Have a Halloween Party with Spooky Orange Cat!

Orange Spooky Cat
Ceramic Tile
4.25 inch square
$14.20 each

The Small Friends are getting ready to have a huge Halloween party with invitations, decorations, and other cool stuff from zazzle.com with images of their pal, The Spooky Orange Cat.

Fabrics from Spoonflower

Some particularly ambitious Friends are also working on tablecloths, curtains, and upholstery for the event with Spooky Orange Cat fabrics or Butterfly Wings from my spoonflower.com shop. Spoonflower fabric choices are basic combed cotton, Kona© cotton, cotton poplin, cotton voile, cotton silk, linen-cotton canvas, organic cotton knit, organic cotton sateen, heavy cotton twill, and silk crepe de chine. Prices range from $17.50 - $38/yard.

Cool stuff from zazzle.com

These (and other) products are all at my zazzle.com "Halloween Party With Spooky Orange Cat" store. Most have quantity discounts.

Spooky Orange Cat Address Label
$2.90 for a sheet of 30
Personalize!

Spooky Orange Cat
Halloween Party Invitation
$1.70/each; .85 each for 10

Halloween Party Dishcloth
$17.95

Spooky Orange Cat
Round Pin-Back Button
$2.80

Spooky Orange Cat
Candy Jar
$17.95

Spooky Orange Cat
Halloween Party Apron
$22.45

Spooky Orange Cat
10-inch Ceramic Plate
$28.10

12 Spooky Orange Cats'
Halloween Card
$2.75

Spooky
Orange
Cat Necktie
$33.70

Spooky Orange Cat
Halloween Totebag
$11.20

Spooky Orange Cat
Halloween Party T-shirt
33.70

Spooky Orange Cat
Halloween
 (and year-round) Pillow
$67.45

Spooky Orange Cat
Sheet of  20 Stickers
$5.60

Halloween Party
Spooky Orange Cat
Pet Bowl
Cats can come to the party!
$24.70

Spooky Orange Cat Poster
$9.35 and up (depending on size and paper)

Brayer: a new tool for paper mosaics

A new tool

Now that I have finished four paper mosaics (horse, pig, hippo, and cat) and have decided that I like making them, today I added a new tool to my toolbox: a brayer. It will transform the sometimes awkward act of tamping down each piece tiny piece of recycled watercolor paintings into an elegant rolling glide.

Helena Paper Mosaic Horse
(Helena Equus Papyrus)
appears on a number of cool products
at http://www.zazzle.com/susangainen

Fredricka Paper Mosaic Cat
(Fredricka Filidae Papyrus)

Herbert Paper Mosaic Hippo
(Herbert Hippopotamidae Papyrus)

Pablo Purple Paper Mosaic Pig
(Pablo Sus Papyrus)

Each of these tiny small friends is part the genus Papyrus, a heretofore unidentified subclass of Mammalia. The Small Friends Research Institute is working very hard to identify and classify more of these whimsical creatures and to create environments that will ensure their safety and security.

The Genus Papyrus will make its first public appearance at the Northstar Watercolor Society's 10th Annual Art-On-A-Line Show and Sale at the Minnesota State Fair Fine Arts Building on May 18-20. They will be with dozens of other small friends hanging next to the nanoscapes. 

2012: an image a day from nanoscapes & small friends

IMAGE-A- DAY

January 1, 2012 from a camera photo
of "7 Hippos Marching"

I posted an image a day to Facebook from October 2010 to September 2011, and it's time to start again.

Image-a-Day 2010-2011

Those images were thematic and either related to specific months (pumpkins for October, leaves for November, lost-left-handed gloves of January, raindrops for April, ears of corn for July, pencils for September), or joyfully random (introducing the LLLama family in May and 30 new small friends in June).

Because both nanoscapes' geometric abstractions and whimsical small friends will be part of this project, the theme for 2012 will be "surprise!"  This first image is part of a 7-hippo family portrait which will join the small friends website next week.

Two elephants run into a studio

It's not everyday that two large elephants come running into a painter's studio. 

As the painter, curator, and wrangler of the nanoscapes small friends, I am not quite surprised, faintly astonished, and completely grateful. During the next few days, while they tell me their stories, I will paint the Stained Glass and a Glass Bubbles Elephants. In a perfect world, they be finished December 31, making them my 109th and 110th paintings of 2011. 

Each elephant is painted on 300# Arches paper, and is 15 inches wide by 8 inches high.

Stained Glass Running Elephant

Glass Bubbles Running Elephant

        

Celebrate 100 nanoscapes and paint your own

nanoscapes neighborhoods 2011
a downloadable nanoscape for you to paint

It's official. During the first 11 months of 2011, I painted 100 nanoscapes and small friends. They aren't all published and they aren't all shared, but they are all finished.Click on the link to see the list.

To celebrate, I invite you download this image and make your own nanoscape using your favorite paint, ink, or colored pencil. Ambitious fiber artists -- make a nano quilt. 3-D artists -- build the village.

This image is called "nanoscapes neighborhoods 2011" and to my mind it is a series of rooftops. 

The original image is 7.9 x 4.5 inches. At 300 dpi, you have an almost unlimited range of sizes that you might print. Get the best quality watercolor paper, print, and paint! Find your favorite fibers and quilt! Woodworkers, ceramicists, and metal workers -- build the village!

Still Point Gallery selects two nanoscapes & a small friend for new exhibition

Purple Glaze: A triptich

The Still Point Gallery selected two nanoscapes and one small friend for The Abstraction Distraction, an online exhibition that runs from 11/16/2011 to 2/14/2012.

Trilobite Four by Five
Theresa & Tommy Trilobite

Each piece is part of the new digital family of nanoscapes and small friends. Balloon and Purple Glaze are nanoscapes, and Trilobite Four By Five, is the portrait of small friends Theresa and Tommy Trilobite

Balloon

PHOTOSHOP IS MAGIC  Having found that the magic I see in watercolors can be multiplied when manipulated in Photoshop, I have the privilege of learning something new and surprising everyday. 

• New vocabulary with new meanings for words that I already know: brightness, contrast, levels, curves, exposures, vibrance, hue, saturation, color balance, posterize, invert, and on and on.
• The joy of experimentation. What happens if I posterize! and then invert! and then work through the image choices, one after the other? Sometimes the result is beautiful; other times, I am glad to be able to revert to the original.  

AVAILABILITY:

• Trilobite Four By Five: Theresa and Tommy's portrait is available in a signed limited edition of 20. Each 20x17.9 portrait will be printed on archival paper and signed. 
• Balloon: The Balloon is available in a signed limited edition of 5 (20x20) for $75 and 5 (10x10) for $50. (click on the link and then on "thumbnails)
• Purple Glaze: A triptych is a part of "The Glazes," a series of geometric abstractions that allows me to celebrate my life-long love of stained glass with paint and paper, thus avoiding the need for safety equipment. Each 20x13 inch print of Purple Glaze is part of a Limited Edition of 50, signed and printed on archival paper with museum matting.  $75 each. (click on the link and then on "thumbnails."  

ENJOY these works and all of the beautiful pieces in The Abstraction Distraction!!

The Last 5 Pencils and Crayons

Some favorite things

I posted the the last five Pencils and Crayons this morning. Creating an image-a-day began as a lark with last October's pumpkins, and quickly became a commitment, a discipline, and a joy.

Some of the months' images were obvious (leaves/November; Hanukah candles & snowflakes/December; basketballs/March; raindrops/April; corn/July; heirloom tomatoes/August), and other months were a creative leap (lost left-handed gloves/January; missing socks/February).

THE LLLAMAS  To introduce the LLLama Families in May, I needed to sit down and write their stories. This was fair. For more than two years the 30+ LLLamas had been nagging me to take them off the shelf and get them out into the world. After being posted to Facebook, they embarked on a world tour, leaving behind SpokesLLLama Rainbow. They will return to the small friends' site in January 2012.

Glenda Diva Gecko
Undersea LLLama
Celebration Rhea

SMALL FRIENDS  When it was clear that the LLLamas would have their day in the sun, the other small friends who had been lurking on the nanoscapes website and in my studio finally put down their collective feet, and demanded both a month (June) and a website of their own. The nanoscapes and small friends had an amicable divorce in early June, and the small friends have their own website, blog, and The Small Friends Research Institute.

It's been quite a year, or with a tip of the hat to one of my favorite songs, The Grateful Dead's "Truckin,"  --- What a long, strange, and extraordinarily fun trip it's been. 

Stained Glass Cat: a creative conundrum

Stained Glass Cat

Stained Glass Cat will be a new small friend, but her roots are with the nanoscapes' Fractured Glass family. She has brought me to the brink with a creative conundrum: is she finished?

Because the Fractured Glass technique is in my comfort zone, I began work on her when I needed a break between identifying and painting new small friends and tackling new nanoscapes projects.

Now that all of her "glass bits" are finished and "grouted" with watercolor, she might be finished. But perhaps not. I might paint a "fractured glass" frame or add a horizontal line to anchor her. Or maybe not.

This eerie feeling -- hesitating before making a paint stroke -- may be as close as I ever get to what I imagine sculptors and gem cutters feel before making a critical cut. Will it work? Will it do what I want it to do? Will it do something better? Will it cause the entire enterprise to fall flat on its face?

small friends, nanoscapes and 9/11

I made my very first batch of jam right after the Towers went down in 2001. I began with Laurie Colwin's Plum Jam, filling jar after jar, making batch after batch. I kept this up for about three years with jams, pickles, Onion Relish, and Barbecue Sauce. During that time, I always had 6 cases of jars in my car -- in case of any emergency that couldn't be handled by the dozen cases that I stored in my house.

Time passes and people change.On this 10th anniversary, I turned off the radio and tv, and got on with what what I do now, which is to paint with watercolors. I paint geometric abstractions called nanoscapes and whimsical creatures called small friends. Instead of fretting about an anniversary attack that had been strongly suggested in the media, I made two new paintings, and nearly completed the Stained Glass Cat.

Both Mama & Baby Elephant and the Two Squirrels are painted on 140# Arches Hot Press Paper. They are experiments and not for sale.

It was a good day.

Stained Glass Cat: progress report

First color

September 6

Friends and fans of nanoscapes may remember the Fractured Glass paintings that I made in 2010, and that there was a magical moment in each painting when the loops and whirls began to come together inside the image. It has happened again with the Stained Glass Cat.

Throughout this work, I have used a new brush: a #1 Rafael 8408 Martre Kolinsky Sable France which I purchased from Wet Paint in St. Paul, MN. It holds a lot of paint and gives me a lot of control, too. 

Stained Glass Cat is 15x22 and painted on 300# Fabriano Extra White paper. When complete, the Stained Glass Cat will join her family in the small friends website.

Stained Glass Cat: in progress

Stained Glass Cat Day 2

Yes. I love stained glass. Yes. I think that any work with glass is magic. No, I will never work with glass because it requires safety equipment for cutting or being a heat-resistant human who can work with the temperatures required by melting and fusing.

But wait! I can paint. Adding to the nanoscapes' Fractured Glass and The Glazes, this small friend Stained Glass Cat is based on a needlepoint pattern that I have carted around for 30 years. When complete, it will be for sale through the small friends website.

nanoscapes' Small Friends declare independence in new website

After working in the shadow of the geometric abstract nanoscapes for more than five years, 38 small friends have declared their independence and moved to a website all their own. Find them in individual galleries for amphibians, birds, cats, fish, LLLamas, and mammals.  31 LLLamas appeared in Facebook in May, and all but Rainbow LLLama left abruptly on the first LLLamaWorLLLd Tour. Rainbow stayed behind to represent them at this new website.

Moose on a Hill: the 1st small friend

 Their first principle is WE WERE FIRST. Before the first nanoscape kaleidoscope or molecule, the Alaskan Moose on the Hill and the the first Musk Ox appeared on post cards that I made as souvenirs of my first visit to Alaska in 2003. One copy of the Moose remains in the archives, and the all of the Musk Ox are lost. These friends were painted on Arches and Canson post cards with watercolor pencils and brushes with water reservoirs. 

In 2006, shortly after taking my first watercolor class, a few extra cats showed up in my studio for portraits. I wasn't surprised because I feed, water, and obey Flying Tackle Phil and Darwin, Felinus Emeritae. Ever since, there has been a steady stream of whimsical creatures either visiting (Mary-Anna Musk Ox) or making their home in my studio. Fortunately, they don't eat, and even the largest (Darren Dragon at 32 feet) take up no physical space. 

Their second principle is USE GOOD TOOLS. They are all proud to have been painted on Arches, Fabriano or Canson papers with Daniel Smith, Winsor Newton, Holbein, Sennelier or Dick Blick watercolors using Daniel Smith sable, Winsor Newton Series 7 or one tiny Jack Richardson brush.

Their third principle is PAINT INDOORS. In our whimsical world, we share an aversion to heat, humidity and bugs. 

Their fourth principle is SMILE. The small friends are proud to stand up for whimsy, to support smiling, and to encourage 10 belly-laughs per day.

Rhea Birds One and Two

Celebration Rhea Bird

Greater (American) Rhea Bird

My San Pedro-based California cousin Rhea graciously hosted me before and after my speaking trip at the National Association For Law Placement's 2011 Annual Education Conference in Palm Spring, CA. Was it a burden or a benefit to her role as host, that I had laryngitis, and conserved my  voice the entire time?

Rhea is a great cheerleader for nanoscapes, and I was intrigued when she told me that there was a Rhea Bird. "Really?" I checked my phone and there it was in a wikipedia listing. It is a three-toed flightless bird native to South America whose feathers are widely used for feather dusters. Identified species are the Greater (American) Rhea Bird and the Lesser (Darwin's) Rhea Bird. As yet unrecognized is the Celebration Rhea Bird, a native of New Orleans.

The two Rhea Birds take their places among nanoscapes' Small Friends.

Peter Pangolin - new nanoscape Small Friend

Peter Pangolin

Peter Pangolin is part of a very small family of scaly anteaters who are native to parts of Africa and Asia. In his native land, he would have eaten ants and termites, but was found to be wildly allergic to ants.  Instead of thriving, he became thin and sickly. To save him from slaughter as bushmeat, a kindly member of Veterinarians-Without-Borders slipped him into a diplomatic pouch and sent him to relatives in France. He hunts -- but does not eat -- forest truffles, and spends his money on only-the-best-chocolate-truffles in Paris.

Pangolins are nocturnal and have very thick scales that look as if they were borrowed from Tricerotops' heads. Sadly, according to National Geographic, they are being consumed to extinction. In a blog post dedicated to an international campaign to stop poaching and bushmeat, you will find wonderful photographs and  25 Things You Might Not Know About Pangolins.

Original: Not for sale. Prints $40.

New nanoscape Small Friend: Bessie, the Bead Belly Block Feather

Bessie, Bead Belly Block Feather

Bessie, the Bead Belly Block Feather, was once an undistinguished gray bird from a family whose name has been lost in the mists of time. When her flock-mates departed without her, she became an orphan. Making matters worse, her singing voice never developed beyond an anemic peep.

She made her way to a small cabin in the North Woods, owned by a Committed Crafter, whose toolkit and workbench were the envy of her pals, many of whom she knew from Etsy. The always-busy Crafter kept to herself, quietly creating work that is beloved by small children and adults who wish that they were still small children.

Bessie landed in a pot of orange dye when she flew into the cabin window.  Shaking herself dry, as birds do, the dye showered onto a silk scarf, creating a beautiful, unpredictable pattern, and the beginning of  a great partnership. Bessie and the Crafter now collaborate on a line of silk scarves, which incorporate Bessie's Dye Shakes, and a group of ceramic tiles which capture her Dance Tracks.

The more that she explored color, the more color she wanted for herself. She learned to carefully dance toward a low-temp glue gun, and the to roll into her favorite beads. She often changes the color and shape of her Block Feathers with gel and shaping products.

Along with her friend "Bird Brain," Bessie will represent the letter "B" in the Small Friends Alphabet.

Bessie is 5" wide x 6" tall. The original is for sale for $250. Matted prints for $40 are available through the nanoscapes website under the both the "What's New" and "Small Friends" sections in the Portfolio.

Mary-Anna Musk Ox (The New Small Friend): A Portrait in Progress

Mary-Anna Musk Ox discovered an antique quilt in my studio and demanded to pose in front of it.  Although she is technically a "Small Friend," when a 600-pound Prima Donna Bovidae Caprina Ovibos  makes a request, it is my policy to accede to the demand.

In the Small Friends Alphabet, Mary-Anna will represent the letter "M."

Marya-Anna Musk Ox - a new Small Friend

I encountered a live Musk Ox a The Alaska Zoo in Anchorage in 2003, the year that the Iditerod started in Fairbanks because there was no snow in Anchorage. It was a hulking, sulking animal with matted hair and the worst animal odor I have ever encountered. Its hair is a kind of wool called qiviut which is prized by weavers and knitters, and can cost $80 an ounce. Despite the odor, the Musk Ox was a good subject to sketch, because it never moved.

You can imagine my surprise to meet Mary-Anna Musk Ox in my studio.  Although she weighs several hundred pounds, she looks terrific and smells quite wonderful.  Although she lives in the mountains outside of Anchorage during the winter, she moves to the city each summer to be near her favorite hair salon, whose staff takes a Mary-Anna Marathon Weekend to give her a color-cut-and-perm. 

She will be around for two more days while I put the finishing touches on her portrait.  Mary-Anna will represent the letter "M" in the Small Friends Alphabet.

Glenda the Gecko Diva -- a new nanoscape Small Friend

Glenda the Gecko Diva dropped by my studio today to pose for "G" in the Small Friends Alphabet.  Unlike most Small Friends, who are willing to cooperate and eager to take direction, Glenda posed by draping herself across the canvas, with part of one foot and half her tail off the page. In another incarnation, she would have called for hair and makeup. A Diva to the core.  

Although it was in the mid-80's outside, she is visiting Minnesota for just a few more weeks. She has heard rumors of our chilly winters, and minus 20 is just not her favorite temperature.   She winters in South Florida. 

Learn more about Glenda's from wikipedia.