Children portraits

I’ve never been a fan of just portraits, I like art that has a twist to it, a bit of fantasy, a lot of beauty… but I have to admit that I am working on portraits at the moment, and I am enjoying myself so much!
It all started when I was thinking of what to give my mom for mother’s day (in Argentina we celebrate it in October) and since it is usually a struggle to find her a present followed by a fight (you needn’t buy anything, don’t spend money…! etc.) I thought that giving her a portrait of her grandsons would be a better idea than buying her something. I am not very confident in my realism skills, especially working traditional, so I went for something a little unusual, a bit modern. I liked them so much that I made a set for my mother in law, and then an idea started to form in my head.

Portraits of my boys that I made for my mother (I really need to learn to photograph art).

I actually had missed doing traditional art, and here I was working on paper, with a brush, with pigment (for me traditional art is a sensuous experience), actually relaxing while working; and I thought that every mom should have a portrait of her children if she so wants. I worked out a fast and easy technique so I could offer this kind of art for a very affordable fee in my neighbourhood (anybody that saves me the stress of shipping art gets a discounted rate from me!), suggesting it to be purchased as a present for grandparents who say that they have it all already, and it was a hit. A lot of moms asked for portraits, some of them multiple copies to give to grandparents and keep one for themselves, one of them even left a special empty spot in a photo wall she was making to hang her son’s portrait! They started thanking me for providing “such a great service”! I have very few times felt so loved as an artist as in the last two weeks.

This is being a great experience for me as an artist, I love sitting with my tools, drawing, painting, and thinking that one happy mother is waiting for a portrait of her child that I will have the honor to paint.

I still have slots for these to be ready for Christmas, so if you are thinking of commissioning one, please drop me a line, I will be happy to talk with you about it.

Home made Halloween decorations (toddler friendly)

If you didn’t know, I have a two year old, and I am a little paranoid about my little child being in touch with chemicals… Okay, I know technically everything is a chemical, but I don’t like not to know what he is in touch with. Some day I will just buy stuff, but for right now, a period in which his organism, his neural system, is undergoing such a rapid development; a time in which industries just dump substances of dubious effects in everything, I am making a lot of things myself: play dough, paints, and today we did some home made plaster to make some Halloween decorations.

Cute ghosts and Jack-o-Lanterns to decorate your home.

The recipe was simple, I took it from a website:

Two cups of flour

One and a half cup of boiling water

One cup of salt.

Dissolve salt in boiling water, mix everything, knead, voila!

… Except that it didn’t work, I was left with a mess of very thick bubbling salt. It looked like some prehistoric swamp. So I went ahead and started reading about making brine, and it so happens that different salts occupy different volumes so you should actually work with weight. Since I don’t have a scale, I had to eyeball it, and since I don’t know what kind of salt you will use I cannot give you an exact recipe, so I will tell you what I did and you can work things out in your nook in the woods.

In a bowl add two cups of flour. Boil one cup of water and start adding salt (I started with 1/4 cup) stirring to dissolve, stop adding salt when the water cannot take any more. Add this water to the flour, mix with a spoon and once the mixture is cool enough, knead with your hands as if it was bread.

Cutest little helper

Cutting shapes

Before doing this, I separated the dough in three and added some food coloring. I used orange and purple to evoke Halloween colors. As I kneaded to integrate the color and make it uniform, the plaster took a good smooth and elastic consistency.

Then I took the rolling pin and stretched the dough thin, as if making cookies. We used cookie cutters to make shapes: pumpkins, ghosts, and just because my son loves them also hearts and stars. With the help of a straw I made holes to pass string. We put the cut shapes on cookie sheets covered with aluminium foil (the tray and the cookies) and put them in the oven at 200 ¤F for three and a half hours, I turned them half way through. Poor Ignacio, he truly though we were making cookies, it took a lot to convince him that the plaster is not for eating.

Before baking, nice pastel colors

The dough baked, and even at such a low temperature the colors became muted and dry. I didn’t much care because I wanted to evoke fall, but if you want vivid colors, which I will want for Christmas, I would suggest to use a lot of coloring.

After baking….

After the shapes cooled off we proceeded to decorate them. I didn’t have a lot at home that was toddler friendly, and my other baby was napping, so I wanted to be quiet, therefore I took pencils and crayons. You could use markers, paint and brush, anything you want. We also used stickers…. because stickers are awesome.

I used pencils for simplicity, but use whatever you fancy!

The last thing was to pass some string through the holes and hanging the shapes.

We made holes with a straw before baking, then we passed some red yarn through them.

While these are definitely not pinterest perfect, we enjoyed making them, especially since I could keep my child quietly entertained while the baby was napping. And he loved picking where to hang them.