Flower Mandalas

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I’m exploring different ways of creating layers in the background as well as layers in the flowers. I am enjoying playing with circles to make abstract flowers as well as carving stamps. This piece inspired a new coloring page that is for sale as a digital download in my Etsy shop.

100 Day Project 2022

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Day 100 of the 100 Day Project Sunflower to support Ukraine

This year my project was 100 days of color fun. I painted in this coloring page for the last day of my 100 day project. It’s for sale in my Etsy shop and the proceeds of the sales will go to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Emergency Response Fund to support Ukrainian refugees.

Here’s an overview of my 100 day project. Some of the color exploration that I did included mixing different color combinations in different brands of acrylic paint, playing with values of those colors or individual colors, gelli printing a whole rainbow of painted papers, compositions with a focus on value or different ways of making colors harmonize, combing color with Zentangle, much of it took place in the journal I created with Andrea Chebeleu from A Work of Heart Studio and some days just playing with color with whatever media I had at hand. And of course there are circles and flowers. Check me out on Instagram to see my full 100 day project @jeanette.clawson

Making Art

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I haven’t posted in a long time because I had some health problems and I have been busy making art. I have sold more this year than ever before. One of the pieces that sold has also been selected to be part of a calendar. It is for Mental Health America (MHA) of Sheboygan County. It was the culmination of the 100 days of flowers. It is called Organic Geometry: Garden Mandala. This has been a motif I have been exploring since I participated in the 100 days of flowers and I am including some other examples of this series. I have also done a deep dive into carving stamps. I have carved a lot of flower and leaf stamps and I love to stamp/paint them and cut them out to make collages. I did a few still life pieces like this and plan to do more. The backgrounds and some of the leaves come from some of the beautiful stencils from Stencilgirl Products using a Gelli plate. That combination has provided me with hours of entertainment. It is one of the best antidepressants I have found.

Thank you for taking the time to stop by. I would love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram @jeanette.clawson.

Garden Mandala
Garden Mandala Landscape
Purple Geometric Flowers

Floral Still Lifes

These Still Lifes and the Landscape Garden Mandala are currently on exhibit with the Sheboygan Visual Art Association.

100 Days of Flowers: Valentine

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I haven’t finished posting about my pandemic art series, but I wanted to share a project I just completed and an ongoing challenge I’m participating in. The 100 day challenge is intended to help artists develop a regular practice of creating art. I decided to make 100 floral images. Here is my valentine for my husband. I have uploaded it to my Fine Art America page if you want to get it on cards.

valentine

I have participated in the 100 mandalas challenge but I didn’t do it everyday and I lost track of where I was both times I tried it. Part of the loosing track was moving from Wisconsin to New Jersey and then moving back to Wisconsin. But I digress. I have enjoyed the first 17 days of the challenge and I will do more posts on the whole body of work in the future.

Yesterday’s visual garden developed from a larger piece I had created last week.

abstract secondary colors

I really liked the shape of the large orange flowers and decided to create a stamp inspired by it. This piece was an exploration of doodled, abstract flowers with tones of the secondary paint colors. I really enjoyed mixing the paint and playing with the different shades and tints. I love how the colors turned out and I wanted to do it again. This time I wanted to mix 3 primary colors to get a whole rainbow of possibilities. I selected quinacridone magenta, yellow medium azo, and cerulean blue hue in heavy body acrylic paint. I mixed each of the colors with black and white. Both pieces are painted on gessoed paper grocery bags. It is a really nice weight and texture of paper and I have easy access to lots of it. And I always like to upcycle what I can.

 

I carved my stamp and painted my background green made from mixing my yellow and blue paints. It turned out very yellow when I painted it but it looked green on my pallet. Then I separated some rose images using a paintbrush and water to get soft edges on the tissue paper. This is a Tim Holtz floral tissue paper that I love to use in backgrounds.

 

I learned this technique for building up a garden background in a lesson in the Wanderlust 2021 year-long class that I’m taking. It was taught by Laly Mille and I loved it. I know this is a technique I will use a lot in the future so thank you very much! I added photos from magazines where I wanted the garden and book pages where I planned to put the text.

I added my own twist to the process and stenciled some flowers in the background. Last summer I discovered the Stencil Girl company and joined their Stencil Club and I love it. I got this floral stencil at the cyber Monday sale and have used it a lot. I let the yellow and magenta combine organically as I pounced paint on it with a makeup sponge. The more realistic flowers are from a Shawn Petite stencil. I love the stencils both of these artists sell and the videos they have of techniques for using them. But back to my valentine. I used gesso to make a clear place for my quote that I printed on tissue paper.

When I tried to stencil the yellow flowers they wouldn’t show up until I put some gesso through the stencil first. I realized I would need some gesso to make my abstract flowers pop. I used the colors right out of the tube and made circles where the flowers were going to go. The magenta and yellow mixed in the process and looked great.

background circles

I used my new stamp on the yellow circles and painted purple flowers on the magenta circles using the June 2020 Stencil Club 6×6 inch stencil. This stencil set is my new favorite. I didn’t take a picture of it, but when the flower stamps were on the yellow circles it look like viewmaster reels, does anybody still play with those? I also used my smaller flower stamp and stamped all around. I painted those flowers blue and played with embellishing and embellishing. I just got a bunch of Posca paint pens and I love them so much. Sometimes the right tool makes all the difference. almost finished

I splattered some yellow paint and glued my quote down with matte medium. I love how the tissue just disappears. There was too much white around the quote so I added some more blue flowers and it was done.

Happy belated Valentine’s Day. Wishing you love and beauty today and every day.

Pandemic Art 3: Kitchen Mural October & November 2020

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The tile was installed and grouted at the end of January but the beginning of the mural started more than 15 years ago.

finished

This is the third kitchen I have remodeled/ had remodeled. I didn’t do any of the actual remodeling work this time, I just focused on the mural. I had a lot of ideas for a mural when we remodeled the kitchen of the house we lived in more than 15 years ago. Too many ideas. I could not decide what I wanted and we didn’t finish the backsplash until we were going to sell the house. We used ordinary commercial tiles to just get it done. I regretted that and decided I wouldn’t let it happen again.

The crux of the design problem is that I love two different styles of art with similar color patterns, folk art and modern art. My specific inspiration in modern art is Mondrian. His work has a combination of color and geometry that speaks to me and makes me so, so happy. I literally danced with joy when I finally saw some of his work in person at the Museum of Modern Art. Folk art uses similar colors and basic shapes in very different ways. My biggest influence was Talavera tiles from Mexico. I also looked at Polish, Dutch, and Italian folk art for inspiration. The last piece of my design influence was Zentangle patterns.

After a lot of research and design ideas, I came up with a rough idea of what I wanted to do. Then I needed to try out the porcelain paints to see what I can do with them. I have a tremor in my hands and that makes some media more difficult than others. It usually depends on how to hold the tools and weather or not I can brace my hand some way and I had a lot of challenges with the outliners. I spent some time mixing colors and playing with different ways of applying the paint.

I worked with a lot of technical challenges in drawing the designs on the tiles and transferring patterns from the paper sketches to the tiles. Many of the designs I wanted to create were not within my skill set, but I eventually found a combination of paint and paint pens that worked to create the look I wanted. I was able to incorporate the vibrant outliners in strait lines by bracing my hand so I could support the applicator while making the mark. I also could make somewhat controlled curves for my vines of flowers. The imperfections in the vines and leaves gave it an organic feel that I liked in these shapes. My circles and ovals never came out very well. I discovered that, fortunately, I could peal off the thick outline media.

outer circle first design

First design with organically connected circles in outer ring. I couldn’t make them small enough for the coordinating ring on the middle tile.

transfering design

Inspiration to include Mondrian inspired geometry.

circles removed

Outlined circles removed

My design was alternating rings of floral motifs with geometric shape rings. Two of the geometric shape circles were Zentangle patterns made with blue Pebeo pens and 2 were of Mondrian inspired patterns that incorporated some of the circles from my original design and leaves to tie into the floral circles. I love sun flowers and was really happy with the way the center sun flower turned out. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in the corners so I “auditioned” different designs.

I liked the combination of the sunflower with the Mondrian inspired pattern. Once I had all the tiles painted I followed the directions for curing them in the oven and I was ready to have them installed. I had to bake them before the kitchen was torn out in November and wait for installation until everything else was done in January. It took some time to design and paint them, but they will last for as long as I live here and will perhaps be part of my legacy. This is a project I would recommend to anyone who wants their own mark on their home.

Pandemic Art 2: September 2020

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Over the summer I created a series of small canvases as part of a fundraiser for our local art association.

I had so much fun with those that when I got my new stencils from Stencil Girl Products I made another 8×10 piece.

stencil club

That started a series of 8×10 collages in September of 2020. My lofty goal was to create a collage a day. My realistic goal was to make art almost every day. And I did. Most of these have since been gifted, bartered or sold. Send me a message if you’re interested in one. The butterfly one is sold.

 

Pandemic Art 1

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Hello again. Since I have started posting to Instagram (and it is so easy) I have neglected my blog. I want to do some catching up. When the pandemic started I bought a large sheet of hot press watercolor paper and started making a very large Zentangled mandala. I still have not finished shading it, but this year I want to finish things. I have developed a daily art practice over the last 10 months and would like to share what I have made with you.

The piece on the left is called Illuminated Journey and is a large (24×36 inches) mixed media collage that I made for a call for art. The call for art was a presentation to a hotel chain that was looking for art by local artists. Our art association didn’t have anything else going on, so we put up a show with a lot of different styles of art. It turned out that they were looking for landscapes and traditional representational art, but it inspired me to make this piece so I’m happy with the outcome. I put a lot of work into it and didn’t have an end in mind so it kept evolving. The inspiration for it is a book I got from the high school library purge that occurred while I was in my residency at North High School. The book is called Victorian Inventions by Leonard de Vries. If you look at the details in the close up pictures you can see a wide variety of transportation related inventions.

The backgrounds of the six small mandalas include vintage book pages that I wrote over with a blue pen. I saw an old journal with small blue writing in it that really looked interesting. I’m always on the lookout for interesting ways to write in my journals and art without it being legible and this is a new favorite. The mandalas that have black circles as a background include an unusual textural element, a circle of chipboard covered with black gesso and the netting that vegetables come in. It was kind of tricky to do, especially in a circle, but I love the effect and plan to play with it in the future.

I hope you have some beauty in your day.

August Class

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intro to zentangle tiles.jpgIntroduction to the Zentangle® Method with Jeanette Clawson, CZT

Saturday, August 24th 1:00 – 4:00

Lakeshore Art Supplies & Framing. 1212 N. 8th St. Sheboygan, WI 53081

In this workshop you will get the tools and skills needed to create beautiful, small works of art using the Zentangle® Method of drawing. This meditative art form uses quality art supplies and simple instructions to create patterns to explore non-representational art. You will be using a Zentangle® gift bag that includes 2 professional grade pens, pencil, tortillion, and 5 Zentangle® tiles.

Please call (920) 783-8612 to register. Seating is limited. $50. All materials included.