Rainy Days and Mondays I & II

On a rainy Monday a few weeks back, I began a new piece using acrylic inks and acrylic paints in lush greens and blues based on what I was seeing outside through the rain-drenched window. Over a four- to five-day period, I kept coming back to it, adding new layers and bits, and eventually adding a bit of white gel pen, too, because it seemed to want it. In the end, Rainy Days and Mondays looked like this:

Rainy Days & Mondays I (Copyright Kelly R. Ramsdell 2017)

Imagine my surprise the following Monday when it was again a rainy morning. I started a new canvas to reflect the yummy rainy day outside, and called it Rainy Days & Mondays II. This one is more blue than green, though of course it has greens and browns in it.

Rainy Days & Mondays II (Copyright Kelly R. Ramsdell 2017)

"What I feel has come and gone before
No need to talk it out
We know what it's all about"

Rainy Days & Mondays rarely get me down.

Tour of my "studio" space

I don't know about you, but if you are anything at all like me, you are interested in seeing where artists work. In my case, at present, it is in the middle of our living room. And yes, it means I have an exceptionally tolerant and supportive husband - especially since if left to his own devices, everything would be exceedingly tidy. Instead, it looks like this:

Copyright Kelly R. Ramsdell 2017

As you can see, there's nothing tidy about the entire situation. 

Some of my supplies are stored in boxes, and some of those boxes fit under a nearby piece of furniture. Others . . . don't. Some of my supplies are stored in a swell teal cart from IKEA. Some are jammed behind pieces of furniture or stored in an entirely separate room.

My workspace, which you can see a closeup of below, consists of a collapsible sewing table that I inherited from my grandmother, which is set on top of a large tarp that also houses the swell new easel that my sweetheart purchased for me recently as a gift. The table usually holds my butcher tray palette, a container of water, spray bottles, pencils, paint markers, brushes, and occasionally gel medium, as well as whatever paints I'm using at the moment. 

Copyright Kelly R. Ramsdell 2017

You can see a copy of in-progress pieces on the left there. The bird is cut and collaged from marbleized paper that I made in a workshop a while back. Isn't he cheery?

Farewell, my lovely

A couple weeks ago, I began a painting that I call EXPLORE, my first really big painting at 30x40" in size. It began looking a bit like this: 

Eventually, after many additional layers of acrylic paints and inks, it looked like this:

Finished

And now, it's getting packed up and shipped off to California, because it sold right off my easel just that fast.