Mayan Gods

The story of this painting is pretty long. It started out with a transfer of the images and then I tried to add some encaustic in the shape of tiles. The tiles looked pretty cool, but I know now, I should measure to be sure I have them straight. The color was not quite right and the gods did not show, so I decided to melt the whole thing down, start over with texture and had to draw the gods in with my brush. Anyway I think this is much more my style, so I will try encaustic tiles another time. Texture, amate paper, acrylic, oil on MDF board. 20X20
Technorati Tags:Mayan Gods, acrylic, encaustic

Habanero Peppers

I have seen so many nice, painting a day blogs, with small paintings that you can't help but want to give them a try also. I have never really painted just oil and I really like the feel of it after using texture on almost all of my paintings. This is another very small one 4X6.
Yechnorati Tags:habanero peppers, oil, texture

Petroglyphs

I have been short on words lately but life has been busy this week. I hope to get down to reading all of the wonderful blogs I visit tomorrow, and try another little still life.. In the meantime this is my latest piece. Encaustic, wall texturizer, acrylic, oil and gold leaf on MDF board. 20X20
Technorati tags: petroglyphs, encaustic, still life

A small still life

For a change and some practice using just oil this week, I thought I would paint a still life. Life has been busy but I hope to catch up with my blog and other blogs starting tomorrow.

Vestige IV

This week has been a little dry for me, art wise. I have to get back to the swing of things and try to post more often. Sometimes I work on a painting so much and the result is just not what I wanted. I have another painting drying at the moment and hope to post it tomorrow.

Farewell

Twenty three years ago my husband and I bought an old run down Hacienda at a ridiculous price. Situated 40 min. to the south of our home in the city, in a beautiful mezquite valley and surrounded by rolling hills. It was so run down that I couldn't see anything pretty about it as it's grandeur was hidden by rubble and mondern day patches, here and there. Through the years, with love and constant work we were able to turn it into something truly unique. It became our weekend home, a place to socialize with friends, the home for one of our sons while he started the cattle business and the place where our youngest son was married last year. Today, I went out to pick up some things and as we left, my husband closed the gates behind him, for the last time. As beautiful and loved as the place is, it was becoming a financial and physical burden for the two of us. Our sons are all busy with their work and lives and our plans of turning it into a Bed & Breakfast, were far from becoming true, since it is in the middle of nowhere and the people we would like to cater to, might not find much to be entertained by, except maybe, hiking. Fortunately a buyer showed up at the perfect time and the whole negociation happened so quickly, I had no time to sulk about it. Mixed feelings I do have, but now I can turn the direction and do things on the weekends I have not done for twenty three years.

We have kept our cattle land and cattle that are very close to this place, so now we will see it from the distance, whenever we go out there. The people that bought it said they will not change a thing and leave it decorated as it is. There is a sort of mystery, spirituality and energy that I hope will prevail and will give it's new dwellers the serenity it gave me.

Technorati Tags: Hacienda, mezquite, spirituality, cattle

Still struggling

I think this will be my last try with this. It shows I have been out of practice with encaustics. The black was too much and now it is very busy but the only thing to do to fix it, would be to melt it all down. I'll leave it for a couple of days and see if it grows on me.

Same encaustic, revisited

I wasn't completely satisfied with the encaustic last night so I decided to do a little work on it.

New Encaustic

I haven't done one of these for over a year and I think I went overboard with the amount of wax and pigments. I can't get the wax bars here so I buy pure beeswax from the beekeepers and mix dry pigments into the molten wax I keep in small jello cups. I have heard you are not supposed to use encaustic over acrylic but I have done it before with out any problem and it adds depth to the whole piece. In this case I didn't and I poured my pigmented wax directly over the MDF board. Unfortunately my red mixed with the black and got a little muddy. I used a hotgun to fuse everything and I will have to wait a little to be able to buff it. In the meantime I have another wall textured one, waiting to be sanded and worked on tomorrow. Technorati tags:encaustic, beeswax, acrylic, pigments