Work In Progress painting, Banyan Tree design, Ebru Power

Been keepin busy, take a look :

This is a work in progress shot of my acrylic painting in process called "Mistress of the Orb." I have been videotaping myself painting this piece so when I am all done I will have a neat time lapse video of the process to show you!


This is a pen and ink Banyan tree illustration that I custom designed for an etsy customer of mine. It was a very fun illustration to work on and I rather like the way it turned out! Maybe this Banyan tree will be make an apearence in a painting of mine someday soon.


And check out my new headband! It was Gifted to me as a 2year dread head anniversary present by my dear misty mountain bard friend from afar. ... makes me feel like a forest nymph when I wear it :) Thank you Sara!

And Danny has been busy brewin some Ebru. Check out some of his new pieces:

"Fire Mandala"
( original handmade double layer acrylic ebru(Turkish paper marbling) monoprint on kozo paper.)

"Peace"
(original handmade double layer acrylic ebru(Turkish paper marbling) monoprint on kozo paper.)


....for more of his most recent work visit the Lucid Optic Lab flickr account.


Love and Light,
-Chelsea Rose
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Portland Love Show 2011

The 6th annual Portland Love show is poppin up now that we are into February.
Danny and I are excited to participate, this will be our 2nd year in the show.

"The show was initially a response to the annual deluge of heterosexist, consumerist, romance-centric advertising that Americans experience each year leading up to Valentine’s Day, but over the course of the last 5 years, it has evolved into a diverse and complicated multimedia art happening in the hands of the participating artists." ( taken from portlandloveshow.com )

This year we put in a collaboration piece under Lucid Optic Lab:

This piece was a labor of love for both Danny and I. I painted and photographed the model. Danny directed the model in her arm poses and then created this magnificent many armed photo comp.
Piece titled " The Goddess In All Of Us"
she is a 24"x24" fine art laminated print on 1" thick gaterboard.
We feel the piece fits well into the theme of "love", since its a visual respresenation of Divine cosmic energy- the voice of the universe which many philosophers have referred to as the Love vibration.
Look for the Goddess in the Love show!

The piece I am putting in under my name is this one:

(acrylic painting by Chelsea Rose)
for the love show i titled it " This Lucid Dream"
24"x24" original acrylic painting on canvas
I have always loved mermaids..since i was a wee lil sprout. I have been drawing bare chested mermaids since age 5 so i guess i found my artistic style pretty earlie on :P Mermaids and their folklore have always been heavily steeped in love, passion, allure and lust so in a sense i feel they are an iconic symbol of love. Here my mermaid hugs herself, an innocent expression or self love or perhaps a gesture of rapt longing.
Be on the lookout for this merlady, she will be at the show floating somewhere amidst the horde.

Danny's piece for the love show is awesome:

original handmade two layer acrylic ebru(turkish paper marbling) mono-print with Ganesh screen print on kozo paper.
19" x 24"

I filmed Danny doing the 2nd layer of ebru for this piece.
Check it out:





The Ebru creation process is pretty neat huh?

So yes, come check out The Portland Love show! This year there are over 300 participating artists. Opening Saturday, February 12th, 2011
7pm-12am
Free! All-Ages!!


Much love and light,
-Chelsea Rose
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Danny's Pop Up Gallery showing

I had a wonderful time last night at Danny's Pop Up Gallery showing!
Here is a photo recap:

Snapped this shot of Danny and his art just a few mins before the doors opened for his one night showing.
It was an amazing evening!
His handmade ebru (paper marbling) monoprint & screen print works were displayed along with his hand drawn ink mandalas and splatter art. It was a one night event in conjunction with NW 23rd third Thursday artwalk. He shared the gallery with two other artists one who did drawings another who did sculpture and there was Industrial Dub music, jewelry, faerie tutu’s, and wine to be enjoyed from 6pm to 9pm in a "pop up" gallery that was once a cheese shop on NW Thurman and NW 23rd.




He had a very large wall dedicated to his art. It was actually really stunning to see all of his recent work up all at once...it had a truly amazing presence!
We were both surprised at how much he had. I guess its easy to misjudge how much work you really have when you have a lot of it stashed away in a cluttered art room in a small apartment :)
I was tottally blown away!


I snapped this photo of Danny with his Ebru master Reza Antoszewska
She seemed very excited/impressed with his work....which is made quite evident from the big grin. They are looking at and discussing Reza's favoerite piece of Danny's in the show.


Reza was kind enough to snap a photo of Danny and I together infront of his art :)

So yes, the night was a treat and success...we hung out with friends, met some new ones and danny sold a few pieces of art!

To see more of Danny's work click here.

Much love,
-Chelsea Rose
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The devine Dyad WIP and The Buddha Project

Busy Busy Busy.
....just started this new painting the other day:

...Been calling this one the Devine Dyad.
right now its color base is acrylic with India ink outlines. i have already started painting in the body so the color is pink and purple- very fleshy. This is different from my usual green or blue skinned goddess/fae creatures. I really do love painting my creatures colors like blue and green because this gives them a "raceless" foundation which I think helps the viewer see them as "other" then flesh and bone. However, here in this painting i think the pink does well to pop off of the cool colored background- I will post more process shots soon!

...And so the Buddha Project continues and culminates:

hand made original ebru(Turkish paper marbling) and 3 color screen print by Danny.

and the process was something like this:

1, 2, 3 !

...and another one with diff color combo!

hand made original ebru(Turkish paper marbling) and 3 color screen print by Danny.


....more coming soon!

Much love,
-Chelsea Rose
Lucid Optic Lab
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New Drawing, tie dye, Buddha Project work in porgress photos

I am pleased to introduce you to Her Imperil Majesty, Elephantress:

Original pen and ink drawing
by Chelsea Rose

.....I have always though Elephants held an air of majestic and regal grace so honestly putting one in a fancy court dress wasn't to big of a stretch for my imagination. Also, Elephants are my cousin Allie's fave animal as well as my boyfriends....so i had to try my hand at them at least once. I like her fancy trunk glove/sock or cozy..whatever you want to call it :P

...so yes, as you can see i did a bit of drawing over the weekend. I also prepped some painting surfaces for new works in progress. This is what my art table looked like over the weekend:

...the art room got a lot of use in the last couple days.

Danny has been quite busy working on his Ebru( Turkish marbling) and silkscreen Buddha project. He has finished the marbling portion and moved on to silk screening his 3 color Buddha prints onto the marbled sheets.

Here some shots i took when he was "Dropping Paint, Not Bombs" :


...and then the screen printing madness over the weekend:


....getting the line up right.


...taking a deep breath before putting down the first layer.


pushing the paint for the first layer- note the ridiculous HUGE squeegee!


...pulling the second color. The final color went on as a light lime green for the Buddha's highlights. I have no posted pictures of that yet but i imagine they will be up soon for viewing.
Neat huh?

In other news i had rather nostalgic moment this weekend when digging around in various boxes in the art room i came across news articles that my mom must have saved for me from the West side Weekly- one of which a photo of me participating in a sculpting class at age 7 is shown on the front cover followed by a quote in the article saying "I love doing the painting, you can make anything you want. What I love most of all is getting the paint on myself."
The photo below the main photo was taken of me at age 7 also in one of the Arts Mecca's painting classes:

( to read the snip it of article just click on this thumbnail and view large.)
...the Venice Arts Mecca was an amazing gift. their classes were more like free-for alls where freedom of expression reigned supreme before rules of technique. The program was given freely to the "underprivileged" youths of Venice, CA. I took many classes there ranging from photography, dark room, Polaroid transfer, painting, clay work, creative writing and more.
I wish that more programs like this existed today, throughout the world- they really do make a huge difference. http://www.venice-arts.org/

...and Lastly:

I know summer is long gone but its just begun to really feel that way. The wind is cold, first frost approaches, my morning glory vines have died out including my other potted wildflower garden. This weekend i took down the wasted vines, flowers...consolidated the left of soil and stacked empty pots. My patio is now bare save for my basil, chamomile and Chile plants which i will be bringing inside very soon in hopes of keeping them alive for winter. while i am sad to watch the "abundance" of summer come to a close i am elated at the changes in the air, the glow of fall in the trees...the inevitable "rest" of winter.
....but its photos like this, taken in summer's height that will help get through the coming months of getting up in the dark chill( but i really do love winter!!)...and spring is such a miracle- to watch the green roll back in with such force! i cant wait to have my morning glory vines growing and flowering again. this time i will start the seeds indoors as soon as spring hits. should be good.

So that's it for now, more coming soon as always.

...and remember kids, Drop Paint, Not Bombs.
-Chelsea Rose
Lucid Optic Lab
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New painting, Rainbow Roots + giant Ebru marbling

It was an art-filled two days off, which always makes for the most refreshing of weekends.

I managed to finish a painting i have been working on:


Rainbow Roots
14" x 14" stretched canvas
Original acrylic painting by Chelsea Rose

....I started this painting one night with the need to paint without plan or even thought. I let my subconscious come out and man the paintbrush and watched rather amused at the various shapes and creatures that came out.
I did change it up a lot after the initial out pour:

...if you compare that to the finished one above, you'll see what i mean about changes. But all in all, this painting was very fun to paint. I gave myself no rules or guidelines and just got to "play" and express. I hope to let myself do more of these spurr of the moment paintings- it was a nice break from my usual tight/planned out creations.

Meanwhile, my other half ( and often Better half) worked on a project that he has had up his sleeve for months now- a GIGANTIC Ebru( turkish paper marbling) project:

This is just one snapshot i took of about a billion of him throughout the creation process. He built a huge container for this project out of wood which he then filled up with thickened water so that he could float acrylic paint on the surface, manipulate as seen in the photo above through "combing" and then take a single mono print of the effect via paper. Yesterday he made two such prints with different colors and designs. The thickened water should stay good for about a week so he has time to make a bunch more prints. In the meantime this huge container has taken over the dining room so we have been eating at the coffee table :)
....more info with photos on this will be posted as the project progresses!

And a couple snapshots of me bouncing around the artroom:


I did some digging around and cleaning out in the art room which lead me to the discovery of a big stack of some of my very old art- some dating back to elementary school years! I posted some of my better old artwork finds on the art room closet couple with a few "inspiration" pieces from other artists. All this lead me to even go back and look at old sketch book journals- its really fascinating to look on old artwork and see how your style and technique has changed through the years. Its comforting to see my own creative evolution and realize that it shouldn't ever stop morphing. I am interested to see what my art will look like in a few more years!

...and a dready update in front of my art room inspiration wall:

My dreadies have gotten a bit longer i think! My dreads are back to the same length my hair was before i dreaded the locks up. Shrinking is normal in the maturing stages of the dreading of ones hair so i am pleased that i have finally been able to get past all that and see a bit of growth, even if its only slight! The henna color I put in a month or so ago is almost completely gone and i am thinking about doing it again- it felt soooo good on my scalp and the red made me feel like a Celtic fiery maned huntress :P

Anyhoo....we harvested a bunch of the Basil we grew from seed on our patio:

isn't it purdy?
We made a pesto sauce out of it which we ate over cheese tortellini with roasted garlic cloves- yum!
...Looks like we should probably bring our edibles in from the patio today or very soon before the first frost catches!

And yes, i am already loving October with every bit of my soul.

Best wishes,
-Chelsea Rose
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