New Abstract Leaf Notecards Set

I promise this is my last blog post featuring notecard designs for awhile! :)

I just wanted to highlight one more new notecard set available in my Etsy shop - a set of 8 cards with abstract leaf designs.

The original artwork for these cards were mixed media pieces ranging in size from 8"x10" to 4"x6". They were created by collecting dry leaves in the fall, painting the leaves with watercolor and using them to "stamp" designs onto watercolor paper, and adding choice lines with colored pencil to draw attention to certain shapes, fill in missing areas, and add a feeling of the crunchy, crisp texture of leaves in autumn. I created these back in 2015 (where they were a reprise of a similar piece of art I created in 2005-2006 in high school), loved how they turned out, and even scanned them so I could make notecards of them, but never got around to making said notecards until now.

Unlike all my other pre-selected notecard variety packs, this one does not have all different designs. There are 8 cards in the pack, but only 4 designs - you receive 2 cards of each design.

"Still Life Spices" Colored Pencil Drawing

This blog is always about a month (or more) behind "real time." It takes time for me to finish a piece of artwork, photograph it, upload those photos to my computer, add watermarks, upload them to this blog, and write about them. I also tend to schedule posts a couple to a few weeks in advance, so I always know that there's something going up on the blog soon. All of this is to say - though this post is going live in mid-November, I wrote and edited this content in late October, and created the drawing itself even earlier.

September and October were slow art months for me this year. I had grand plans to create several 5"x7" sized drawings with holiday themes, which I would then scan, resize, and print on notecards in time to give to my local community art center (Paint Creek in Rochester, MI) for their 2018 holiday market. Items for the holiday market are due by late October; my art schedule then had these drawings planned for completion in September. But then I got pregnant. And had a miscarriage. And I'll be honest - for several weeks in August, September, and October, I was not in the mood to work on anything creative, let alone festive holiday-themed drawings that were looking forward to the future.

Some people find art therapeutic, but I'm not usually one of those people. (Instead, I often use writing as my therapy-of-choice.) To me, creating art is more a point of pride, a way to produce nice things for other people, and a way to try to make some extra money. I would love to allow myself to experiment more and also create art just for myself, or just for fun - but my time is limited and more often than not I focus on art that I can share, market, and sell. The standards are high, then - it can't just be a hot mess, it has to be well-executed. And when I am depressed, when I'm grieving, when I'm lacking self-confidence, it's really hard to believe I should or can create good artwork. I had the time, but I procrastinated. I had no motivation.

I finally produced one small, simple colored pencil drawing - one of the several designs I had originally planned. I started it sometime in September and finished it in early October. I didn't particularly like the way it turned out (no surprise, really, as my heart wasn't in making it), and I didn't move forward with my plans to make any others. Maybe next year will finally be the year I make a "variety pack" set of holiday notecards; in any case, it is not going to be 2018.

The 5"x7" drawing features two glass mugs of apple cider, complete with cinnamon sticks and apple slices, surrounded by a few red berries, apple slices, and a twine-wrapped bundle of more cinnamon sticks in a make-believe still life arrangement. The atmosphere is undefined, with no clear tabletop or any perspective lines and a few bokeh-style circles in the upper right reminiscent of holiday lights or glitter. I used Prismacolor pencils on toned tan Strathmore paper.

I did at least make holiday cards out of my "White Poinsettia" drawing from a couple years ago - so if you're looking for holiday cards, don't worry, I still got you covered. :) They're available now in packs of ten at the aforementioned PCCA holiday market in downtown Rochester, MI, and will also be featured in my next blog post.

Art & Apples Juror

I recently had the pleasure to act as a festival juror for the Art & Apples fest in Rochester, Michigan the weekend of September 7-9. I have worked with the Paint Creek Center for the Arts (which puts on the Art & Apples festival) in other capacities before, and currently have several original artworks and notecard prints for sale in their year-round art market, and I was honored that they asked me to participate as a festival juror for them.

I looked at the quality of the individual pieces for sale, as well as the overall booth aesthetic (i.e. how well the artists were utilizing their booth space, engaging with visitors, or drawing people over to their booth) and gave each booth a score on a scale of 1 to 7, seven being the highest. There were other jurors also walking around giving scores; at the end of the day, all of our scores will be tallied and averaged together to see which booths were ranked the highest and which artists will be given jury-exempt status for returning to participate next year.

I love the Art & Apples festival because they do such a great job at bringing in a variety of artists (and at a variety of price points) so there truly is something for everyone. There were more than 250 artists in attendance, representing 18 categories: 2D Mixed Media, 3D Mixed Media, Clay (Functional), Clay (Non-Functional), Digital Art, Drawing, Fibers (Non-Wearable), Fibers (Wearable), Glass, Jewelry (Metal), Jewelry (Non-Metal), Leather, Metalsmithing, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, and Wood.

Afterward, I remarked to my husband that if I had "unlimited money and unlimited storage space in our house," I would've purchased SO MANY things. I was really impressed by a lot of the booths. I saw gorgeous purses and backpacks, adorable birdhouses, beautiful indoor wall art, functional wooden kitchen utensils and serving dishes, fun Halloween decorations and costumes, colorful pottery, gorgeous photographs and paintings, whimsical outdoor garden art, many Michigan-themed gifts, and hilarious witticisms printed on notecards, tea towels, baby onesies, t-shirts, and wall plaques. As I was walking around, I also saw an artist being interviewed for local ABC-7, an artist and recent purchaser posing for a photograph, holding up a large painting that had just been sold, and quite a few artists demonstrating their technique right in their booths, making art en plein air.

I started going around and jurying as soon as the festival opened at 9 am, and by 11:30 am it was getting harder to judge the booths - because there were already so many people walking around the festival and cramming in to look at all the art, that it was difficult to fight the crowds and get a good look at everything. Art & Apples really brings in a lot of visitors and art enthusiasts, and it was great to see so many people out and about on a beautiful fall day, enjoying themselves looking at quality artwork against the backdrop of music provided by the local high school marching band and the delicious smell of elephant ears and roasted almonds in the air. I'm so grateful that PCCA gave me this opportunity to act as a juror - it was a great excuse to walk around and make sure I got a good look at every single booth. :)

Autumn Flora Photos

I didn't have much free time to snap a lot of photographs of changing leaves this year, but I did take some pictures of the very early hints of fall color on a trail walk along the Paint Creek trail in September, and (of course), documented the landscape work my husband and I did in October. I knew the hydrangea, hosta, ferns, and astilbe we planted would likely never look so good again, so I had to take a couple pictures of them when they were freshly planted. :) We also planted tulip bulbs in our front yard - and I'm hoping to see the rewards of that job come springtime!

Here are the (few) autumn photos I took of plants this year:

September on the Paint Creek Trail

September on the Paint Creek Trail

Someone left these pretty yellow flowers behind on a Paint Creek Trail footbridge

The new hydrangea bush that we planted in our front yard

The four new Earth Angel Hosta we planted along the north side of the house

We also planted four Lady Fern and two Astilbe plants along the north side of the house

And here's a bonus photo of a carnation bouquet on my parent's kitchen table

Changing Leaves - Paint Creek Trail

A couple weeks ago I posted photos of the Clinton River Trail near our house. More recently, my husband and I took our puppy on a walk along the Paint Creek Trail and the Downtown Connector that connects the Clinton River & Paint Creek Trails through downtown Rochester.

There were a few more trees with color on them this time, and it was another gorgeous, sunny day. So naturally, I took some more pictures. Here are a few of my favorites:

Changing Leaves - Clinton River Trail

As I complained in yesterday's post, I feel like autumn didn't synchronize well this year. Though individual trees were beautiful - if you caught them at the right time - they didn't necessarily work together to create that traditional multi-colored everything-changing-at-once autumn panorama.

In late October, my husband and I took our puppy Ginny on a walk along the Clinton River Trail near our house in Rochester Hills, Michigan. I brought my camera along, thinking there might be some great fall color to document - but only some of the trees had changed, and many others were still green or just starting to turn. There was also limited sunlight, since we took our walk in the morning, when the sun was still a bit low in the sky. So these aren't the most colorful autumn photos, but a few of them turned out pretty good regardless.

I don't know if I'll ever use these as inspiration for future artworks (certainly not for the foreseeable future, since I have a lot of other projects already in the making), but who knows? I might some day!