My progress 9/5-9/17

I spent a great deal of time trying to find the most cost effective way to buy lollipops in a variety of colors. This included trying to locate them locally and online. With the local pursuit I went to Wal Mart, Publix, two different dollar stores, and a party store. The only place to even carry any form of individually wrapped suckers was the dollar stores but they were not the kind that you frequently find at banks, which is part of where I got my inspiration from so that is important to me. 

The next step was to try and locate an online store. I started with a Google search.

 

 After some time and clicking on a great deal many links I found the first two promising stores (screen shot images: below-left, and below-center), however I quickly realized how much I would end up spending on shipping ($27 per 25lbs). Then I eventually found the store Candy Creek Lollipops (screen shot image below-right) which has free shipping and also has more flavors than the previous online store I found(10 flavors vs 4-6 flavors at the other stores). They also carry a peppermint flavor which is almost completely white and a butterscotch flavor which is a light brown.

 

I have decided that I will order a few cases from Candy Creek Lollipops to start off with and buy more as needed. It is still going to be very expensive but I guess that is always how things go when pursuing an artistic career!

I also picked up some more painting supplies since I was running low on various paint colors and a variety of my brushes, and my art palette, didn't survive the painting class I took in the spring. I am really excited about trying out the new brushes and a couple of the colors I bought for fun.

I also have 16 8 by 8 inch canvases that I plan on experimenting with various painting techniques in order to find my own style. One thing that I realized in the spring is that I paint best when the surface I am painting on is not white, so I started by taping off the sides and painting the canvases a neutral gray.

Below are some of the photos I am going to use when experimenting with painting techniques. I am also going to be taking new photos of Zoey as part of next weeks progress and will post them by 9/27.

 I may also play with the themes of the images creating sets of paintings of images from the same photo shoot. The images with the bubble wand and the images with the over-sized lollipop are both older images that I took of Zoey last year.