Maureen O'Brien MO illustration and design

Demonstrating both monotype and trace monotypes, then colorizing and combining the 2 prints in photoshop.

Wrapping up the Summer Youth Art Institute summer workshops/art camp at Vanderbilt. Students designed their own personal logos which they carved into stamps, created gel plate monotype prints with stencils and from those prints created cut paper illustrations, which I demonstrated but only a couple students got that far - they were having too much fun creating stamps and gel plate prints!

Summer Youth Art Institute - I demonstrated pastel alcohol underpaintings on sandpaper (horse), following is a sampling of kid's work this past week + alcohol and acrylic painting on canvas, and cyanotypes. fun week.

This summer I'm participating in the Summer Youth Art Institute workshops again, although only 1/2 the amount I did last summer. Last week I tried a variation of CF Payne's technique with self portraits. 1/2 the kids didn't get to the oil wash part, we skipped that & went straight to color pencil. It didn't help that my demo was an almost complete disaster. 😉

Haven't posted anything here in a while! Work in progress, some character designs for current project.

The show is now up, Sarratt 7, at the Nashville International airport - near United Airlines - featuring 7 artists from Sarratt Art Studios at Vanderbilt. Evening reception at the airport April 9.😉 The Sarratt 7 art exhibit will be up through June, I believe, then travel to Vanderbilt and be on display at the Sarratt gallery through July and August.

Lino-cut demonstration for my Intro to Printmaking class At Sarratt Art Center. Having fun with this series. Also posting a trace monotype on scrap paper with watercolor.

Howdy! 2018 has been a bit hectic so far, I've been ignoring social media pretty much. :) I did get it together enough to deliver some art for a curated group show at Belmont University's Leu Gallery. The show is called Complementary Voices, Jan 8 - Feb 26. All the pieces I submitted for the show were accepted and are on display, I think about 11 altogether - illustrations I have done for children's publications - some published work and some unpublished. I have been trying to finish up at least 4 pieces of my horse cop series that I started a while ago - this will be in another group show, but will be my first one at the Nashville Airport, part of their Arts at the Airport project. We submitted and were accepted last year, but the deadline to deliver framed art for the curator is Feb 24. We are calling the show The Sarratt Seven (not the official name). I will post more info as i learn more. Here is a peak, I've posted some of the process pics previously, so they should look familiar. :)
The last one - Horse Cop IV is a 2 color monotype print, along with a watercolor, a charcoal and a chalk pastel. I will continue with the horse cop series - cropping them, varying viewpoints and exploring the images in different mediums - all the things that interest me at the moment. My idea is for them to be grouped together as one piece, that is why each piece is only about 9 ish x 12 ish - not sure if the curator at the airport will be keen on displaying them as a group.

Hi all, if you live in greater Nashville/Franklin area and are interested in taking an art/illustration class - I'm signed up to teach an "Intro to Printmaking" class at Vanderbilt's Sarratt Art Center, Spring 2018 - open to everyone (over 18). I teach it as an illustration class, combining printmaking techniques (silkscreen/linocut/monotype/monotrace) with multiple mediums including digital as illustration assignments. It will be a fun class - they are small classes with individualized attention. David Heustess is the program director, classes start Jan 22, 12 week course, $140 +30 materials fee. To sign up or get more info: https://www.vanderbilt.edu/sarrattart/schedule-cost/

Schedule & Cost | Sarratt Studio Arts | Vanderbilt University Schedule & Cost. Sarratt Art Studios Join us in the Studios for Fall 2017. *On line registration opens On November 1, 2017 with a new registration system. Returning students will create a new account as we were not able to transfer any of your information. See the”How To Register” page for more info...

A bit more progress w/the watercolor police horse. This is hot press so the paint sits on the smooth surface. I am re-posting the 1st of 4- charcoal (I worked on it more since this pic), and #2, pastel on sandpaper (not finished). I want to do one more but not sure how I want to crop it yet, or what medium. Hoping to finish for the group show at Nashville airport.

Squeezed in some time last night to resume my police horse series. I wanted to paint it looser than this. 😉 #3

Inktober 2017 & i have participated for 3 out of 4 days - not bad. We'll see how long I can do this. First day was just a warm up, no story or thought behind it. Hopefully they will get more interesting. 😉

SCBWI conference this weekend, illustrator intensive with Irene Vandervoort, AD Sterling children's books. I submitted 2 possible spread ideas from the choices given and went with Alice falling down the rabbit hole/well. I saw it as a monotype print, so I had to obey that vision. 🙂 I made several background monotypes of a circular well, then a monotype of the well and Alice, then a trace monotype and I combined them in Photoshop. I used oil based printing inks in Sepia, Black and Pthalo colors, and I colorized the line in PS as well. Many layers, several layouts. Not sure which I like better. AD Irene's comments to me: "You’re so ambitious to work up two spreads, Maureen! I love the energy of your spread for Down the Rabbit Hole. You are going to have quite a time getting the block of text to read along the wall. The extract could be a portion of the proposed text (given what you’re illustrating). I think you could get away with starting from “Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly,” I would suggest taking Alice down a bit in size in order to not lose her hand in the gutter. For the Tea Party spread, I would pull in slightly so there isn’t so much space for the table. The Dormouse is going to be lost in the gutter, too, I’m afraid. I love the idea of hand lettering for this spread!" :)

Just a few more tweaks, like a towel rack & such, but i'm pretty much finished. Nice to have a bathroom on the main floor again. Now to clean the drywall dust from the rest of my house, ugh ... oh, i'm supposed to seal the grout in the shower. That sounds like fun. 😜

I am trying to prepare some new art for a couple shows coming up, but mostly I've been renovating my main floor bath. I demoed the walls & ceiling, took out a senseless wall & door, tiled & grouted new floor, grouted the tub/shower tile & designed the new cabinet. Painted, too. I gained almost a foot of ceiling height with bulkhead over the tub. Not finished yet - just waiting on the plumber to hook up & install toilet & faucets. 😉 Guess who forgot to take "before" pics?

This summer i worked on a lot of demos in various mediums for my classes. I didn't finish all of them, which is typical. 😉 Posting some of them - theme was Art from Around the World.

I was impressed by my last week's group of 13-16 yr old kids at Vanderbilt's . They created art for silkscreen prints, combined with stenciling - their inspiration was South American folk art. They each did a series of 5 (minimum). Their 2nd major project was an acrylic painting.

A whirlwind of busyness at at , teaching 13-16 yr olds silkscreen methods studying South African folk art examples for inspiration, and 7-12 yr olds looking to India & Sri Lankan folk art and textiles for inspiration. I brought in my antique hand carved wood blocks from India for the kids to use in combination with their own designs that they carved into linoleum blocks. Here are some examples, silkscreen prints first:

Happy 4th of July, all! ;) This is a recent linocut I created as a demonstration for the Summer Youth Art Institute last week. My first artist proof. ;) A festive image inspired by a photo of Chinatown, LA.

Completing the 4th week of teaching at the Youth Art Institute at Vanderbilt, , 7-12 yr olds. Here are some student's using ink & a bamboo brush, block printing & painting.

SYAI at Vanderbilt, we've been studying various artists and regional folk art from all around the world. This week we touched on the influence of Mexican satirical illustrator Jose Posada (he depicted his characters as Calaveras to equalize rich & poor & remind us of our mortality. He is credited w/influencing the usage of Calaveras in Day of the dead festival). Amate bark painting/folk art and the works of Kahlo & Rivera. A lot for one week. And then, some of the students ignore the theme & go their own way ... ;). Student (13-16) work- Acrylic paintings and trace monotypes with chalk pastel.

This past week the 7-12 yr old group in the Youth Art Institute studied Egyptian hieroglyphs & made cartouches of their names, and also made mosaics, taking inspiration from Roman mosaics in N Africa.

A few more self portraits from , The Youth Art Institute at Vanderbilt, 7-12 yrs. These are acrylic paintings with chalk pastel and oil pastel added, in the cubist style, with a few trace monotypes (and chalk pastel) inspired by Modigliani. :)

This summer I am working with kids at Vanderbilt's Youth Art Institute. This past week We explored self portraits in the cubist & post impressionist styles (specifically Modigliani), and lightly touched on surrealist self portraits. Age groups 6-9 & 10-12. I can't believe how well the little ones took to cubism. We also did some trace monotypes that I will post. I was not able to get pics of all the art. :( This first group of cubist self portraits in conte crayon by the younger group. I encouraged them to try mixing in some collage as well. :)

Some of the images in this old b&w movie were so interesting I paused a few frames & made some sketches ...

The other day, trying to focus & get some work done, i was overtaken by a familiar odor...couldn't concentrate anymore...

I have a show up for the month of May at the Saratt Art Center's ACE gallery at Vanderbilt. We got most of it up today. ;) I'll finish getting all the work up next week, featuring my

A little plein air quick sketching on Vanderbilt campus, awesome oak trees.

Happy Easter and blessings to everyone! Thanks to all those who follow and Like.

Demonstration in Gouache watercolors - using white gouache as resist (tiger bunny), and also comparison paintings: layering/overlapping opaque colors from dark to light, starting with a blue under painting vs. laying in each color opaquely, but not overlapping. Tiger bunny -(as requested by students), gouache resist is a bit tricky, as you have to paint over the white gouache without activating it and mixing in w/your overlapping paint colors, then wash your painting under the faucet to reveal your image where you laid in opaque white gouache, then go back & brighten faded colors if you want. Each time the results are different. :) Easter Lilly using liquid maskit as resist w/watercolor washes. Always fun demonstrations.

Charcoal demo for drawing fundamentals -focusing on value composition and reflective light, tone & shadow, then pen & ink demos. This week we will be working on ink washes and transparency, light distortions/bending. ;)
I took photos of the still life/objects students drew, but we don't draw from photos for these exercises. ;)

Sketching people under the radar whenever I can ...