my latest obsession

For those who have been following our blog for a while, you may remember that I made a goal a little over a year and a half ago to always have an art project in the works. As a result of that goal, I started painting again and displayed my work at a local art walk.
It was a really fun experience. I just sat there, painted a little, and played my mandolin while people walked by and made nice comments. I sold one painting, but it was to my mom, so it doesn't really count. I kind of misjudged the venue. We went to an art walk in West Seattle, and it was a very fashionable wine and cheese event. The Renton art walk was more of a beer and Cheetos event.
Without being too big of a jerk, let me just show you what did sell at the art walk:

It was a fun experience anyway, and I'm excited to submit my work to a few other art walks around Seattle.

Last spring, I won a mini-scholarship to the Art Institute of Seattle, and I just finished taking my first class. It was an illustration techniques class, and it was a lot of fun. Here are some of the techniques we learned:

Bleach on dark colored paper.
Scratchboard.Airbrush and prismacolors.
Screenprinting.

It was such a fun experience. Engineering classes were fun and all, but I'd much rather spend hours in an art studio working with my hands.

Finally, I put some work into creating an online portfolio so I can market myself to the art walk organizers and patrons. Here's the background on the name upstARTIST.org:

I've always felt a little strange using the term artist to describe myself. Besides "Intro to Watercolor" at BYU, I don't have any real training, so it feels a little pretentious to call myself an artist. But that kind of attitude doesn't get you anywhere. When I think about "real artists" the word upstart comes to mind.

upstart |ˈəpˌstärt| a person who has risen suddenly to high position, esp. one who behaves arrogantly.

So even though I still feel like an impostor, I remind myself that I need to assert myself as an artist in order to become one.

The exciting news for today is that I just sold my first painting (to a non-family member). I guess that makes me legit.