Silly Dog Art Glass

Online Selling

I feel myself extremely fortunate that I have very sweet and loyal fans.  At my most recent art show in Alpine, CA, I had the pleasure of having some very enthusiastic ladies come to seek me out.

One woman had seen a piece that a friend of hers had purchased at the same show last year.  She was a funny and interesting lady who ended up buying 5 pieces!  She is a bird watcher as well as an adrenaline junky and we had fun talking about the motorcycle she is planning to buy.

Another lady I had met just a couple of months ago at the Circle of Art show in Borrego Springs.  She was there before I was and patiently waited while we lifted the sides of the EZ Up to let her see all of the new goodies I had brought to the show.  She ended up purchasing 2 pieces and custom ordering 2 more.

I just had a conversation about sales this morning with a friend.  You see, I don't offer pieces for sale on my website because since everything is one of a kind, it is very difficult to keep up inventory.  I would have to be updating frequently, or hold items at home that I want to sell online.  However, I have found that while people frequently look at my website, they very infrequently purchase anything from there - even my Etsy site.  Since I am out at shows about every other month or more, it just makes sense to bring all of the inventory to each show.  That way those "in-person" customers can see the full range of what I have available.  On Etsy, I tend to list items that I make multiples of (like my plant markers and greeting cards) but I have recently listed some of my other art pieces on there as well.  The problem with this is that many of those pieces are also for sale at the co-op gallery in Lake Arrowhead and if an item sells in the gallery, I might not be aware of it for up to a week.  Which means, if someone also purchases it online, I am in big trouble - only one item, two sales.  I am having to go and look at my items in the gallery much more frequently and hope that scenario does not happen.

I am wondering how other people may deal with this kind of thing.  I know that many artists are able to list and sell prints of their paintings online and then keep their originals for galleries and shows.  However, all I can do are some cards, not prints due to the nature of my art - it would take away from the fact that my art is on glass, not paper or canvas.  Suggestions or ideas are more than welcome!!

I leave you with photos of the custom orders just completed--

"Acorn Nut" - Acorn Woodpecker

"Waterborne"  Great Blue Heron

Before and After

I don't know if I ever showed you what my paints look like before and after they are fired.  I think I may have mentioned that I never really know exactly what things will look like after firing, but it's hard to imagine something like that without visual aids.

So, I actually took some before and after shots of the paperweights and desktop stands that I painted a week or so ago.  

You can see the difference in depth, darkness and brightness.  And the head/neck color is pretty drastically different.  As I mix paints from a powder with water I can see, in general, what the finished color will be.  Then after it is painted on, it dries to the dull color.  On larger pieces that makes it a little more difficult, because one color will dry as I am adding other colors and you don't really get to see what they are going to look like together.  

I have learned to mostly play it by instinct and experience and go with what feels right at the time. I wish I had a before photo of one of my most recent pieces.  The paint went on a nice red-brown.  But when I mixed it, I mixed in some yellow to mellow it out and the finished color is a wishy-washy brown.  It's a good thing it "works" on the piece, because it was a larger piece and a bit more work.  I don't think anyone will know the difference except me, of course.

So, there you have it -- another interesting aspect of working with glass and heat.  It's like a box of chocolates - You never know what you're gonna get!

 

Reduce -- Reuse -- Recycle --

Oh my, I just realized I haven't posted here since February!  Where does the time go.  Rest assured, I have been very busy.

It started with a bang-up sales weekend at the Circle of Art in Borrego Springs.  We had such a great time meeting people and selling my art.  We even saw several people that live near us in the mountains!  That was a treat.  I nearly sold out of everything - very exciting!

So, since then I have been working hard on lots of new pieces and even have come up with some new "functional" art designs.  I will post about those in a few days, but if you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen a sneak peak or two.

I have finished some new Glass Whimsies - Like these --

"Under the Umbrella Tree"

"Small Town Livin'"

 

And some new necklaces - Like these --

"Catsanova"

 

"Floral Pause"

And there is so much more to do!  

So...now to the reason behind the title of this post.  We have some track lights in our kitchen.  The globes are made of glass and are about 4" round and 10" long.  

Well, over the years, some of these fixtures have blown up on us.  I mean, the electrical portions have sparked and burned out.  We held onto the glass pieces because, well, I am a glass artist.  Surely there was a way I could use this glass in some creative way. 

Well, turns out my husband got a little tired of them sitting on his workbench, but he did have a fabulous way to use them! 

Planters!  They are buried about half way down in the ground and since they have a hole in the bottom, they are perfect for a little splash of annual color in the bed next to our front door.  

Welcome, Spring!!

 

 

Protection and Prosperity

My giant totem is finished and installed!!!

I had the idea for a large totem a couple of years ago.  I imagined a giant, 20 foot, totem erected in the middle of my town.  I have not figured out, yet, how to get the county to go for that idea.  Then, last summer I started making some smaller, table top size totems.  You can see one of them in a blog post here.  Mark had some fabulous ideas on how to finish them and between us, we have created some great pieces. Then, in the fall, he said- we need a big totem for our house.  I hemmed and hawed thinking it would be such an enormous project.

But, in October we went up to lumber yard and chose our log.  We looked at a lot of wood, but settled on a piece that had been sitting, drying flat in a stack of logs for a while.  It is about 14" diameter and 9 feet tall.  We had the yard cut a flat side which turned out to be about 11" across on one side of the log.  We got it home and there it sat in our side yard for a couple of month.  Fall time is very busy with shows for me so I didn't have the time to work on it, but we made an outline pattern so that when my shows were done, I could start drawing the animals.

In mid December I finally had time to start.  I chose the animals and started drawing and then just dove in and cut the glass.  It took 2 firings per piece and a lot of time in painting and frit work to finish each section.  The coyote is cut in 3 parts, there is 1 part for each of the skunk and the raccon, and the eagle has the body section, the head section and then 8 seperate pieces of glass for each wing.  Plus there are 4 divider sections between the animals and below the coyote. I worked on it pretty solid and finally finished all of the glass pieces a couple of weeks ago.

The weather has been cooperating fairly well this year with small snow storms in between long sections of warmer weather.  I was able to glue the glass onto the wood pole during a bout of 50 degree weather.  That is still fairly cold for my adhesive, but we set it out in the sun during the day and let is set for about 10 days to ensure curing. The head and wings are mounted on custom cut 1/4" plexiglass.  We mounted the hardware to the plexi and then glued the glass to the plexi and brought them into the house to cure.

The animals on this totem are a coyote holding a fish which symbolizes prosperity, a raccoon holding a pinecone which symbolizes curiosity, a skunk holding an acorn with symbolizes protection and a big, bold eagle which symbolizes creativity.  Each of these animals was chosen because they are very common around our home in the San Bernardino mountains and they impart feelings that I wanted associated with our home.

I am so happy with the finished product.  And the fact that installation went so smoothly.  This was my first attempt at anything so large and it is only installed at my home, but I am still so proud of myself and my husband for what we accomplished.

Here are some photos of the process of installation and the final result.

"Protection and Prosperity Totem" 2013 copyright, Cheryl Chapman
Finished size - 10 ft tall, Wingspan of 5 ft wide. 

Incompatible

Glass is a funny thing.  One piece can look just like another - flat, clear, same thickness - and they may still be as different as a cat and a cow.  It's all in the "Coefficient Of Expansion" or COE.  The majority of glass artists who are firing (fusing) their glass in a kiln are the happy recipients of years of trial and error by artists and glass companies who painstakingly developed ranges of glass with the same COE. 

I personally use a line of glass made by Spectrum Glass Co. and another by Uroboros Glass Co. that all have the COE number of 96.  Now, having the same COE means that this glass will expand and contract in the heating and cooling processes of the kiln at the same rate (or close enough to not cause stress on the glass - assuming the artist takes the proper precautions with their time and temperature rates).

The line of glass paints that I use has a very wide range of compatibility due to the fact that it is so finely ground that it can move more freely as the glass expands and contracts.  However - I have found it's breaking point.  Literally.

I am always coming up with new ideas to make miniature glass paintings to be used in jewelry pieces.  The challenge is that I would like to make the glass round or oval, but cutting those pieces is more difficult and making them the exact shape and size to fit into a pre-made metal bezel is super difficult.  That is because when the glass heats and cools it generally gets smaller and I have yet to perfect the knowledge of what that size difference will be.

I found a company that sells small domed glass pieces that are meant to be used as covers over miniature paper pictures for jewelry.  I thought "Aha".  I could paint on the flat sides of those and then mount them in the bezel settings.  However, these domed glass pieces are not made of "tested compatible" glass and are actually very hard glass compared to that which is usually used in fusing.

I chose 4 pieces and successfully painted and fired the lining and shading stages of my black work. I was thrilled.  Then, I added the paint colors.  Huge failure.  The COE is too far off to do my usual method of painting.  The paint was too thick.

4 Failures of Compatibility:

The sparkling effect you see is the crazing or cracking where the paint and glass meet.  Almost looks pretty, but it's definitely not right.

In this last image, you can actually see where a piece of the painted glass chipped off of the glass piece.

So, back to the drawing board - I knew that the first two paint steps worked just fine, but they use thinner layers of paint.  I tried another piece and fired the lining and shading again with no issues, then mixed up some paint with my clove oil (I usually use water for this step) and then painted the colors on in thin layers.  I crossed my fingers and into the kiln it went again.

This, apparently, is the way to go.  The colors are brilliant and there is no crazing between the paint and glass.  Yay!  

"The Power of Three"

This one is mounted in an antiqued silver bezel with a 24" chain.  The antiqueing process brought out some copper color in the metal which is just the right touch for this painted scene.  It's available in my Etsy store now and there will be more to come.

 

 

 

Freedom

So, for 2013 I have started to go back to allowing myself a little more freedom with my drawings and paintings.  I will probably always be a fairly "literal" artist in that I don't "do" abstract art.  I can appreciate it and love the flow and feel of it, but am a more restrained artist myself.

But for the past couple of years I have been focusing on drawing birds and animals in a mostly lifelike manner.  Trying to get the colors right and focusing on the animal itself.  This year I am going to explore my own interpretations a little bit more and see what I can come up with. 

I still like to add in all of the detail, but I think it will be more in a fanciful and determined way.  My first batch of pieces (besides the large totem I am still working on) have come out of the kiln and been mounted and titled.  You can see that I have taken liberties with the colors and have been working on creating an atmosphere with each little piece by expounding on the backgrounds and settings that each bird is in.

"Ground Cover"

"Blue"

"Extended"

"About Town"  Business Card Holder

We will see where this takes me.  I will probably still do some realistic birds to please the audience (and stay in practice) but I am really liking the freedom of color, pose, shape, etc you see in these pieces.

Coyote Down

Last fall I purchased an 8 foot log with about a 14" diameter from a lumber yard and had them saw one side of it flat.  The idea was a huge glass totem pole for our yard.

Well, the time has finally come - spare time to start working on this awesome project. Over the holidays I drew the design and last week started to cut the glass and work on the firings.  I have reverted back to my first way of painting and coloring that I adapted from Richard LaLonde.  That is, I used a squeeze tube of black Glassline paints to do an outline, then fill in the outline with frit.  In this process there is no shading.  That means the depth is more two dimensional, but the colors really pop. 

That is exactly what I wanted - really bright, pops of color on this totem.  This will truly be my largest piece to date and I am hoping it will be magnificent.  I chose to use animals for this totem that frequent our home.  There is a coyote, a raccoon, a skunk and an eagle on top.

Each section of the totem is painted, fritted and fired seperately and then will be layed together on the wood when the weather warms up.  I just pulled the third section of the coyote out of the kiln this morning and just had to lay it down to check it out!

The background is my very busy braided rug, but you get the idea, I hope.

There are three sections of glass here and the total coyote is about 12" wide and 40" tall.  You can kind of see the breaks - one just below his "hands" and one just below his jaw line. 

Here is a picture after just the first section was complete and laying on top of the colored pattern.

I had to make a run up to my supplier about an hour and a half away yesterday to get more frit for this totem and other projects.  So now I will be off and running.  The raccoon and the skunk are done in one piece each, so the progress will seem a bit quicker until I get to the eagle on top.  The eagle has a body section, a head and two large spread wings.  

Miniature Workshop

I have told you before about the great co-op gallery I belong to in Lake Arrowhead.  I don't think I have mentioned the wonderful artists that belong to it.  One of those folks is Jon Olson, a very accomplished painter who specializes in miniatures.  He does shows and gallery displays all over the world and is a fun and interesting person.  His wife, Natalie is equally fun.  So, when they announced that they were offering a free miniature painting workshop I jumped at the chance.

Although I don't have any formal painting experience and don't paint in the "normal" way on paper or canvas, I think I held my own.  I was a bit slower than the others so only got 2 paintings out of 3 completed, but I am pretty happy with the technique and the results.

We started with 3 canvases that are 2 x 3" of different kinds of paper and coatings and chose our reference materials.  He wanted us to try out different substrates to see what we preferred.  My favorite was the first one that I finished on Yupo paper.  It is very smooth and shiny and I am told the paint will end up scraping off if it is not allowed to dry and is sealed properly. 

I have never used oil paints, so chose to try my hand at them today and really loved the color vibrancy and feel of the paint.

The first step was to draw the sketch of what we were going to paint and then using a dark umber color (acrylic) we painted in the oulines and shadows of the piece.

I

I then dove into the oil paints and just started going to town.  The whole technique is to use the initial shadowing as a base to control the lights and darks.  So you paint in nice thin transparent layers of paint and build up color as you go.  It's fun to see the painting take shape as you add to it.

There are many things I would change or do better now that I have a little practice, but I learned quite a bit and had fun doing it.  Thank you Jon and Natalie!!

It's a jungle out there....

And it's also a jungle here in my studio!  I have been busy getting ready for my upcoming show tomorrow in Altadena at Christmas Tree Lane.  People gather for hot chocolate, coffee and to see the annual lighting of the beautiful trees along one section of road in Altadena.

The arts and crafts booths are all set up in the parking lot of the Altadena Library and while it is outdoors, there is a feeling of warmth and coziness all around.

I have been busy creating some animal pieces to display and sell --

"Endearing"  Young raccoon

"Mates" Barn Owls Box

"On Top"

"Regal" Bald Eagle

"Ursus"  Brown Bear

 

Collaboration

I belong to a wonderful co-op gallery in Lake Arrowhead.  There are close to 50 artists in the gallery and it is a really fun place to be.

One of the other artists, John Grden, is a wood turner who makes pens, bottle stoppers, nut crackers, etc.  He called me last week or so and said he had an idea.  He had made some bottle stoppers and they had a nice flat spot on them and he thought my glass would be nice mounted on them.  So I picked up the 4 stoppers and did some drawings.  

They are quite small - the biggest piece is only about 2" in diameter.  I wanted to stick with some of my past ideas that have worked well, so went with a couple of trees, a sweet little house and a little singing bird.  

We will see how it goes - they will make fantastic holiday gifts!