Roses for Mother.

This was meant to be posted the beginning of summer...but it wasn't..and now its almost September. :p I painted these roses for my mom as a Mother's Day gift. There are three - pink, white and red. I still have the red one to finish. 

Blessings,

~Elizabeth Joy

More Stuffs..

~Elizabeth Joy

More Productions

Magnet gold pans and an ADORABLE painted rock. 

Meet Cuteness - a Caribou calf. I'm very attached to Cuteness. I carry him around in my pocket. I pet him and speak to him. I will cry when he goes to a new home.

God Bless,

~Elizabeth Joy

Recent productions

Painting on Boydstone again. This time with acrylic. 

These little things only took me about 15 min. each. They're fun to do.

Penguin rock.

Magnet gold pans

Mousy rock.

 

 

I freaked my mom out today with it...Heh. Sorry mummy. :-)

~Elizabeth Joy

Local art gallery

Hi peoples! If you remember in my last post I mentioned I'd tell you about my new job. Normally I wouldn't bother to tell you about my employment (since this blog is centered on my artwork) but in this case it's closely related to my artistic endeavors. So here it is.

I still have my previous job working part-time as a rural mail carrier. This other job I just picked up is part-time as well; its something I can easily fit into my week. Its a co-op of sorts, and I'm the third partner in the endeavor. There is four of us local artists involved and we have gotten together and started a small local art gallery/gift shop in Glennallen. Each individual (or couple) supplies the shop with his/her own handcrafted work to the Cabin (as we like to call it). There is one couple who makes things made out of antler - coat hangers, racks, dresser handles, key fobs, ect, Then there's another couple who makes jewelry and belt buckles with the most AMAZING animal etchings on Boydstone (I touched on Boydstone in my last post).

Boydstone neckalace

 I have a necklace from them with a standing bear on the Boydstone that hangs from it (shown above). It's super cool. I love it. They also make some really cool wall hangings. Then we've got a very talented lady who sews a lot of different stuff to mantle pieces, to bags, and to baby carrier covers. She also paints and has a lot of her paintings hanging on the walls of the cabin, and makes the coolest alcohol ink paintings on tile. Then there's me. I have diamond willow staffs in there, some of my last painted light-switch covers, painted magnet gold pans, and painted animal rocks. Presently I'm looking into greeting cards and t-shirts with my artwork on them (Alaskan cartoons on the t-shirts). We made one greeting card with my chickadee watercolor (posted the watercolor here) and it turned out so beautiful. So I dusted off our PH printer (we never use anymore because of the cost of the cartridges - or so I thought) and today tried it out..it was quite unsuccessful..something, I found was terribly wrong with the printer (may be the reason why it wasn't being used :-p). Moving on to t-shirts - I found a suitable custom designing t-shirt site online but came upon some problemos, so that will be delayed.

The shop is open Mon-Sat 9am-6pm. I work Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I've been given Thursday to utilize my time to produce stuff for the shop.
When things are slow going (it usually is when I'm working for some reason) I try to do some painting. It's hard, and I'm still trying to get accustomed to the different atmosphere. I just finished my most recent project: painting part of the sign for the roof of the cabin - fireweed and for-get-me-not flowers shown below.

I started this painting my first day there. 

God bless, and ya'll have a good weekend!

~Elizabeth Joy 

Oil painting on Boydstone

Something new I tried last week. Boydstone isn't anything you go mining for--its a man-made material created by Mr. Boyd an acquaintance of mine. I currently work with Mr. Boyd and his wife running a local art gift shop in Glennallen. These little paintings you see were just practice. But we may just turned them into something yet--pendents or key-fobs or something of the sort.

Things are getting piled up for posting. I have several Mother's Day paintings to post, the other calender cover, and my new job to tell you about. :-)  Oh yeah, and I've had several commissions over the week which I haven't started yet. 

Have a great summer and enjoy the heat! Especially you Alaskans. ;-)

~Elizabeth Joy

Cartoon Wednesday

Just a little doodle I did.

~Elizabeth Joy

Chickadees in watercolor and the latest news from the studio

I was given a commission to paint the front and back covers of a 5x7 calender. This is what I came up with for the front.

I'll post the back cover when its done.

On the Viking painting:

I was rushing madly to finished the painting in time to send it off to an art festival, but saddly didn't succeed in doing so. So, I gave it some "time out" and it still is having some "time out", as it was beginning to give me a headache and wasn't taking shape so I had to stop for a while. I think I need a different strategy...

 I often find myself standing over the painting staring at it until my eyes hurt and pondering it until my head hurts. I do mean to sit myself down sometime soon-ish and finish it, hoping when I do that it will just come to me; and not give me any long, arduous pain-staking hours. We will see. It wont always come so easily. In fact, it usually never does...but I like to think I improve through each painting battle; that someday, I will have it all down. The paintings that are hardest for me are the ones from my head; its MUCH easier to paint something your looking at, like a picture for instance. But the things from my head are the things I REALLY want to paint! 

Also: 

Mothers Day is coming up! I think I already have a project planned. ;-)

And:

For some time I've wanted to start ordering prints of my paintings and sell the prints, possibly on ebay or some other place. The Chickadees in watercolor I think will be a good start :-) 

~Elizabeth Joy   

Vikings

Here's something I've been working on for a while now. The sketch is finished and sprayed with a fixative and is ready to paint. I'm actually in the middle of painting it as I post this.

Click on the photo to see it better

~Elizabeth Joy

Our wet and last soccer game to end summer.

We've had some pretty amazing soccer games over the years, but this one is definitely in the category of the very best.  

     It was on a Sunday in September that this fabulous event took place. Sunday morning weather proved to be sunny and warm; I thought it would be a perfect day to end our soccer season. I knew we had to play our last one soon before winter, so while we were on our way I contacted some people and told them to bring a soccer ball.  Unbeknownst to me it had been raining the whole week! But that didn't hinder us from playing; we decided to anyway. So after service a small group of us, or smaller, (we were missing three or four regulars) got to the field. I must say we weren't quite expecting it to be so wet. There was a layer of water over the grass, and deep puddles which made for some unexpected dunking. 

But that was only the beginning.

     As we surveyed the field we began to feel excitement surge through us. We knew this game was going to be great; the water only adding too its greatness. We started off. Some of us chose to kick of their shoes, trying to preserve some articles of dry clothing (but soon gave up on that idea), while others preferred to remain in their squishy waterlogged shoes, which they acquired immediately after setting foot on the field. We slipped, collided, flew, and swam in the grass and water for a good two or three hours. Then the fog came, obscuring everything, including the players across the field; nevertheless, running around in the fog was glorious. Then we played a game of Ultimate Frisbee, then we ran screaming and yelling into a huge lengthy puddle that ended up to be very stinky and unpleasant (as if we weren't already wet enough?), then we indulging ourselves on Kenny's chocolate-chip cookie doe, said our goodbyes to these great-people-were-so-blessed-to-know, and started on our journey home (still in our wet and smelly clothes). Thus, ended our epic day.

Just another wonderful memory made. :)

I love you guys.

~Elizabeth Joy

Christmas creations

I did this sketch for a good friend for Christmas/birthday.

 

This month has been quite productive for me I am happy to say. :)

 

Rachel came up with the brilliant idea to do these mugs for Christmas. 

I did the dragon and squirrels and Sarah did the foxes.

There was one more mug Sarah did but we didn't get pictures of it. :( It was really cute.

I was able to obtain a photo of the Lynx in the frame, so I thought I'd show you all. :)

Happy New Year!!

~Elizabeth Joy