Where has the summer gone?

River's Rim Studio has been busy all summer teaching classes and painting new pieces. 

I recently started to experiment with encaustics as well as continuing teaching alcohol inks and

Watercolors. I also remodeled the studio to give us more classroom space.. 

I am planning on monthly newsletters as well as more blog posts. 

Stay Tunes... More will be revealed!

How To Save A Disaster

Another Approach to Painting with Alcohol Inks 

        I was painting on a 6x6 tile using pretty traditional Alcohol ink techniques of dropping the ink and maneuvering it with a small brush and a straw and ended up really liking the basic design of lights and darks that I had achieved. Thinking I needed to go to another level in the painting I tried a misting technique to bring more " light" into the painting. Unfortunately I over misted and began to lose the entire painting, not sure what I could do I grabbed a piece of archival matte photographic paper and pressed it down on the tile like you would do if making a mono print ..I was intrigued by the result of what I had when I lifted the paper.. After studying the painting I grabbed a few of my AI Spectum Noir markers and a white gel pen, added some small details and fell in love with the final result. Voila! A new way of "painting".. I Adore happy accidents!

Drops, Drips, Dots and Doodling with Alcohol Inks

Sometimes it is just fun to play with a medium, I created this painting by choosing three colors , Wild Plum, stream and sunshine yellow, and then putting different size drops of the colors on a piece of paper, spritzing with alcohol, more drops, splattering alcohol, then splattering ink, playing with a small brush loaded with alcohol thinking flowers shapes, picking up the paper and leaning side to side then up and down and generally just seeing what the inks will do. After I let it dry I lifted more flower shapes with alcohol on a small brush and paper towel,  a blender pen and a small Qtip and finally I connected it all with random flower shapes outlined with a gel pen. Happy Flowers! Try it yourself!

"Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect" Julia Cameron

Another Day, another painting

Went to my studio today and spent some time creating. After planting the flowers I bought Friday, framing two pictures, painting two frames and re-hanging the wall where I sold a painting yesterday I finally sat down to paint. This little gem of a painting is only 4x4 and I plan to double mat it and frame it for Gallery St. Thomas.

My Latest Passion

Here are some of my newest paintings

Rose Afternoon  4x4 Alcohol ink on Yupo paper

Green light in the Forest

Spring in the Mountains

Happy Flowers 

The business of Art

4x4 Archival Print of AI painting matted to 8x8

 Like most beginning artist I was excited to learn to paint and in my early explorations I didn't think of what is the next step once the painting was completed. Consequently the first time I tried to frame my art I was in for a big surprise.. I had 4 or 5 nice pieces and the Framer told me it would be about $500.. Yikes! I couldn't afford that so I went to a Craft Shop and tried to fit my pictures in precut mats and frames.. No go there either. I had 4x5 and 8x6 and 12x14 inch paintings and None of them fit into standard frames. That was when I learned one of the most important lesson in starting in the art business. Paint to Standard sizes. It makes it so much easier to frame your art. If I had painted  on a 5x7 inch piece of paper it would fit perfectly into a mat for an 8x10 frame.. And a 7x10 painting works well in a 11x14 frame.. Hmm. There must be a reason those artist blocks come in those sizes. LOL.. So, I started to standardize my paintings.. And bought mats for those standard sizes and kept an eye out for great frame sales and haunted the thrift stores for standard size frames and soon had a substantial art inventory and joined a small co-op gallery.