Mega Update: New Watercolor paintings, Artwalk photos, henna dread details

So i have some catching up to do seeing that i have not posted anything since the 20th!
First off i wanted to share some watercolor painting i did over the weekend which are all now available for sale in our etsy shop :


Faery ah Glow
4" x 6"
original watercolor painting by Chelsea Rose
On sale for $60. Check out the sale listing HERE.


Harpy in Moonlight
4" x 6"
original watercolor painting by Chelsea Rose
On sale for $60. Check out the sale listing HERE.


Fish of Perception
4" x 6"
original watercolor painting by Chelsea Rose
On sale for $60. Check out the sale listing HERE.


Conversation with a Pixie
4"x6"
Original watercolor painting by Chelsea Rose
On extra sale for $50. See the sale listing HERE.

And some snapshots danny took of me working on these:

as you can see i took over the dining room table with my watercolor supplies!


Honestly i had been itching to play with watercolor ever since i sold one of my originals- talk about inspiration and encouragement!

In other news- we must now backtrack to Thursday the 26th which was the Last Thursday Artwalk on Alberta st for August:

This was our booth set up. As always we were selling original art, silkscreen prints, tie dye and more.

I painted my face up in hopes to entice some souls to have their own faces/bodies painted by me for a few bucks:

(photo by Bert Steele )
...and so it did attract quite a few moms and their kids to have their faces painted:

and all was well and super fun until the unthinkable happened....Wells Fargo set up a table to "sign up accounts" right next to us!!! I was truly outraged by this and confronted them about it. I pretty much said that i was very uncomfortable with their presence at what is supposed to be a community based independent artwork festival. I hope i made my disgust known enough for them to think twice about setting up again. This may be a sign that its the beginning of the end for the Alberta arts festivals but i am determined to not be too disheartened. We will see how it goes for September's last Thursday art walk.

...Oh and for those who are wondering why my dreads are suddenly red- i colored it with Henna( all natural plant based hair coloring!)
The process was pretty messy and looked something like this:

but i had fun making the mess as always and the henna was so soothing and healing for my scalp.
The color change was pretty dramatic as you can see- but i love it! Change is good.

Danny has been super busy finsing these huge screens for a Buddha silkscreen/marbling project he has in the works:

As you can see- he is all done with the three screens needed to make up his 3 color Buddha print. Instead of using the photo emulsion method of creating these silkscreens he hand painted them with drawing fluid. The next step is getting all his supplies ready to begin marbling big sheets of paper that he will then print the buddha onto. i cant wait to see the outcome but we have to wait awhile and let the $$ come in so that he can purchase all the supplies.



a quick snap of Danny and I over the weekend. We spent a good amount of time hanging out on the patio, conversing and drinkin tea.
I hope every one's weekend went well.

more updates coming soon.

Best wishes,
-Chelsea Rose
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Its been awhile! Lots of updates and Hello to 2010.

Some time has passed since my last blog update...so much that its now 2010! Strange indeed....
Saying goodbye to 2009 was bittersweet. So much awesomeness happened in that year including my first ever solo gallery show, the selling of a bunch of my acrylic paintings + the expansion of my life in Portland and my artistic direction. Still, i welcome the new year with excitement at the possibilities of new beginnings, fresh starts and aspirations. I am truly hoping on finishing a new acrylic painting series by the end of winter in hopes that i can find a spot to exhibited it come summer( details more to come.)
.....i wanted to take a little time here to tell you all that i sold another one of my big pieces just a day shy of the new year.
This is the one that sold:

Yes, the "River Spirit", 18"x24" original acrylic painting has found a good home with a local Portlander.
The woman had contacted me through our Etsy Shop, saying that she lived very close to T.Ruth Artspace where i had my solo show up for 2+ months and that she thoroughly enjoyed seeing my artwork hung up on her daily walks. She said one night she had a powerful dream involving the "River Spirit", and after that really felt the need to buy the painting. Her boyfriend had the idea to buy the painting for her birthday but when he went to the gallery to buy it, it was soon after my solo show was taken down so my work was gone. Instead he bought her a bunch of my art prints through our shop. Still, she wanted the painting and ended up contacting me via etsy. I was able to hand deliver the painting, which was something special to be able to meet the buyer face to face. What a trip! This was very exciting and inspiring for me and has really only renewed and heightened my creative drive.

....I have felt like i have been seriously neglecting all of my various painting projects ever since i started working on my body painting/photography project. So i made sure to use the past 3 day weekend to get all caught up.


....and Yes! I managed to finish my Harpy painting finally!

Harpy in Babylon
14"x14" original acrylic painting
by Chelsea Rose
.....This painting went through a lot of changes during the creative process. if you are interested to see its metamorphosis you can check out the process pictures i store in my "Works on Progress" set on flickr, just click HERE.
...Otherwise I did some more work on the Wood's Man cloak i am painting for my friend. I should be finished with it by the end of this month i believe. This will be my first fabric painting project so i am interested to see how it turns out.

I also worked on starting up a new painting based on this illustration:

...So far i have painted the background purple and projected/transferred the illustration onto the canvas( size 14"x14"). When i get home today i will begin my first experimentation with filling the drawing in with color. Hopefully i can find the time to take a quick picture to document the creative process on this piece too.

.....In other news Danny has pumped out a new t-shirt screen print:


"blue laughing Buddha" screen print
Check out our etsy shop listings: for Him or for Her - now selling for $20
Still in print! please do not hesitate to place an order in your size. If you request it, we will print it.

....I have much more to share but in an effort to keep my posts not excruciatingly long i will stop right here.

Peace and Love for the New year to you all!
Much love,
-Chelsea Rose
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Humble Beginnings + new tie dye and screen prints for sale!

I'm starting to believe that December is just around the corner. This morning the bus ride to work was frigid and its been raining almost every day since Halloween. I do finally feel like I live in Oregon, unlike last year where we got hardly any rain but then thrashed with a crazed snowstorm that Portland was seriously not prepared for. I'm interested to see what this winter will be like.
So, in homage to the chillyness of these days and the days to come Danny and I listed a new tie-dye that is perfect for keepin you or a loved one cozy with some psychedelic flair:

Psychedelic Thermal
Hand tie-dyed with lots of love in my favorite color harmony: Purple and Green!
extra large(XL)
100% cotton thermal dyed w/ procion mx dye
51" chest
To see more of this tie-dye or to buy go HERE

Also, we listed a new screen print that is a collaboration of screen print work of both mine and Dannys. check it out:

behold opticle (eye)llusions
8.5" x 11"
a mash-up of Chelsea Rose's Behold design, and Danny's optical (eye)llusion, and splatter design screen printed on watercolor paper.
very rare, one of a kind
to see more of it or to buy click HERE

And I wanted to show you what i started working on Wednesday night:

This is a snapshot of my work table in my lil home studio space.
You can see the humble beginnings of two new paintings.
I'm going to be trying to begin incorporating more detail into my pieces, namely adding some backgrounds to my subject. I felt the Harpy would be a perfect way to start since my original drawing featured her perched on a tree limb.
Here was the original pen and ink drawing:

I projected this pen and ink image onto a prepped 14x14 stretched canvas.
Once I had the harpy transferred where I wanted her I began to sketch with pencil to figure out where and how I wanted the branch to be rendered which she would perch upon. I then drew a few different background ideas involving a looming city scape in the background. Once I finally settled on a background sketch I took my India ink pen and went over the lines to produce what you see in the above photo. That was all done Wednesday night.
Last night I began to go into the Harpy's background with color. I will take a picture of my color additions tonight once I get home from work. I will then begin to lay the first layers of color into the Harpy herself.

....Now, the other painting you can hardly make out in the background of the picture above is another story. I started the background months ago with the idea that I would place this certain drawing I did of a warrior mermaid into it.
here is what the background painting turned out like:

My inspiration/idea for this piece was a sunken glowing city under the ocean being guarded/protected by her:

I hesitated for so long to try and put her into the piece because I liked the background as is. But Recently I decided that id give it a try.
I was a little befuddled as to how to transfer my mermaid onto into the sunken city piece. At first i tried it the way I normally do it- which is to project the pen and ink drawing on top the background and then trace it with my India ink pens...but that did not work because the background was too dark for my pen to make much of a guide. So I then decided to use the projector to guide me in blocking out the basic shape of my mermaid in white. That's pretty much as far as I have gotten so far. I did draw the beginnings of her face but that's it.
This is really more of an experiment, if anything. so wish me luck with this and if you have any advice or ideas I would love to hear them.

What i didn't realize till yesterday was that both of these have city scapes in the background. Ugh. Oh well...I do love city scapes...I see them as portraits of Babylon. I wonder at the chances of being born in the midst of such an intense time in the epicenter/mecca/vortex of so much. Its foreboding, frightening, strange, bizarre, horribly ugly and so oddly beautiful and i see all of that in these city scapes i draw- they are stark symbols of man's bloody triumphs, our unquenchable thirst for power, knowledge, our need to shape the world we inhabit. So yes....i do love my city scapes but perhaps for my next painting i will use something else as a background.

...So now you all know what I'm up to currently.
I'm going to try and be diligent and recording the creative process with both of these pieces so stay tuned if you are interested in seeing these paintings unfold with all the progress, struggle and learning of the creative journey.

I am truly looking forward to this weekend. I mean to work a bunch on the above paintings and get a bunch of laundry done too.

Danny's birthday is this coming Monday so I hope we can find some time/funds to do something special together.

Peace be with you all!

Enjoy your weekend journeying,
-Chelsea Rose
Lucid Optic Lab
www.chelsearoseart.com
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