What’s new between my art table from November to now? Lights so I can work even at night and during rainy days… Hooks to find scissors and ruler and paint can opener easily…. Gloss gelling (aka wood varnish) my favorite color wheel to keep paper from disintegrating… A stool for being able to work even when tired…. Life is good. Pura vida. Special thank you and tons of brownie points belong to my better half Andy. Want to see how my art table painting space looked before these upgrades? Click this sentence. Want to see a small part of my old painting studio? This video shows my old studio, the one we let go to move to Costa Rica. The easel and other things are currently in storage for my new future studio. It describes what you can expect during an art demo. You can find it by clicking on this paragraph. 12/8/2021 Art Supplies Found in the WildOk, not completely in the wild, but at least in someone's garden driveway!
While visiting our neighbor Nacho, I found some rich, black, thick charcoal laying around some flower bushes. The type of charcoal that’s found in a 2x3x1 inch box in an art supply store and sells for a few dollars. The juicy charcoal that oozes blackness on paper…and smudges and brushes away easily to make grays. Nacho laughed at me for asking for his charcoal. Charcoal in Costa Rica is used as deodorant or for gardening fertilizer, not art supplies. He shrugged and offered me more charcoal. I took just what I needed. After all, I just found an almost endless supply, right across our road!!! I finally got to make the value chart I needed for class! If you happen to be in Uvita, Costa Rica, come out and see me and three more awesome artists at Dolce Uvita on Saturday, December 11th, 2021, from 10 am – 3 pm. For more info, https://dolceuvita.com We live in a very small, cute house while we build our new home in Costa Rica. This means very limited art painting making happy space. This is ok, as I’m sticking to studying for a class I’m enjoying. Everything is small for this class: paper swatches, painting surfaces, supplies, etc. This is good…because as I make new things there is limited storage space, too. The first few weeks here were spent at the coffee table and the back patio tables. I’m still spending time at the coffee table for things like collaging and cutting paper. I adore my new art table. We decided to have local Uvita craftsman Freddy make us this table. Here’s all the reasons why we love this table:
10/27/2021 Bat and Fall ThingsAs I was checking out our outside laundry system at our new home in Costa Rica, a bat landed on the wall above me. It was about six inches long. I was happy to see it, but sad as it was a late morning. It let me get a single photo and then took off. ©Angeline Marie MartinezIt’s very weird being in Costa Rica for October. There isn’t the whole Fall Thing here in Costa Rica.
The whole Fall Thing didn’t make sense to me in Florida, anyway, so it almost feels like a bit of relief, lol. It’s great not having to listen and watch a constant onslaught of marketing about Fall Things like harvesting, warm colors, sweaters, pumpkin spice, fire places, Holiday Shopping, etc. Everything is green here, so all this straw stuff makes even less sense in Costa Rica than in Florida. I hate the cold, not a pumpkin spice kind of girl, anyway! So far, Alexa provides tunes to a simple speaker we brought. The music is interrupted by US commercials about…you guessed it…Fall Things! I still don’t understand everyone’s excitement about all this, lol! I did see some Halloween decor in a store here. One store, on what amounts to two long shelves. No candy on display, just decor! There are two seasons here: winter and summer. Cooler or Hot Hot. Rainy or Dryer. There is truly no “sweater weather,” unless you count that Andy and I wish we had an extra bed sheet during cooler nights, lol. This little bat is one of many we enjoy watching fly about our new temporary home in Costa Rica. Happily, this is the only bat we’ve seen in the daylight. It’s a poor photo, but I was lucky to get it! Happy Halloween and Happy Fall Things! 10/20/2021 My Self Care During Job’s OutagesIf I were still at my job, I would be working an outage RIGHT NOW. I’m not going to explain any nuclear power vocabulary here at all. I’ll just say outages require all employees to work six days weekly, for a minimum of 12.5 hours daily. Add the commute time to all of these daily hours. Outage duration might be three weeks or longer, dependent on scheduled work, etc. All outages add up to very exhausted employees. I was one of those glazed eyed, unhappy, exhausted, trudging, trying to do my best, miserably scared of getting sick employees. I was barely conscious of my birthday and Halloween...I was barely conscious at all. My days were drive to job, do my best at job, drive home, do a couple of chores, try to enjoy time with Andy, and go to bed! Quite a few outages ago, artist Carol Trice was having to work some overtime for her job industry. She made up a book similar to this one, with sticker rewards. I adore stickers. I copied Carol’s idea. This was one of the few ways I could still feel like me...adding reward stickers to my calendar day. To earn a sticker, I had to spend at least five minutes on that option. Those minutes were precious. Yes, I had a Must Do List, too. When Andy and I had to work outages, I printed systems for myself and worked them. All of the lists got stickers. Andy rolled his eyes, but I had my list and our outages ran smoother. I threw out this book this year!!! I kept my collected leftover Halloween stickers, because, I love stickers, lol! I kept my instructions for how to make and use another book like this. I prefer to abandon ever needing a book like this again, but life is weird. Maybe I’ll make one for doing art biz things? Hmm…! If you need a thrive kit like this, I’m happy to share my instructions. Step one is get some great, happy, fun, bright stickers like you can find at Dollar Trees in the US. The stickers can be any theme of your choice. You could do like old school and stick to gold stars, too. Next steps are find a cover, make a list, repeat and print the list. Pura vida from Costa Rica, where I’m figuring out what’s next! |
CategoriesAll Art In The News Art Studio Cats Classes Costa Rica Painting Painting Studio Pets Sketching Drawing, painting both analog and digital, and other artsy things while living in Costa Rica.
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