Where's The Art?

If you follow this blog, you've probably been asking yourself that question- where's the danged art and where has Judi vanished off to this time?

You'd be right to question me. I've been lax not only in keeping up with this blog, but also, I'm sad to say, in making any actual art. I have a lot of excuses, all of them valid, but suffice it to say that a combination of events and emotions interceded on my desire to work, and as a result, very little has happened.

It isn't all grim news, though. In fact, there's some very good news on the horizon and I'd like to share it with you.

First, I completed this monster for my living room.

It measures 3 feet x 4 feet and just as with the last two, is created on a stretched artist canvas with a lovely 2" reveal, so it sits regally off the wall where it hangs. I used light modeling paste, stamps and texture plates, and many, many layers of acrylic paints.

While I am not one to worry about creating "couch art", I must say that it goes will with my new sectional! And, okay, that was its purpose.

What you can only barely see in the background, out the windows, is another bit of good news: the pool is going in! I'll take photos once it's completed and show you.

The third bit of good news is actually very good news, or at least, I think it is: I have been working towards making videos of art techniques and will soon be ready to post them here. Creating technique videos is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and while actually shooting the videos has been a fairly easy process, editing them may take a little more practice. At any rate, I hope to have one ready in the next couple of weeks and you will be able to watch it here or on youtube!

This is a very exciting development for me, because I have longed to show you some of the more complex techniques I use to create my art, but stopping every few minutes to photograph them for you tends to really interrupt my flow and I wind up either not bothering, or simply forgetting to do so and then I finish a piece and have no step-outs to show how I accomplished it! Being able to create intuitively right on camera will address that, so yeah, I'm pretty darned excited! I hope you will be, too.

In the next few months you can expect to see videos on these subjects, and more:

~ Painting background and collage papers and fabrics
~ Creating your own stamps and texture plates
~ Collage techniques
~ Stacked Journaling
~ Creating textures and depth with modeling paste (like the piece above)
~ Printing with the GelliArts gel plates. 
~ Tools and mediums, and how to use them

To those of you who have been hanging tough with me for the past twelve months while I build my house, recreate my studio from the ground up, struggle fiercely with my vacationing muse, and muscle my way towards a new kind of blogging and the way I bring you information, thank you. I know there hasn't been a whole lot of new eye candy and content to keep you coming back, but my blog hits are still on the rise, and for that I am deeply appreciative.

Happy creating!