57th Street

I had my first outdoor art fair of the season over the weekend at the 57th Street Community Art Fair.I finished several paintings in a mad rush on Friday prior to packingup the truck. I am a master procrastinator. I love starting new paintings, but the best chance for me to finish them seems tobe a deadline, a commission pick-up or looming show date. The hard part is that it's not just finishing the painting, then it needs to be varnished, titled, labeled, inventoried, hanging hardware attached and packed. On these occasions I dub myself "SuperAnne", as I am able to accomplish a weeks worth of work in a day or two. My studio looks like a disaster area as all of this activity ensues, and usually remain this way until I have a client visit.

It was very hot and humid but sales were very good on Saturday and we actually lucked out with the weather as it rained a lot in some parts of the city. I met some wonderful new customers and heard a lot of great dog and cat stories as I always do at these shows. Two women I spoke with are very involved with Greyhound rescue and told me about GreyhoundsOnly.com - they help find homes for retired and injured racing dogs. These are the kind of groups that I really want to help, I would love to design fund raising posters or tshirts for them to sell. Also met some wonderful artists - check out this great leather and metal jewelry by Molly Bitters. And more press, I was interviewed by the City of Chicago's Streetside Studio, at some point this will video should be viewable online.

Hyde Park is very beautiful as is the drive down on Lakeshore Drive - strange to see it from the truck as only one week ago we were out there on our bicycles during Bike the Drive. We only live about 3 miles west of Lake Michigan yet rarely seem to get over there - it's so beautiful and big sky and water and green space...every time I'm there I vow to visit the lake at least once a week, and of course several usually go by before I find my way back.

I'm now trying to catch up on all the email and paper work that a show brings with it.   

Face Lift...

So I ended up putting my week's painting hours into home improvement projects - a chair and bench that I'm going to spruce up for summer deck use (I built the bench one Christmas many years ago visiting my friend Dawn - it was a family project we made about 4 of them I think.) I had drawn designs on the bench probably 7 or 8 years ago and am now going to finish it with color...I'm sure I'll come up with some fun patterns for the chair. Hopefully can finish by Monday for a little bbq we are having, but we'll have to see see how much energy I have left after Bike the Drive tomorrow morning.

My main project of the last 24 hours was painting Rich's music mixing room for him - it looks GREAT, he does so much for me and is so supportive of my artistic endeavors.I want him to have a room that he loves to work in and a place to keep his equipment - he's building a storage piece to fit in under the slant of the ceiling. It was fun transforming this small space from what I call "masking tape yellow" to this cool "durango blue" - that was the paint chip color. He wears this shade of blue a lot too...I got him some really cool record album frames to showcase a few of his favorites from his enormous collection.

I had a little fun on the walls before I painted over it...I did leave him another little love note painted in the back of his closet.

Strolle....

well...i guess i'm not doing so great with that getting in the studio to paint thing. it's been a crazy week, the tribune coverage actually worked out very nicely as i sold the featured painting and i've received several checks for postcard requests.

so what i did do was finish a commission - this is Strolle, or Strolch - a schnauzer owned by a very nice german couple here in chicago who also have a home in Germany. last  year i painted their irish wolf hound: Gorda.  i put a lot of time into the sketch process going back and forth with edits for the client. once the sketch is approved i project the image onto the canvas as shown above on the left (you can see my little projector in the background). this saves me much time when it comes to recreating the proportions. next i go in with color ...essentially blurring it and finish by bringing it back into focus with black paint.  so i did work on some other paintings already in process...i can never work on just one at a time and i hate to waste leftover paint.

day 2 in the studio

Perhaps this blog will not only help me to better document my work - but actually DO the work. My new goal, post 2 entries each week featuring work done in the studio. It will keep me accountable and keep me painting. I know my posts are pretty 'dry'. For someone like me who wears her heart on her sleeve, I feel very self conscious sharing in this format, maybe this will take the edge off.

So, I'm really happing with how these paintings are progressing and am very tempted to leave them in the 2nd step phase of my work which is basically color fields - my final process is to go back in and re-outline all with black paint...stay tuned. (just wanted to add that the size of the painting on the easel is 24"x48" and the top right 18x24 and the one on table 8x24 or so.)

The Joy of Painting...

Lucky me, I got to paint today! (this does not happen often enough, I seem to spend all my time and energy in my office running my art business.) I started three new paintings based on images I created on clay tiles...I can't wait to get back at it tomorrow. I hereby declare my intention to start spending a lot more time in my studio...hold me to it. Commission paintings don't count!

Before the lights went off...

Priming

It was a beautiful day in Chicago - I swept out the garage and primed boards to be cut for future paintings. I love it, our old garage on Oakley was leaky and falling apart, this is twice as big with a high ceiling and only a few years old. I'm still making peace with my new basement studio, perhaps I'll take refuge in the garage for part of the summer or at least work on some larger paintings out there. Just good to work in daylight and have fresh air circulating through...and Alice, happy as a clam, keeping watch over her kindgom in the backyard.