Fun and Fine Art by Sheryl Karas

Duckling Parade Painting

2008-05-18T22:57:00.000-07:00

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Please don't use them without permission.

More ducklings! Again a digital painting done from an original photograph at the wildlife sanctuary near my house. It's also available as a framed or unframed print from Imagekind and as greeting cards or on a mug or a variety of other products from Cafepress.

Ducklings Painting

2008-05-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

It's duckling time at the wildlife refuge near my house. This digital painting was done from an original photograph I took last year at this time. It's available as a framed or unframed print from Imagekind and as greeting cards or on a mug or a variety of other products from Cafepress.

Wild Ride on the 1911 Looff Carousel

2008-04-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

I live a 15 minute walk from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. I love it. I go down to the wharf and beach near there several times a week. My favorite ride is the old 1911 Looff Carousel. It's a great one with handcarved wooden horses. You can still reach out and grab a brass ring and if you manage to throw the ring into the mouth of a giant clown as you go by, his eyes light up and bells ring. One day I brought my camera and just started snapping as the horses went round and round. I got a number of priceless but very blurry random shots of people laughing and having the time of their lives. I turned this one into a digital painting. I think it's a hoot.

It's available as a poster, greeting cards and on a wide variety of products through my website on Cafepress.

Quilt Designs and Geometric Patterns

2008-02-22T18:48:00.000-08:00

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Please don't use them without permission.

Well, I'm finally back after a break of several weeks. I had the flu and was just too tired to think about blogs.

Lately there's been a renewed interest from other people in the quilt designs I used to do. I used to make part of my living making quilts that were framed to hang on the wall made from cut pieces of wallpaper, giftwrap and other colorful paper products. I gave up the business when the repetition of doing the popular designs over and over started to feel like factory work. This was before Imagekind and Cafepress. If these services were available then who knows what would have happened.

By the end of my "paper quilt" career I started to design my art pieces on the computer but those designs never saw the light of day. Finally, years later, I put them on Cafepress and I have new fans of my work! Quilt-makers and quilt-lovers enjoy them, of course, but it seems that math and technology-oriented people appreciate them as well. Nice, huh?

Buy a matted and framed print from Imagekind by clicking one of the links below:

These images are also available on greeting cards, mugs, T-shirts and a variety of other fine gifts at the Quilts and Geometric Patterns section of my Cafepress shop. Here are samples of what's available:

Dreams Coming True

2008-02-05T13:14:00.000-08:00

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Please don't use them without permission. (Linking to this site, though, is more than alright.)

Even though I've gotten into drawing, painting and photography in recent years I'm still more of a graphic designer at heart. Here's a design I came up with that I actually became obsessed with until I got it done and put it online. Why? I guess I wanted it on a coffee mug for myself so I could drink out of something with a hopeful joyous message on it any time I wanted to.

Oddly enough, I haven't gotten around to buying one for myself and it just sat on Cafepress for months without anyone finding it. Until today. Someone likes my stuff! They bought several of my graphic designs and this was one of them.

This isn't the first time I've sold work on Cafepress. No, that's been a good investment for me and my partner Paul. But this particular set of purchases touched my heart because several of my favorites were included in the bunch.

You can find this design in Paul and Sheryl's Giftshop.

African Violet Dreams of Life in the Serengetti

2008-02-03T00:20:00.001-08:00

All the artwork on this site is copyright protected.
Please don't use it for any reason without permission.

This is an example of a piece done in my favorite medium—dyes painted on silk. Then it was photographed, uploaded into my computer and had text added in Photoshop. It was done at a time in my life when I felt a bit like a potted plant myself. The only real outlets I had for my longing to be somewhere else were African dance class and the African marimba ensemble I played with for awhile. It was energizing and so much fun!

You can buy a matted and framed print of this piece by clicking the link below:

You can also find T-shirts, greeting cards, and a variety of nice gifts with this design at my shop at Cafepress.

Visioning and Dreaming

2008-01-25T19:07:00.001-08:00

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Please do not use them for any reason without my written permission.

"Know you what it is like to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming . . . . It is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul."—Francis Thompson

How did I spend my time as a child? I daydreamed A LOT. I think a lot of artists do that and many artists could benefit from a little time apart from the business of doing art and selling art and worrying about how to use art to help them eat by getting back to the heart of it all... enjoying one's life, letting one be enthralled by the wonder and beauty of the world we live in, allowing the mind to wander and the imagination to be set free.

Lately, I've been so caught up in the business of life—I have a new book out that I'm trying to sell, I'm developing my artist website, trying to spread the word about my spiritual counseling practice—that it's been hard to take time out even to slow down enough to plan more than a few feet ahead.

Daydreaming now? But I know I need to. Relaxing, being with my own thoughts, allowing things to slow down to a reasonable speed. Last week I chose to take a little time just to dream and it changed things. I guess that's why I've been so busy lately. I started imagining a possibility I hadn't considered before. Things that weren't even on the horizon until I took a step back and looked around a bit. And that got me so enthusiastic I flew into action.

Dreaming is the first step on the way to manifestation. Little kids do this naturally. They know that just pretend games help them feel into what they might want to be and do. It's the first step of deciding what you want to be when you grow up. You imagine it first. And that's something artists do, too. Imagine the future and then try it out.

That looks like fun—let's build a fort out of snow, throw snowballs at each other and have a war. Ow! That one hurt! I didn't like snowball fights one bit. But I did like building the structure we had the fights in. I liked making the snow people who guarded our fort when we weren't in it and I liked figuring out how to decorate and dress these watchpeople most of all. Some kids don't like that part. They just want to dig into the snowbank, pack it into a ball and throw it.

Today I spend much of my time being an artist. I don't like to throw things—I create them. I make things. I design them. "Each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul." Each adult does too. That's what visioning is about. It's how we get started in being who we want to be when we grow up. And it's how we get started in making our dreams come true.

The drawing of the child above is available as a matted and framed archival quality print through Imagekind by clicking the link below:

It's also available on a variety of products and clothing items (especially for kids but for adults as well). Click on the examples below or go to my Cafepress giftshop to see the whole line.

Cymbidiums

2008-01-24T13:04:00.000-08:00

All the images on this site are copyright protected.
Please don't use them for any purpose without my written permission.

This painting in acrylic of Cymbidium Orchids hangs in the spiritual counseling and healing office I share with my partner Paul Hood. That's what we do with part of our lives. In the other parts we write books and blogs, make perfume, and do LOTS of art. I have other blogs and websites where I share personal stories about all of that. In this blog I share my art and help you find it for sale.

I put Cymbidiums up first because it is my current favorite. It's bright and cheerful and reminds me somewhat of Hawaii. And it's very representative of the graphic arts influence in my art and in my heart.

You see, I offer my artwork for sale to hang on the wall like most artists do but I really feel that art that brightens a person's life on everyday objects like a coffee mug, a throw pillow or a jewelry box—functional (commercial) art—is just as valuable. In fact, I think the line between "fine" and "commercial" is simply a matter of context and belief. If you believe Matisse, if he was alive today, would be ashamed to see his work sold on a coffee mug you're quite mistaken.

Art is art. If it warms your soul, take it home, love that it matches your couch(!) and enjoy having it in your life.

I don't currently make original paintings for sale. But I do sell archival quality framed and unframed prints as well as prints on canvas. You can buy Cymbidiums through Imagekind by clicking the following link:

Also, as I said before, I LIKE the idea of people enjoying my artwork on a coffee mug, a pillow, a greeting card or a refrigerator magnet. Click on the photo to go directly to the page where it's for sale or visit the Cymbidiums section of my Cafepress site to see my whole line of Cymbidium products and gifts: