Posted May 16, 2016 by Kerry McFall

B is for Bachelor’s Buttons, Butterflies, Bark, the color Blue, and Borders!

“Borders”, mixed media by Kerry McFall NFS

Borders are my new thing.  They’re small and compact, they’re useful for so many things (digital quilt edges, sketchbook pages, illustration frames), and they’re non-threatening from an artist’s viewpoint.  Doing an entire page every day in my sketchbook can be daunting, but doing one little rough border design can be quick and simple and still makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something.  I’ve started playing around with these as a way of warming up before I commit to drawing a full page.  For example, the Bachelor Button border was a way to test several shades of blue watercolor paints, and it worked out well enough that I got brave and made an entire painting:

“Bachelor Button”, mixed media by Kerry McFall, prints $25

If I can keep this up, I’ll have an entire library of borders at my disposal for making digital quilt borders and greeting cards.  If I get excited about something new, which given my squirrelly attention span is not unlikely, I’ll still have a few in my hip pocket and several nice sketchbook pages – the trick is to index and file the images so I can find them again.  Someplace obvious, like under “Borders”, duh.  Digital housekeeping, and sketchbook housekeeping, is as critical as physical housekeeping, and just about as much fun – ugh.  But thanks to Roz Stendahl I have developed the discipline to index my sketchbooks, and it’s been worth the effort.  Maybe I’ll do a blog post on that soon…

Speaking of attention span, it occurs to me that this could also be a way to develop graphics that could work well for fabric designs… which the painting below isn’t but fabric was used to help with the background texture, and the title starts with B.  And squirrels do bark, in a chattery kind of way.  Okay, enough with the B’s…  I need to go and paint today’s border.  Maybe something with squirrels…and or tree bark.

,  “Bark”, by Kerry McFall, acrylic on canvas, sold

Posted May 8, Mother’s Day, 2016 by Kerry McFall    I am a fiber artist, a painter, a sketcher, a teacher of “arting”, and a mother.  My son Ben is a mural artist/film afficionado whose Instagram handle is @blankspaceremoval, and my daughter Corey is a designer and costumer whose surf coverup business is www.sharknaked.com.  I’m indulging myself by musing on Mother’s Day about what it’s like to be the artist mother of two artists… and the stepmother of two more artists – Aaron a photographer/web designer in Ireland, and Larsen a film director in Tennessee.

For one thing, while Ben and Corey were growing up, I could never put my hands on a pair of scissors.  Corey and I are left-handed, husband Griff and Ben are right-handed, which further complicated the scissor issue.  Griff got so tired of hearing, “WHERE are the scissors!?”  that for Christmas one year he ordered for each of us a pair of scissors with our name engraved on the blades.  Once Corey began to sew in earnest, she really understood the desperation, and she squirreled away her precious left-handed fabric scissors so that even I had to beg to use them. Some things never change; the only scissors readily available at the moment are Griff’s, and I’m pretty sure they’re in the silverware drawer…

“Look Sharp”, mixed media by Kerry McFall, prints $25

Finding a decent paint brush or a marker was equally challenging.  Sharpies vanished as quickly as dust bunnies piled up in the corners.

The Art Gallery on the refrigerator door was always a riot of color and craziness.  Still is, only now the crayon masterpieces are from an assortment of grandchildren and honorary grandchildren, most of whom are at the age of joyful scribbling with wild abandon.

When we down-sized several years ago, one of the hardest decisions was what “kid art” to keep, and what to recycle.  As they grew older, their art got bigger, and so did mine, and now we have U-Haul storage boxes in the attic filled with gowns and coats and costume bits, and palettes and plywood and canvases in the shed, and shelves spilling over with sketchbooks and quilts and fabric cuts…  such a jumble, but impossible to part with so far.  (We keep fooling ourselves that someday they’ll come and retrieve their stuff!)

As Corey and Ben move deeper into this millenium and adulthood, I marvel at their positive energy and ideas, at what comes out of their hearts and minds.  My own energy waxes and wanes, and I scale back my own projects or work in new media to adjust to the Big Momma of Us All, Mother Nature.  Big heavy wall hangings can no longer be my thing.  Lovely lightweight paintings or collages are more the ticket, as I condense my “studio” into one big shoulder bag.

A lot has changed in the world since I became a mother and an artist, but the phrase “starving artist” is still tossed around casually, as if being poor is to be expected if you take the path of an artist.  The older two sons have morphed the artistic piece of who they are into businesses where they can make a living, which is gratifying.  As for me and Ben and Corey, we’re still working on that, which means that we spend a lot of time and energy on projects that give us “great exposure” but not much money.  We’re stubborn, though, and persistent, and our love of a creative life keeps us going and makes us happy.  We’ll just keep arting along until we finally make it to Rich and Famous.  Hey – It could happen!  Okay – well, what about prosperous and fairly well known?  Works for me!

Posted May 1, 2016 by Kerry McFall

“This wasn’t my idea!”, mixed media by Kerry McFall

As a rule, when I try to sketch a cat, they wait one minute so I can begin to draw their face, then they decide to take care of a little personal hygiene.  Predictably, most of my cat portraits have involved one hind leg in the air or a tail flag hoisted above a retreating patoot.  But I think this may be my solution: give her a starfish toy and get my husband to take a photo, then work from the photo!

This is Sparky, arguably the laziest cat in Corvallis.  She might be part Coon Cat.  Or not.  She is definitely asymmetrical.  Her chubby friend is Patrick, of SpongeBob SquarePants fame, whose one talent is that he sticks out his tongue if you push the button on his back.

Process

The process, apart from the sneaky photo, was the fun part.  I started with light pencil, then some watercolor washes, using a sponge for background texture.  Black ink marker followed by dry brush watercolor and gouache for fur, followed by white ink for whiskers, more watercolor, and a few touches of colored pencil.  My resident critic/pet photographer says I need to do more stripes and detail on her body, but hey – the sun is shining, and when the sun shines in Oregon in May, I feel compelled to get outdoors!