Tappin' Shoes!

I've had these tap shoes for about 6 or 7 years. I danced a little in them a while ago along to live drumming. The percussionist was encouraging me to get some sensors to attach to my shoes somehow, to trigger samples from my synthesizers ( I have a keyboard and a Handsonic electronic percussion unit.) I've been visualizing myself tapping in my performances and I recently got my platform out of storage, where it had been since all my studio moves last year.

So it was very synchronistic when my good friend Akiba Abaka invited me to attend a preview performance of 2 shows: Daniel Beaty's Emergency and Maurice Hines' Tappin' Through Life! this past Tuesday. It was amazing! Maurice is STILL tapping at almost 70 years old and he brought out his proteges, the Manzari brothers, WOW!!!! I'm looking forward to seeing the whole show when they come back to Boston in the spring.

So, with all that inspiration within me, I set up my platform in the basement, pulled on my shoes and had myself a tappin' fun time!

P.S. if anyone in the Boston area has a clean (we go shoeless in my house) scrap piece of carpet about
36 inches by 40 inches minimum, for me to put the platform on to protect my beautiful hardwood floors, please let me know, thanks!

Sponge Roller Daubers for Face Painting

As I've been face and body painting again, I'm having fun learning about all the new developments and supplies in the field. One of them is using round foam sponges called daubers to quickly create circles. I decided to try out some of my foam hair rollers and they work just perfectly! Much more cost effective then buying daubers on a wooden stick, which are around $5 for 3 or 4, you can get 6 rollers in a pack of 1 1/2 inch rollers for about $2.79 and you can use both ends of a roller for 2 colors! Don't worry about the hole, just dab over the spot with the edge of the roller to fill it in.

    I made my Jack-O-Lantern arm art with the orange end of the roller :-)

Pitt Artist Big Brush Pens by Faber Castell - Update

Oh boy! I recently received 2 more colors (Light green and Pink madder lake) to add to my collection of Pitt Artist Big brush pens by Faber-Castell! They were on back-order from Dick Blick and I almost forgot they were on their way, when I saw the FedEx truck I said to myself "Hmmm, what could that be? I'm not expecting anything."

What a nice surprise it was! I'm off to try out these new colors and will also post on how the Pitt pens combine with Faber-Castels Albrecht Durer water colour pencils. I recently got the 250th anniversary set of 25 pencils, some of the pencils in this set are the same color number as the Pitt pens, I will see how close the colors match.

I used these markers in my pieces Happy Springtime, Two May Tulips and One Red Tulip.

Heads up on some of the colors if your planning on buying a set: These colors are not in the set of 48!

178 Nougat
228 Bright Magenta
278 Chrome Oxide Green
143 Cobalt Blue
157 Dark Indigo
219 Deep Scarlet Red
121 Pale Geranium Lake
270 Warm Gray I
230 Cold Gray I
250 Gold
251 Silver

I first bought the small set of 4 Classic Colors that was on clearance at a craft store, it had the black missing, so it was priced at $3.95 (a deal as they go for $2.55 Blick online and $3 plus per marker at brick and mortar  stores!), since I heard they were great markers from artist Don Colley in his video, On the Go with PITT artist pens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI24mfsrU80&feature=channel
I figured it was good time for me to give them a try. I fell in love with the first stroke! I then bought the set of 24 and started visualizing getting what I thought were the remaining 26 colors. 

So I'll have to buy the ones I have listed above separately sometime soon, I realized these were not in the 48 set after I was done ordering from Dick Blick online, grrrr! I don't know why they don't have the Deep Scarlet Red in the sets, as the red they have, Pink Carmine 127, is a medium red and not dark enough for me, I have to make several passes with it to get a good color.

I think these extra colors may only be available from online art stores, I'll check at Blick when I go this week to pick up a fine art print order that is ready, YEAH! I'll also take a look across the street (Mass Ave. Central Square in Cambridge, MA) at Artists Craftsman Supply to see if they have these colors in open stock and I'll let y'all know what I find.

Until next time, Keep on Creating!

I LOVE R & F Pigment Sticks!

Just thinking about them makes my heart beat fast and I want to jump up and down, dance and Skip, skip, skip to my Lou! I'm a multi-media artist, this is the first time I've ever had a such an intense response to a visual art medium.

I am a member of an artists site, wwww.wetcanvas.com ,one of their forums is "The Oil Stick Party", I've been enjoying reading about other artists experiences with oil sticks by lots of other companies. This inspired me to get back to using them.

At the last studio I had before my current studio, one of the artists left 2 boxes of about 16 of the R & F sticks (almost all unopened) in her studio when she moved (the building had been sold and it was converted to apartments, so all of us artists had to relocate our studios, you know the scenario.) I thought they were oil pastels, which I was just starting to get into.

When I had settled into my new studio, I found out just how different they were. I went on to the R & F site, www.rfpaints.com, to learn about them and was shocked to see how much they cost! I was glad I had rescued them before they were thrown out by the renovation crew. She had also left some gessoed boards by Houston Art supply, so I tried them on those, I tried them on canvas board and stretched canvas too, but the gessoed board is my favorite surface for the R& F's because of how smooth it is.

I just tried them on clayboard last night, (that was also left by the same artist :-) they're good on that too. I just had big time fun smoothing them on with my pallet knife, my favorite tool to use with them, just playing with the pure colors and not at all getting into my often very well thought out geometric patterns. I go totally freestyle with them, except for one medium sized painting "Sun Flower", I'll post some photos of it soon.