Lingshoestudio

"Winfield in the Milo" My art studio is filled with projects to finish.  I love to do so many different, creative things and like many artists, I tend to jump from project to project.   This summer I promised myself I would finish an acrylic painting that has special significance to me.  It is a painting of my paternal Grandfather, Winfield Powell standing in a field of red milo (some folks call this crop sorghum).  My photo reference was an old family,  heirloom, picture in black and white which showed this gentle man standing in an unusually great harvest of this crop.  The milo was nearly as high as his waist. I decided to create a full color painting with the milo shorter so I could add a beautiful, Oklahoma sunset.  I wanted the colors and the light to be vivid. Modern crops are now shorter and denser due to hybrid varieties.  There are also fewer and fewer farmers who grow the old fashioned, red-headed milo.  Long ago I cut a few s...

To start the year with my high school craft classes, I teach a unit on making paper sculptures.  I love demonstrating all the ways I have discovered of manipulating, folding, twisting, curling and changing the shapes of plain, everyday paper. This year I made the word "PAPER" as I demonstrated some of these techniques.  I think the letter 'E' is my favorite and was created by folding little strips of paper similar to quilling. My Paper Sculpture Bulletin Board When I decided to dive back into regularly updating my blog, I knew I wanted to include a lot of my most popular art lessons.  I am often asked for copies of my handouts so I have also included a downloadable PDF of some of the handouts I use during this unit. Feel free to share and change this to suit your needs.  There are also a lot of great, online videos.  Over the years, I have collected quite a few supplies that I provide for students during this unit.  A few years ago, a scrapbooking friend of...

My Dollar Store, Fabric Covered Pumpkins  It's always a great day when I get to do something creative.  Today I covered some Dollar Store, plastic pumpkins with fabric and burlap scraps.  I just used glue stix to butter up the back of the scraps to attach them and then hot glued strips of burlap on top. I made a prototype as a gift earlier this week in my classroom and I decided to attach the fabric using mod Podge and I was so sticky and frustrated, I almost burned the whole thing before I finished.  I also had to varnish the finished piece in order to even out the glue application.  So this first attempt was also pretty shiny. I really prefer the natural fabric texture of today's attempt. Now to see if I can ever watch off all the sticky on my fingers.

"TAP" 6.5" x 9" Mixed Media Drawing on an Antique Dictionary Page While traveling around the country to art shows, I often have customers and patrons ask me for specific themes and images.  It's not unusual to have local dance troupes and performers who are being featured at these event stop by my booth and many have asked that I include more dance themed drawings. This drawing of well-loved tap shoes (my daughter's shoes were my models) is the result of just such a request.  I love the challenge of drawing something that is basically one color, like these black shoes, and finding ways to add lots of color excitement to my subject.  These old shoes don't have the original shine, but they still catch and reflect the colors around them. This original may or may not still be available for purchase but prints can be found on my Etsy shop at  Print of Tap Shoes Drawn on Antique Dictionary

I have really neglected my blog and instead, have spent most of my time using other social media to share my artistic adventures and artwork.  I hope to do a better job of writing and sharing.  I've blamed my neglect primarily on the cumbersome platform, Blogger, that supports my blog and the fact that Google, for whatever reason, has not updated it's platform for years and no longer supports digital blogging.  But regardless, I'm back and want to share what I'm up to.