Category Archives: art every day

New Work

November 11, 2022 By in art, art at the speed of life, art every day, artist, original art work, ornaments, painting, pam carriker, portrait, portraits Tags: , , , , , 12 Comments

‘Wishful Thinking’ 11×14 oil on board

My journey into oil painting finally lead me to do a portrait. I’m really loving exploring this medium that I have avoided for most of my art life. I’ve been heads down painting for many weeks and also busy  participating in local gallery shows, pop up art events etc. It’s a different path than the one I was on for so many years, but I’m really loving it.

Close up of dandelion in ‘Wishful Thinking”

I’ve updated my Gallery page with new work. If you see something you’re interested in you can contact me at pamcarriker@gmail.com  I don’t want to open a store or list them for sale because some are in gallery spaces or other venues and I don’t want to create confusion if it gets sold before it’s updated here. All of the work is framed in a gallery style, black wood frame, wired and ready to hang.

‘A Golden Opportunity’ 11×14 oil on board

I’m especially enjoying still life painting. I love using objects from around my home in them to add sentimentality to the work.

“Christmas Past” 6×6 oil on cradled board

Capturing reflections, light and shadow and painting metals and glass are especially intriguing to me.

Drawing the Bath 16×20 oil on masonite SOLD

 

I hope you all are finding inspiration around you to keep your creative life vital and growing.

xo,

Pam

Combining Two Passions

August 8, 2022 By in art, art at the speed of life, art every day, artist, Oil painting, Still Life Painting, yarn bowl Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

So some of you may know that I love to knit as well as creat art. It’s something completely different and so relaxing and I love the feel of amazing yarns. It’s sometimes a battle between the two as to where I spend my time lol. I also recently began a venture into oil painting. I’ll talk more about this later, it’s really been a learning curve!

Setting up a still life to paint from requires some thought and while I’m only 8 paintings in so far, I have been loving painting some of my favorite things around the house which is where I got the inspiration to paint my other passion!

Yarn Bowl 8×10 oils

This is my favorite yarn bowl, yes I have several lol, and the knitting needles my dad found for me several years ago so they are extra special. They are hand carved antiques that are well-worn. I don’t use them but I do display them in a bowl with some yarn balls on my coffee table.

I added a gallery for my oil paintings on my gallery page. I’m loving learning something new and working outside my comfort zone,

Lost and Found

July 24, 2022 By in art at the speed of life, art every day, artist, birds, feathered nest, mixed media art, mixedmedia, original art work, painting, pam carriker, portrait Tags: , , , , , , , 10 Comments

Found 16×24 mixed media acrylics

Finished this piece a few weeks back and it’s in a gallery show right now. The bird was inspired by a picture that a neighbor took, and you could clearly see it had something in its mouth. I have it holding one of the pearl buttons from this woman’s dress and if you look closely you can see the loose threads where it fell from. Hope you are enjoying summer, it’s sure hot in Texas! I will share my oil paintings in a future post. Trying something new and loving it.

Best,

Pam

Pillows

May 15, 2015 By in art, art every day, artist, face, facebook, pam carriker, portraits, zazzle Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

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Well a couple of weeks back I made some pillows on Zazzle using my artwork. They came yesterday and I have to say I’m extremely happy with them!!

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So you know how it goes, you post it on Facebook because that’s where all the fun is happening lol.

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Several people messaged me and asked on my post if they were going to be available to purchase and to be honest I’d not even thought about doing that,

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I just wanted some new pillows for home and thought it would be fun to have some arty ones,

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but I listened and went ahead and opened up a shop and listed my pillows there. I hope you’ll check my  SHOP out:-)

Color Shaper Journal Painting

May 10, 2015 By in art at the speed of life, art every day, art journal, art journaling Tags: , , , , , 7 Comments

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I was messing around in my journal a couple of days ago and wanting to play a little differently I grabbed my Colour Shaper tools to paint this portrait without using brushes. Several people have asked about both the Colour Shapers and the method so I did another quick journal page in my Extra Large Moleskine Sketchbook (11.5 x 16.75″) and took some step out pictures to show the process.

Most important I think to using the Colour Shapers in this way is not to get bogged down by details, stay loose and go with the marks that they make!

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The Colour Shapers are some of my favorite art tools and I keep them handy by my work table on my Raskog cart from IKEA.

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Here are the sizes I like, and note that they come in both firm and soft tips and it’s good to have both as they will work differently with the paint.

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I’m using my Fluid Matt Sheer Acrylics in Mustard Seed, Barely Black and White Washed. You can see that these are very fluid and also carry a high pigment load. You can try any acrylic paint and you will get various results depending on the viscosity of the paint.

I love this color palette as the Mustard Seed and Barely Black mixed together make a really warm gray color.

FullSizeRender_3My model is my Asaro’s Head. This is such a wonderful tool for seeing how light hits on the different planes of the face. Here I just sketched the actual head, but you can use it to also sketch a more realistic face and get some great references to where shading and highlights should go.

FullSizeRender_2Using the larger 1″ and 2″  Colour Shapers, I start to block in the dark areas. Note all of the cool marks the tools leave in the paint-I don’t try to avoid them, this adds to the overall look.

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As I work I wipe off the tool onto the background to start that off. By adding small amounts of White Washed to the gray mix I get various tones of color that I add the planes of the head. Switch to smaller tools as needed.

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You can also wipe a bit of each of the tones you mix on the page somewhere to help document them. I do this a lot in my journal work.

(and yes, that’s a glass of wine in the background-keeps you loose while you paint😉

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Remember to stop! I am not at all going for some finely detailed painting, I want it raw, so remembering to stop is important. In all this took less than hour from sketch to finished painting. Now I’m going to let it dry and then add some journaling to the page. This is a fun journal exercise to help you loosen up and play with shading and tonal values.