A Better Way To Spend My Time

View From Elaine's Place, Inverin, Co Galway, IE

Persimmons and Cranberries on Oil Cloth - sketch by Tracy Feldman

I produced these three sketches yesterday during a long wait. Creating them was a fun challenge that kept me in the moment -- which really helped me not fret too much and also helped me be present.

Fall Light in Coole Park, Co. Galway

The first sketch is the view in from my friend Elaine's home in Inverin, Co. Galway. I am thinking about turning the second sketch into one of my vegetation on oil cloth portraits. And the third one is of late afternoon light as we walked along a forest path in Coole Park. 

I used sharpies, colored markers, a brush pen, and watercolor on sketch paper to do these pieces. All in all, a much better way to spend the four hours than sitting in a waiting room and watching the same news stories recycle dozens of times.

What I loved about Living in Galway during Halloween Week 2016

Macnas 2016 Parade - music, costumes, giant puppets,
folk on stilts, acting, dancing -- what Craic!

 Macnas's 30th Anniversary Parade for Halloween! 

They say in Galway that the Halloween celebrations started in Ireland.  It spread to the States with the people escaping from the potato famine.  Like so many things,  American Halloween celebrations -- through the influence of TV, films, and folk returning to Ireland --  have come back to influence how the event is celebrated in the 21st century.  For instance, we first lived in Ireland for the year in 1999/2000 , and tThen the majority of children who came to our place were dressed as ghosts and ghouls. This Halloween, the costumes are closer to the ones we'd see back home:  more superheroes,   Disney characters, princesses, rock guys and gals, etc. than we saw in 1999.  Also, like at home, kids are much less likely now to trick or treat on their own, without a parental chaperone.  

One thing that makes Galway, Galway, is how much Galwegians enjoy "the Craic" -- pronounced "the crack".  It refers to fun-loving people  getting together to have a good time with friends, perhaps at a special event.  That is why a wonderful, community-based puppet/parade company has thrived here for the last 30 years. This Galway-based, non-profit street theater group puts on huge, elaborate parades that incorporate music, drumming, dance, and giant, human-powered puppets. Its parades are so wonderful that the group (Macnas)  has been invited to perform in many places in the world.  The Halloween-themed Macnas parade celebrating its 30th anniversary was a truly wonderful spectacle.  But the spectacle did not stop with the Macnas performers.   Many of the individuals and families who packed the streets to watch the parade also dressed in wonderful, elaborate costumes of their own.  Craic indeed.  And even though we were only visitors (and not dressed for the occasion), we loved  it.

        We got a lot of fantastic images of the event, and I might paint something this year based on what we saw.  Periodically check on this blog or my website for the work I produce this year.

Peaceful Day for Lucky & Techno Troubles for Tracy

Peaceful Day For Lucky - 11 x 14", Watercolor on Canvas by Tracy Feldman

I'm so glad that I'm I'm back to posting on my blog.  I have been working for months to change my art website: converting it from a pure gallery site to a sales and gallery one.  Boy, does that take more work and knowledge to do it well than I ever imagined.  Fortunately I had gotten some initial advice on doing it from Cory Huff of the Abundant Artist, and my graphic artist sister, Danni O'Brien has been working with me and holding my hand as I've faced various challenges.

As a newbie to website design, I assumed that getting on a hosting platform and buying the services of a website building program (I'm using iPage and Weebly) would allow me to get a great site up and running in no time. How wrong I was.  Perhaps I would have been correct if I only had a few pieces, or worked in a very limited range of standard painting sizes. But my sister helped me realize that without first figuring out a logical organizational structure for the site, the galleries, the pages, etc. would have resulted in my site being a confusing, hot mess to visit.  And that is a formula for scaring visitors off, not for converting visitors to buyers.  So, I've worked with her to better the techno aspects of doing things.  I also have had to write descriptions of paintings, and work on figuring out all of the techno details, hoops that one has to jump through before selling online is even possible. I've had to learn new terms and to think about how to get paid, and what to do about shipping works that can be very large.  Boy, that involved more techno details than I originally thought. And, when it is done and up, I'm going to have to get much better than I am at the techno details of art promotion. Thank God there are people out there to help, like Cory, and Danni, and my friends,  Deb Watson and Tony Crocamo, and all sorts of helpful web advice about doing that.  I'll keep you guys posted about where I am on this.

During the months I've been doing this work, I've actually  been painting quite a bit, but not even posting the small pieces on my Daily Paintworks website because I felt guilty taking time to do that when the website still wasn't done.  Recently, I've come to realize that was not a logical thing to do.  So, on April 19,  I decided I needed to start posting on my blog and putting my small works back up again on the Daily Paintworks site for auction. That will give folk, I figure, a chance to get my pieces for maybe less than they will pay when I finally post them in the Small Works Gallery of my website.  But, when I went to do that, I ran into techno problems because I had converted from a personal to business PayPal account (in order to do sales on my website).  That required me to reauthorize Daily Paintworks to register sales for me.  I worked with the folk at PayPal and David Marin at Daily Paintworks for over a week to solve the problem, and I discovered something important that I want to share here.  Pop-up windows may be a pain when unscrupulous sellers hijack your monitor.  However, they are key to enable if you want to take full take advantage of the features of sites you actually do want to deal with.  So, if you click on a button in a site and it doesn't seem to work, do this before calling the site's techno support.  Check the preferences in Safari (or whatever browser you use) and if pop-ups are blocked, authorize them and go back and check on the faulty-seeming button.  I humbly can share that that might save you lots of time I wasted for myself (and others) this week.

What about today's painting?   I started painting "Peaceful Day for Lucky" at my friend Deb Watson's house.  She's a wonderful watercolor artist.  I hadn't remembered to bring anything for reference material, and she suggested I search through some of her reference photos, and one of those images evolved into this work. I loved the peaceful feeling I got from the scene.  It reminded me of scenes I'd seen many times in the west of Ireland. but the contrast and coloring were too similar in the photo.  So, I simplified the composition and adjusted the lighting and coloring to make the horse stand out.  I am very happy with the result, and I hope you are too.  I'd love to hear what you think.

As usual, I'm going to put the piece in my Daily Paintworks Gallery, so if you're interested in it, check out the auction there. I'm starting it at $50, but if it's still around after the auction I'll raise the price to what I"d normally sell my small works for ($100+ -- the actual price will depend on the work's size, media, and whether it is framed or not).

Barnyard Bully Boy

Barnyard Bully Boy, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8",
 by Tracy Feldman

Years ago, when we were visiting Bunratty Castle Park in Ireland (by Shannon Airport), we saw this remarkable rooster strutting around. I loved his look -- so puffed up -- and  I had always wanted to paint him, but I lost the picture I took of him.

    Just the other day I found a group of old photos and there he was.  I still found him visually compelling, but the dusty farmyard in which he strutted his stuff was uninspired.  So I painted him, but simplified the background to let him shine.  As I worked on him, I realized that he had protrusions under him that looked like they were made of claw material -- which made him look even more like a tough.  Thus, the name of the work was born: Barnyard Bully Boy.  I hope you enjoy it.

   Tomorrow I'll post another small work I did based on the old photos I came across.

    As with my other small works, I'm putting my bully boy up for auction in my digital gallery on Daily Paintworks.

"Daily" Painting 3 -- Loneliness of a Whiny Goose

Loneliness of a Whiny Goose
watercolor on canvas
10 x 8"

This small painting is a type of a watercolor on canvas, but I used artist grade watercolor crayons to paint him.  I saw him on a trip we took to Charlestown, MD, on the Delmarva peninsula.  He's a Toulouse goose. I'm very fond of this type of geese because their slightly tubby shape and white underside remind me of toddlers in diapers.  That day, this guy's normal crew (OK flock) weren't with him, and the way he was squalking for attention and snacks so reminded me a whiny 2 year old that I knew I'd have to paint him some day. It still makes me smile when I see this image and I think of that day -- and that goose.

I used Caran D'Arche Neocolor II Aquarelle Artists Colors on this piece.  They are artist-quality watercolor crayons from Switzerland.  Finding these crayons was serendipitous.  My sister Nancy (a hand-crafted jewelry maker) was scheduled visit us when we were in Ireland last year.  Since she and I spend time making jewelry when Arny and I visit her, I had offered to show her oil painting when she visited me. She told me that she instead wanted us to work with this type of watercolor crayons.

Nancy had seen some jewelry pieces that incorporated designs with watercolor crayons and was intrigued by them for her own art. I, however, had never used watercolor crayons, didn't have them, and didn't know how to find them in Ireland.  But, being a good sister and hostess, I spent a long time trying to find them, and going on websites to learn about how to use them.  Unfortunately, we didn't work on them together because she didn't come, but it wasn't a waste because these crayons are a great  add-on to my artistic toolbox.

These watercolor crayons can be used alone or with other watercolors, acrylics, and/or ink or markers. A wet brush turns a few swipes of a crayon into a color wash.  Colors can be placed to create a varied,  layered effect.  They can be applied in a more impasto fashion, and they can even scraped to create more effects.  Like with other watercolors on canvas, paintings made with watercolor crayons also need to be sprayed with  clear acrylic to preserve and protect them.

I'm including my whiny little guy in an auction on in my Gallery on the Daily PaintWorks Website.  Check out my Gallery, and bid on it if you want to.   I'd love to hear your feedback, and if you want, I can do a tutorial on using these watercolor crayons to create paintings.