Bouffant Blonde

This piece of art was a different avenue for me. I'm accustomed to bright colors. The idea seemed to come from nowhere and wouldn't let go until I created the piece. Each piece of dimensional art takes a great deal of time. I think people sometimes confuse it's simplicity with quick and easy. It's neither. Obviously, the idea came first. Then I drew the face. It took several tries to get exactly what I wanted. Then I traced that onto thin plywood and cut out two exactly alike. I used a jigsaw for that. I added the frame to a 24 x 48 inch (approx.) piece of plywood. I painted each side. Then I painted and inserted the two faces. Each face has an eye and an eyeball cut out on the band saw and layered for the final piece. I think what I love most about this piece is the truth it speaks. Black and white and whatever color out there looks at the world from their view. It is truly a rare person who considers someone else, someone different from them. Yet, we're all see...

This g iraffe is one of my favorite art pieces ever. It was just so much fun to do. And doesn't he look happy? He now lives in the nursery of a precious little girl. As always I started with an idea. I'd never done a giraffe before and wanted to give it a try. I started by drawing a pattern. It took a while to get that exactly right. Next I selected a thin piece of wood for the backing. It's approximately 24 inches by 48 inches. I selected another thin piece of wood and transferred the pattern I'd drawn onto it. I cut it out with a jigsaw. The "frame" is made from thin slices of wood that I painted and then glued around the edges. The giraffe tail is made from toothpicks. Each of the "spots" were cut on a bandsaw, as were the eyes and hooves. I layered it all together and Mr. Happy Giraffe was born. Creating dimensional folk art is fun but it also takes a great deal of time, effort and imagination. Things that might work well on a canvas won't ...

Bright and bold color is such a wonderful thing. It's happy and festive and makes me want to smile. Except it does seem to offend those folks who think brown and adult must go together. Who said? Now, I really don't have anything against the color brown -- so long as I don't have to live with it. It's a safe color, I suppose. Everyone accepts brown. It's a standard of sorts. Like oak furniture. Everyone loves oak. Except me. I prefer mahogany or cherry and I really like distressed black wood. But I digress. I recently painted a bedroom bright green. Kind of a lemon green, if that makes any sense at all. I'd purchased the paint from The Home Depot a year ago. I meant to paint the room but everyone else's art projects -- those I get paid for especially -- always took priority. I finally decided to plunge ahead and do it anyway. I love it! It's cheerful and happy. My mother -- a typical brown person -- looked at it and said she hoped I had good sunglasses...