Cat and Rat, 16″x20″ (Unfinished)

I’m leaving tomorrow for Philadelphia to do a week-long artist residency at the Philadelphia Art Hotel. My hope is to take my creatures BIG! I’m leaving my computer at home. See you in a week!

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    H a p p y   T h a n k s g i v i n g ! !

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The Art Unraveled 2010 site went live yesterday, and I’m teaching three classes! I hope to see some of you there!

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 • evening class
Cereal Box Paper Dolls - New! 

Thursday, August 5th, 2010 • all day class
Watercolor Transfer Paintings – Expanded class! 

Friday, August 5th, 2010 – evening class
Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists 

Here is a detail from another Drawing Lab book illo… can’t show EVERYTHING, or it wouldn’t be a surprise!

How are you today? I am busy and happy. After we sold our house, we waited for the “oh no” or the “oh crap” feelings… would we feel we had made a mistake? So far, no; we are just relieved and excited for the change. We feel charmed, even. 

This has been an interesting year. My artwork output has not been consistent at all… partly due to the book and partly due to the impending move… and I’m feeling like I am really ready to concentrate on a new body of work in 2010! This goal will get a little start in less than two weeks time as I travel to Philadelphia for my first artist residency at the Philadelphia Art Hotel. I’m planning to try and take my creatures series BIG!

What do you have in store for 2010?

That’s Wes up there, the face you can see. Photo taken by my husband at League a few weeks ago… they won! Last week the Salida Spartans also won STATE (cross country, 3A)… even though Wes didn’t run in that event, he was there, cheering on his teammates and proud to be part of a winning team. 

We were disappointed last summer when our house didn’t sell in time for us to move at the beginning of the school year, but good things resulted nevertheless… the best being that Wes got to be part of this wonderful team for a season. We will miss them!

Our remaining time in Salida will go quickly. I am busy tying up business loose ends before Thanksgiving, then will be away for two weeks (one week in Philly; one in Seattle to look for a house to rent). Then, whirlwind packing and Christmas and a cross-country drive somewhere in there… We are excited and happy… and grateful.

One change we are planning to make in Seattle is to rent a studio space downtown, rather than work from home. Working from home has its advantages, but can be isolating. I’m looking forward to being around people again!

If you live in the northwest and would like to be on my mailing list (studio sale announcements, artwalk reminders, workshop notifications, etc.), let me know and I will put you on my Seattle Studio List! (email me at carla@carlasonheim.com)

I’m working this weekend finalizing the last ten percent of the book art… the above illo created with a Derwent Inktense pencil (Deep Indigo)… when you draw it looks like a pencil, but then you wet it and it smears very nicely… I bought a handful of these pencils last weekend and I am loving them!

Thank you for all of the nice comments re: our house selling. We are thrilled over here!

I am still fighting to make my deadlines and am now fighting a cold. Ugh.

On the up side, three parties have looked at our house this week!!! 

In other news: Natalie needs a flea collar, it was 70 degrees here yesterday with snow still on the ground, my house is as clean as it ever will be again (or cleaner, but that’s really not saying very much), Steve comes home today after 10 days away, and my friend Sherrie York gave me a nice book plug on her blog… thanks Sherrie!

Once I’m caught up I will be posting some of the drawing exercises in the book here. Bye for now!

I was fortunate to be able to attend Journalfest as a student last week. It was so fun! The first class I took was from Anahata Katkin, and here is some of the work I did in her class:

It was fun to mess around with collage and gel medium, and very fun to see Anahata create her lovely work. 

The next day I took a class from Orly Avineri. It was a process class where we talked about the attachments in our life… here is some of the journal work from that day:

Orly was wise and wonderful and I truly enjoyed spending the day with her. 

The third day I took a class with Theo Ellsworth:

He had us   S L O W   D O W N   to a snail’s pace, and I really appreciated the lesson from that day so much: Good Things Take Time! This class was also super special because sitting next to me the whole day was my son Wes (14)!

I came home to another major deadline hurdle which explains my non-blogging self.

Have a great Halloween, everyone! Be well.