Craft Fairs

Craft Fairs June 1st & 2nd

I belong to two Etsy teams, Etsy NY and Hudson Valley Etsy Team, and they are each having a craft fair on the first weekend of June.  I will be hoping for no wind or rain and showing my jewelry and my NEW one of a kind stuffed monsters.  No artwork, just crafts from me at these two shows.  The forecast is for a sunny weekend so come on out!

Jody

Collegium Chronicles: Bastion

My Drawing Board 

I turned this in yesterday.  A cover for Mercedes Lackey's new novel in the Collegium Chronicles for the good folks at DAW Books.  In the upper right you can see my color comp and below that my now 17 year old son posing for me as Mags, the Herald trainee at the center of this series.  Oils on illustration board for the painting and a digital background of silver horses and arrows done in Photoshop.  I'm not sure when this is coming out, as Misty is in the midst of writing it!

Jody

DIY: Matting & Framing Tutorial Part 3

DIY: Matting & Framing My Fantasy Art

Part 3

Tools & Materials

DIY metal frame 

Picture hanging wire (any wire will do, even tough string)

screwdriver

duster

matted artwork

plexiglass

wire cutter

Plexiglass

This is the final part of the tutorial.  Previously I had completed the matting of the art, and now I assemble the frame and put the artwork in it.  I buy my frames from American Frame, Graphic Dimensions, and sometimes from the art suppliers like Dick Blick, Pearl Paint, or AI Friedman.  I like American Frame because most of the time I'm framing artwork for conventions and I expect the art will do some traveling before it sells, so I prefer metal frames for toughness. I use plexiglass, which American Frame will cut for you as well, instead of glass because it is much lighter, and may crack but not shatter as glass will.  I like color in my mats but a clean, austere look in my frames.  

I assemble the frame as per the instructions, leaving the top open for insertion of the art.

I insert the corners at the top and the piece for hanging wire about 5" down.

I dust off the top of the matted artwork so there is no lint.  The plexiglass comes with sticky paper on both sides. I peel off one side and place it quickly on the matted art so there is minimal chance of getting dust on that side.  Then I peel off the other side, revealing the artwork.  I scan for lint and specks.  If I find anything, I carefully lift the plexiglass and use a bit of masking tape on a finger to trap the lint and remove it.

 Now I'm ready to slip the matted artwork and plexiglass in together into the 3 sided frame.

And slip in the final top side of the frame.

I turn the whole piece over and screw the sections in tight.

I don't know the technical name for these curvy things, but they apply pressure between the frame and the backing board to keep the art in place.  Slip them in along the edges, about 4 or 5 to a side.

They don't fit in all the way, and they occasionally pot out, but they do the job.

 Cut a length of wire about 4" longer than the width of the frame and put them through the holes of the frame's wire hangers.  Wrap the ends around the wire.

Finished and ready for show!

This painting was the illustration for the cover of "House Wars Book I: The Hidden City" by Michelle West.

Jody

www.astudiobythesea.com

www.jodylee.org

Travels & Art

Murals at Willard Straight Hall

I've been taking my son, who is a junior, on a tour of various colleges.  One of the joys of travel is finding quirky objects of interest and of course, ART in unexpected places.  These are murals painted by Alison Mason Kingsbury under the auspices of Ezra King in the entry room of Willard Straight Hall in Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.  The student guide rushed us through this with not a word (but gushed at us for minutes over the School for International Business and Labor Relations) proving itself little better than a benighted heathen.

Sorry about the glove up there, it was cold and I was being rushed into the great hall!  But isn't that just a lovely unicorn and a real treasure of a room?  More about the artist here:

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/alisonmasonkingsbury/exhibition/wshmural/index.html

Willard Straight Hall.  The carvings in the ceiling are of good and bad professors, but you can't make it out from my iphone pix.

The new Engineering building.  It looks a bit like a large indoor mall at first, but those are 3 sided rooms for students to gather and discuss things, and the grey wall and stairs are supposed to reflect the many gorges on the Cornell campus.

I don't know what this was about, but it was amusing.

 Just can't resist taking a pix of an anatomically correct statue of a Human/Transformers hybrid.

This is Cornell's Biological Sciences building (or one of them, dealing more with plant biology) so my son was quite tickled by the fact that they've let plants grow all over it.  Even their metal gates are sprouting!

Jody

Magic Wands

My daughter, who reads a lot of teen dystopic fiction, says these wands look like stele from the Shadow Hunter Chronicles.  I've been making a lot of beads in this style lately.  They look very victorian to me, perhaps a bit steam punk.  Not sure what to do with them yet.

Jody

Matting & Framing Tutorial Part 2

DIY: Matting & Framing My Fantasy Art

Part 2

Tools & Materials

Acid free glue

Acid free mounting tape

Weights (stray books)

Ruler

In Part 1 I removed the art from the illustration board and measured and cut my mats.  Using acid free glue in all four corners, I glue the two colored mats together.

I make sure the sides of the window of the mat line up evenly, and then weight the corners down with a few stray paperbacks to make sure the mats adhere to each other as they dry.  By the way, I was framing 3 different paintings at this time, so the art and colors of mat board do change in the demonstration pictures.

Place the backing board right up to the top of the mat, top/surface/showing side facing down and use masking tape to keep it in place.  Cut two or more acid free tapes to act as hinges and glue in place.  These too may need a book weight on them to keep them in place until they dry.

When dry, remove the masking tape, and fold down the hinged double mat over the backing board.  3 finished mats, ready for use!

Lift the mat and insert the artwork.

 If there are vertical and/or horizontal lines in the artwork, use a ruler to make sure they are parallel to the lines of the mat.  Gently shift the art around and make sure no outside edges appear - the mat completely covers the art on all sides.

Tape the art in place with masking tape, carefully keeping the art in place with one hand.

Flip open the mat.  With more acid free hinges, tape or glue the artwork in place at the top of the painting.  Art and paper breathes and expands, especially depending on how much moisture there is in the air.  So I attach the art only from the top so it doesn't wrinkle from being caught on the bottom.

And again, weight the hinges as they dry, 15 minutes to a half hour.

Remove the masking tape, fold back over the double mat, and the matting part of this tutorial is finished!

Part 3 will cover framing.

Jody

www.astudiobythesea.com

www.jodylee.org

Fantasy Prints

New Fantasy Prints

I finally corrected my scans and got my fancy new printer to work, and these new prints of "Oathblood," "The Shadow Isle," and "The Black Swan" are doing their 24 hour air dry.  I'll sign and number them and hopefully I'll find the time to put them up on Etsy.


Jody