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Reflecting on 2018

‘Tis the season of thanksgiving and introspection. This is somehow supposed to be eked out amongst the scheduled maelstrom of visiting family, holiday parties, shopping, exploding kitchens, bottles of booze and piles of wrapping paper. It’s about survival, so it’s no surprise that you may look up and realize that it’s already time to switch that last number on the calendar–again–and you’re still dating checks for 2017. In reflecting on 2018, I have realized that the last few holiday seasons have marked some pretty chaotic moments in my life.

Reflecting

Three years ago at Christmas, my husband and I were packing up our stuff to move back to the U.S. after more than 6 years living abroad. We said goodbye to unofficial family, friends and a city we had grown to love. We moved back in with my parents while job-hunting. In the end we were extremely fortunate. We were both hired within five weeks at the same university and moved seven hours away from our families.

Two years ago, I was pregnant but completely unaware. I never had morning sickness during my pregnancy. What I had was the emotional rollercoaster ride of a pubescent boy. I fluctuated between depression and rage for the most part. (Halfway through my pregnancy I hulked out over a spilled milkshake and punched a hole through my trash can lid.) The tip-off that we may be expecting was a truly horrendous case of food poisoning I had on the drive home after the holidays. We took our first pregnancy test on January 4th, which was negative. Gotta follow those instructions people.

Last Christmas I had a new baby, new house and no job. I interviewed for a new position in late October and finally heard back on December 22nd that I could start to work on Jan 2nd. I was relieved and very thankful for the job, but also anxious over going back to work as a very new mom. Google does not have many answers on how to broach the topic of breast-feeding pump breaks with a new boss. Then on December 26th, with family visiting, I had my 3rd—and worst—gallbladder attack. A visit to the doctor on December 29th confirmed I needed surgery. I drastically changed my diet hoping to forestall surgery for a few months (or forever). I lasted about a month. The diet mostly stuck and combined with burned calories from breastfeeding, I lost 1/3 of my body weight in less than a year.

Anticipating

This Christmas I have so much to be grateful for. I have a brand-new appreciation for my health. I’ve enjoyed spending this year with my son and our small family has settled into a comfortably flexible rhythm. I am so thankful for a job that I enjoy where I have made new friends. I’ve been able to do more art this year and have enjoyed challenging myself. I even won a local prize. And on my last day of work before the holidays, I was pleased to find out that I’ll be starting a new role in my department in January. It may not have always seemed like it, but 2018 was a good year and I feel ready for 2019.

Reflecting on 2018 was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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Snapfish Review (by a picky design mama)

I have a ton of photos. Thousands. Tens of thousands actually. Travel photos, wedding photos, family photos—you name it, I’ve got them all stored away on a couple of external hard drives. Wonderful if you don’t want anyone other than facebook to see them.

Enter my son. While my partner is perfectly happy to leave photos sitting in the cloud or on his phone, I am not. But not having printed any photos since the advent of digital, I had no clue where to get them done. I had no idea that you can get them from Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens, not to mention the plethora of online options. Now enter my inability to make a decision without a looming deadline or gun to my head.

I did research. Lots of research. But deep down, I may be picky, but I’m also lazy. I set an internal deadline of having my son’s photos printed by his first birthday. It’s either first birthday or fifth birthday if I know myself—and fifth birthday would be thousands of photos. (Not to mention the mommy guilt of explaining to everyone why I don’t have any photos of my kid on the walls.) So at the end of the day I chose Snapfish. Snapfish had good reviews and more importantly, a sale going on. Your first 100 photos are free and since I had 296, that sounded great to me. Plus a summer sale got my next 100 photos for .01 each. My only issue is that somehow they were re-organized in the online system so they were not printed in date order. That meant more time putting them in my photo album. It may be something fixable if one has the time to check out the issue. (I did not.)

Of course shipping busted me quite a bit. But I do like the range of delivery options. Of course my internal clock and visiting parents meant I needed them as fast as I could get them. I choose the rushest of rush options, included all the sale codes I could use and altogether paid less than $30.00 USD for nearly 300 photos. Not bad.

Now I sat back and waited for them to arrive. I used their tracking options, which let me know where my package was on route, but I didn’t need to bother because you get an email when your package has been delivered. It took two days. I love the internet. That’s faster than the days of sending your film off to Timbucktu and waiting a week or more.

I opened the package with excitement and trepidation. It was packaged well into groups of 100. Most of my photos were taken with my iPhone. All the time I thought I’d have posing my infant into super-awesome photos never materialized, so I know many of them are blurry, dark, and not color-corrected. I did my best in Lightroom, but with the sale deadline being that day, I gave up and just ordered them thinking bad photos are better than no photos. (Pinterest and Instagram have a lot to answer for).

TaDa!

They don’t look half bad. Ignoring things like composition of course. The issues I have are all with the original images. The two clearer images in the second row are ones I took with my Canon dSLR so the color is better on those. I’m sure a true photographer could pick them apart or offer comparisons with better companies, but I have to say start to finish, it was an easy process and I got decent product. Now I can work on year 2.

Snapfish Review (by a picky design mama) was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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I regularly doodle on my project sheets during meetings at work. Some of them turn out pretty cool and I rework them into final pieces. It’s also interesting for me to see the progression over time, or what I was thinking about that week.

  Weekly Doodles was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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Wallering vs Wallowing

Backstory: My nearly year old son co-sleeps with me and my partner. We did not plan for this to happen, but we actually get more sleep that way. Or at least, we used to. Now our sleep is interspersed with kicks and jabs, occasional head-butts, and the odd attempt to roll off completely. I woke up last saturday with a single word running through my head: wallering. I remembered all the times my parents used that word. Stop wallering and watch the movie. You’re wallering on me. You just wallering?

I never thought about the actual word—wallowing: to lie about/take pleasure in/bask/to indulge. Wallering is a southernism of the word wallow, although google says it’s also a mid-western word. Whatever. So to me, they are two different words. To wallow, in my mind, has a negative connotation—wallow in self-pity. I probably picked it up reading melodramatic romance novels. Or it could infer luxurious laziness but still also in the negative—like an over the top bubble bath in a pent-house suite when you should be doing something productive. Wallering, on the other hand, is a phrase meaning restless movement, usually on a couch with a loved one. A uncomfortable snuggle really.

But on Saturday, the two words merged in my mind. I wallowed in my son’s wallering.

Wallering vs Wallowing was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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Juried Show Award Winner

The Bath

In July I entered the Statesboro Regional Art Association Annual Juried Show. I had thought it was the first time I submitted for a juried show, but remembered days later that I’d entered the Red Clay Survey about 15 years ago and was rejected. Anyway, I was really excited when both of my pieces were accepted to enter and over the moon when my oil painting was chosen for the first place Roxie Remley SRAA Award! I’ve never shown the painting, but it was the first one I had been happy with, even years after I finished it. I had a lot of fun painting the cloth and skin tones. I was told that the juror said it reminded her of the Spanish Old Masters and remarked upon the “velvet eyes”. What a fantastic compliment and one I don’t really think I deserve, but I’ll treasure the sentiment anyway.

Oil on canvas 30×40″

Nebulous

Nebulous is an experimental work. I took a photo at the Louvre of a famous sculpture “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss” which has been kicking around my harddrive for a few years. I’ve printed it on cards and as prints at craft fairs but wanted to have some more fun with it. I added a background of NASA shots of the Carina nebula and then hand embellished the piece with rose gold foil in the shapes of hexagons. Then it was off to the framers to find a frame that popped. The final piece is one I’d be happy to keep if it doesn’t sell.

Foil-Embellished Print

Juried Show Award Winner was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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Supplies and Demand

There are some things only other artists appreciate. Things like paper tooth and why it’s SO important to find your favorite ink pen. You know, the one that writes smoothly and evenly and feels like a dream in your hand. Even though you have 20 other ink pens in your hand, you need that ONE you’re looking for. Artists have quite a bit of the pack-rat gene when it comes to art supplies. Half-used sketch-books, paint tubes with lids glued in place, off-cut bits of paper and used exact-o blades come to mind. You never know when you may find a use for a dull blade or the last drop of Alizaron Crimson. You won’t, but what if you DO?

I have a closet full of art supplies that I accrued over the years and most of them have been in storage for 6 of those years. I’ve been sketching here and there using cheap colored pencils pilfered from the closet and have been thinking of upgrading to a nicer set of colored pencils. A trip to Hobby Lobby ended with my coming home with several new supplies, but no colored pencils of course. This is due to my being a cheapskate and Hobby Lobby’s policy of 40% off any one item. This means that I space out my purchases.

Recently I delved into my disordered box of random pencils, pens and colored pencils. Imagine my delight to discover that some of those “cheap” colored pencils were in fact a nearly complete basic set of prismacolors. I don’t recall buying them — it must have been at least 10 years ago. They feel so much better than my crappy cheap ones. The color goes on more smoothly and is more saturated. They are definitely worth the money that I paid 10 years ago! This of course makes me wonder what other treasures I have hiding in there — a project for another day.

Supplies and Demand was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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Let Your Dreams Set Sail

I took some fun photos of my son and liked the look on his face. So I took it into photoshop for a play-about and am very happy with the results.

Stock images are from Freepik.

Let Your Dreams Set Sail was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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Fluid Mermaid

I drew this mermaid from a Mermay2018 prompt of “fluid”. I’m very proud of how she turned out. Blue sketch done first, refined a bit with a mechanical pencil. I plan to finish her digitally one day. Some day…sigh.

  Fluid Mermaid was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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Vintage Flower Girls - Rose White

My 3rd installment of the Vintage Flower Girls digital collage series is complete. I especially enjoyed working on her hair. First isolating the tendrils, and second find a color with pop. Her see-through skirts were also a fun challenge. And her legs were dirty with aging from the newspaper, so it was challenging to remove the spots just enough, but not too much. Does anyone else see a young Queen Victoria?

These items and more are available at my Redbubble page, just follow the link.

Vintage Flower Girls – Rose White was originally published on Christy McNutt Art & Photography

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Vintage Flower Girls - Forget Me Not

This is the second piece in my Vintage Flower Girl digital collage series. While Forget Me Nots are blue, I’m not sure these flowers are Forget Me Nots. It’s just that something about her just made me call her that. Maybe because one of the birds was originally carrying messages in its beak, so I started associating her with love notes.

The process

I spent a lot of time correcting the original color and adding some more of my own to make her really pop. I am happier with how she turned out than with Rose Petal.

These items and more are available at my Redbubble page, just follow the link.

Vintage Flower Girls – Forget Me Not was originally published on Christy McNutt Art & Photography

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Vintage Flower Girls - Rose Petal

I’ve been working on a new series which I mentally refer to as my Vintage Flower Girls. I loved a cartoon as a kid called Rose Petal (think Strawberry Shortcake but with flowers), so when I stumbled across a 1908 newspaper sheet at a craft fair, I immediately thought of that cartoon. She’s been colored in photoshop and combined into this digital collage of other vintage pieces. I love working with these old images, even though it doesn’t really match any of my other work. I wish I could be one of those artists who have a set style that’s recognizable, but I haven’t managed it yet.

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Vintage Flower Girls – Rose Petal was originally published on Christy McNutt Art & Photography

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13 Circles Horse Logo

The twitter logo is designed using 13 circles, and Dorota Pankowska has done some amazing designs for other animals using the same 13 circle idea. I felt challenged to do my own, so here it is: a pony!

  13 Circles Horse Logo was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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Candy Minimal photos

The county fair came to town recently, around the same time I finally discovered Candy Minimal on Instagram, so I thought I’d give it a go. I’m really pleased with how some of them turned out, although they may not truly be minimal. I love the colors though. My big disappointment was I didn’t take my camera, so they were all shot on the iPhone.

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”3″ gal_title=”candy minimal”]

Candy Minimal photos was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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Bewitched Madmen Mashup

My friend Tom and I had a conversation about Bewitched where we discussed how Darren was an ad man, which lead us to wonder how a 60s sitcom of MadMen would look.

Bewitched Madmen Mashup was originally published on Christy McNutt Art

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Inktober day 31 - Lila Skellington

Tonight’s final inktober drawing is my own creation, the daughter of Jack and Sally from Nightmare before Christmas. She was a lot of fun to draw, and I tried a few different versions of her before I settled on the one I liked the best.

So this was my very first Inktober, and I’m happy that I tried it this year. I only managed 18 this time, for various reasons, but it’s so much more than I usually do in a month. There are some nice ideas in these that I plan to pursue, which I’m very happy about.

Inktober day 31 – Lila Skellington was originally published on Christy McNutt Art