Linda Mahoney Art

I completed this colored pencil painting yesterday, photographed it and uploaded it, along with the cypress tree painting, as entries in the CPSA 2009 Int'l Exhibit. Last year was the first year they accepted digital entries, but I didn't enter last year. It was nice not having to deal with taking slide photos with the 35mm camera, but on the other hand, what I see on my computer monitor is not what I see when I look at the actual painting. Then, how do I know what the judges will see on their monitor? My colors look washed out to me on my monitor. Since the judges only get one impression of your work, that feels risky to me. If I had better techie skills I suppose I could calibrate my monitor, but alas that is not my forte. So I continue to muddle along. I used some of the Neocolor II crayons when working on this picture along with heat. I didn't discover that combo until I was almost finished. Now I am anxious to give that another try. I took over the glass topped range ...

I took a timeout from the colored pencil painting I am working on to do a painting of the sun rising above the clouds. In the past week, I have been plagued with the sudden onset of arthritis in my hands/wrists & feet/ankles. I would have blamed it on overuse of the hand with the prolonged use of scribbling with my pencils, but both hands hurt. I haven't been scribbling with my left hand, or my feet, for that matter, so that couldn't be the cause. My friend Alice told me it was because I just passed another birthday milestone. Probably right! I had a regular appointment to see my doctor yesterday anyway, so I bought a bottle of glucosamine-chondroitin and started taking it until I could meet with him. I knew that stuff would take 6 weeks or so to kick in - if it works for me. So, I have been scribbling and wincing at the same time. I started thinking maybe that is why I became more acquainted with collage recently. I figured I could do it with less stress to my hand and wr...

I have started my ice cream collage as you can see here. First, I began with a simple pencil drawing on a 10"x8" sheet of birch plywood. Next, I painted very general areas of color and let that dry before applying paper to the collage. And then there were two... So what can be better than 1 ice cream cone, but 2? I decided while I had the paint out I should go ahead and make a quick background prep for a second cone. Besides, I couldn't decide between chocolate and strawberry anyway and I think a companion piece might be twice as nice. You can see that I have begun applying paper to the background of the chocolate one. I ordered some mulberry paper from a seller in Thailand that took a while to get here - about 2 weeks - but it love it and it is so much fun to work with. It is spawning ideas for other things like big cabbage roses or copying the photo of a confederate rose I am using as wallpaper on my computer these days. Since most of it is sheer, it is fun to layer ove...