Paint Party Friday Week 32 Year 2 Check In Featured Artist: Aimee from Artsyville

photo courtesy of Artsyville

Welcome to Week 32 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 bright, colorful, and fun paintings with charming and thoughtful words that match her vibrant personality. Please welcome Aimee from Artsyville!

 
image courtesy of Artsyville

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?) I’m not primarily a painter, but I use paint and love it! Mostly I write and illustrate hand lettered poems and phrases, and I do use paints with those sometimes. But I'm a big crafter too, and this is where I really go nuts with paint!

image courtesy of Artsyville

What are your favorite techniques, media, and tools to use in creating your paintings? For paint in my illustrations, I go with gouache. It’s chalky and has a weird texture, which gets a lot of people all riled up, but personally, I love the thickness and boldness of it. It’s like painting with cream, and it’s excellent for filling in little doodle details, which I love, and covering up my mistakes, of which I make plenty.

image courtesy of Artsyville

I love watercolor, too. Sometimes, I’ll work backwards from my usual method of creating, and toss a bunch of watercolor splotches on paper. After they’ve dried, I let the shapes guide my writing and my word choices, since I’m restricted by the sizes of those shapes. I use this method a lot for my journal pages.

Liquid watercolors (any kind) and acrylics (Liquitex) are my favorite for craft projects.

image courtesy of Artsyville

What is your favorite thing to paint? Why? Objects! Things that have no expectations -- and even things that don't expect to be painted in the first place. Pumpkins! Chairs! Whatever is there. I’m much freer with paint when I’m in crafty mode rather than deciding where it should go on an illustration. I love to slap paints on kraft paper grocery bags. I cut them apart, lay them flat, paint in random patterns, and then cut them up for collage pieces or craft projects.

image courtesy of Artsyville

What is your proudest painting moment and/or greatest painting achievement so far? It’s not so much a particular moment as it is a feeling I get when I put a brush onto a surface. The moment a brush imparts that bright splotch of color... it’s like the first sip of an excellent beer or a real, full-sugared Coke. It doesn’t even matter to me if it looks good or not.

image courtesy of Artsyville

What's next in your painting future? My family and I just went through a major relocation that has taken the better part of a year to work through, and the (un)settling process left me with very little time or emotional energy to take on new work. Some people are great about working their way creatively through strife, but instead I can only absorb and observe. So as the ideas popped up, I kept them in a thousand different notebooks, and now I have the time and the spirit to channel them. It will be a very busy fall in Artsyville! ♥

image courtesy of Artsyville

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Thank you for bringing so much color and inspiration to the party, Aimee!

To learn more about Aimee, please visit her at:

http://artsyville.blogspot.com/
http://www.etsy.com/shop/artsyville
http://www.facebook.com/artsyville?fref=ts

 **Would you like to be a PPF Featured Artist? (Of course you do!)
Click here for more details!**

Another fun and busy party last week with such lovely creations! 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.

Have a fun and creative week everyone!