Learning Anatomy Because of a Broken Ankle

Top is a watercolor painting of my left leg with the two broken malleolus and the surgical implants recently added to fix them.  While painting, I was drinking coffee out of one of my favorite Mushroom mugs when I noticed the Fly agaric mushroom's stem looked remarkable like my Tibia.  So, I added a Mushroom cap to the image.  The reference used to visualize my own leg and broken bits is from the invaluable "Atlas of Human Anatomy" by Frank H. Netter, M.D.

Doodle Art

 Having fun doodling with watercolor and Adobe Illustrator line art.  Maybe a new fabric design, although I do not need any more fabric!

After Image I Color Theory short animation

Youtube short video created by combining an old watercolor painting, Boris FX Optics software, and some original music to illustrate an example of afterimage color theory.

Art Access - new Video

Trying for a new way to showcase some of my latest oil painting.

New Fabric Designs and a Contest Entry

I'm back doing more fabric designs, which are available in my Spoonflower shop here:  https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/lucy_autrey_wilson. 

 Some of the new designs are not yet available but will be soon.  They can be seen by clicking on the "designs not for sale" button.  I have to buy test samples before I can sell.   Some of what's new is described below

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1.  New coronavirus repeating fabric design.  The viruses were created with Illustrator and Photoshop, then layered on top of a photo of a chain link fence in front of a garden which was modified to more closely appear like an electron microscope scanned viral specimen.

2.  I painted a Dodo with pen & ink and watercolor, put it on a watercolor rainbow painting and added scanned cheesecloth. 

3.  An old fabric design of a bacteria.  Face masks made with bacteria and/or virus image fabrics seems like something that makes perfect sense.

4.  Last, but not least, I created a Poster Tea Towel image (to be printed on linen) as my entry into a Spoonflower contest.  I painted the image (actually a larger version of it) while on one of my many Ibiza vacations.   Voting starts Oct. 22.  You can vote here:  https://www.spoonflower.com/design-challenge

 

Collaborative Painting

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1.  Finished still life "Brayer with a Jar of Paintbrushes" oil on stretched canvas 16" x 20" x 3/4"

2.  Sketch of Cole Taylor June of 2016 which Wilson painted

3.  Sketch of Wilson Taylor June of 2016 which Wilson painted

4.  Sketch of wall with outlet and window July 2016 which Wilson scribbled on

5.  Sketch of Cole and Wilson July of 2014 where Wilson added the bodies and did the coloring

The bottom four pictures were the inspiration for the top oil painting.  I loved doing art with my grandsons where I would get to a point and they would take over.  Often the results made the pictures much better!  So, without the benefit of having my grandsons around, I pretended my Brayer had a life of its own, and it got into the action after I finished my still life painting, by smearing blue paint on the finished canvas.  

Upping my Game with New Product Designs at Zazzle

 Lucy Autrey Wilson Redcrow Art on Zazzle

All Together Now - Six Monoprints - Three with Newly Added Embellishments

Three Original Monoprints (Top left, Top right and Bottom left)

Three Monoprints (two ghost prints and one offset print), with mixed media added (ink, watercolor, gouache, pastel).  Bottom run part of an on going Strange Journey series

A Day at China Camp

(Above) A digital collage of various photos take at China Camp yesterday.  It's been awhile since visiting this site in San Rafael - about 23 years!  Last time was January 1996 when I did this drawing (Below).  The best way to tell time is with old artwork and photos.  Makes up for having no memory.

When in Doubt Cut it UP

I didn't like my collage much after looking at it for a few months (bottom image).  So I cut it up and embroidered it onto another painting I didn't like that much (top image).  Now I like it better!

Insect Ecology - Mixed Media on Claybord

Oil, acrylic, watercolor, silver point on 12x16 claybord.

New Artwork done in Portland

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Two drawings with colored pencil on 6x9 black paper
1.  Riley on my Lap
2.  Sunflower in Vase (a common theme)

Three pen & ink and watercolor paintings on 9x12
1.  Weightless - inspired by a 1955 untitled ink on paper work by Diebenkorn seen at the Portland Museum
2.  Wilson with his Watch:  Not a good likeness at all, except for the watch
3.  Clear Zone - not a happy painting, perhaps a premonition of bad health issues currently being managed

Having Fun with Seattle Art and Photography

My trips to Seattle generally result in at least one attempt at a portrait of grandson Wilson.  Unlike his twin Cole, he is more amenable to posing.  However, like any normal 8 year old, posing doesn't last very long (which I can blame for the my inability to capture his likeness).  The result this time is "Wilson and his Toys," a 10 x 14 pen and ink and watercolor painting.  To try to improve on the original, I tweaked the resulting watercolor by doing a bit of over painting in Photoshop, then added a background that was a blurred version of a Home Depot product shot.  All of the elements are shown above, including a refreshingly more appealing photo of Wilson, walking the dog Riley, while wearing a T shirt in 30+ degree weather.

"Sewing Tools Used and New" - a Recently Finished New Art Quilt

This quilt happened for a couple of reasons: 
1.  I started collecting old scissors on a trip to Indiana in 2013, after enviously noting my artist aunt Reva's scissor collection.  This forced me to take a class on flash photography, and buy a flash attachment for my camera, in order to accurately photograph my old scissors.  That done, the scissors were photoshopped into a polka dot star pattern I designed.
2.  On a trip to the Galapagos in 2017, a fellow traveler was always sewing and I spent a couple of hours doing a watercolor of her pin cushion, which I liked a lot.  So I printed it onto fabric.
3.  I made the mistake of going into Britex Fabrics in SF (before they moved this year), thinking I would only look, and exited with scissor and pin cushion fabrics plus some complimentary blue and white fabric as well.  I needed to do something with them.
Once all of the above happened, I thought I'd put all the elements together and make a quilt I could enter into a cool quilt contest.  The problem is my craft abilities are inferior to my creative abilities so the finished quilt, being slightly imperfect, would probably never get accepted in a craft quilt contest.  Additionally, after photographing the quilt, I transformed it in Photoshop to neatly fill a unified space and find it now looks slightly more warped than it really is.  So the only place this quilt will be featured for now is here.  It will be live for viewing at my Marin Open Studios this coming May, however.

Some New Winter Seattle Art

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1.   Pen & Ink and Watercolor portrait of sulky grandson Cole Taylor.  His nose is too long in the painting, as can be seen from the photo below it.  That might have been because we were reading the book Pinocchio!  Cole was not as willing to pose as his twin brother so this is the only time I had to paint him.
2.  Watercolor painting of Wilson, which doesn't do him justice, as can be seen from the photo of him above the artwork.
3.  Pen & Ink and watercolor and pastel pencil portrait of Wilson in his sport shirt.  He looks a bit like a Nazi youth in this picture, which Wilson said was "creepy."  It does not look much like the photo of Wilson above the art, holding up the world with his dyed red Mohawk hairdo. 
4.  An Abstract, inspired by going to Discovery Park in Seattle, one of my favorite places to hike
5.  A Memory Abstract of my week in Seattle ends the tableau.

Japanese Popsicles Artwork Backstory

One of the few benefits of being older is there is some personal history now I can pull from when creating new artwork.  My latest craze doing mixed media collage is benefiting from various other expressions on similar subjects done in the past.  Case in point:  In 2004 I did a watercolor of some orange ice cream and multi flavored popsicles (because I used to love to eat them).  In 2009 I turned that painting into a digital composite with some scanned buttons (art using scanned buttons kept me entertained for about a year.)  Now, I used some new Japanese washi origami papers to create the ice cream/popsicles and placed them onto a recent landscape photograph of trees printed on Hiromi kozo-shi paper.

Lucy's Vacation Art

Some pencil, pen & ink and watercolor drawings/paintings done on vacation at Turtle Inn in Belize

Recent Seattle Art

One of the best parts of visiting my nearly 7-year-old twin grandsons is doing art with them.
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1.  Wilson's picture, done while I was drawing the bird, flower and flying bug below it.  I think his flying bugs were influenced by my drawing, but he is a very independent artist and tends to go his own way.
2.  My pencil drawing of a bird, flower and bug.
3.  Cole's tree painting, done while I was painting a watercolor memory of the view of Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains from Discovery Park.
4.  My watercolor painting, using the twins' somewhat inferior paint.
5.  A photo of the view of Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains and the light house in Discovery Park.