Paint Party Friday: Week 26, Year 2 Check In Featured Artist: Martha from Ayala Art

image courtesy of Ayala Art

Welcome to Week 26 of Paint Party Friday (Year 2) and to the next edition of our Featured Artist Series! (Would you like to be a PPF Featured Artist? Please click here for details!) This week's featured artist creates fantastic faces and inspires, motivates, and invites us to join in the fun.  Please welcome Martha from Ayala Art!

Please tell us a bit about your personal history with painting. (When did you start painting? How has your painting evolved since you first started?) All my work is under AyalaArt, which is part of my name. Ever since I can remember, I have loved drawing. That was the only way they could keep me busy and sitting down. (Except when I was drawing on the walls, I had to do that standing!) As I grew up, my artistic inclinations went more towards the performing arts and sculpting. I had also a graphic design studio, which involved a lot of drawing but no painting.

Fast forward a bunch of years, I get married, move to a different city, have babies, and I could not do clay anymore, it was too messy and kind of impossible with young kids (one was throwing clay balls up the wall, and the other one was eating it!), so I turned my attention back to drawing and as the kids grew up, I went into painting. I've been through all the mediums, sizes and substrates.

I settled for a good long time on wood with acrylics. But then I would go to oils on canvas, then watercolors... In each medium or even size, my style would be different. That's when I discovered I suffered from "Quoque plures penicullus incompositus" which is fancy Latin for "Too many styles disorder". (I actually looked for an online translator to get it in Latin hahaha...)

image courtesy of Ayala Art

What are your favorite techniques, media, and tools to use in creating your paintings? At this point, acrylics on canvas. Tomorrow, who knows! I painted with water soluble oils for years. I even have posted about the pros and cons of both acrylic and oil paints. I use speed dry mediums for oils, and slow dry medium for acrylics. Just can't deal with their normal speed I guess! :o)

Tools, well, it depends of what I'm working on. Sometimes the best tool is an old brush, and some other times a rag. I do love my filbert brushes!

image courtesy of Ayala Art

What is your favorite thing to paint? Why? I absolutely love painting portraits. I started with realism, and slowly moved to a more abstracted style, and went into everything in between. For years I painted little girls. I still love painting and drawing them. Maybe the fun part of that is all the bows and frilly things I can paint on them, since my daughter never really let me put bows on her :o)

Figurative art is what calls me. Maybe because there's always a story that you can see in the face?

image courtesy of Ayala Art

What is your proudest painting moment and/or greatest painting achievement so far? My proudest moment was when I was able to catch a bottle of red paint before it hit the carpet. Man, that made me proud Xo)

Actually, almost every time I'm working on something new, is my proudest moment. Also when my doll was published in Art Doll Quarterly. It was so much fun!

image courtesy of Ayala Art

What's next in your painting future? Classes! Always learning, and now offering online workshops. Any one can learn how to make a face, I will see to that! :o)

Also: Taking commissions again. Not too many since I can't help stressing about each of them, but it is thrilling to work on somebody else's dreams. As well as Balance work, listings and promoting... is that possible? Sometimes I paint a lot and never list... some other times, I list a lot and never find time to promote it, or worse, get stuck online and forget to paint! :oP

Plus my 29 Faces Challenge in September! It's the 3rd time around and it is so much fun!

You can find Martha and Ayala Art at:
Blog: http://ilove2paint.blogspot.com
tumblr: http://ayala-art.tumblr.com
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/AyalaArt?feature=guide
twitter: https://twitter.com/ayala_art
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AyalaArt
Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/AyalaArt

Thank you so much Martha for the wonderful interview and providing us with the motivation to create faces daily!  (Kristin is having lots of fun & EVA enjoyed the very first one!)

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NOW IT'S YOUR TURN...
WE WANT YOU TO SUBMIT YOUR STORY!

**Would you like to be a PPF Featured Artist? Click here for details!**

Wow! What a busy and creative party last week! What wonderful paintings!

By the way, several of you have again mentioned how much they would like to reply directly to your comments on their blogs, but Blogger's default setting is "noreply-comment@blogger.com".  Jenn of "Just add Water, Silly" has a great explanation on getting replies so you are not a "no-reply blogger". (Dashboard - Edit Profile - check "show my email address" and enter it - SAVE profile.) We changed our settings when  we first realized the issue and it is great to hear back from someone who has appreciated your comment. If you are uncomfortable with sharing your personal email address then email us (link on sidebar) and we can send you an invitation to get a gmail account which you can forward to another address.

Now, here is our check-in for this week's party:

As always, please make sure to use your post URL address NOT your blog home page URL address as there are many late visitors who get confused as to which post is for PPF when they arrive (after Friday) at your website. If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Linky, an explanation of how this tool works can be found on Week 1 and Week 2 Check-Ins.

Hope you have a wonderful creative paint-filled week!