When to be finished.

I've been working on an oil over gold and silver leaf painting for the last few weeks, right now I believe that I may, in fact, be finished.

This got me thinking about the importance of knowing when to stop.

It's a hard lesson to learn in art. It's probably a hard lesson to learn in a lot of endeavors  But it is an important one.

When you are painting and you are just starting with it, you're young. Not necessarily in age, but in art. There's an edge of youth to your concept design and execution as you learn how to handle your tools, and paint what you see. And there's a lot of things running through your head;

"This is going to be great"
"This is going to suck"
"I can't wait to show everyone my masterpiece"
"I can never let anyone see this"
"If I keep going I can make it perfect"
"I'm going to be famous and rich from this *followed by five minute daydream*"

the cacophony when you are starting out is great and it's hard, very hard, to filter all that out until you are left with the two most vital things:

The meditative state of just "being in the moment" of the painting (what I often refer to as an artistic coma)

and the only thought you need to listen for - "It's done now"

That "voice" is there from the beginning, but learning to listen for it is a skill you need to practice.

For me, in my experience, I found that once I was able to slip into that meditative "working state" at will, that knowledge of being finished with a piece came to me at exactly the right time, often stilling my hand and forcing me to push away from the easel and put the brush down.

How did I get to that point, the point where that other world was always ready for me to slip into? And that voice was clear?

It's actually more boring of a reason than you might think.

Up until I was about 8 or so I mostly drew and doodled and sketched with dry media, pencils, crayons, and such.

My painting experience up to that point had been on paper, with good ole crayola kids' watercolors and a little set of pentel watercolor tubes (remember those? I'm old now) and I'd never liked them.

I always wanted them to be thicker and brighter and have more coverage and body. I would mix them to an ink like consistency, washes annoyed me... (looking back I can't believe I ever felt that way, because now, I love them for just that reason, but I still felt that way about watercolor as recently as 6 or 7 years ago)

So, for a birthday present my gramma (I'm sure my mom had some influence here) gave me a set of liqutex acrylics. A starter set of a beginner's palette, having a red, a blue, a yellow, a white and a black. I also got a few brushes and a package of canvas panels.

I LOVED it, it was bright, it was thick, it was colorful, it was exactly what I wanted painting to be.

And the problem with it, the problem that stunted my ability to really learn what painting should be, was this: It dried fast.

I could "knock out a painting" in a few hours. I didn't have to stop and think, there was no conscious reflection on each stage of the painting. I sat down, I painted, I was done.

When I was about 27 or so, I decided to take a class in oils. I just wanted to learn the basics, the tools the chemistry the theory of layering the paint, how to use it effectively, etc.

Once I started with that, and was forced to slow down, wait for things to dry, only do so much and come back to it later.

An oil painting is a lesson in taking your time. You have to learn how to build your layers, fat over lean, how to make corrections in form and line in the next pass, how to shade and highlight as separate machines of use. You have time to watch the paint dry, basically, to step out of that coma and really look at it between passes. You see the process happening as you go. Instead of being swept recklessly up in it. Instead of grinding away layer after layer in one sitting, and going too far, you see and hear and KNOW when it's done.

You become more connected to the piece, you have more awareness of the intimacy you are experiencing while painting. It teaches you how to slip into that head space whenever you need to.

Most art teachers will tell you that you need to have the basics down before you can throw them out the window. Well, this is the basics. This is learning to connect with what you are doing, thinking out each step and making a "to-do" list for subsequent steps. This is shutting out all thought that is not essential to the work, and learning to listen for the "stopping point"

Once I learned that, I found I missed the immediacy of the acrylics, but was so in love with how oils behaved during a piece, that I wanted to do "a la prima", one pass paintings, in oils.

So I took my new found knowledge of when to stop and went back to the beginning, reveling in the immediacy of doing a painting in one sitting, but applying the techniques and tools I'd learned from doing oils in the traditional manner.

Now that the "stop" was clear as a bell to me, it was easy to not overwork things, to let little quirks slide into the work and not obsess about digging them out. I can still see these little mistakes, but they no longer scream at me, like they used to when I was obsessed with perfection and ignoring the sound of the "stop".

I firmly believe that embracing that golden whisper has made me a better painter.

Snow Gentleman

Snow Gentleman is ready for all the winter holidays!

Wrapping paper

Cards, postage, envelopes, ornaments and mugs to match

Tee Shirts, Stickers, iPhone and iPod cases

Book Squee!

Here's a preview of my 60 page art book available now in a soft cover and iPad edition, The link below the preview will take you to the page to purchase it!

small satisfactions by Amy-Elyse Neer

New Fabrics, Just in time for Halloween!

New Costume Fabrics Available, Two different color schemes for scales, one in pink, teal and purple (great for Mermaid tails!) and one in yellow, green and purple (perfect for your fierce little dragon!)

Also a hand painted water color turtle/tortoise shell repeat, and a digitally drawn chain mail design, excellent for lining actual chain mail pieces to cut down on any chaffing or irritation without compromising the look of the piece or for making some Kid safe armor for your little valiant knights,

They are ready to go for all your costuming needs, just in time to order for Halloween!

They are available on any one of Spoonflowers' yummy cottons or their lovely silk.

All of the things under the sun...

So with The Craft Star opening today, and the successful publishing of 37 new fabrics on spoonflower, I am ready to write a nice blog post about the fantastic life of "Ditzy Sun".

Earlier this year I decided to sit down and do some elements for a series of ditzy patterns.

I cut some stock for the base designs, decided to go with watercolor and ink for them, and then made a list of elements I wanted each set to contain, this resulted in a fish dtizy , a chicken ditzy , a pond ditzy , and a Celestial Ditzy .

Then I started working on them. One element in particular satisfied me perfectly, I felt like it had come out really, really well. Which isn't to say I was unhappy with the others, it was just this one was exactly how I wanted it to be, there wasn't a thing I would change or a tiny mistake screaming at me in a voice only I could hear from it.

And that was this


I mean, look at that happy face! How could you not love it?

I went about getting it ready for various things, both as part of its' ditzy set and as a stand alone work. People seemed to like it, Then my friend from ArtFire, Gail Pither, who is the needle genius behind Cross Stitch Cards, suggested this design would make a fantastic cross-stitch pattern. My sister had already been yammering at me to make a cross stitch pattern of "SnowBot", so I thought,
"This is a good idea and if it works, maybe I can shut my sister up about "SnowBot"."

However the big hurdle for me, was:  cross stitch is not my "thing". I like it, I think it's pretty and admire the handiwork of it, but I just don't do it. I sew, I make lace, but other needle arts have never really grabbed my attention, so my understanding of the ins and outs is EXTREMELY limited to what I have forced myself to politely listen to my best friend, Pinki, babble about (in much the same way she forces herself to listen to me ramble about art). So Gail was a bolt of fantastic out of the blue. She very kindly answered my excessively stupid questions, and did an amazing amount of patient work and tinkering (which I paid her for, 'cause (let's all say it together people) "it's not a fucking hobby™") and turned my design into a test pattern.

I sent the test pattern to my sister and said "Do this, or SnowBot gets it right between the rivets!" (or something like that... I may have been more polite about it, I can't recall now...)

So as you can see here

She Did.

I sent Gail her notes and the pictures of the finished piece and from here she again worked some secret magic I am convinced she alone possesses and should be worshiped like a goddess for, and went over the pattern to adjust it for issues my sister came across.

Then because neither Gail or myself had the forethought to discuss it before we did the actual work, we discussed how to sell it and settled on me paying her for the pattern work and just offering it for digital download on The Craft Star.

It's an instant digital download, for 6.99 USD you can be a trip to the floss aisle away from a fun new cross stitch project!

So here's where it gets fun, I turned on the coordinating fabrics in the last batch of spoonflower proofs

Just the sun in a repeat on a sky blue field 

The sun the moon the earth and the stars on a dark blue field

So fabrics can be had for making pillow backs or whatever to coordinate with the cross stitch.  fabrics start at around 15$ a yard depending on amount and type of fabric. (or if you can work it smaller, 8" x 8" swatches of fabric are 5$ a piece, not really sure if that's a thing you can do with cross stitch, make it smaller or larger, but I am pretty sure if I ask Pinki again to try and explain it to me, she will stab me in the eyeball with a knitting needle)

So leaving the land of needle work and back to my native hearth of pretty pictures... I also have this design on various items on zazzle, including

Celestial Ditzy Canvas Bag by amyelyseneer

And on redbubble we have 

Stickers:

Tees in sizes from baby to grown-up 3xl

Framed prints

Also there's posters and cards, too at those links.

And for all that (phew!) There's the original design, which is hand painted watercolor on 140 lb cold press watercolor paper. The painting is 4" x 4" and ready for framing, and available here.

So check it all out and make sure to visit Cross Stitch Cards to see just how fabulous Gail is.