On Choosing Titles for Art

I have not given this acrylic painting a name. That fact made me realize choosing titles for my artwork is not one of my strong suits. I tend to be obvious: "Crow," "Peacock," "Girl with Braids." Thank goodness the girl wore braids...

My artist-friends are so clever. Look at Nancy's titles: "Hot and Humid," "Converging Thoughts," and "Secret Places." Geez! I wish I could think of original, interesting titles. Perhaps a thesaurus would be helpful.

About the art. I've wanted to paint on a gesso panel for a long time, and I really enjoyed the process! No bumpy canvas to deal with. The paint glided on like butter. Layers resisted new layers if I wanted them to. They obeyed. It was magical, so different from printmaking, where you can't completely control your end product and each print pulled from the same plate has its own personality.

But I'm feeling nervous again, too many interests, not enough time. Besides working on gessoed panels, I've been craving my pastels lately. And today I'm starting a new project with linocuts. Looks like it's time to prioritize.

Don't have a cow! Have two.

This is a very small (5" x 5") acrylic painting. I love backlighting and have tons of photographs of backlit scenes.

I finally uploaded some items to my Etsy store today, just a few sets of note cards and this painting. I know I should be more diligent about keeping the "store" stocked.
Shoulda woulda coulda, right?

Sunburst Pasture, acrylic on canvas, 5"x5", for sale here.

Channeling Mary Cassat?

Nearly Bedtime, 6"x4", drypoint engraving on paper

Mary Cassat was an American artist who lived in Paris in the late 19th century. She was a member of the Impressionists, a small group of now-famous artists who started a unique painting style in the late 1800's. Mary Cassat favored images of women in her art, often mothers with children. As I was engraving the drypoint plate for this print, my artist-friend BDP sneaked a peek and commented on the Cassat-like subject matter. Cassat was a huge influence on me when I first began painting with pastels. And Cassat was influenced by Japanese printmakers. Now I appreciate and understand that influence more than ever. It seems a natural progression from pastel painting to printmaking.

The people in the image are my sister-in-law and her first child, from a photograph I took only a couple of years ago.

This kind of drypoint was made from using a sharp pencil-shaped tool to scratch the image into a Lexan plate, then wiping the plate with ink and printing it onto damp paper. The damp paper loosens the paper's fibers and allows the paper to pick up the ink from the crevices in the plate as it goes through the etching press.