Inside The Studio: Spring Fling & The Third Sister (The Forsaken) Deep Dive

Oh my! Thank you each and everyone of you who made it out to Spring Fling in North Platte on the 16th! It was an absolutely incredible weekend and it felt amazing to be back in North Platte for a show. It was incredible seeing all the familiar faces especially on a day that really wasn't all that bad weatherwise. It did rain and hail on us while we were packing but thankfully from everything I have gone through since the show it looks like nothing got damaged! I had most of my stuff packed so only one of the tables got wet and the table clothes I had on it.

I currently don't have any new shows that I've added this time around. I decided it was best to take a break between Spring Fling and Celtic Fest so that way I can get some more stuff made up. I sold through a lot of my laminated bookmarks so I'll be making more of them as well as be working on painting some new wooden ones as well. I have been spending my down time the last week or so working on designing them and should hopefully be able to work on painting more of them soon.

I am also working on creating the next collection of mimics since I am down to two. Over the weekends I while I was off I was able to start working on them. One I know I am done sculpting, it took far longer then I anticipated but then again I am trying something different with it and while I love the look of it, it gave me several issues. The second one is not as detailed as the other one but I kind of like it. I'm not 100% sure if I'm done with it yet. I might end up adding more to it when I work on them again, we'll see what happens. I was also able to get two more sculpted and will be starting to paint the first two this week since they have fully dried and cured.

I am also planning on having a couple new stickers by Celtic Fest. Before Spring Shopping Bonanza I had finished the portrait of the third sister in my version of Weird Sisters and have finally figured out a proper name for them as well. Since finishing them I have been calling them the Fading Memories Series and the newest one, The Forsaken, will soon be made into a sticker to match the other two. I'll also be getting my Ghost designs made into stickers as well. I have been slacking on getting them made into stickers and if I am going to be getting more made then I might as well add them in as well.

The Forsaken while I always knew would be fairly personal and personal, she ended up being even more than I had planned. I really wanted her to be one of the more haunting pieces I've done lately and I definitely think I managed to do it. I took heavy inspiration from Annie Oakley and different elements of the Midwest. One of my sisters also heavily inspired it as well, granted it she inspired more of the smaller elements and thinking of her helped keeping me from straying to far from the western them I had for it. Out of all of my siblings, she is the one that is the most into western imagery which really helped with some of the smaller elements.

Every piece in the Fading Memories series has been inspired by different time periods. The first one, Cemetery Girl, was very loosely inspired by the Victorian Era. Bats in the Belfry, with the Queen Anne style house upon her head, is styled after the Edwardian Era. The house on her head is slowly starting to break down with time and bats circle around her head. The bat at her chest is inspired by old costumes from the Edwardian era, in particular one dress that floats around online all the time. I am a bat loving girl and that has always been a piece that has inspired me. The Victorian and Edwardian eras have always been points in time that I have been absolutely fascinated by from the fashion, decor, and even the advancements in medicine that happened during that time. And don't get me started on the ghost stories , seance, or spiritualism movement of the time! I could go on for hours!

The Forsaken, with her inspiration being so heavily set in the American Old West, while not often an era that I have been inspired by, draws inspiration from my life here in Nebraska. With Buffalo Bill Cody living in North Platte, we've also often heard about Annie Oakley and her sharp shooter acts that she did while touring with Buffalo Bill. She was the starting point of the piece before I even started drawing anything. This led me down a long long rabbit hole of different elements that I could use in it to both give the haunted feeling I was looking for with her. I thought about the different things that are so insanely common out here from the broken wagon wheels that seem to be just about every where thanks to Ogallala being the meeting point of all the wagon trails when people were migrating out west, to the small villages and towns that formed years ago and are now maybe a couple hundred people out here and their abandoned churches that have been left behind as the small communities has faded away.

When I was growing up I used to live in this small village that had roughly 35 people at the time. My family made up a good chunk of those people. One of the families that lived out there for a few years had bought one of the churches the village had and made part of it in their home. They moved away after a few years and the large church remains to this day as far as I know. Granted, it mostly lost shingles while I was living there but they did board and lock it up when they moved. There was a second smaller church that was not even a block away and I never saw anyone ring the large bell outside the church but you'd occasionally hear it when the property owner would ring it. I just happened to never be in a spot to see him ring it which meant my mind would run wild! The old churches for some reason, above any other building that existed while I lived there are some of the clearest memories for some reason. In a lot of ways I remember them more than I remember the house I lived and grew up in. The Forsaken is actually the second time I have used an old church in my art. The first one while old wasn't in as bad of shape as the church in The Forsaken. It was similar to how I remember the bigger church from where I grew up, with it's chipping paint. I didn't add on the doors or windows, they were just black voids but at the time I didn't really know how to make it look right at the scale I was painting.

The turkey vulture watching over her shoulder with the only seeing eye in the piece is there both because of my love for the birds but also because for me, not only are they scavengers, but in a way they feel like guardians and watchers to me. As places are forgotten to time, nature takes over and especially out here we often see the vultures out drifting on wind currents as the scavenge for food. To me when I see them, I don't see a creepy bird circling something dead or dying like so many do. They are the watchers of these more forgotten and abandoned places. Death of these places isn't ever a true death. Nature takes hold and life will continue, whether it be wildlife or the nature plant life. They are guardians of the souls that still call those places home even as we move on from them, watching over the souls that remain in the abandoned places. They are the faithful companions that make it so we aren't ever truly alone and forgotten . Something out there will remember that we were once here.

The Forsaken - 3rd in the Fading Memories Series

Since the last blog and newsletter was so big and covered two months I don't have as much as that one. I can go on listing how I've ordered more grid wall pieces and how I'm looking into different containers for transporting stuff but that isn't anything to exciting and is stuff that is for the most part hidden at shows. I'm still working on adjusting and updating files for the larger coloring books that I am wanting to start making but I'm still in a point of redrawing some of the pieces since I was super smart when I first go my ipad and started using procreate and merged all of the layers so it was one single layer. This is what I get for not thinking ahead about what I wanted to do with my art in the future. Granted these are art pieces I did back in 2020 and I was just excited to be able to start making art more easily while I was on overnight shifts. It only took a dozen or so pieces to learn not to do that but hey, we all start somewhere. After deciding to do stickers I learned pretty quickly not to do that. I need to make sure I keep more layers in the file so I can make different adjustments as needed.

I have also finished the shop update blog! I published it prior to this one. It is there if you are wanting a quick reference guide to recent things added and removed from the shop with far less rambling. Depending on how Celtic Fest goes, I may end up having another shop update blog since I'll have new stickers, and hopefully new mimics and bookmarks to add. I won't complain if I sell through that many of them but I will be overwhelmed if I do. We'll see what happens.