Chelsea Rose Fine Art

Saturday, June 28, 2014

The Last Mermaid new original acrylic painting

Meet my newest acrylic painting:

The Last Mermaid

36"x48"

original acrylic painting on canvas

by Chelsea Rose

Its my first painting that features an obvious reference to death. While I was not aiming to create a melancholy piece, I was exploring "tender aches" that present themselves during times of loss. The loss represented here could be a metaphor for a loved one passing, or a loss of belief or even a loss or dyeing out of tradition, tale, dream or magic.

If you look closely, the pink figure holds the mermaid close, her head bent to the side, the corner of her lip turning up in a subtle smile. I was hoping to capture a calm warmth in her features that spoke of the sweetness of love, honor and remembrance. I placed the mermaid and her mourner amidst a cityscape, hinting at the possibility the mermaid could no longer survive within the modern day Babylonian way of life. Perhaps her death can be attribuated to pollution by the city, or perhaps the city's simple lack of belief in her existence.

Anyhoo, those are some of my personal intentions, or perceptions of the painting. I invite the viewer to read the image in any way they wish, eyes unclouded by my own musings!

Now, on to the creative process! I did a fairly good job at documenting the creation of this painting so I thought it would be interesting to share with you.

It all began with a drawing in my sketchbook:

I drew this concept sketch over 4 months ago! I used a mix of india ink pens and paint pens as well as some watered down acrylic paint.

I finally made up my mind to paint the concept, thus I started the painting in early April.

By April 15th I had everything roughed out in a the first layer of color.

Now I started to add another layer of color for skin, refining the design by adding highlights in the forms while using black to explore the details of eyes, hair, face and costume.

By May I had begun more work on the background cityscape, adding details like streetlights and a bridge.

Here is a compare and contrast comp I made. The top is before, the bottom is after. I added another layer of color, highlight and shadow to the skin of both figures. I also made some changes to the corset and skirt design of the pink one. I changed up the hair colors of the mermaid as well. In the background you can see before, and after the addition of the bridge and a second closer layering of buildings.

Here is a studio snapshot of the painting in its "work in progress" state.

And this photo was taken this past weekend, June 21st. You can see I added some drastic changes to the sky, with many pulsating orbs, somewhat akin to "Starry Night", as well as the final layer of color, highlight and shadow on the main figures. And that was that!

I am excited to debut her during my solo show at Future shock in September! I will be offering prints in my etsy shop as well, so keep an eye out for them!

I hope you enjoy the finished piece, and found it interesting to see it's process of creation.

Thanks for the support!

With love,
-Chelsea Rose

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

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

Spray Paint Mural Experiment at the Eugene Oregon Free Wall

Finally having a good stretch of time off from my day job I was able to make the drive out to the Eugene Oregon free wall ( since Portland doesn't have one, which is a total outrage!)

My comfort zone with painting is using a brush, and I have painted several murals in this method as you can see here. However I have recently developed an interest in spray painting, especially after becoming a member of the Murals and Girls team. Before my trip out to Eugene I made a few experiments with the medium, by doing so on pieces of scrap board which you can see here. But I had never done any large pieces on a wall, so Eugene was my first big spray painting experiment. Have a look:

I began without a set concept sketch on paper but with the idea of painting two opposing goddess/alien/faery creature girls, with their hair sort of swirling together mid wall. So, first I sketched out a rough outline of the first character and began to fill her in.

My first creature lady filled out pretty quickly and so after I felt most of her color had been roughed out, I put down the black lines and moved on to start roughing out her sister's outline and color.

Once I had both of them roughed out, I went back in an added some final highlights and details, and then went back over everything with black...that is, till I ran out of black! Lesson learned: bring triple of every color and perhaps even quadruple of black and white!

And then I was all done! Here I am feeling a lil tired but mostly happy and accomplished.

All in all, I spent around 2 and a half hours painting, had lots of fun and learned so so much. I hope to make another trip out there soon to continue my experimentations with spray painting. Maybe next time I will do a mermaid creature lady! We shall see.

In other news, my art will be showing at Nectar Cafe for the next month and a half, and will also be on display at the Tea Zone & Camellia Lounge for the month of June. And come August, I am pretty excited about a solo exhibition at Future Shock gallery! Will post more on all of this soon.

Also there are plenty of new items in my online shop to grab up!

(a photo from this past week's Last Thursday Art walk on Alberta, showing off a bunch of new art goodies)

I added some art prints of several of my recent acrylic paintings and there are now 10 of my handmade art pendants listed and ready to go to a good home!

So go visit my shop, and support the arts cuz mama needs some mo' spray paint ;)

Much love always,
-Chelsea Rose

Sticker Nerds III and Space Lady Mural

I had the oppertunity to get involved with an awesome pop up art exhibit that happened in Portland late last month called Sticker Nerds III. The event was touted the biggest sticker art installation show ever created in the US and was self described as "a celebration of adhesive art with contributors from all over the globe."

I submitted a sizable pile of my own hand screen printed/block printed stickers as well as a few hand painted posters:

(acrylic paint on poster paper)

(lino cut block prints on acrylic painted sticker paper)

(screen prints on adhesive vinyl)

Knowing some of the organizers of the event, I volunteered to help with the install which meant pealing and sticking hundreds of submitted stickers on walls, old TVs and computers, pillars, vending machines, news paper stands, mirrors, toilets and more for days leading up to the event.

At some point during the install I was asked to paint a mural on one of the wooden pillars.

A request I most happily accepted.

Here are a few work in progress photos:

I was able to rope in two of my favorite local artists to add elements of their own into the mural, thus creating an awesome collaboration. Silly Weird Things added the ray gun, and the lil rooster aliens manning space ships( which we lovingly call "space cocks) Mewt added the creatures encapsulated in blue planet like orbs as well as much of the background details.

The finished result:

I really love how it turned out and its inspiring me to find more mural projects to do in the near future!

The Sticker Nerds III event was crazy, in a good way.

People waited in line for hours to see the exhibition which was allowing 20 visitors in at a time.

Our space lady mural watched over the "collab" station, which consisted of two couches and a coffee table set up in the middle of the event space. The table was stacked full of sticker paper and pens so that the visitors, if feeling inspired, could make some stickers of their own.

Some close ups of some of my work around the exhibit:

I had a few "fine art" pieces on the walls too.

One piece sold before I got a photo, but here are the remaining two:

"Green Faery" acrylic on canvas

"Pot Head"

Acrylic painted skateboard deck with screen print.

And here are some random photos of the rest of the installation:

I highly recommend checking out the article that the Portland Street Art Alliance wrote about the exhibit ( this article features some real quality photos of the event also.)

Read it here!

All in all, I am just super stoked to have been in on this crazy masterpiece and am super thankful for everyone who made the event possible as well as the visitors who came through the install to bask in the spectacle.

Body Painting Praesepe SG

I recently branched out a ways from my Earth Goddess body art series and did a colorful body painting session on the traveling SuicideGirl, Praesepe. We had so much fun!

Between tea, cookies and much fun chit chatting It took around three hours to paint her.

I painted one mermaid on the front, in addition to a third eye.

and two on the back in addition to a large floating vertical eye between her shoulders.

I am hoping to do a small series of body art photo sessions like these where I paint my creature ladies with bold color on women. I already have quite a few models who have volunteered, so It will be a nice way to do some body painting this cold rainy Pacific Northwest spring until the seasons turn and I can resume work outside on my Earth Goddess series.

In other news, I have posted a few more of my hand sculpted, hand painted art pendants for sale in my etsy shop!

Here are two of my favorites, that are up for grabs currently:

I call her "Space Empress Spiral Buns" and her third eye is a laborite bead. She is $35. See the listing for more photos.

This is a large "Third eye" which is available for $30. Check out the listing.

I have lots more to update on( including the Space Lady mural I got to paint for Sticker Nerds 3!!!) so much has happened recently I have been having a hard time finding moments to write out a post! But certainly more updates coming soon.

Much love and light,
-Chelsea

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