Moved

I have moved my regular art blog posts to a Wordpress account. You can access it here or you can go to my website Adele Castillo Art  aka adelecastillo.com and use the Blog link on the homepage. 

Thank you for following me here. I hope to see you there soon. 

Organizing the Home Studio

Company while I paint at home

In 2015 I took a couple of online courses with Alyson B. Stanfield, aka Art Biz Coach. The first was an Organize Your Art Biz class and the second was her Art Biz Bootcamp. Both have been lifesavers and have led me to work with her in her Inner Circle. Talk about motivation! 

arghhhhh!!!! 

Not perfect yet, but much better

Today was the first day I've painted in my newly reorganized home studio. I finally splurged a bit and hired Closet Factory via Tasha Miller (friend, plus amazingly tidy and organized person.) It was my treat to me for having a good year and to boost my intentions to produce more art by giving me a space at home I actually want to spend time in. I love my downtown studio at Crossroads, where I spend most days, but sometimes, like today with the snow falling, I just want to paint at home. 

Everything in its place

    

Thirty Days - Number Three

"Dune Breakers"
Acrylic, micaceous iron oxide and coarse alumina on canvas
©2016 Adele Castillo AllRightsReserved
For Sale - 4" x 12" - $125

Here is number three!  

Thirty Days - Second One

"Night Waves"
Acrylic, Micaceous Iron Oxide, Coarse Alumina on Canvas
©2016 Adele Castillo AllRightsReserved
For Sale - $135

I did it.Two in a row! 

Completed just this afternoon, before working on a larger painting.

You may notice that on the Thirty Days blog, the title may or may not show up. It has to do with the links (and with me, trying to figure what to put into which box.) You will also notice I have to crop it to fit a square space on that website. This is the entire painting. 

Thirty Days, First One

"High Tide"
acrylic on canvas, 4 x 12
©2016 Adele Castillo AllRightsReserved
For Sale $125

Finally, here is the first painting of the Thirty Day Challenge. It will be posted to Leslie Saeta's blog, Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days .  Ok, I'm not on the same schedule, but if you read her rules, that there ARE no rules, you'll see that I fit right in. The idea is to get into the studio and create. Since that is one of my goals for 2016 - to increase my painting time this fits perfectly. I WILL do thirty paintings. They will likely not all be posted to her site consecutively, but I will post them all here as soon as each is ready. 

(And yes, I know it's small...it's also wide and your's truly can't figure how to configure it to fit. Which may mean it won't make it to the 30 Days blog...but it's done!)

Thanks for following along. 

Challenges

"Beach Day"
Acrylic, coarse alumina, micaceous iron oxide
5 x 7
$85 - For Sale
©2015 Adele Castillo AllRightsReserved

I've done it. I signed up for the Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days challenge with Leslie Saeta. I've followed her blog off and on for awhile, then I was able to take a workshop with her in September 2015 when she came to Crossroads Art Center in Richmond, VA. Although I typically paint in acrylic, this was an oil painting workshop, using 3 painting knives and only 5-6 tubes of colors. We created one painting each day (ok, well, I did two paintings in two days - the third is still in my freezer hoping to be completed one day.) I liked how Leslie spends at least an hour prepping her paint mixtures, allowing her to paint for the rest of her allotted time. 

Kay, who is the manager of Crossroads, came in to my studio as I was painting and asked if I was participating in the challenge. I knew another Crossroads artist, Linda Hollett-Bazouzi, was taking it on, but when I realized there would be more of us, I sighed deeply and dove in. YEP! I'm there. 

I had already set as a goal for 2016 to finish 4 different bodies of work (This includes selfies for an exhibit in November, lingering commission paintings to finish, sea paintings and pup paintings) -- ambitious for someone who typically paints at a snail's pace.  This will help me work on the smaller sea paintings and my smaller dog paintings to get more of those ready for sale. I will post the Thirty Days paintings here, on my Facebook page and also on the Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days site. 

Encouragement is welcome. 

Odds and Ends

As the year winds down, many of us try to finish up projects or prepare for new ones. I happen to be doing both. 

I am having a closet rebuilt to create more storage in my home studio. Plus adding a new set of shelving to the wall next to the closet and a nook below a window to house small canvases. This is all part of a new direction in the studio and getting organized, plus a serious effort to clean out our home and get clutter under control. 

The doorway to an overflowing studio closet. 

That means by early January, I have to clean out a significant portion of the studio to make room for the worker bees. So much stuff.Trash or keep.Tackling it all at once may take days, so I came up with a solution using the one-thing-in, one-thing-out theory of clutter clearing. Every time I go upstairs (where the studio is) I grab something to take back down to the trash. In one day I'm amazed at the progress. 
I'll be ready on time. 

In the meantime, I've also been working on a painting I'm giving to someone special for Christmas. So you only get snippets of it in progress right now. Acrylic on canvas.