The Illustration Conference! ICON6

Spending 4-5 days with some of the most talented and hard working illustrators in the industry always leaves me inspired, awed and ready to paint!

This was the 4th ICON conference that I've attended and each has had it's own personality and focus. The industry changes; evolves with advancements in technology or reacts to politics and culture and this conference had a bent towards animation and the advent of the iPad ;)

Session speakers and workshops varied from Tim Biskup, Thomas Blackshear, Todd Oldham, Dreamworks and Disney, to the Clayton Brothers. Something for everyone and all were generous, informative and inspiring.

Pasadena was lovely beyond words. Anything in the Bungalow/Arts and Crafts movement/cottage realm and I'm in heaven! Plus a block of time to saturate myself in beautiful art with concepts and cleverness is a true gift.

Fair Weather

Still putting paintings and products away, stepping over lights and step stools and wondering how I'll ever put the studio back together again. I'm craving order!

The Marin Art Festival was this past weekend; a beautiful venue with really good art and some stellar people watching! My first 2 day fair, this one is especially nice because the tents and the walls are set up for you. How amazing is that? All you do is show up, set up shop and hang out for 2 days of great live music, sunshine and ideally sell, sell, sell.

I enjoy listening to the different (or same) comments about nice color, strong women... all the different things people enjoy about my work. The cutting boards were once again a major hit but oddly not a great seller. At a past Festival, same price point but 2 years ago... I completely sold out of the cutting boards - so you just don't know!


Thank you to family and friends for making it to the Festival! We'll see if I do this again!

Just spent another wonderful weekend creating art! June 12-13 was the Youth in Arts, Italian Street Painting Festival and my 13th year as a Chalk Muralist.

It was HOT! and for once I was grateful to have been placed in the 'wind-chunnel' as we call A Street in San Rafael. There are tall buildings on each side of the street and each year around 2pm it becomes a flurry of trash, wind and a lot of chalk dust. But THIS year, it was just a nice, refreshing breeze!

I have 2 fabulous nieces who are each wonderful little artists. One began 'assisting' me when she was 6 months old. This year though, the younger of the two helped for the first time. Here she is with the proof on her hands. Both of them helped me on my mural, creating lovely mottled wild flower hills in the lower corners of the mural.

I heard a lot of "wow, look at the colors" and "oh, look, an owl!" over the weekend... I am pretty happy with the piece and look forward to painting it again, in oil, in my studio.

It's Show Time!

Well, Showsssss Time!

Coming up soon, careening towards me is what it feels like, are 2 wonderful art events.

June 12-13: I'll be in San Rafael at the Youth in Arts Madonnari Festival. This is my favorite Chalk Festival and it is always a magical weekend. http://www.youthinarts.org/ispf.html

The following weekend I'm up in San Rafael again!

June 19-20: I'll be at the Marin Lagoon Festival, selling paintings and goodies!!
http://www.marinartfestival.com/

Here is a picture of a past chalk mural I created in San Rafael, I'm currently finishing it up in Oil on Canvas and will have it at the Lagoon Festival!
So come check out my new work!

Graffiti gone, Painting Restored

I've already dumped my frustrations on Tagging in a previous post. It's clear, I'm sure. I hate it!

It was quite an experience working on the restoration of the painting underneath the Tagging. Finding, choosing, matching, buying the house paint to match, that was fun!

Paint swatches never really match the dried paint, so I supplemented the paint colors with my own acrylic colors and this worked really well.

Mimic-ing another artist's paint style was tricky and rewarding. The muralist had a very loose, watery style and since my work is so structured and bright and strong I found it really freeing. At the last minute I grabbed an old wide and pretty battered brush from my studio and thankfully I did because it was the perfect 'texture' brush for this impressionistic and loose feathery mural. Hoorah for impulses.

Cleaning up Graffiti

I actually like Graffiti. You know the kind that is imaginative, colorful, has interesting characters or social commentary and is under a freeway perhaps.

Tagging though... this is not graffiti. This is immature. It's hardly creative.

A local restaurant has a three panel mural on their patio, which was recently tagged. Each panel had black spray writing across it. The owner of the restaurant asked me if I would clean it up and restore the painting underneath, and was it even possible?

I've never cleaned up spray paint, graffiti or any tags but felt so badly for the artwork the taggers defaced, I thought I'd give it a try.

I read up online on Graffiti clean up. So, my first purchase was Mineral Spirits. This did nothing.
Did some more reading, stopped at the local Orchard Supply and found a spray of Graffiti remover. I sprayed that on and used a nylon brush to scrub loose part of the tag, then I lifted it off with the power-washer. LOTS of scrubbing! Not much progress and I was sore! There had to be a better way.

I knew I needed a tougher and longer handled scrub brush, so visited the Ace Hardware in Los Gatos. They happened to have a spray can of something called Goop Off, Graffiti remover so I bought that too.

Now Goop Off WORKS! Spray that over the tag, use a scrub brush and move lightly in small circles over the tag then spray it with the power-washer... and it comes up pretty well.

Next up was the restoration of the painting underneath. Not that the restaurant has kept it in great condition, but it still needed touching up. I fixed up the sky with a mix of house paint and Liquitex acrylic to get the colors just right. Next up is to fix a bit of the greenery and finally, I'll varnish the entire thing!

Goodnight and farewell

I had a commission to recreate one of my Chalk Murals as an oil painting. The piece is called 'Goodnight Sun' and it was always one of my favorite murals. The original was 9'x12' and created for the San Rafael Italian Chalk Painting Festival.

So I was asked if I would paint it on canvas in oil, something I'd already planned on doing down the line, but this would certainly make it happen faster ;)

I still love the piece. My favorite bits are the hands coming from the penumbra, holding the blanket of stars. If this wasn't a commission it would definitely be in my bedroom! (So probably best I sold it!)

This was the first time too where a client is out of state! Usually clients come to my studio to pick up the work but this time I had to have it professionally packed and it was FedExed to New York City. Not a calming experience... I knew it was packed well and being sent by a reputable company but still, what if??? I was super nervous until I received an email from the client saying it arrived safely. Phew!

I will miss this painting. I love it. I think it has a good home now and I was sure to get it scanned before I sent it away. Now I can have giclee and greeting cards and who knows what else made out of it down the line. Farewell beautiful painting, I miss you already.