The Bloody Hearts of My Enemies

After a shit winter where I’ve done almost no art in February I started working on a new series of paintings called The Bloody Hearts of My Enemies. I’ve completed 3 paintings, a 4th is just waiting for a few coats of gloss varnish spray, and 2 more are actively in progress.

I’ve just been super angry and unhappy for the last 6-9 months and it seemed like nothing was going right. I applied for and was rejected for more jobs at my current employer than I’d care to specify here over the course of 12 months and I was just not handling it well.

So after a random tweet by one of my fave authors, this idea got stuck in my head and I decided to do it. I wrote up a list of names, over the last couple months more names have been added, and I pulled out my paint, pastels, glitter, ordered some new mica pigments from Mad Micas, decided to do this series on 8×10″ and 11×14″ stretched canvases and got to it.

It’s going slow because I’m still not quite back where I want to be creatively… but I’ve been working on these regularly and feeling pretty good about them.

They are going to be added to my Etsy shop at some point this spring. I want to have a few more completed and I need to take decent photos of them.

Here are the 3 that are done though. Currently they’re hanging in my living room along with some of my other paintings.

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New Paintings!

It’s been too long since my last post.

I have a number of new paintings to post, I have a new Patreon I started this month, I have a couple videos on my new YouTube channel, and I’m working on a tutorial for my rainbow paintings.

First, let’s chat about the environmental impact of micro plastics. In short? They’re terrible for the environment. There’s been talk lately of scientists wanting to ban micro plastics like has been done with micro beads that used to be in bath products. While I don’t believe that a ban on micro plastics (glitter) is immediately viable or likely, glitter is used by A LOT of different industries and our government is in the process of imploding, so I sincerely doubt this will happen any time soon.

Having said that, I have made a personal decision to stop buying standard glitter. I’ve been using a very high quality polyester craft glitter that I order online from Bulk Glitters. The quality is vastly superior to anything I’ve bought in a craft store. However, it’s still environmentally questionable.

I’m going to continue to use the polyester glitter I already have, but I’ve been working with biodegradable glitter and mica pigments to determine how best to use them instead.

Here is one of the recent paintings I did with mica pigments added to the paint. I think it turned out lovely! 💜

Not NaNoWriMo…

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo in the past and failed each time. Which isn’t a big deal. Mostly. I considered trying again this year, I have a few ideas I’ve been bouncing around my head, but I decided against it. I’m just not that interested in pursuing any of them right now. This may change, but probably not this year.

Instead I’ve decided to try to do 50 paintings in 30 days. 50 FINISHED paintings in 30 days. I have a handful of canvas panels blocked out (for butts, fart, wtf, stfu, etc.) if I finish those after November 1st, I’ll count them.

I also have an idea for a series of friendly gouache monsters on watercolor paper.

This is actually really good timing because I signed up to have a table at the Holiday Art/Craft Fair at my paycheck job which is going to be on December 7th. So this will help ensure I have plenty of art in a variety of sizes/prices ready in time to sell there. I’ll probably put them up in my Etsy shop throughout the month and then just put my shop on vacation mode for 3 days around the Fair at work.

I’ll be posting my progress here, Twitter, and Instagram on the regular. Posts here will be cross posted to Facebook and Twitter automatically. Posts on Instagram will the cross posted to Twitter but I can’t get them to post to Facebook for some reason.

All paintings posted will be available for sale unless otherwise noted. If you don’t want to go through Etsy, just send me a message on any platform except Facebook (because I really dislike Facebook messenger) and we can work out the details.

If you’re doing actual writing for NaNoWriMo and I’m not following your blog (or preferred social media flavor) let me know and I’ll follow and offer lots of encouragement!

We can all totally do this!

Though I’m still mostly okay with failing.

 

The Struggle of Creation

Last week John Scalzi posted a thread on twitter about how difficult it is to write in the current social and political climate. The world is going under; natural disasters across the planet, mass shootings in our backyards, the president is a tangerine colored buffoon who cannot be controlled or managed, and the government is trying to kill everyone who isn’t a rich white man. 

As if being an artist isn’t hard enough under normal circumstances, we have to also contend with the suffering of everyone on a massive scale. It’s hard. It’s really hard. 

Art thrives not because of adversity, but despite it. So I keep going and doing what I can. Slowly. A little at a time. I wonder whether the quality is up to my standards. I wonder if it even matters. I doubt anyone even pays attention to what I’m doing. 

I try to tell myself it does matter. I try to tell myself that even the smallest steps count. I try to remember that art is important. 

Being creative is always a struggle. Some days the struggle is much harder than others. 

New WIPs

I recently acquired some new canvas board panels. I prefer painting on wood panels but they were free, so I decided to not worry about that. They’re on the thin side, so they aren’t suitable for Glitter Fluid Painting, but they are perfectly suited to glittered profanity and sass.

 

Okay. Maybe neither of those are particularly profane or sassy… but they’ll still look fab once the glitter I added dries and I varnish them. 

The only thing I’m struggling with is whether I want to invest in frames to sell with them, glue sawtooth hangers to the backs, or just sell them as is and ready to frame. The backs are gessoed, in either black or white, to match the gesso used on the front. Though the backs aren’t pristine once I’ve finished the painting, but I doubt that matters much. 

Hot Pink Hearts?

Is cutting bright magenta fleece into heart shapes twee? I did it anyway. 

My mom agreed to loan me her sewing machine and my tiny coworker agreed to let me measure her arm, so glitter embellished fleece arm warmers will happen just before or soon after legit fall and/or cold weather hits my state. 

I’ve also got some fleece stripes, stars, circles, a light blue cephalopod with arms, stars, and I’m hoping to do some bats as well. 

Because bats are cool. 

Just Glitter Everything

I’ve been wanting a new wallet for a while. I wasn’t having any luck finding a nice leather wallet at a price I wanted to pay. I couldn’t find a cute wallet with skulls, mermaids, cephalopods, or dragons that fit my needs or aesthetic. 
So I found a plain black rfid blocking “leather” wallet on Amazon for $9 and decided just to buy it. The listing was a little misleading. Parts said “genuine leather,” other parts said “high quality PU leather,” and some reviews talked about the leather smell, but it was $9 so my hopes for genuine leather were not high. 
The zipper is kind of huge and VERY gold, I’d really prefer it was silver, or less dominant on the wallet, but I can’t do anything about that now. 

Since the wallet is decidedly NOT genuine leather, I’ve decided to cover it in glitter. Right now I’ve just got the first coat of black gesso on it. Then I’m going to do some thin coats of glitter and acrylic medium. I haven’t decided what color yet. Then I’m going to put a glitter skulls or a mermaid tail on it. 
Because I really can glitter anything. 😘

Just a couple things for now

I had an idea to do fluid glitter on old cds while I wait to buy more wood panels. Then I had an idea to put fleece or felt on the back and make them into coasters. So I made 8 and glued fleece to the back of 4 of them. I took 2 of them to work and I’ve been using them under my drippy coffee mug and my sweaty water bottle. They don’t work great. They stick to the bottom of my mug and my water bottle. They’re pretty, but the sticking is something I’m having trouble getting past, and I’m just not even remotely comfortable selling them with this issue. So. Oh well. It was an idea that was worth trying. 

I’ve also been thinking about starting a patreon. Maybe doing mini paintings for specific reward levels with monthly themes. Possibly doing exclusive videos of the fluid glitter process. Or perhaps limited postcard prints. I’ve been resisting the idea of doing patreon myself because my art is physical and not digital… but I think it’s doable if there’s interest. 

This painting is available on Etsy! I’m so proud of this painting. I think it’s the best one. I’ve done so far and it turned out BEAUTIFUL! 

Sunday Afternoon Glitterings…

One of my coworkers is getting married in September and she mentioned a few weeks ago that she was thinking about adding some glitter to her wedding shoes. I told her I could probably do that, I’m pretty sure I can glitter just about anything at this point. Last week she brought her shoes in for me to look at and I told her I had several colors of glitter that were probably really close to the color of her shoes. I brought in the jars, we compared colors, picked the closest match, and discussed how much glitter she wants. Not solid glitter on the cork soles… but a couple layers of glitter and acrylic medium to give it some sparkle would be great. 

The pictures show base shoe, 1 layer, and 2 layers of glitter. I think I’m going to do one more layer of glitter then add a final layer of satin varnish. 

Yesterday I decided that I wanted to varnish the 4 leaf clovers I find while walking my dog onto the backs of the Rainbow Glitter Fluid Paintings I’ve been making. Otherwise they just sit around my apt until I lose them, I thought this would be a nice way to pass them on. I varnished one I still have from last summer onto the back of the first painting I’ve sold in my Etsy shop. 💜🍀

I’ve also been thinking of revisiting my idea to make glitter arm bands. I’m pretty sure I have all the materials… I’m just hung up on sizes, I’m not sure how wide to make them. I’ll probably do some testing while I’m on vacation from my day job later this month and see how it goes. 

Birthday Giveaway!

My birthday is later this month so I’m going to giveaway a fluid glitter painting. 

Open to anyone in the US or anywhere the government doesn’t prohibit me to ship to, though I doubt anyone reading this is in one of those countries.

It’s a small 4×4″ fluid glitter painting pictured below, because this will fit in a small flat rate box, international shipping is expensive, yo. 

Colors are various shades of purple with royal blue, silver, pink, and iridescent accents. 

Simply follow @violetgloomart on twitter, RT the designated giveaway tweet, and I’ll draw a winner at 7pm on Friday July 14th.