Category Archives: Artistry

Getting Cinderella Ready For the Ball

It had been a long time since I had been able to create any new artwork, so I made it a priority in April to create a piece of artwork just for fun and all for me. My daughter loves Disney movies and we watch many together. It’s fun to re-watch many of the films that inspired me to become an artist.

One film that I loved re-watching was Cinderella. The artwork and animation are beautiful. I’m especially in love with the colors and style. Cinderella’s dress transformation might just be true animated magic. I love many other adaptations as well including, but not limited to, the Rodger’s and Hammerstein Cinderella TV musicals (1965 and 1997), EverAfter, and Gail Carson Levine’s young adult novel Ella Enchanted.

I decided to create my interpretation of Cinderella’s dress transformation. In addition to wanting to work for Disney, I also dreamed of being a children’s book illustrator and wanted to replicate these loves and ambitions through my art. I’m currently reading a book on children’s book illustration (a dream is to someday create my own illustrated book) and wanted to make a finished piece that might look like the page from a book. I hoped to create a sense of scene and story in one image as well as experimenting a little bit with style and technique.

My inspirations were all of the film versions of Cinderella I love and the artwork of Disney concept artist Mary Blair who helped create the look of the animated Cinderella.

I started with a really REALLY rough thumbnail using the ArtRage app on my phone. I had a vision, and wanted to quickly block it out with some colors I thought might work together. Afterwards, I created a pencil sketch, transferred the sketch to some smooth watercolor paper and began to block in the background using wet-on-wet watercolors and placing saran wrap over the paint while it was still wet. This technique create a fun texture, one of my favorite ways to play with backgrounds in my pieces.

I had envisioned a roughly painted tulle skirt created using thick gouache, but when I struggled to get the effect I was looking for, I had to switch tactics. I took a gamble of the dress by using a combination of wet-on-wet technique with lots and lots of salt to create a crystallized effect. Thankfully, it turned out even more magical than I had anticipated. When I started adding fine details on top of the dress, it really came to life and had a dimensional quality to it that I loved.

Cinderella’s face and the pumpkin were painted using gouache. I wanted to include the pumpkin and mice to foretell what else Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother would transform to get her ready for the ball. I had originally started with a solid black silhouette for the pumpkin and mice, but felt it looked too flat when compared to all of the textures used in the background. The addition of blue and purple gouache helped tie it into the rest of the piece.

I am very happy with how this piece turned out. I hope to create a Snow White themed piece in the near future.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes video depicting my process on Cinderella:

Wedding Gift Portraits

It’s been awhile since I have posted, so I wanted to share some portraits that I painted as wedding gift commissions. Each is done in watercolor and gouache.

Pianos About Town – The Finished Results

I finished my piano for the Fort Collins Pianos About Town project last week. I put in a full day on Sunday, July 12th and wrapped up the small details on Monday, July 13th. The piano was approved and has since been moved to a new location. I’ve heard that it’s currently sitting at “Jazz Alley” by the Food Co-op and the Mitchell building. I plan on dropping by sometime to take a picture of it in the new spot!

There was a big sense of accomplishment when the last details were added as well as a big wave of relief. I had painted a four wall mural in my daughter’s nursery before this piano project and I feel like this piano took a lot more work. Part of it is you have to fill up all of the space on the piano, which takes a long time, but I think the other part is interacting with the public and working with the elements while you paint. The best part about getting the piano finished was knowing that I would be able to have my weekends back to spend time with my husband and daughter. I had missed them so much during the three weeks of this project.

I feel very thankful to have been selected by the city of Fort Collins to share my art with the public! It was definitely a worthwhile experience – one I hope to have the opportunity to do again in the future.

New Product Photography

I had been planning on doing new product photography for the greeting cards in my Etsy shop to bring them up to the next level. It’s taken a while to do because I’ve been busy working my other jobs, but I finally finished the first phase of pictures.

Each greeting card was placed on a large piece of decorative and elegant scrapbook paper. I used silk flowers, feathers, jewelry, and other small items to help draw out the colors in the artwork or hint at the theme of the piece. I still want to take more pictures featuring the cards in frames since the cards can also be framed as prints.

A side-by-side comparison of the old product shots and the new.

Here’s a screen shot of my Etsy shop homepage. I had updated about half of the greeting cards at the time of this picture, and it amazes me how much more my eye is drawn to the cards that have the new product photography shots. There’s a new level of sophistication and professionalism that wasn’t quite there before:

Here’s a couple more examples of the new and improved greeting card pictures:

Pianos About Town – Week 2

I was excited to return back to work on my piano for the Pianos About Town project. Last weekend, I had blocked out all of the colors for the sky, grass and tree, painted all of the red and yellow stripes, and I had sketched out all of the animals (first in chalk and then in pencil). It took longer than I had anticipated, so I was looking forward to making some real progress this week. There were a couple of things that I did differently this week:

I showed up early

I almost finished this side. I ran out of steam and decided to “call it a day” and return to it later with fresh eyes.

The first week, I was stopping by the Oak Street Plaza around 11:30am everyday to work on the piano. They were long days and I felt pretty drained upon finishing, so I decided to head in earlier in the morning. I made it a habit to arrive between 8-9am mostly to beat the heat, but also to enjoy some quiet work time before Old Town wakes up.

I’m happy to say, that I made a lot of progress and finished all of the goals I set for myself this weekend: finish painting the piano front, top, and sides (well, I almost finished painting BOTH sides).

You can get a lot of work out of the way when you don’t have to work around piano players. People love playing the pianos, and I love listening to them play. There are a lot of talented musicians in our community, young and old. I wanted to get the front and top of the piano finished so that way they could enjoy playing the piano without me getting in the way of their music making.

I thought of my work as “ministry”

I was talking to my friend, Emily, who is a wonderful role model to me. She had stopped by with her daughter to visit me paint last week, and later on we got a chance to reconnect with our daughters at the park. I was telling her the progress on my piano and how some days were slow because people would stop and talk to me, sometimes disrupting my work flow. I was talking about how hard it was to listen and work at the same time. She was saying that I could think of my work as its own form of ministry.

There are a lot of people in Fort Collins, and when you’re painting on a regular basis, you meet the “regulars” who stop by the plaza a lot. You also meet people who need someone to talk to and tell their story to. This week, I talked to a homeless man while I worked for probably close to 2 hrs. He was a kind gentleman, and I felt glad that I could be a listening ear for him. He kept asking, “Am I bothering you?” to which I would reply, “No. You can talk and I’ll listen, but I have to be working on my art at the same time.”

I also talked to a little girl for about 2 hrs on Sunday. We talked about her love of books, why we thought the berries on the nearby tree were ripe or not, watercolors, bicycling, sewing, and how it takes a long time to paint a piano. She probably spent a good 40 minutes peeling off the dried paint from my palette and she loved it. I hope I can raise my daughter as inquisitive and thoughtful as her.

I thought about how lucky I am to be an artist

In the plaza, there are a lot of kids and they’ll ask me, “Are you an artist?” and I’ll say, “Yes, I am. It’s the best job in the world. I basically get paid to color.” I say it with a little bit of jest, but I’m thankful that I actually do get to be privileged enough to be bestowed that job title. I had always known I wanted to be an artist growing up, and now that I’m a “grown up” I’ve realized that you’re not always given your dream job, so I definitely feel blessed that I’m offered opportunities to teach, create and sell artwork as a career. I try not to take it for granted and I have to work hard to find opportunities to continue to make art my career.

My co-worker and friend, Jenna, once said that “art isn’t just a career, it’s a lifestyle” and it’s so soooo true. In church, we’re always talking about time and talent – basically, we are all blessed with different gifts and we need to find ways to share them with others. I am thankful to God that He blessed me with a love and talent for art and that He has helped me find opportunities, like the Pianos About Town project, to share that gift with the community. I’m thankful to my husband, who is also an artist, who supports my art making.

I’m looking forward to finishing this piano next weekend so that the community has an inspiring piano to make beautiful music on.

5 Things You Learn When Painting a Piano

This summer, I was lucky to have my concept art selected so that I could participate in the city of Fort Collins Pianos About Town program. The Pianos About Town program gives local artists a chance to paint a piano in public. The finished pianos are rotated around Fort Collins as a way to create opportunities for musical spontaneity. The people of Fort Collins love looking at the different designs as well as playing on the pianos. I had always wanted to have the opportunity to have my artwork featured on a piano and wanted to come up with a design that would be family friendly and visually attractive.

A couple of months ago, I created a piano concept design that I submitted to the city. My design was selected and this last week was the first of three weeks that I am given to paint my piano.

The front and top design of the piano.

The back and side designs of my piano.

I’ve experienced a lot during my first five days being a piano artist and I thought I would share with you what I have learned.

1. The pianos are new

My piano before I started to paint it.

The first thing that people ask you when you’re working on the Pianos About Town project is why you’re painting over a piano that has already been painted. Like most of the community, I had been under the impression that the pianos were re-painted every season. However, I learned in all five seasons that none of the pianos have needed to be painted over. Citizens donate new (actually “used”) pianos for the artists to paint. I was given a piano that had been sanded and a bucket of approved paint primer. The new pianos are all painted in the same spot (in the Oak Street Plaza by the fountains), so people get confused when they see a new artist painting a different design on a piano. Multiple times a day, I tell the community that all of the pianos from past seasons are either floating around the city or in storage at the Mitchell building.

2. It takes a long time to paint

I’ve had experience painting murals on the walls of people’s homes. The walls of my daughter’s nursery are filled with a landscape of children’s book characters, so I more or less thought painting a piano would be the same. I work quickly, so I assumed I would be over halfway done by the end of my fifth day.

The artist is required to paint every surface of the piano, so that would include the underside of the keyboard cover, the underside of the piano, and many other nooks and crannies that you wouldn’t necessarily think of. The entire piano needed to be covered with white primer before I was able to start adding the base colors for my sky, grass, and yellow/red stripes. The stripes were the most tedious part of the painting process because they needed to be clean and crisp. I had used painter’s tape to block out the stripes, but the paint bled through the tape. That meant I had to carefully paint the remaining stripes by hand to guarantee crisp lines. Which leads me to the next thing I learned….

3. People freak out when they see masking tape

The masked off stripes before “the incident.”

The end of the first day, I spent an hour measuring and putting down painter’s tape across the keyboard cover of the piano. I covered the piano with the tarp that comes with it, and left for the day. When I returned the next morning, the tarp was off and almost all of the tape had been torn off because someone had opened up the cover and played the piano. It took every ounce of restraint I had not to scream and throw my paint on the ground. Thankfully, there was enough tape still on the piano that I was able to re-tape the lines without re-measuring. It took me less than an hour to redo, but it was still time that I could have been painting the actual stripes.

As I was re-taping the piano, a concerned lady walked up to me and asked why I was taping the piano shut. She was worried that I was keeping citizens from playing the piano. I assured her that I was there to paint the piano to make it eye-catching for the community and that the tape was meant to mask off the stripes for my design. After that, I tried to paint the lines as quickly as possible. Because of the bleeding through the tape, I had to paint almost all of the lines by hand which took me a little more than two hours to do. Note to self: in the future, don’t incorporate stripes into your design.

4. You meet a lot of people

One of the things I have always loved about Fort Collins is how nice the people are here. Everyone is very friendly and you meet a lot of these friendly citizens when you work on a piano. When I was still in the priming stages of the piano, I would have people non-ironically telling me, “It’s looking good so far!” (Really? It’s just white!) Most of the people who come up and talk to me are residents and are familiar with the program, but I’ve had a lot of vacationers talk to me. I had no idea how many tourists visit Fort Collins.

During the fifth day, I had to work around two piano players. The first gentleman was playing original songs and blues/swing covers trying to sell CDs. We talked a little about his music and he told me that he plays at all of the pianos that are “about town.” When he was wrapping up, one of his friends came over and spent the next 1.5 hrs of my shift telling me his life story while I attempted to listen and work at the same time. Near the end of my shift, another gentleman asked to play the piano, sang opera and played “Rhapsody in Blue.” It’s neat meeting so many different people and now I understand why they give you three weeks to paint the piano – you’re talking to the community just about as much as you are actually painting the piano!

5. I miss my daughter

My mother-in-law and Holly stopped by the visit me on my second day.

I’m an artist, but I’m also a mom. I would call myself a stay-at-home mom, but I’m blessed with the opportunity to work on my own art at home as well as work as an art instructor at Pinot’s Palette. Like my job at Pinot’s Palette, the Pianos About Town job has been flexible, but I had to ask my in-laws to help watch my daughter, Holly, for the first five days. My days are always focused around my baby girl, so it was strange not to have her around. I’m very fortunate to have awesome in-laws (who live in town) who offer to help babysit. I knew Holly was in good hands, but I definitely missed her. When I would get home, I would feel tired from the day’s work and she would be off to bed shortly after. Two of the days I worked on the piano were also days that I taught night classes at Pinot’s Palette, so I really missed out on spending time with her. I’m looking forward to being back to our normal routine.

So, even though I’ve made a lot of progress, I still have a long way to go. The base colors and almost all of the stripes are finished (I ran out of yellow paint, so I still need to paint the stripes on the inside of the piano keyboard cover). I painted in the base color of the tree and drew out all of the animals throughout the piano. I used chalk to figure out their placement before outlining the chalk with pencil. They will be ready to fill in with paint during my next shift.

I’m planning on resuming my progress on Friday, July 3rd. The plan is to arrive early in the morning so that I will hopefully have a couple of quiet hours working before the plaza becomes bustling with people. I’ll keep you posted on my progress!

You know you’re an artist when…

You know you’re an artist when you’re hard on yourself… when you’re often in the frame of mind that your work isn’t “good enough”… when you talk yourself out of starting or finishing projects because you’re afraid to make mistakes or that it won’t live up to your expectations.

I think that all people go through phases of self doubt, but I feel like I notice it the most when I’m making art. As an artist, I go through periods of time where I feel like I’m on a roll… creativity seems to flow from my watercolor brushes… every pencil stroke feels meaningful… I can create lots of work in a short amount of time. However, I can’t always feel inspired or always make meaningful work. When I have the time to work on projects, there are times when it feels like I can’t draw a single thing. I think this is when the doubt starts to sink in. That doubt starts making you compare your artwork to the work of others, it tells you that you’ll never “make it” no matter how hard you work, and that art is a waste of time and is only meant for the elite few.

So what do you do when you begin to feel this way?

The first thing I do is cry. I’m mostly joking. I personally think that if you’re feeling strong emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, etc), it’s healthy to allow yourself to experience those emotions rather than bottling them up. If I’m feeling like a failure, I need to take a moment to acknowledge those feelings of sadness, even though it may hurt. I talk to my husband about my insecurities and he does his best to listen, offers tender words and gives back rubs. If I’m still feeling sad, I treat myself to something (coffee, a quick shopping trip, Netflix binge, etc). This “pity present” tells me that it’s okay to feel down, but ultimately, it’s time to move on and stop being a baby.

Next, I remind myself that I’m a good artist. I can’t always be an exceptional artist, but most of the time I’m definitely a good artist. I have to remind myself that people have bought my artwork (“People don’t pay for things they don’t want”) and that, more importantly, art is something that I love (“Being an artist is a lifestyle”).

Finally, I make an action plan. Do I need to take a complete break from art for a couple of days/weeks? Do I need to continue to be in the habit of creating and accept the fact that what I finish might not be good? Do I need to change my subject matter? Medium?

While we’re on the topic, I’ll share my current action plan: If I want to continue to grow my skills as an artist, I need to put aside the time to practice. If I have time to work on some art, but don’t feel inspired to create something meaningful, I will set a timer for 15 minutes and sketch. When the timer goes off, I need to stop and pat myself on the back for the effort regardless of whether or not it looks good.

I Love You to the Moon — and Back

When Holly was a little bit younger, before she could really sit by herself or play with toys, her favorite thing to do with me was read children’s books. One of her favorite books to read with me was, “Guess How Much I Love You” written by Sam McBratney and illustrated by Anita Jeram. It’s about two rabbits who are trying to explain how much they love each other. At the end of the book, Nutbrown Hare says, “I love you right up to the moon — and back.”

The phrase is written on nursery walls, jewelry, and has maybe been used so much that it’s now a cliche, but it’s a simple way of expressing how much I love my daughter. I would describe my love for Holly as being infinite.

I wanted to create a piece of artwork that showed the loved I have for my daughter. It had been on my mind for months, but it wasn’t until last weekend that inspiration struck. I went to visit my mentor student’s high school IB art show and got to see some student projects. High school students experiment and are unpretentious about the way they use art to show their emotions. Seeing their work helped inspire me.

A couple years ago, my husband and I had created a watercolor “tunnel book” as a wedding gift for our dear friends. I was interested in re-visiting that style of painting. Though my finished piece didn’t end up being a tunnel book, the layered pieces help give it a sense of space and set a scene.

My first tunnel book project: a wedding present for our friends.

My dad loves going to garage sales and over the years he has picked up a large variety of frames for me to use for my artwork. I finally had to tell him to stop picking up frames because I couldn’t keep up! One of the frames he picked up was perfect for this project, so I gessoed it and painted over it with silver acrylic paint.

The painted garage sale frame with the watercolor background.

On three separate pieces of watercolor paper, I used wet-on-wet watercolor techniques to add color throughout the pages. I added salt, dots of alcohol, and used saran wrap to create the texture and effects. I drew out all of the pieces using pencil and touched them up with extra watercolor washes, pencil, and gel pen. After I finished the pieces, I cut everything out with an x-acto knife and scissors.

The stars were made out of strips of origami paper. I threaded a needle with metallic thread and added a string to each star. The stars were taped to the backs of the different cut-out pieces. I also cut out a piece of the silver paper and glued it into Holly’s hands so it would look like she was holding a star.

I folded small pieces of watercolor paper to different sizes and glued them to the back of my pieces to help them “pop” out.

The finished piece is now hanging up in the hallway outside of Holly’s room. I’m looking forward to creating another piece done in a similar style. Any suggestions for future projects?

Why it’s important to create work you love…

When I was in college, I was very involved in our college competitive swing dancing team. I was dancing about 4-5 times a week, so it only made sense that the artwork I created in college was inspired by dance and movement. I’m very proud of the artwork that I created during my time in college and my professors encouraged me to push myself and to explore what “drawing” really was.

“Single Ladies.” A charcoal motion piece I worked on during college.

After college, I worked as a middle school art teacher in Greeley. I won’t go into too many details about my teaching experience, but because of the stress and the workload, I didn’t have much of a social life and I didn’t have any time to create art. These factors, and others that I won’t go into at this time, started to create a sort of void in my life. I thought to myself, “Wasn’t the whole reason I became a teacher to create and encourage others to create art?” I had imagined teaching as an extension of the creating that I had been doing up until that point, but teaching was draining me of my creativity and any energy that I had left to do anything productive.

Upon leaving the world of teaching, I had a lot more time to create artwork. In fact, I had so much time that I actually didn’t know what to create. It was as if I had taken a year off of creating any artwork for personal use and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I tried to create some dance inspired artwork, but because I was no longer dancing, I didn’t have the same connection to the new pieces I created. I wanted to create artwork, but I didn’t know what I was passionate about anymore.

While I tried to figure out my new style, I displayed some of my old artwork at the local coffee shop and was fortunate enough to sell some work and earn some commissions. I tried to come up with ideas for paintings that I thought customers would want to buy. I filled up Pinterest inspiration boards with pictures of flowers and landscapes… nothing inspired… just images that I thought a prospective customer might think, “That would be a nice piece to help decorate my wall.”

Not surprisingly, the pieces that I displayed the next month, the artwork I had created for my imaginary customers, did not sell. Because I wasn’t involved with my work on a personal level, people weren’t making a personal connection with my art. It’s not enough to create a technically skilled piece of artwork. I’ve learned that in order for a piece of artwork to be successful, it needs to create an emotional response from the viewer.

My New Year’s resolution was to draw everyday in my sketchbook. My sketches didn’t start off pretty. In fact, it was hard to come up with ideas, so I ended up looking up photos of celebrities or animated characters that I could try to replicate. I drew crude ballpoint pen drawings of my succulent plants and tea strainers. Slowly, my drawing skills started to return, and so did my creativity. I gave myself “challenges” like, “30 days of pen drawings,” “30 days of watercolor paintings,” and “30 days of mixed media.” I rediscovered my love of watercolors and slowly started to see my new style start to emerge.

A watercolor sketch from my “30 Days of Watercolor” sketchbook challenge.

Seeking more inspiration, I decided to take an online class on visual storytelling through Skillshare, an online site where you can learn everything from culinary arts, graphic design, coding, business and fashion illustration from a variety of instructors. The class I took was taught by a Disney animator and during the two weeks I was enrolled in the class, we were asked to create a work of art that told a story in one image as well as create a storyboard depicting a scene from Greek Minotaur story.

I consider the first piece that I created for the class, “Balancing Act,” to be the piece that kicked off my “new style.” The piece was inspired by a sketch I had done during one of my sketchbook challenges. I had painted a tightrope walker walking on a string of barbwire. I had painted it over a journal entry I had written expressing the anxiety and doubt I had been feeling at the time. Using the new knowledge I had gained from my Skillshare class, I re-created the image using a more dynamic perspective. I felt proud of what I had accomplished, and with some encouraging comments from the instructor, I knew for sure that I was onto something. More importantly, it was the first piece that I had done in a long time where I found myself thinking, “I’m proud of this.” (For the record, it’s still one of my favorite pieces)

“Balancing Act.” The piece I created in my Skillshare class on visual storytelling.

Before, when I was trying to find my new style and discover who I was through hundreds of sketchbook drawings, I often found myself getting discouraged. I would see the work of artists that I admired and I would feel technically inadequate. I could never get my work to be photorealistic enough or have loose enough brushstrokes. I teach painting at a local paint and sip studio and always tell our customers, “Everyone’s paintings will look different, and that’s okay. All of our brushstrokes are different just like how our handwriting is unique to us. The process is just as important as the product.” I realized I hadn’t been taking my own advice, and embraced the strengths that I did have. I felt pretty darn good about my watercolor paintings, and it didn’t matter if my figures weren’t photorealistic or loose and abstract. My paintings were based on my personal experiences and I was making deep, therapeutic connections with every brushstroke. I wasn’t making art with a specific audience in mind – I was creating artwork for my personal enjoyment. Was my work pushing the boundaries of what “art” and “drawing” could be? No, but it didn’t matter because I loved what I was creating.

When I displayed my new paintings at a local coffee shop, I got a very positive response. I sold work, yes, but more importantly, I got a lot of feedback from people expressing how they had made a personal connection with my work. When you create artwork that you love, people know. The reason the paintings I had created with the customer in mind didn’t sell was because they weren’t made with the same depth of feeling as my other work. Maybe that sounds like touchy-feely emotional garbage, but I think it’s true. We need all kinds of art in the world. We need artists who can create technically and scientifically accurate paintings of things like an eye, but we also need artists who can look into that same eye and see someone’s soul. For me personally, the latter has been more rewarding.

Amy Heyse

Catholic Artist