My Dream Studio

My 10yo was telling me what he would put in his dream bedroom the other day and he asked what I would want in my dream bedroom. I told him that my needs are really simple for my bedroom: an incredibly comfy bed with room to snuggle and some decent light during the day. Perhaps a little reading nook too.

But what I’d REALLY have fun with would be creating a custom studio space for my art and design. He asked me what that would look like so we went onto Pinterest to play.

Of course, in this dream scenario, we have no budget. I told him I’d love a space that’s separate from my house so I could have a tiny feeling of “going” to work.

This structure with glass panels for two of the main walls looked especially wonderful with how much natural light I’d be able to get. Although, I don’t know how secure a room like this would be and I may not love having to get there when it’s snowing. I would also want to make sure it’s climate-controlled.

I would want a space that’s large enough so there’s a whole wall of desk space and a large table in the middle for picture framing, kinda like these:

This made me swoon a bit.

^^^ This image with the chairs made me think that a reading nook might be nice. Loving the under-the-stairs storage solutions.

Like THIS for a reading nook. ^^^ This low sofa-daybed-looking thing looks downright dreamy.

Really digging the long desk space.

Ultimately, I would want a designated space for all of the different artsy things I do. I’d want a designated space for my desktop computer, a space for my sewing machine, a space for my mat cutter, a space for my easel (if I ever paint on canvases again), and a space dedicated to watercolor painting. I’d prefer for my mat cutter to live on the edge of a large table that’s in the middle of the room to make picture framing easier.

Some creative storage for flat paintings and paper would be nice along with vertical storage for mat boards, foam boards, canvases, and more. I’d prefer drawers versus shelves for the flat storage to prefent dust from collecting.

I would love a big, sturdy table in the middle to hold my mat cutter, rolls of craft paper, picture framing supplies, tapes, and various other tools.

I also want a Fletcher 3000 Multi Material Cutter. It mounts on the wall and can cut mat board, foam board, glass, and plexiglass. It’s amazing how much easier it is to cut things to size when they are vertical versus trying to cut these items on the floor. It’s only $1800, a girl can dream.

Perhaps the most important of all would be the kind of light this dream studio space can get. I’d ideally love large, north-facing windows to get the most optimal light for most of each day. I’d love if these dream windows are still pretty easy to clean too.

This amazing studio with fantastic use of vertical space reminded me: I would love for this dream studio to have a big, industrial sink for the fabric dyeing projects I love to do but don’t really have the space for right now.

Large, deep, and most importantly, easy to clean.

Of course this space would be heavily climate-controlled and have its own toilet. Cuz, yeah.

What would you have in your dream studio space?

Wolfpack Running Club Custom Trucker

It has been a true pleasure to build the visual brand of Wolfpack Running Club. You can see lots of the stuff I’ve created for them here. Last year I made this painting of Lone Peak in watercolor, ink, and gouache. You can see photos of the painting and a link to a timelapse video here. All of Wolfpack’s trainings and most meets meets take place around Lone Peak; which is one of the prominent peaks along the Wasatch Front. Even most of Wolfpack’s trail runs are around its base, so it was only fitting that it we put Lone Peak somewhere on our merch.

The folks at Boco Gear did an amazing job putting my artwork on their running trucker hats. They turned out SO good! If you’re ever looking to have custom hats made, check them out. You can order as few as 50 at a time (which is rare).

The first order we placed was for 50 hats. The imposter syndrome in me was terrified that no one would buy one. They would think the artwork was shit and our small club would be stuck trying to sell these hats. Wolfpack is a nonprofit, so they are hoping to make a few bucks from these hats and not selling them not cheap. To my surprise (and relief), we sold out of them and placed a second order a few months later. Whew!

It also helps that the hats themselves are really nice quality and comfortable to wear when running. I purposely wanted hats that could be worn by both adults and kids. The velcro tab in the back makes them easy to adjust to little heads. They aren’t the common, stiff trucker hats that are often too big for anyone who has a smaller-than-average head. Check out the Reel I posted on Wolfpack’s Instagram about why we put Lone Peak on our merch here.

I adore my hat and wear it for most of the summer.

Irvington High School Custom Hats

I had the pleasure of creating a watercolor painting for the sole purpose of putting it on a trucker hat for Irvington High School’s track & field and cross country teams in Fremont, California. The most recognizable peak in Fremont is Mission Peak. It’s barely a foothill by my Utah standards at a mere 2,516 feet in elevation, but it’s by far the most well-known by residents in the area. Since I grew up in neighboring Newark, California, I know this peak well.

I don’t live in the area anymore, so I had to use images from Google as reference and we went with a viewpoint as close to the high school’s as possible. The color of the hills themselves varies on the time of year. In spring, the hills are a vibrant green, depending on how much rain they got in the winter. By late summer, the hills turn to a harvest gold color, and become a huge fire hazard! I have always thought they are pretty in either colors, but I know some hate the gold, calling it brown instead.

This was such a joy to paint and I LOVE how the hats turned out. I designed the IHS logo that we added. Irvington’s track and XC coach had the hats printed with Boco Gear in Colorado. He actually had two hats made; one with the painting and another that was solely a running hat in white with just the viking logo that I designed earlier this year. They both turned out awesome.

I know they are planning to use the hats for a little bit of fundraising, so I am excited to see what kind of money they bring to their track & field program this coming spring.

You can watch a timelapse video of my process with this painting here. This view of Mission Peak is close to what can be seen from Irvington High School.

I really had a hard time getting my iPhone camera to capture the correct lighting when doing this painting. It looks pretty washed out in the video. One one snippet, I turned off my overhead light and just used the natural light in my office, but I couldn’t keep that up as I worked on this well into the night. Maybe there’s a light setting on my phone that I can mess with?

Patrick, the track and XC coach at Irvington HS had a second hat made with the logo I created. This one is a running hat and he went with a simple topographic map design that Boco Gear already had. It’s such a comfortable and lightweight hat. And it looks rad with the Irvington logo.

This was such a fun project! I cannot wait to see what other paintings I can make to be turned into hats!

Art in the Barn 2024

This weekend I participated again in Art in the Barn hosted by the Draper Visual Arts Foundation. It’s a fun, local show that I’ve done for three years now. I always opt to have a tent outside of the barn at Draper City Park so I can set up my own booth. Every year I consider setting in physically IN the barn, but it gets very crowded in there and it’s just not my jam.

I got to chat with some artists who I met last year and meet a few new faces too. The DVAF brought in a food truck each afternoon and there was plans to have live music playing on Saturday afternoon too. I got to chat with Stasia, a violinist who played at last year’s event. It was awesome chatting with Jacque Tietjen with High Adventure Photography and meeting Brooke Ochs, a contemporary folk artist.

This year, Utah’s summer weather got the best of us though.

On Friday, it was breezy, a little gusty, and a few scattered moments of rain. It was honestly no biggie. My tent held up just fine and my displays are heavy wood and pegboard, so nothing budged. I just had to move things around a little bit when it rained for 10 minutes at a time.

I assumed the weather kept lots of people away. There really weren’t a lot of people, but I knew that in previous years, Friday was typically slower than Saturday.

When I signed up for this show three years ago, I had wicked anxiety about it being super windy and stuff blowing over, so my husband and I built my stuff to withstand those potential winds.

Saturday proved to be different.

There was no rain, but by about 2pm, the winds were gusting horribly. I tried to stay confident that my tent and displays could handle it. I even started painting a little bit. But when one of my 7-foot-tall displays blew over and I could see the wind trying to pull tent stakes out of the ground, I cut my losses and called it quits. Thankfully, nothing was broken.

I did manage to sell a few prints and I gave away a bunch of the Delicate Arch postcards that I had made. I got to bond with a couple of awesome artists too who were my neighbors over the fun weather. Unfortunately, both of my kids had soccer games this weekend, so they couldn’t come and hang out with me and let me browse the rest of the show. So I totally missed getting to see the artwork of my friend’s daughter.

Overall, it was disappointing to have to close up early. Saturday afternoon and evening usually brings the most people. But I also understand that we can’t control the weather. Given that this was my 3rd year at this show and this was the first time the weather played chicken with us, I count myself lucky.

And let’s be honest… a little wind and rain is still WAY better than 100°!

10-Day Painting Challenge

I stumbled upon a 10-day painting challenge on Instagram co-hosted by Canvas; the company where I got my awesome desk lamp that lets me easily make time lapse videos for my socials and decided to sign up.

The challenge was hosted by Blue Pine Arts; a boutique watercolor supply company based in India, included a private Facebook group (over 600 people!) that I joined where we all shared our paintings each day and how we felt about them and the challenge. I’ve seen challenges like this a lot over the years, but 10 days felt much more doable than a 30-day or longer challenge.

When I saw this challenge, I realized that I hadn’t painted anything since March. I needed a kick in the butt to make more art, and this was it.

Now, what to paint… often the biggest challenge.

Day 1:

I started with absolutely NO idea what I wanted to paint. Thanks to Facebook memories reminding me of an awesome camping trip I took to Kents Lake in central Utah many years ago, I decided to paint that lake from a photo I took.

Honestly, I don’t like this painting at all. I felt rusty. I felt like my hands didn’t know what to do, what colors to choose, how to make the brushes do what I wanted. I kind of gritted my teeth to get it to a finished spot so I could move on. HERE you can watch the Reel I made for this one.

Day 2:

I opted to paint something well within my comfort zone so I could have at least one painting I knew I would be happy with. I painted a galaxy sky on a 4x6 piece of paper with some happy trees at the bottom. I limited palette to only phthalo blue, imperial purple, indigo, and white gouache for the stars. I kinda love it. You can watch a Reel of this painting HERE.

Day 3:

I tried something new on day 3. Upon seeing a handful of other paintings in the FB group I opted to try some misty mountains and trees. I have always struggled with getting wet-on-wet to do exactly what I want. Usually, I have blamed it on the dry Utah climate. One artist explained how she soaked her paper in a bathtub for a few minutes before starting her painting and all I could think of was, “why have I never tried that?!?!”

I submerged a piece of 300lb watercolor paper in a bin and let it sit for 5-ish minutes and went to town with indigo to just see what happened. After that first wash dried, I went in with varying shades of dark greens and blues to add trees and I really love how it turned out. This one was a win. You can watch the process for this painting HERE.

Day 4:

Continuing on this trend, I soaked Day 4’s paper in water too with the goal to attempt an aurora borealis. There are a few artists on SkillShare who’ve done aurora tutorials and I have never been able to get the paint to behave the same way. I honestly hate this painting and I think I have a ways to go to figure out this technique, but at least I learned a few things.

First, soaking the paper for 10 minutes helped a ton, but part of it still dried before i finished the first wash. In the future, I’m gonna try to soak the paper for longer AND paint faster.

Second, I need to choose my colors more wisely. These washes granulated a LOT more than I wanted. Granulation = that grainy separation in pigment. I think I’m good to keep the indigo, but I need to choose different blues and purples that don’t granulate as much. I know some artists love granulation. I do when I’m painting things like rocks, stone, or sand. But I don’t like it for this.

Day 4 was a learning experience, and I have no video of this because my phone filled up!!

Day 5:

I started Day 5 with the goal to paint Horseshoe Bend in Arizona from a photo I took a few years ago. Then my family was invited to spend a day at a lake with friends, so that won. I got it sketched out and some colors blocked onto the paper and left for the day.

Also on Day 5, I submerged a couple of 4x6 pieces of paper in water for 10 minutes and threw some indigo or dark green on them to see what would happen. I had zero plans for what they would be, just decided to let the art gods take the wheel.

Day 6:

I finished the painting of Horseshoe Bend. It was a little challenging to be loose with some of the texture of the sandstone and to not get nitpicky on the details. I did a lot of squinting and stepping away from this one so I didn’t overthink it. Overall, I love how it turned out and it keeps the somewhat “illustrative” style that I love to do when I paint red rock. HERE you can watch a Reel of this painting process.

Day 7:

For Day 7, I took one of the little papers I submerged in water on Day 5 and threw on some purples and pinks to see what evolved; thinking I’d do another galaxy. I ended up with what looked like pretty stormy clouds, so I added a horizon and some simple waves and voila! a moody seascape! HERE you can watch the reel I made for this one. I’m think I need to learn how to make some different waves. In hindsight, this moody sky deserved some more turbulent waves.

Day 8:

For Day 8, I started a larger painting of a part of Kanarra Falls in southern Utah. I was too ambitious with my time on this one. I got it started, but then had to take my kids to soccer and taekwondo. So Day 8 was a work-in-progress.

Day 9:

My family decided to spend the day (a Sunday) in the Uinta Mountains fishing, relaxing, and escaping the heat at home. We spent the day at Pass Lake, which is one of the many lakes along the Mirror Lake Scenic Byway in Utah. My husband and my boys did some fishing (my husband actually did catching). And I painted this little scene. It’s always fun to paint outside when the breeze makes the paint dry super fast. I was also grateful for that breeze keeping the mosquitoes away.

HERE you can watch a Reel of what I pack with in my Art Toolkit when I’m painting en plein air and the supplies I bring. Also, HERE is a reel of me painting this one.

Day 10 (and 11):

For Day 10 I finished the painting of a slot canyon in Kanarra Falls. Well, it took longer and spilled into Day 11 too, but I’m happy with how it turned out. I used watercolor, ink, and gouache.

This painting is an example of one I will probably tweak in Photoshop after scanning it. I want to lighten and adjust the saturation in a few spots to help with depth. Even when the painting part is done, I still consider a few unfinished until I can play with them on my computer. This is why I don't sell very many original paintings (maybe for the right price). We'll see if I can get it to a place where I am happy with it. HERE you can watch a Reel of this painting process.

All in all I am SO happy that I signed up for this painting challenge. I needed to pull myself out of a rut and I needed to relearn how to MAKE time for myself and my painting.