Something Old, Something New

Here are two pieces that are already on the website, but represent a bit of a jump for me, creatively.

I'm recognizing that I work best when I give myself a few constraints. For my Alumni Sale paintings, I think, "What's a weird animal, and a fitting or fittingly unfitting thing they could do?" (Okay, sometimes it only makes sense to me, but it's a usefuly questions.) I was entirely thwarted by the advice to make a book dummy from a classic fairy tale (everyone will tell you to do that) but the idea of doing a nursery rhyme was really freeing. (More on that soon, I promise.)

Lately, my default parameter is "Why not make this an alphabet?" This isn't always an ideal approach, not just because I don't always want to do 26 of something. Plus, how many words start with X, really?*



I've managed two of these, anyway, the first being "A Bichon frise teaches Ballet to a Beaver, a Bunny, and a Baracuda."

I am ridiculously happy with this piece. I intentionally limited the palette (cerulean is the only blue) and I'm really happy with the vignette edges, among other things. This and the next piece are both on Fabriano watercolor paper, and I think I prefer it to my regular Arches.



"Peccaries Parade in Pompadours and Ponchos, Packing a Pineapple Pinata, Piggy bank, and the Parade Princess."

I'm less utterly charmed by this piece (not: cerulean blue isn't actually the answer to everything) but it was fun. I think the format, which is wildly inappropriate for my website, might mean that this works well as a repeat. We'll see.


Finally, an all new painting. I made this card for an entirely lovely wedding a couple weeks ago. I was really happy I had time to make this (and go to the wedding!), and when two separate speeches mentioned the couple's affinity for wacky cards, I was pretty relieved.



Inside, the card says, "You're going to build an incredible life together." Get it?

*By the way, I hate workarounds, especially in alphabets but also generally. When I was little I had a video that showed an alphabet of animal clips. When they got to X, why just showed an ox, and flipped the word horizontally. Even at age 5, I felt like that was a cop out.