helvi-blog

The World is my Oyster, or something like that...

7/17/2022

I have been helping someone downsize and I brought home a BUNCH of globes
from their place.
I had my kid go into the attic of their house and bag up the globes.

What am I to do with so many globes?
I will do a LOT!
Here is what I did with the first one:

Here is the second one.

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Cats Cats Cats and more Cats and More

5/26/2022

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I like cats.
I like painting.
Well, there ya go!

These are all 4"x4" squares with a one inch deep side.

STICKERS!
I had some stickers printed and I found them so fun that I am now awaiting 200 more with different images. Stay tuned for those. Priced at $4 each.
These are 3" square fishy stickers.

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April 10th, 2022

4/10/2022

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I am working on figuring out how to post videos to Tiktok.
Eventually, I will get the hang of it.
For now you can see what I have created.
www.tiktok.com/@helvismith

I am planning on expanding my working studio space to accommodate making MORE art!
Not sure when this will happen as I will need to lay down some linoleum over the the floor and move a lot of stuff from here to there and back again.

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Inspiring myself

1/5/2022

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I am still working on a theme from a painting I did years ago and ran across in my VAST photo library. I looked at the older painting and thought that it would be fun to revisit that style with a few more years of painting under my belt.

Most of these went to Valley Art, a local gallery in Forest Grove, Oregon. There is a opening on Saturday, January 8th at 2pm and these will be available at that time.

I have used a specific app on my iPad for years to create art and it has been big time revamped and I am trying to learn the new tools. These are in progress. Fun to try out new ideas!

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Finding my own inspiration

11/27/2021

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I was looking through some older digital paintings that I did on the iPad and decided that I really liked some of them and decided to try to paint them on canvas.

Rather fun and challenging too!
Then I just kept going.
This is a painting still in progress.

Used one of my greeting cards for inspiration and off I went.

Waiting to see what is next!

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Recycling my own art

5/13/2021

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I am still having a blast cutting up old paintings of mine and creating new smaller works that have stories to go with them.

The bird raced the dinosaur towards extinction.

Cats rule! Dogs Drool!

The Cat now understood about fracking and decided it was time to skeedadle

The night was magic and the cat intended to get a bunch of that.

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Time to make lemonade from lemons

2/2/2021

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I have ordered canvas from 5 different suppliers and it has all been inadequate to my needs. It all buckles when it gets wet, and paint is uh, wet.
So.
I am trying something different.
Again.

This is a smaller stretched canvas that had a painting on it that I did not like, so I panted over the shameful one and then cut up some UNstretched canvas that I had painted on and glued that on the stretched canvas.

When glued, the wonky warped canvas has NO CHOSE but to behave and lay flat. heh

I like the childlike quality to this. So of course, I made more.

I really like making the birds!

The chopping up part...

This one is called, "Summer at the Lake"

By the way, I have over 100 YARDS of unstretched canvas to use.
Guess I will get back at it.

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Painting woes.

11/20/2020

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I like to paint on unstretched canvas. I have done that for years. The painting can be stretched later or not stretched at all. Easy to store paintings that way too! Easy to ship!
But, alas the canvas I have purchased lately has been, well, crap. When I go to paint on it, the canvas buckles and warps. I tried taping it to my table and that helps, Sort of, but certainly not ideal. I am used to working on many paintings at a time and if my work table has painting taped to it, then I have to clean house, Oh! The horrors!

This is not good.

So, since I have some cardboard here courtesy of Amazon, I thought I would play with the idea of constructing some art out of that. I am still working on the idea, but these pics will give you the idea!

I wrote a plea to a canvas manufacturer in Texas and I hope they have just what I need. Cross your fingers for me!

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One foot in front of the other

9/23/2020

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This Covid stuff has made time just slow down for me. I had a while there where I was not painting. Then I got back to painting and the new canvas I ordered had issues and they sent me another 50 yards. Yes, Yards.
This canvas is better but will take me extra steps to get it to work. But I will figure it out.

Then my computer died. Had to wait 2 weeks for an appointment to take it in. Had to drive to the middle of Portland to take it to an Apple store. They said it would be 5-6 weeks before they could get to it to repair it. So I have been stumbling by on my ancient macbook pro. It is 11 years old and it is slow. Really slow. I have to wait for my other one to be repaired before I can upload photos here.

So if you are on Instagram, I post there often. www.instagram.com/helvismith

Photos to come when the starts align!

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Together Alone

4/27/2020

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Well, who woulda thunk?

I am pretty much used to spending a lot of my time by myself, but I do miss the little social life that I did have.

Lots more Facebook and phone calls lately. It helps.

My art pal, Beck Lane, who lives in Florida, posted on Facebook that she was doing a "social distancing art walk" in front of her place. What a great idea!

So each day I put a painting on an easel on my porch and post it on my instagram page and my Facebook art page.