Rediscovering Older Work

Two Has a Dream by Jessica Torrant

Prints available at http://www.livefunky.etsy.com/



Yesterday Rob and I went up to the studio in Indian Orchard to make our first of two trips clearing out all my stuff. After packing my Suburu to the brim, we brought it all to our new storage unit right in our own hometown. (Unloading was so much easier than loading! My sympathies with anyone that has to move any time soon!). As much as I may miss some parts of having a studio in the mills, this new "system" is going to be so much easier for me. Now I can paint at home and when I'm done photographing, I can take a canvas five minutes down the road to our storage unit. No more 45 minute drives just to pick up a painting! Yipee!



Part of going through all of my things at the studio meant finding my binder with all of my watercolor and ink illustrations from 2004/2005 (such as the piece above). I'm going through them looking for my favorites to list as prints on Etsy. There are also some drawings that I plan to scan and color in Illustrator (including one on an old envelope! My best drawings were always on scrap paper - there's got to be some psychological reason for that, which I won't look into now - hahaha).



At this point my Etsy shop has 237 items. Is that ridiculous? Too much? Should I put some of the older pieces that haven't sold in edit mode just to make my shop more user friendly? I am inclined to put it ALL out there, but there is A LOT and it just keeps coming! What are your thoughts on this, fellow artists? I could use your expert eyes and input!



(Oh by the way! I just got accepted by Trunkt - woo hoo!)

Gravity - Illustration Friday

This is the first time I've made something for Illustration Friday . This week's theme was Gravity, and the above painting is in watercolor on 8" x 11" watercolor paper. It is available for purchase in my Etsy store.

Since I was a child I've dreamed of flying and levitation. Most of the time I begin standing on firm ground, feeling the weight of gravity and my body. Then I remember my little trick. I push down with all of my energy and that pushing down lifts me up. The attention to this downward push is like rocket fuel propelling me upwards. If I get scared or panic, gravity sets in immediately and there is a rush back down (if I can catch it in time, I can refocus and lift up again, if not, I'll switch to a new scene rather than being taken through the experience of actually hitting the earth).

I wanted to capture that feeling of moving in both directions - the force of gravity, and the energy of gravity's opposite.