Drawings

Cheetah  2013

Zebra  2013

Giraffe   2013

More to come later!

Paint is Pleasing

I love paint!  I would not have gone to school for 4 years and spent countless hours in a studio if I didn't!  I'm not really sure what it is about paint that makes it so wonderful to me.  I had a professor in collage who referred to paint as being 'buttery.'  When you're mixing paint on a pallet with a knife, it feels like perfectly soft butter.

 But that's not really what makes it so very pleasing to me, yes, there is something beautiful in that buttery mess on the pallet, getting to see many colors mesh together so fluidly, but that's just a part of it.  There is something amazing in being able to create an image that is entirely your own.  Seeing a picture of a seagull on my computer and being able to see each and every color, that purple shadow, or orange highlight, then being able to take my buttery mess and paint all those colors so that others can see what I see.  Paint is pleasing, it lets me create the world as I see it.

Paint is pleasing, it lets me create the world as I see it, color never ceases to amaze me, how it can be so subtle, yet so powerful!

Macro Lenses!

A few weeks ago I ordered some new filters for my camera, I found a deal where I could get a set of macro lenses along with them for only a few dollars more!  I got them out today to play around with them.  I pretty happy with them!

Here is a sneak peak of the paintings I'm working on right now, this one is the third in a set I'm doing.  Obviously it isn't finished yet, but you get the idea!  I really love the way the top of this wing is coming along, the way the feathers fan out.

These last two I took with a few of the lenses stacked, they are not full lenses, they are like filters that screw onto the end of a lens, so you can stack them.  I discovered that when you do this, the lens bends the light so severely that it distorts the image.   Aside from the blurred effect around the edges of the image, you can clearly see it on the second image, in the top left corner, the light comes off the end of the bristles and bends towards the edge of the image.  It's a neat effect, although I'm not sure I'll be using it very much, I like the images above a lot more!

Bonus, this is my cat:

Her name is Aria!

Birds are Fascinating

I have found that I love birds!  Here in Chicago we have a ton of seagulls because of Lake Michigan.  Since the weather has warmed one of my favorite things to do is go to the lake and take pictures.  The water doesn't really do too much, but the birds...the birds are always doing something!

On one particular day, I had just received an order for a few new filters for one of my lenses and was eager to try them out.  I packed my things and walked down to the beach.  The filter I was so eager to try out is a circular polarizer, it can darken the sky, and eliminate glare without affecting the rest of the image.  So far I've gotten some good results!

See the black corners on that last one?  That's from my lens hood, my photographer dad and I are trying to figure out why that's a thing!

So as I'm trying to focus on the sky, (which was beautiful that day!) I began to notice the birds flying around, and how elegant they looked.  

Seagulls can fly rather slowly compared to smaller, more common birds like Robins, which makes them a lot easier to photograph in flight.  But these shots were just not cutting for me, I wanted to get up close!  I found a spot where they were gathering on the beach and set myself up a few feet away, camera ready for when they would undoubtedly all scatter for no apparent reason.  Problem was...they all seemed perfectly content to just sit there...and sit there.

Until... I noticed a man stop at a bench behind me with a big bag of something that looked like bread crumbs and started tossing!  It was almost a Hitchcock's The Birds feel, you know, except better!  (I wasn't getting dive bombed or anything!)  I was suddenly surrounded by gulls in flight, swooping this way and that, going absolutely nuts!  I couldn't hit that shutter fast enough!

Crazy right!!!  Once the man was out of crumbs and the pandemonium died down, I turned to go talk to him, and say thank you, clearly he wasn't doing this just for me, but for that few minutes I was in art/photography/seagull heaven!  I wanted to make sure he knew how he made my day!  But sadly, when I turned to walk his direction, he was gone, and since this outing clearly could not get any better, I started home.  Before I left the park however, I spotted some different kinds of birds, and spent a couple minutes hanging out with this guy!

He also had a lady friend but she was not too interested in me or my camera!

Check back in a couple days, I am working on a series of three 5 x 7in paintings of these gulls in flight, I hope to have some pictures up in a few days!

Paintings

David  2010

Boxes 1  2010

Moving  2010

Beginning 2011

Last Box  2012

Morning  2012

Lonely  2013

Waterfall  2014

Blue Mountains 2014

Gull 1 2014

Gull 2 2014

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Gull 3  2014

Status: Unemployed

This seems like a good way to start my art blog, by telling the internet world that I do not have a job.  Awesome.  Let me clarify, I did not quit my job with the intention of being a full time artist.  In my entire artistic career I have sold a grand total of I think four pieces.  Two of them to family...so does that really count?  I still got paid so... maybe?  One painting I sold for $350!  So awesome right!?  To a collector no less!  I cashed that check and went straight to Preston Art Center in Louisville, KY and got new paint, brushes, and basically all the stuff that I'd always wanted but could never justify paying for.  A brush case, pencil case, new silicoil jar, and one of those things that you put your paint tube in and crank it and it pushes all the paint to the end of the tube so you don't waist as much.  Thank goodness I did that!  I bought all this stuff about 2 years ago before I moved to Chicago, and now that I'm unemployed I'm not freaking out about not having paint!

That $350 check is the only one I've seen, the other checks have been more along the $30-$60 range.  Not exactly a jumping up and down, run to the supply shop kinda check, but it's a few more 'Meredith C Yelton' signatures out in the world I guess!  By the way, if you're a fan of Hawaii Five-0 (the more recent version) keep an eye out for this:

I got a sweet (but actually really terrible) sunburn drawing this.  I sold it on Etsy to the TV show for set decor.  Which totally made up for the sunburn!  How cool is that!?

All to say that, given my level of exposure as an artist, it would be pretty stupid of me to quit my job to be a full time artist.  Recently I read that a 'starving artist' is not really an artist, if you're starving, you can't make art.  No, sadly, my workplace became a place that I dreaded going to everyday, for multiple reasons, and I decided it was time to get out of there.  I've been working at a leasing agency for almost 2 years, I've had enough of selling apartments!

So here I am, jobless, and putting out applications and resumes like crazy!  (I just got a call from Target!) In the meantime, I'm using my sudden abundance of free time to work on my art, start this blog, and basically be a full time artist, before I rejoin the work force!  

Keep an eye out, I'll be adding photos of more of my work soon!