2/7/11
This is the painting started in Sylvia Megerdichian’s class. She talked about working with light using a mid-value then moving to dark. “You cannot paint like anyone else. When you paint like you, your best comes out.”

Free Arts for Abused Children contacted me to spruce up their existing fundraiser logo and design a “save the date” postcard. They wanted to use the same heart graphic and hand prints from their original logo, although, the original graphic was not available. I had to recreate the heart in Illustrator and add the hand prints in various colors to match it as close as possible. For “little hands,” I selected a handwritten font to give a youthful, warm feeling. The “big hearts” text in all caps blended well with “ARTS,” which stood out in a much bolder font. When designing the postcard, I thought a paint splash would be a great graphic to place behind the “Save the Date” text. Also, instead of using text for “Free Arts for Abused Children” (as on their last postcard) I used their official logo for brand recognition and placed it along a paint drip to direct your eye towards it. A student’s artwork was used for the back of the card and the colors in the art brought out the colors in the logo and heart graphic, bringing a cohesive look to the direct mail piece.

This organization delivers the healing power of art to abused, homeless, and at-risk children. For more information, visit: http://www.freearts.org

Pictorial free association, Automatism as defined in “Art Speak,” was the last project from the abstract class at UCLA with Ben Britton. Using Payne’s Grey, I started drawing outlines of these shapes. They are some sort of entities that have been showing up in my work, similar to Gatherers and The Rose Angel. In this painting, the entities are traveling west, following the leader on the center left side. They are coming together under one mission: healing.

For project #2 from UCLA abstract painting class, we started with an exercise in class taking turns repeating marks made by another student. For our painting, we were to use one stroke gestures or marks and also consider using motifs or patterns. My main thought while painting was to use strokes in different sizes, wiping away areas and adding more color.

Columbus Day 10/11/10
I need to work on my painting some more. It’s at the ugly stage. Not sure how I’m going to fix it. I haven’t been writing much or doing my own work since I started the UCLA class. The painting is getting worse. Maybe that’s a good sign. The painting is still muddy. Too many areas have the blue and orange blended together. I kept laying on more strokes of color. Class critique is tonight.

Oct. 5, 2010
While the paint is drying, and since there hasn’t been a moment to write ab….. the phone interrupted me. The final layer of paint is still drying. Then, I will add paint pen line work. This was the second gestural painting I did for my UCLA class. Painting it felt good.

9/21/10
Spur of the moment abstract art class was good last night.

Layer 3 looks done but I kept painting. Notes from class: flat planes that overlap value, interlocking, come up in stages, same depth, contrast, edges, relationships between forms, edges: sharp or painterly, balance, sense of gravity, look for opportunities to define a space between forms, organizing principles. The final touches were the white, black and gold lines. The symbol Pi appeared and that means infinity to me. Ben, the instructor at UCLA, thought this painting looked like a Celestial Block Party. So maybe that’s what happens when we die. Forever more, we are in party mode with all our good friends.