Paint and clothing...

Here are the "22 Owls"  from the GuessWho? show. I had fun painting them and they have gone on to a good home. I added them to my inside painting photos of the Christmas card this year. Since the painting is only 10x10 inches, I used a small brush - but I worked on being playful and not tight. I've already had a strong suggestion that somebody else would like owls another year- so I'll have to think of another playful approach - but something different too.  Maybe not even a tree but something else for the "framework" - and a different "feature" owl. Well, one thing about that painting was it was a sitting down,  working on a desk painting and thus, a much neater project. Like most artists, I tend to really get into my work - which can mean paint right up my sleeves. An artist's apron isn't quite enough for me. I do much better in a lab coat. I had a lab coat that was a wrap-around style and that was perfect as it could be simply wrapped looser if worn outdoors over a jacket. Alas, it finally fell apart. I have another one but it is button-front.  Chris Charlebois has a great dark blue mechanic's coat that I covet - and it is wrap-around. He works in oil, which can be messy too. Another artist I know says he seems to attract paint and was merely showing people around his studio when he ended up with a big blob of paint in his hair. I usually work in acrylics and they really stay on fabric. In fact, with a fabric medium mixer  (or even without!) you can paint on t-shirts, sweat-shirts and so on and have designs that last beautifully through washings.  For artist's clothing, the paint is more apt to be spatters and blobs than designs - but the lasting quality is there so an artist has to be cautious on what is worn in the studio. It would be very easy to end up with no "good" clothes at all! ... On the other hand, there are some jeans sold at Holt Renfrew for $340 whose special feature is that they are paint-spattered.  Well, there is one expense an artist need not spring for. After all, if they were worn by an artist, no-one would recognize them as expensive style. Instead, it would be assumed that the artist had mindlessly gone out in public in her studio clothes.