The Long Ride Home acrylic painting

I have been so preoccupied with painting on non traditional surfaces such as cow skulls, walls, recycled materials and the human body, that I had forgotten to share with you my most recently completed painting on canvas. Oops!

So without further adieu:

"The Long Ride Home"
12"x16"
Original acrylic painting on canvas
by Chelsea Rose

This painting is the first in a series I plan to make involving placing my strange creature ladies in fairly mundane places/doing fairly mundane things. Such as, this first piece, commuting home on a train. Other ideas include waiting at bus stops, eating at a restaurant, working an office job, taking a bath and so on. I have sketches of many of these ideas at the ready, I just need to buckle down and begin to pump out paintings for this series.

Now, since I am a fiend for work in progress photos I will share the creative process involved in the production of "The Long Ride Home." Enjoy!

It all began with a  rough concept sketch in my drawing book. I felt confident enough with it that I went ahead and projected my sketch onto to canvas and proceeded to transfer it (using an india ink marker) while adding more dimension and detail.

 I then began to add the first layers of color. I hadn't done a color study for this painting so I was making up the color scheme as I went along which was mostly fun, but a bit nerve racking at times.

By the time I went through with my 2nd layer of color I had made some big decisions about the interior of the train car as well as the outside sky/cityscape. My favorite movie of all time is a Studio Ghibli animation called "Spirited Away" and if you are a fan of the film, you should be able to tell right away that I recreated my own interpretation of the iconic red seated, wood interior train. If you have yet to see this movie, you must go watch it. Now! Seriously…
I also changed the sky to a dusky/sunsety affair, while pushing the city scape farther back.

During the final layers of color I added small details like her leg hair and shoes.

And to cap off these work in progress photos, here is a nice wide look into my lil art factory.

I think my next painting in this new series of mine is going to be one of my creature ladies eating a bowl of ramen at a lil restaurant.

Here is a lil sketch of the ramen painting concept. Next step is to select a canvas and get to work projecting my sketch onto it so that I can begin to paint. I will keep you posted on its progress.

Much love and light,
-Chelsea Rose 

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Tree Goddess Commissioned Interior Mural

I can feel myself evolving as a Muralist with each new project and thus I certainly had a blast creating my most recent mural:

The above was commissioned by a local Portland Oregon patron of the arts who gave me complete creative control of a section of the bedroom in his new home.

It all started with a concept sketch:

Once the concept sketch was approved by the patron I began work on the wall:

I started by using a paint marker to rough out the concept sketch directly on the wall.

And then I started mapping out the color!


And then cleaning it all up with some fine details

All done! 

What am I doing in this photo you ask? Why, I am being a tree lady too! Wasn't it obvious?

Is your bedroom next? Got a nursery or living room that could use some color? How about the chicken coop or the shed out back? Contact me if you are interested in talking about commissioning a mural!

Hope you enjoyed seeing my creative process in the creation of this project.

I have plenty of other things to show you soon, namely this past weekend I finished a custom commissioned body painting portrait session. Photos and details on that will be posted soon.

Much love,
-Chelsea Rose

P.S

I will be in SoCal come August, so if you are interested in commissioning a mural or body painting portrait session and you are out that ways, don't hesitate to set something up with me.

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Mother Of Faces acrylic painting on canvas

Today I finished a tribute acrylic painting for my favorite animation of all time: Avatar: Last Airbender.

"Mother of Faces"
16"x20"
original acrylic painting on canvas
by Chelsea Rose

This painting is inspired by “The Mother Of Faces” a spirit who only appears in the Avatar Last Air Bender graphic novel “The Search.” As with many of the characters in the Avatar world, Mother of faces is a fascinating and strong female archetype (IE: Compassionate Mother Protector and Gentle Giant) that shows great heart and generosity while still commanding respect and awe. The mother’s ability to emerge and become mightier than the very mountains around her sacred pool was especially inspiring to me. I enjoyed exploring and expressing her tremendous scale within my painting, while also aiming to capture her surreal beauty and grace. As an artist, I usually gravitate to subject matter related to the sacred feminine, warrior women, and the paranormal or metaphysical. I saw all of these things in The Mother of Faces and felt she would lend herself well to my painting approach as well as my existing body of work.

And...It all started with a pen and ink sketch:

Once I had the pen and ink sketch I projected it onto canvas and then began to load the canvas with color.

And then today I added the final touches:

I was in a bit of a rush to create this because only a few weeks ago did I realize that there was an open call to artists for the Legend of Korra / Avatar: Last Air Bender Tribute Exhibition showing at Gallery Nucleus in early March. The deadline for art submissions is Feb. 20th. Yikes! I submitted my painting today and I am crossing my fingers that they pick mine to exhibit( they are only choosing 15 pieces of art from all of the open call submissions. Eeep!)

In other news, I am currently working on creating a astrology sign series which has been lots of fun so far. I began working on the series because I am going to be a featured artist for Splendorporium's March show, which is Zodiac themed. I am also working on a painting for an upcoming "Sasquatch" themed group show at Good Gallery, opening in March. Oh! And, I will be doing a month long art install at The Bike Bar during March. Soooo, March is shaping up to be a pretty busy month! No complaints here. More updates and photos soon.

Much love and light,
-Chelsea Rose 

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Future Shock Body Painting

With my art show at Future Shock coming to an end as the month of September culminates,  I felt a live body painting session inside the gallery amidst my art would be lots of fun. And it was!

(this work in progress photo was taken by Tony. Thanks Tony! )

The body painting took a lil over four hours to complete. My model Caitlin Sparkle Jackson was very patient and sweet about it. I was very happy to be working with her one last time before she moved to Hawaii at the end of this month. She is one of the most fearless models I have had the pleasure of working with. (Our first shoot together was for my Earth Goddess body art series, where she ended up posing in nothing but my body paint, in the snow! That takes guts! Photos of that shoot can be seen here.)

Once the body painting was complete we began to shoot, using my art show inside Future Shock gallery as a background environment.

Here are some finished photos:

This one might be my favorite shot, despite the fact  that it does not show off all of the body paint. I think I am especially loving this photo because she is completely surrounded by my big acrylic painting "The Last Mermaid" so it gives the sense that she IS one of my goddess creature ladies who has just stepped right out of one of my paintings.

It was not intentional, but I had a few people tell me that the body painting reminded them of Kali, the Hindu goddess of change. I could not agree more! Between the blueness of her face, Caitlin's dark curly hair, and her head dress( she said she bought it at Country Fair and that its a hand made piece by Neman's Commedia Mask) she really does resemble Kali in some ways. After looking at the photos I stopped on this shot, where, to the right of Caitlin is my own acrylic painting interruption of Kali which I call Goddess of Eternal Change. I love the synchronicity!

All in all, we had a blast and I am very happy with the colorful results. I hope you enjoy these photos also.

With Love,

-Chelsea Rose 

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EYES a psychedelic body paint experiment

I am happy to be experimenting with more color body painting outside of my strictly black and white body art series Earth Goddess. I wanted to share with you my most recent color body art experience:

It all started out with this concept sketch done on sticker paper. 

and then paint to flesh!

The actual body painting took around 4 hours to do.

My friend and model Hannah was very patient and so we had fun hanging out as I painted her on the sunny nude beach of Sauvie Island in Portland Oregon. 

By the time I was finished with the body painting, the sun was beginning to set. I loved the colors in the sky, and the overall mellow lighting produced. 

And yes, I used creepy cat heads to censor this photo. The original was deleted by Instagram & Facebook because it violated the online communities puritanical rules against posting photos of the human body. I am deeply conflicted about having to censor my art, but using disturbing cat head stickers has made it a lil less painful. Why must society perpetuate fear and shame of the human body? Why do we treat our bodies as profane and distasteful things? 

The nudity found throughout my art is an innocent, natural non sexualized nudity. And for those who find my work offensive, well get your mind out of the gutter. 

And on that happy note...Much love! 

-Chelsea Rose 

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My new mini paintings and Nectar Cafe display

I finally got around to utilizing a bunch of scrap wood I had been saving for painting supports. Have a look at the end result:

Wormhole Goddess

7"x7" original acrylic painting on scrap wood

 by Chelsea Rose

available for $65 here.

Dryad

3.5"x10.5" original acrylic painting on scrap wood 

by Chelsea Rose 

available for $65 here

Fish of Perception

4"x11" original acrylic painting on scrap wood

 by Chelsea Rose 

available for $75 here

Pot Head

9"x6" original acrylic painting on wood cut

 by Chelsea Rose

 available for $75 here

I also have a few of the these minis plus a bunch of my other paintings on display at an awesome funky lil local business, Nectar Cafe. Here are a few photos to hopefully entice you to visit:

So yes, If you can make it out to Nectar cafe soon, you should go check out my art, prints and pendants(My work will be up for the month of June and the first half of July.) Also, I have had the ginger lemonade and its amazing. I also hear their jalapeño waffle sandwich is super yummy.

 Support small business! Support independent artists! Why? Cuz its good for the soul as well as the local and global community. 

With love,

-Chelsea Rose 

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Artists on Board

If you are more then a casual follower of my work you may have noticed my love for painting on broken skateboard decks. Well, I recently got involved with the people at Art Deck Co and their touring skateboard art show known as Artists on Board, and thus ended up painting a full deck! To kick off the tour they had a massive art bash that featured close to 300 artists and their paintings on skateboards.

Here is the skateboard I painted for the show:

"Keepers of the Seed"

original acrylic painting on skateboard deck

by Chelsea Rose

original available through ArtDeckCo for $200

 Here I am posing with my board at the show:

I had so much fun! There were so many amazing deck paintings it was very difficult to pick a favorite. And to top it all off they had MearOne visiting from LA doing a live painting on stage. All in all, I was pretty stoked to be a part of the show and I am excited that my board will be traveling as the show does its tour circuit. 

In other news, a sellecton of my paintings and art pendants are up at Nectar Cafe for the next month and a half:

So...if you happen to be in Portland, come have some coffee or tea and take a moment to look at my art. 

Blessings,

-Chelsea 

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A Meeting of Minds - new acrylic painting and MORE pendants coming soon!

So I just finished my newest painting on canvas:

"A Meeting of Minds"
16"x20"
original acrylic painting by Chelsea Rose

I managed to capture a few "work in progress" shots during it's creation:

As seen above, the painting started out as a purple background vortex with a very simple sketch in India ink. I then began blocking out the background and adding more detail to the trees, beginning some of the first layers of color. By the third photo I have my first couple layers of color on, and finally almost finished just fine tuning and making final color and detail decisions.

 The background took the longest for me to decide exactly what I wanted out there, but I eventually settled on the idea of lil floating metropolis islands dotting the horizon.

I rather enjoy the subtle "see through" aspect of the third eye spirit, how you can see the tree behind it and a bit of the sunset streaks that peak through its specter. I think I may try my hand at a small series of "specters in the woods" or something along those lines, because it was so much fun to paint!

Here is a peak at me in my lil art studio. This photo was taken near the end of the painting's creative process when I was debating on a few color changes, like the round fungi/grass stuff in the front being multi colored( as seen in this photo) or all one color ( like blue, in the final version.)

So now that that is done I am back to focusing on making more of my hand sculpted, hand painted art pendants:

Here are the humble beginnings of a new batch. So far I have sculpted the forms out of polymer clay, stuck stones and crystals into them, then baked them till hard. Then I coated them with an initial layer of acrylic paint and did some rough sketching to plan out the basics of their faces.

And here is the first of the batch to be finished! I will be finishing the rest and listing them on etsy this coming week. So keep an eye on my shop if you want to snatch one of these up for yourself or a loved one.

Sending Love and Light,
-Chelsea Rose 

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More Goddess Pendants and Paintings

I made a new batch of pendants, since the first two have sold:

I love making these! I am using polymer clay to sculpt with, and adorning them with stones, crystals and gems, then painting them with iridescent acrylics.

I call her "Pink Medusa."

She is the biggest one of this batch, 3"x3.5"
Her third eye is embellished with a rainbow Agate Druzy bead.
She is available for $45 in my etsy shop.

I call this one "Green Sorceress"

2.5"x2.5", she is embellished with a Kyanite bead for the third eye and a Silver Agate Druzy orb sits in her hair.  She is available for $40 in my etsy shop.

I call this one "Punk Goddess"

She is the smallest of this batch, 2"x1.5" but I think she is my favorite.
I adorned her third eye with a Kyanite bead and then gave her three dark rainbow coated Quartz Crystal liberty spikes.  She is available for $30 in my etsy shop.

I have also been working on a few paintings. The main painting I have been working on is almost done and my next blog will  feature it along with a few "work on progress" shots.

Till then, here are two smallish paintings I finished recently:

The All Seeing Forest
7"x7"
original acrylic painting on salvaged wood block

Its ready to hang in your home! Available for purchase in my etsy shop for $65.

And here is a close up of the mermaid I painted on a piece of drift wood.

"Sea Spirit"
3"x9" acrylic painting on driftwood. I found the wood tossed ashore one of my most favorite hidden misty pacific northwest beaches. She is available for $45 in my etsy shop.

Im still working on more paintings and pendants, and other strange art things. So keep an eye out.

Much love and light,
-Chelsea Rose 

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