Category Archives: painting

San Benito County Open Studios 2017 / Couling Studio

Photos from 2017 Open Studios, Cindy Couling’s Home Studio location.

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Getting back in the swing of it

I’ve had a kind of a rough year and haven’t had much time or energy to get back into painting or anything creative, really. When life issues strike, I would have thought that I’d want to paint more – but it wasn’t the case. It was more like, the creative things I loved to do […]

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Matroyoska Ceramic Doll Couling

Matroyoska Ceramic Doll Set – Pages 08/07/14

I’ve been working on a set of ceramic Matroyoska dolls. Note to self, you must learn how to spell it properly and remember the name before you start blogging about it. Really, I’ve had a hard time remembering the name of the dolls and it’s embarrassing. I am not even sure I have it right […]

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Pages 10/18/12

I’ve been busy! My blog is neglected. What can I say? I am spending alot more time posting things on FaceBook these days and am wondering if this blog will stay active much longer. Anyway – here’s what I’ve been up to the last couple of months. I’ve been making alot of pottery to prepare […]

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Pages 6/8/12

Aren’t these super cool? These are the self portrait books that Jen Worden put together. Each of us did a self portrait and sent it to Jen. She made these fabulous handmade books for each of us. Inside there are pages with copies of the other artist’s self portraits. We also filled in a questionnaire […]

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Pages 5/7/12

Detail of the right spread. Detail of the left spread. Here are a few altered book spreads I did over the weekend. Mixed media, painting and collage on an old yearbook. This book is BIG. I am a little overwhelmed working large and filling the space, but it’s been fun. The scary baby one, yeah […]

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Pages 5/3/12

Not too much going on in the studio right now. I’ve posted a page I am working on in an old journal. I’m working on priming some pages in a brand new book. This is the boring part, right? I have a couple more pages to prime and then I’ll stitch them all together. That’s […]

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Pages 4/23/12

A couple more finished visual journal pages. Both for a round robin I am in. Not sure now, looking at the ‘Secret’ pages if I need to go back and do a bot more. Hmm. Some open spaces I think might need ‘something’. I’ll sit on it a night or two. 😉 The ‘Secret Family […]

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Pages 4/16/12

Here’s a finished spread in my personal art visual journal. It’s the last one to finish before I do the cover. Top image is closest to the true colors in the book. The second I included because I loved the colors the Hipstamatic photograph put on it. It really enhanced the blues.

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Pages 4/12/12

Well, I finished the page last night. I used the cut up piece I showed you guys yesterday. I layered in a bunch of acrylic paints and pastels and then did a final batik like stencil over the top to give it a splash of bright yellow. What you think? A little strange looking, but […]

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Pages 4/11/12

This was a weird little picture that came out of altering a magazine image. Almost spooks me out. Well, wait … yeah it spooks me out. I covered this with a wash of acrylic paint, and then went back in with portfolio pastels and more full strength acrylic paints. I ran this through the Zyron […]

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Inspired by Leonard Cohen’s “Who by Fire”. I love this wonderful song. The imagery and creativity and thought put into the words. Illustration is a play on life and death and mirror reflection. Paint, henna stencil and pencil drawing. Left panel is stamped and images from the hipstamatic camera for iPhone were printed on canvas […]

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Pages 1/7/12

This is a sketch I did on a paper grocery bag. I’m adding it as a tip-in page into the altered book. I find tip-ins a good way to use the doodles I create while on the phone. Some of them can be pretty cool! Page illustration. My book theme is ‘Lyrica Obscura’. The words […]

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Pages 1/3/12

Preparing the Altered Book. Removing pages, gluing pages, and waiting for them to dry. Back Cover. I sanded the cover, then painted the book with good acrylic paint and used metallic pens. This isn’t done, I’m just getting started! Interior Page. Working on laying in a strong base for collage. Acrylics, pens. Interior Cover. The […]

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Pages 09/15/11

Been working on my journal lately. Here are a few finished pages for you guys to look at. I love journaling. It really gives me total freedom to work less mainstream. It’s art for myself, not anyone else.

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Pages 02/21/09

I got pretty behind with my Traci Bautista workshop this week because of work. Today I buckled down and spent a bit of time going through the exercises. Most of the exercises were about spilling out your random thoughts using a variety of different mediums. I used Sharpie paint pens, gel pens, highlighters, markers, white […]

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Pages 10/03/08

This is the page I created for the ‘Blissfully Art Journaling‘ Yahoo Group – ‘All About the Shoes’ chunky book. I made the background using techniques I learned from Karen Gartel’s workshop I took last year. (Check out previous entries which describe her techniques.) I painted and stamped the background using hand-carved stamps. I altered […]

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Pages 03/22/08

I’m taking an online painting/collage course with artist Karen Gartel over at Altered Diva Online Workshops. The 6 week course is called “Softly Spoken” and is supposed to help us make our own painted backgrounds and teach collage composition. I honestly took this class because I wanted to MAKE myself set some time aside and […]

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Pages 02/28/08

Since we didn’t have as many signups for the Shipwreck Swap, I had to quickly come up with a bunch more cards so the 5 participants didn’t get the same card. lol. The front has a small plastic mirror and a vintage photo which I manipulated in Photoshop to make it look like it was […]

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Pages 02/23/08

This is a piece I’ve just finished for the Altered Art Obsession Yahoo Group. It’s one of 10 pieces I made for the swap. The theme is ‘Shipwreck’. The swap hostess is going to make tiny little treasure chests, alter them and inside will have all the artwork from the participants. It sounded like a […]

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Pages 01/26/08

Sketchbook collage. Got some new pink paint (so NOT a fave color of mine, but I wanted to expand my range of colors a bit) and a cool new Frida Kahlo stamp which I bought from stampcamp.com.

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