The Dress - Painting with Plaster

The Dress

Painted with Plaster

The first time I made a painting where the image was made with plaster and then painted over for a 3D effect was in college when I was doing some works for a production at the Yakima museum.  I made six 6x6 ft paintings...each one themed after the music compositions that were being performed.  My sister choreographed a dance to go with each song too so the production was a combination of live jazz, dance and visual art.  It was cool.  The plaster was used on a painting called Punctuation.  I made a huge punctuation mark on the canvas with plaster, then painted the whole canvas a solid color and then splattered it all jackson pollock style...I thought it went with the theme of punctuation with the punctuated marks they left.  ANYWAYS, I really enjoyed using plaster and have wanted to do it again ever since.  I have ALSO been wanting to make a dress painting for a long time too...like .....Then, a few months ago when I was researching faux finishing when I was getting ready to do the bathroom makeover  I discovered Segreto Finishes by Leslie Sinclair and fell in LOVE.  Then I was looking through the Segreto Art Gallery and saw the paintings by Rachel Schwind and saw the paintings she made with plaster and was inspired.  Her dress paintings with plaster are like the perfect combination of the 2 types of paintings I've been wanting to do for the last few years!  So I made this for the master bedroom.  

work in progress...

work in progress....

I wanted to make it more greyish and muted the way Rachel Schwind does, but wanted to have some blue undertones so I painted a mix of grey and teal on the background and then just teal over the dress.  I started adding a white-ish wash to the background..toning it down...but then I couldn't bring myself to do it over the dress...it wasn't what I intended...but I loved the pop of color...it still has the simplicity I wanted anyways.  I used plaster and painted it on with a palette knife.  waited for it to dry and then added paint.  Only mistake...I should have not done this on a canvas...the plaster is cracking like crazy so I am going to get a bunch of midge podge and paint that over top of the whole thing to try to keep it from cracking further and hopefully keep any plaster from cracking too much and falling off!  I would be so sad.  The cracks aren't too noticeable unless you get up and look real close but they make me nervous!  The punctuation painting was on canvas too and there was no cracking...even after trasport in a u-haul but maybe it was because that canvas was so thick and sturdy...these canvases I've been buying are really inexpensive and are light and flimsy...I'm not even sure if it's real canvas..it's almost papery because if I get it too wet...the edges start to fray...so maybe that is the problem.  But large canvases are EXPENSIVE!  This one was $16! and it's a good size!  you get what you pay for I guess.

And after I made this dress painting, my 5 year old, who is dress obsessed, wanted to make a dress painting too and design her own dress so I did a google image search for dress paintings and let her pick out a reference picture and she made this, all by herself and she is so proud of it she keeps saying we need to send it to a factory so they can make it into a real dress.


When she seriously wants to draw something, I sit down and give her a little instruction by drawing the same picture along side her on my own paper and explaining what I'm doing as I go and then she draws hers at the same time.  It's from the Monart method when I was teaching art classes and it's nice because I never touch her picture and she can look at it after and be proud that she did the entire thing by herself.  As you can see I turned mine into a silly clown picture as we painted along side each other.  She wanted it to have polk-a-dots so I had her make the dots with crayons and then paint watercolor overtop, a 5 year old couldn't paint a polk-a-dot dress it would be a mess...so this worked well and kids always love seeing the crayon resist the watercolor.  When is was dry she added glitter.

While doing the google image search for "dress paintings" we found the artist Roxanne Rossi and I am LOVING her dress paintings.  So simplistic and beautiful I had to share!  Almost made me wish I painted something like this instead of the plaster dress....(almost! still love the plaster dress painting)

Mom and Baby Portrait

Portrait of Mom and Baby, Pencil

I finally got this portrait done recently and have been waiting to post it on here since I wanted my winner, Crystal from the hit mom blog Wanna Be Balanced, to be surprised when she received it.  She was the winner of my custom portrait giveaway I held.....let's just say it was a while ago.  Anyways, we all know how it is with little ones to sit down and complete a bigger project, especially one like this because I need a good chunk of time to just sit down and focus on it without interruption.  I was feeling a little rusty when I pulled out the art supplies, but as you can see I had such a cute picture to work with, I was really happy with how it turned out!  Thanks Crystal for being so patient with me, I'm sure you probably figured it wasn't going to happen! lol!

Getting the final coat of fixative to provide protection from smudging and light damage

Woodpecker Illustration

Here is a sample I made for my 7-12 year old students for an art lesson at the studio I used to work at. It's colored with a combo of Prisma Markers and colored pencil.  I just came across this today during my spring cleaning and thought  I would share :)  It makes me want to do some "arting" which is a term J came up with today at dinner.  I was in the kitchen and she was supposed to be eating her pizza (crust made with gluten free bisquik) when I heard her exclaim "Mom, I'm arting!!!" at first I thought she meant...you know...farting.  But when I looked around the corner she was happily drawing a picture and then repeated "I'm arting mom, look!"

For a great method to help your kids learn to draw and create beautiful works of art, check out Drawing with Kids, by Mona Brooks.

Snow White Portrait

Today I can actually show some real-ish "art" for day 10 of AEDM!  I've been a bit disappointed with how I've been doing, I thought I'd have completed a lot more art and feeling more creative by now, but I just have to remind myself about what season of life I'm in and if I do get to fit in extra things for myself like art, then great! But the family is numero uno! 

So my only time I really have to try and do any drawing or art seems to be alongside my 3 year old, while getting her to work on her own art.  Today we sat at the table and she told me to draw Snow White, (If you haven't seen my snow white tutu, or Halloween picture with her in a snow white dress, you'd notice it's a recurring theme with her). I do think it's kind of funny that Snow White is her favorite princess...when I was growing up, she was my least favorite...I didn't like her dress, it reminded me of a clown or something....I don't know...we had a snow white costume and my sister and I would always make our little brother wear it when we all played dress up because we didn't want to wear it.  I think it's cute now though...I don't know what my deal was.....anyways...this the snow white picture I made for her, we taped it up on her wall afterwards. (oh, and J added a small detail in the corner, she wanted to help :)

snow white tutu

She asked me to make Snow White's hair "long".  I used pen and prismacolor markers to color it in...I was happy to discover they hadn't dried out as it's been FOREVER since I last used them, back from when I was teach at the art school!

Scribble Stories

So it's day 3 of the Art Every Day Challenge and this is all I got!  I was really busy today, heard a motivational talk from an organizational guru and then had to spend the kids nap time cleaning the dust off the tops of the spice lids and wiping in the crevaces of the cupboards...you know...the type of anal cleaning that my husband doesn't understand why I spend time on those little things instead of just tidying up real quick and making it look good in general.  The bad thing about anal cleaning is you can spend a ton of time on these little details and feel so good about it, but then turn around and there's still lots of housework left to do and no more time or energy.  I'm just not naturally very organized....After all the scrubbing, my back was aching when the kids woke up from nap so we went to the gym and I didn't even work out!!!  I went to the hot tub and closed my eyes and enjoyed being the only person in the pool area!  (That's the "me" time the organizational guru said was a top priority so I had to do it! lol)

Anyways,. the closest thing I can claim to art today is earlier, I was trying to make a storybook with my 3 yr old daughter and encouraging her to lead the story...but she ended up just narrating and wanting me to illustrate her experience from when she went through the refusing to poop for days phase of her life that she recently overcame with the help of miralax, a close mom friend and her child setting a good example, and telling her to pretend there were little worms in her tummy that needed to squish out the hole....(ew i know that sounds gross but I didn't realize what I was saying until it came out...I had tried every other way to get her to poop without having a hysterical meltdown trying to hold it in...anyways..tmi I'll stop...here is the scribble story.)  And you don't need to criticize y'all!  It's scribbles okay which are fun, quick and not artsy, it's also fun because I draw these upside down so the paper is facing her as I draw and she narrates it to me.).

 J says "Once there was a little girl at the fair.  On the ferris wheel and the merry go round. And remember when my butt really hurt at the fair?  Because I was sad and crying and didn't want to do it!  I didn't want my poopoo's to come out.  I had to go home....

 BUT THEN.....I DID IT!!!! at HOME! Just like my friend does!

 And I am so Happy and PROUD and glad....and my tummy and butt doesn't hurt anymore and I can go poopoo ALL the time....and get LOTS OF JELLY BEANS!!!!