Getting Back in the Groove!

After being the child care provider for my little granddaughter for the past 5 years, Miss Lily started Kindergarten! That has freed me up to make a heck of a lot more effort towards my art adventures.
Hooray! I will miss my daily dose of Lily Rain, but I still get to see her a lot as she lives right above my place.

A few years back I joined a facebook group called 29 Faces with Ayala Art. Currently there is a September Challenge to paint a face a day. I painted one yesterday but didn't get a chance to post it.
So here it is.... I love challenges because they help me to paint daily and explore mediums.

A Few More Days of Summer

Watercolor

One thing I wanted to experiment  with is painting on a DIY absorbent ground.

I had a book of watercolor paper that I didn't like the way it absorbed the paint, so I decided to paint the ground on it and see what happens. The ground is not as absorbent as paper of course, but I liked the way I could lift off the colors. I think I will paint all my 29 faces with this ground and see where it goes and what I learn about it. I am also trying to paint a bit more loosely.

Retrospect: Two Weeks Gone By

I do intend to write in my blog more often, but before you know it a week has passed and then another. Tonight I am heading to Bountiful, Utah for the BDAC Statewide Show and Grand Opening of their new facility. I was fortunate to have a painting selected to be in the show. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of if before I took it in. I will get one tonight.

Mother's Day Gift by Catherine Darling Hostetter

Recently I finished a portrait for a girl in Canada. It is to be a gift for Mother's Day for her mom. Due to longer shipping times from the US to Canada, it will get there late. She ordered it a week and a couple of days before Mother's day and I shipped it the Wednesday before MD.

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, I am reading and studying a book called 'Success Principles'. My goal was to read a chapter a day and really try to change all my habits into positive ones. I am on Chapter 6 (obviously not a chapter a day), and I have come to realize if you really want to do something life changing, you can't restrict it to a chapter a day. So I decided I need to focus on a chapter until I feel like I really get it.

I am currently working on a painting titled "Walk With Me" it is about half way done and is acrylic on cradled panel. I plan on finishing it tomorrow, and making at least one print of it to frame and donate to a fundraiser. I should have a picture of it to post in the next few days.

In June our Gallery, Local Colors of Utah is having a group show of our artists and we are doing a 'Green' Theme. The art has to be made of recycled or re-purposed items to be in the show. After I finish the "Walk With Me" piece, I will start on my upcyled piece. Busy times ahead!

Success is in Your Head, if You Want to Dig it Out!

"Follow Your Inspiration"  Catherine Darling Hostetter

This weekend I was reviewing what I had coming up on my calendar, and realized that I am not accomplishing nearly enough. I am one of those artists that is not the most organized. I thought "what am I going to do to change this situation"! 

I remembered a few months back when my son and I were reading a book together, called The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. I recalled during the time that as I was studying it and applying it's principles to my artistic existence, I was accomplishing more and felt very productive in all aspects of my life.

So... I dragged the book out yesterday and determined to read a chapter a day and work it like I was going to school with assignments and all. This time through the book, however, I am not going to read it and then forget what I learned. I will diligently try to make it a part of my life habits. Having experienced already that if I don't focus and make a goal of this, I will fall back into old habits. I know that for a fact, it's the story of my life!

Chapter 1: Take 100% Responsibility of Your Life.  Don't worry I am not going to go through the whole book here on my blog. But I will summarized some of the amazing info found there.

I would like to quote from the book something that made a lot of sense...

"Ninety nine percent of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses"

George Washington Carver

Great advice, take accountability for your own choices and don't make excuses. Another great insight from the book - If you don't like your outcomes, change your response. Sure, a lot of things happen in our lives that we don't have direct control of , but we do have the choice to determine how we respond to it. 

The last thing I want to mention is: You have to give up blaming and complaining. 

That's it for today. If anyone is interested in joining me as I change my life and would like to change yours, get yourself a copy of the book, and lets go for it!

Art Mingled with Friday

I consider my Fridays my day off. In addition to working in Local Colors of Utah art gallery as president and working on my art whenever I can, I tend my handicapped grandson Anthony 4 days a week, for 3 hours each day Monday - Thursday. Plus this month I have my 3 year old grand-daughter, Lily Rain during the weekdays. She lives in Portland OR with her mama and is here to visit.

Being an artist is nice because I am able to be flexible for my family and grandkids. 

So what am I doing today? Well next Friday I am participating in a fundraising event hosted by the Bradley Center at the South Towne Mall in Sandy, Utah. Today I am getting art ready for that event.

The Bradley Center supports children who have lost one or both parents. 30% of the sales go to the Bradley Center. Come see me next week!

Another particularly nice thing about today is that I am a featured artist on Jennifer Love's Blog!

Jenny is a good friend and has interviewed me and featured some of my art.

As she said we are kindred spirits, which I totally agree.:-)

I have been thinking of doing features on other artists and Jennifer has provided a great example of how to do it!

Also on my friday agenda is to paint a couple of paintings I have been working on. I hope to get them done for the show next week.

"Juggling Life" by Catherine Darling Hostetter

How is your friday going?

Six Sisters and a Dog Painting

Patience is a Beggar's Virtue by Catherine Darling Hostetter

Do you have a sister? I do and a very good one at that! Saturday I was planning on going to a Utah Watercolor Paint-out in Salt Lake City. They were going to paint train cars. I don't really have a set up for plein air (painting outdoors), so I was looking through all my stuff for something to use (like a folding chair, folding table etc). It wasn't long before I heard my phone ring and guess who? My sister Debbie!

She was calling to see if I wanted to go to "What a Woman Wants" at the South Towne Expo Center. My sister is a lot of fun, and I love hanging out with her, so I said yes!
We planned on going at 10:00 am and I figured I could make it to the paint-out which was at 1:00 pm.

So what does a woman want? Apparently the vendors there thought clothing, jewelry, crafty decorations and essential oils was what was wanted. It was fun to look at all the stuff. I have an art show in a couple of weeks, so I also looked at the way the vendors displayed their merchandise.

The WWW show featured guest presenters on stage. One that interested my sister and I were "Six Sisters". They are sisters that grew up in Utah and when they began to reach adulthood and some were getting married and moving out of state. To keep in touch with each other they began sixsistersstuff.com blog. They shared recipes and craft projects and soon they noticed they had a following.

Since their blog start in 2011, they have published cookbooks, do blog conferences and I don't know, sounds like they have a lot of fun together. I can understand this having a fun sister myself. Only in their case it's "the more the merrier"!

Anyhoo, on Saturday they demonstrated some of their recipes. One that I thought was interesting and tasty (they served samples afterwards) was the Funfetti Cake Batter Dip If you like to lick the bowl when you bake a cake, this dip is for you! You dip Vanilla wafers in the dip. Yum!

To make a long story a little shorter, I didn't make it to the paint-out. No worries though, there is always one another day.

I mentioned a dog painting in my title, didn't I? My artist friend, Sandi Olson curates an art display at Great Harvest in Sugar House. She asked me to pick up my aspen painting from the last show and to bring in an animal painting. It inspired me to paint a new painting for the show, a cute black lab-mix.

I titled the painting: Patience is a Beggar's Virtue

If you are a Salt Lake City local, and love animal paintings visit 

Great Harvest in Sugar House at 21st and 21st. 

Be sure and check out the Six Sisters blog for lots of yummy looking recipes.

Spring has Sprung with Portrait Commissions

Spring has sprung here in Utah, and I have been keeping

busy doing portrait commissions from my etsy store. 

The first commission came from Canada, a lady asked me to paint in 

watercolor her son Archie and her baby daughter Rosemary. 

It has been a wonderful opportunity to brush up on my drawing watercolor skills. 

About the same time I received another commission from California to paint a lady's brother and sister in law as a gift for their 25th anniversary.

For more information about watercolor portrait commissions, click on my etsy store!

Daily Paintings 3 & 4: Trial and Error

I am continuing painting in watercolor. Since these daily paintings are studes, I have been painting on Canson 140 lb. paper. This is not my preference of papers, but I had a pad of this paper so why not use it! I have a few sheets of the really good stuff, but thought I would use it for the Spring Show for the Utah Watercolor Society.

The Canson paper is not too bad though, better than some papers. This Canson is not bad if you don't over work it, and if you like to lift color, it is good for that. All in all, I figure if I can learn to paint successfully on this paper, I should do ok on the better paper. Is that logical?

So on day three, I painted 3 sheep. I did them with a little landscape behind them. I am not big on doing landscapes, but I have a many friends that are excellent plein air painters, and they go to plein air paint outs and have a lot of fun... so I decided I needed to practice painting landscapes so I could do some plein air this summer.

As I did the landscape, I really overworked it. It turned out ok, but it's not my favorite painting. I will show it to you anyway, just because I feel kind of obligated since it's one of my daily paintings.

Three Sheep

6"x 10"

$40

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You can be sure that I will be working on landscapes again... You know, practice makes perfect, or so I hope! But for Valentines Day I am not going to do a landscape!

Oh by the way, I forgot to mention that I may not post daily paintings everyday, just because I figure it is more important to get the painting done for the day, and sometimes that doesn't leave time to blog about it. So today is a double whammy!

Watercolor takes a lot of thought, and I decided that my daily painting for today I would put down color and try not to go back to it,so I don't over work it.

I drew another sheep, a big woolly one and since the paper is great for lifting, I decided I would do some lifting. I like the way this one turned out. I still overworked the trees in the background though. *sigh*.

Fancy  Ewe

8" x 10"

$100

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A Painting A Day

I recently read a book by Carol Marine called Daily Painting. Carol discovered daily painting in 2006. Her theory is paint small and often to become a more creative, productive, and successful artist.
I agree that if an artist would do that daily, they are bound to improve their art.

Since that is one of my new year resolutions to improve, daily painting makes sense to me. Another thing that Carol talked about is selling your daily painting online for $100. So today I begin my daily painting! My first painting is a study in watercolor, titled "A New Day"

                                                            A New Day - 8" x 10" Watercolor

 $100 

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A Commission for Arty Cakes!

I was contacted last week about doing a watercolor commission for a lady in England who has her own business called Arty Cakes.

When I do a commission, I work from a photo generally. In this case, she didn't have one with the cake she wanted in the painting, If you can't tell from the drawing, it is a hat with flowers on it. I had to use photoshop elements to create the image to paint from by combining different images she had emailed me.

She makes beautiful cakes, many that are florals. She is really an artist herself with butter cream frosting!

I had to enhance the drawing so all the pencil lines show clearly, but it also makes the background a bit grayed because of doing that. It really isn't gray at all. In my process of doing a commission, I then send the drawing for the client's approval. I also ask for any suggestions if they have any. I find that helps in producing a final painting that the client will be satisfied with.

Once approved, I then paint it. I will post progress of this painting in the next day or so.

Watercolor Studies Continues; The Midnight Bunny

Today I completed another study, this time of a bunny. As I am doing these studies, I am trying out different kinds of paper, graphite pencils and color palettes. The bunny today was painted on 90 lb. Arches Cold Press. It is too thin for my liking, but wasn't too bad to paint on. Because of it's light weight, it absorbs the water like a sponge all the way through. That can result in a unflat painting when you are finished painting. Last night I put weights on the 'Vintage Lady' Painitng which I mentioned in my previous post. It was painted on this same arches 90 lb. paper. I sprayed the back of the painting with water, put a paper towel over it, then a heavy book with 2 three pound exercise weights (gotta use those weights for something!)

This morning I looked at the Vintage Lady painting to see if it was dry. It was and it was pretty flat. not perfectly flat, but reasonably flat and ready to mount in a mat.

Ok, so back to Midnight Bunny. As mentioned I have been trying different graphite pencils to do my sketch for the painting. This time I used a 6B. I liked it, you could get a nice dark if you want. On Vintage Lady I used a HB. Which is very hard. It was a lot lighter lead color and didn't smear much.

If you don't want your lead to show up in your watercolor, the HB is pretty good for that.

On Midnight Bunny, I used the same color palette as I did on "Vintage Lady". Three colors; cobalt blue, rose madder genuine, and azo yellow. Although I used a lot of layers on this painting and it has some darks, it still has some luminousity in places. I guess that's what you get when you use transparent paint, right?

In this painting I lifted color out on the bunny, the grass, and around the moon. A few years ago I took a workshop from Joseph Alleman, and he lifts color out. His work is wonderful and he has the awards to show fpr it. Here's his website: josephalleman.com

Look at Joe's paintings, especially those that have darks in them and see if you can see where he has lifted the paint out. If you are new to watercolor, you may not know what this means. When you put several layers of color on the paper, you can go back after it's dried with a wet brush and lift out spots. I you look at the bottom of my bunny painting, you can see blades of grass that I have lifted out.

I am finding as I am doing these studies, that I have picked up and implement some things from the people I have taken workshops from. I hadn't realized that I had done this till now as I am re-evaluating my painting skills.

I have to admit that as I got into this bunny painting, I wasn't liking the way it was turning out, but committed myself to finishing it. Lifting really saved it. It's not a great painting,but it is ok and was a valuable study. The purpose of doing studies is not only to practice, but to also find what techniques and color palettes I like and don't like. So I am satisfied with what I learned today.

How's your painting coming along?

New Year's Resolution; Improve my Watercolor Skills!

Vintage Lady 10" x 8" Watercolor

I am sitting in my studio, cozy warm, looking out the window. It has been raining on this very grey, overcast Monday morning. I have bread baking in the kitchen anticipating a delicious union of homemade pumpkin soup for lunch. My plan for my art today is painting watercolor studies. I have been watching videos on youtube by fantastic watercolor artists. One of my resolutions for 2015 is to improve my technique and style.                                                                                                                                                                               Over the weekend I watched several videos by Sterling Edwards. He paints very loosely and my mission today is to loosen up my watercolor style. Although I am not trying to  paint exactly like Sterling, there is always something to learn from a really great teacher. Several years ago I took a workshop from Sterling, and although I have notes from then, I felt like I just needed to see him paint again. 

Once you begin watching these demos, you need to be careful or you will find yourself on a  youtube watercolor demo binge! It's the next best thing to taking workshops. I also watched demos from Don Andrews who I took a workshop from. He paints quite loosely as well, and does it so effortlessly!

Learning Twitter 10" x 8" Watercolor.

I have attached a couple of watercolor studies that I have done the last few days. The first one, Learning Twitter was done in the way I usually paint. The second one was done after I watched the Sterling Edwards and Don Andrews video demos. It is definately a lot more looser.On the first one, I did try to do a loose background, but failed with the subject matter.  I think the second painting was more successful, but I still have a long way to go. By the way, on the second painting I used a limited palette of 3 colors; Rose Madder, Cobalt Blue and Azu Yellow.
I am trying to find a palette that I like working with too. That's another goal!

I am going to keep painting, and it's time to do another one. I will keep you posted. You can bet I will be watching more demos on youtube!

New Year, New Ideas!

A new year is always refreshing, it seems to be a start over for many of us. Although today is probably not much different than most days. It's just how we think about it.

This Christmas I made many gifts for my family. One of them was a portrait of my son. He loves the Green Bay Packers and has since high school. So it seemed appropriate to reflect that in this painting of him.

It is done in watercolor on Arches hot press paper. It's not very big, an 10" x 8" painting. I often use my kids as models in my paintings and Brock has been known to complain that I have never used him. So it was time to paint him!

Today being the first day of the new year, I have been planning what I would like to accomplish this year. I paint a lot in acrylic, but I thought I would like to improve my watercolor techniques for 2015. I belong to the Utah Watercolor Society, and it is a wonderful organization with many talented painters. I hope to benefit this year by participating more in the paint-outs and workshops they hold.

If you would like to join us, here is the link to the website;

www.utahwatercolor.org

The meetings are the first Tuesday of each month and they are held at the Sons of the Utah Pioneer Building. Here's the address:

Sons of the Utah Pioneers Hall, 3301 E. Loiuse Ave (2920 S.) Salt Lake City, UT, 84109

I also am planning on writing on my blog more often and sharing my artistic process.Comments welcome!

One more thing I would like to say on this fresh new day in 2015... I am full of gratitude for my life, and my family. I am so thankful to be an artist and through my talent am able to show appreciation for the beauty of this earth. May we all be blessed with a happy and prosperous New Year!

Wild Ride Horse and Gecko Prints

                               A Wild Ride


One Wednesday afternoon, sunny, not too hot, a horse was wildly galloping down the street. On his back was something green, small, but not too small. I would like to say it was an alien but it wasn't. It was your basic gecko. I think it was a jockey the way it rode that horse. But then I began to wonder when the gecko steered the horse straight at me. Needless to say I was a litte alarmed. Not sure how the gecko felt about it. All I can say is it was a wild ride and I lived to tell about it!


I am now offering prints of my original paintings on Etsy.

Click here for my etsy shop

Another Small Painting

Painting art cards is a challenge. The 3.5" x 2.5" canvas makes it difficult to get the detail you are able to get with larger painting surfaces. I have been trying different mediums so see what gives me the detail I would like to have. Yesterday I tried pen and ink and watercolor. Still not satisfied with the results.

 As I paint these art cards, I've been drawing from my head without reference. I think the artist is the biggest critic of their artwork. That's me for sure! I find I am not satisfied not only with the way I am painting but I am not happy with just painting what I see in my head. I am going to keep going with my experimentation with art cards until I am satisfied with what I produce. Anyone want to join me painting art cards? It's a great exercise that I think will benefit my larger pieces.

"Planting Seeds of Faith", pen/ink and watercolor.

My critique is that it is too cartoony for my taste :-) I like it for what it is however,

and it was fun to try. 

Painting Small

The last week of March and throughout this month I was away from home for a little over three weeks. Because of different restrictions I packed up the smallest amount of art supplies I could. This has led me to working on a series of art cards (mentioned in my previous posts).

Painting small or perhaps 'miniature' is a better description - brings a whole lot of new challenges. The main challenge for me is what medium best expresses what I want to accomplish? I have tried pure watercolor, acrylic, acrylic with colored pencil. Today I will be working on a piece with watercolor and pen and ink.

My 3.5" x 2.5" paintings have been divided into two main subjects, portraiture and whimsical illustration. I have enjoyed doing the portraiture in watercolor - even though the 'canvas' is small, it is big enough to get the detail in that I enjoy. Doing a little illustrative scene is a whole other story. To get all the details in you have to paint VERY small. I am not sure I am satisfied with what I have come up with to this point.

I am going to post a couple of recent illustrative pieces and would appreciate your critique of them.

"Bunny Serenade" is done in acrylic and colored pencil on paper.

"Catching Falling Stars" is watercolor and watercolor pencil on paper

"Little Red Riding Hood" (SOLD) Mixed - watercolor and acrylics on paper.

I would appreciate any comments. If you want to see more of my art cards, visit 

Cathy Darling Art on Ebay

Painting in Portland

I am in Portland to help take care of my grand-daughter Lily. A couple of weeks ago a dog bit her in the face. :(
I packed up the biggest suit case we had. Not just for my clothes, but for the inflatable mattress. My daughter had just moved to Portland the month before leaving her furniture behind. We were worried my suitcase would go over the 50lb. weight limit, but it weighed in at exactly that... 50lbs!

I came out on Jet Blue and they have a policy of no oil or water based paints, so I packed up my watercolor palette (dry) and brought along mini watercolor paper to paint art cards. An art card is 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" so I could pack a lot of them!
So far I have only painted 2 cards, they are in my whimsical style.

 This one (above) is titled "Breakfast at Tiffany's, 

Pupper's and Miss Pretty Kitty's. 

This art card is titled "Finding Spring". 

It is fun, experimental and a good exercise to paint this small. I will continue to paint while here in Portland. It rains a lot and often cancels my daily walk... I thought my waterproof windbreaker would be sufficient but I was wrong... so I will happily paint when it rains.

Dreaming

This is a more whimsical painting titled "Dreaming". It is number 3 in a series of women paintings I am doing.

 My purpose in doing a series is to explore the topic and paint wherever the inspiration leads me.
There are many virtues that are embodied in women and often they begin with a dream.

This painting is 10" x 8" on gallery wrapped canvas. $250 plus $5 shipping in the US and is available for purchase. Contact me!

She Can Do It!

Today I put the finishing touches on this painting. It's second in a series called "The Virtuous Woman".
When I was thinking (out loud) of what to paint next in this series, my daughter suggested that I do something like the poster of  "We Can Do It".  It is an American wartime propaganda poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost worker morale. (1)

One of the titles I considered for this painting was "Strong in so Many Ways", but my daughter vetoed it. That title does say in just a few words the idea behind this painting. But no go. My next thought was to just call it "She Can Do It". My daughter was asleep on the couch and couldn't gun it down, so there you have it.

"She Can Do It" is a tribute to the strength of today's woman.

This painting is 8" x10" x .75" on gallery wrapped canvas. $250 plus $5 shipping in US. To purchase it please contact me!

(1) Wikipedia

A New Series of Paintings

Today on my blog I am posting the first of a series. The series is called Virtuous Woman and it is inspired by all the women that I know that are multi-talented, smart, and wonderfully kind and good in so many ways.

Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. (Proverbs 31:10)

This first painting needed a title and as I thought and painted and painted and thought, a song soon began repeating itself in my mind. It was a song that was an anthem for women in the 1970's as women attempted to combat social and cultural inequalities. I was fresh out of high school back then and was able to witness that bit of history. Although my interpretation is a bit different, I think the song title lends itself to a perfect title for this painting.

How can I describe today's woman? Oh wait, that's why I am painting this series for! Each painting will be an exploration of the many facets in a woman's life. "I am Woman" is the opening statement. A woman and her world. I painted the world like a halo that crowns her head, symbolic for the angel that she is.

This is an 8" X 10" painting and is available for purchase, $250 plus $5 shipping in US. Contact me for info.

Blind Leading the Blind

Each year the Springville Museum of Art holds a juried show that focuses on Religious art. This year I created a painting titled "Blind Leading the Blind". My reference is from the teachings of Christ in Luke 6:39 (KJV).

It is painted in acrylic and is 24" x 30" x 2" on gallery wrapped canvas. I took it down to Springville on Saturday. The show will be juried this week and of course I am hoping it will get in.

I like to include words or quotes in my art occasionally. In this painting I put a quote that I thought was pretty profound. It reads:

"The world today is in serious trouble. It is struggling for survival in a sea of selfishness, hate, greed and sin. They travel and cry for peace but do not want peace in righteousness."

To me that translates to this; many in the world have a bad case of spiritual blindness turning from the true source that gives us light and knowledge.

The leader of the group appears quite confident as he leads his followers. I came very close to adding the words coming from his mouth: "the ditch is this way" (see Luke 6:39). I think that we are not totally blind when we make choices and I think neither is this guy. The women in the center is labeled as trusting in the arm of flesh. The fellow behind her appears to be not only spiritually blind but deaf as well.

I often take a photo of my paintings, but my camera battery was dead so I had to borrow one. Apparently this camera is sensitive to capturing good pics of people because when I snapped a shot of the painting, a message appeared. It read: "Did someone blink?"

It made me chuckle and say; no they're just blind.