the art that was my own unique vision. It is very validating and humbling at the same time. And encouraging that I'm on the right track.

I think I will continue to trust my instincts. I've read that it takes 10 years or 10,000 hours to be truly proficient and successful at something. I'm half-way there. I know that in 5 more years, I'm going to be twice as good if I keep studying and practicing my art.
No one but me can hinder my future success as an artist. I have big goals. I want a piece of my art to hang in a museum. I want to win some major art shows. I want to sell paintings on a regular basis. I want to paint until the last day of my life.  I want to make beautiful, interesting, unusual art that makes me excited to share it with the world. Now I've stated it and it's out there. And I'm willing to work for it.

It's mine, people. On my terms.

Woods of Wonder

Bird friends of odd chick

chick chat

 I love birds. They are the one consistent symbol in my art and in my life and they share spaces all over my house as well.

odd chick made by Nancy Phillips

this delightful bluebird struts over my stove-top.

odd chick as the original ugly duckling!

The latest and favorite bird painting called, "You Are One Fine Chick". I love to send this card to my girlfriends with this caption on the inside.

And someday I will fly high, over the sky where birds fly over the rainbow.
Until then, odd chick will share her life and art and home and yard with the birds and bird friends.