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Tara Turner

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My name is Tara Turner and I am a fine art photographer and digital artist who has a driving passion to capture the beauty of my surrounding environment, whether it be a misty landscape, a moody sky or an old brick wall with a hundred stories to tell. I focus on combining my two favourite genres of photography- landscape and urban. By merging these two mediums I hope to make a statement about how as people we affect the environment around us. As well I hope to evoke emotion by creating a visually appealing, unique and imaginative piece of work, as ultimately in the end, some things can’t only been seen…they must be felt

Mix It Up

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Please welcome the latest Try Handmade columnist, Susannah Rodgers! You may know her through her shop Art Nest (which we featured a few weeks ago), and we’re fortunate to have her and her new series Get On The Wall. She’s going to be treating us with 2D, frameable art for your walls. Check out her first column, and I know you’re going to be hungry for more. Welcome Susannah!

:: Erika

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My interest in mixed media art was sparked by mistake. Several years ago, a local artist gave me one of her watercolor paintings as a thank-you gift for hosting her first art exhibit. I proudly hung the painting in my home, and it was admired often by my family and me. One evening, I was walking through my home turning off lights, and something in the painting caught my eye. Upon closer inspection, I was shocked to discover that the artist had used a few strips of magazine images in a section of the artwork—it was a mixed media piece, not a strict painting as I had previously thought! I had my nose to the glass for a long while, examining all of the details I had been missing. My mistake was a happy one which resulted in a new-found fascination of mixed media art. This month’s get-on-the-wall pieces are beautiful examples of how delightful mixed media artwork can be.

Color Theory (13)

I think the Color Theory pieces by Esta Sketch are genius. [Read more…]

Jim Bradshaw

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Jim Bradshaw: Jim loves everything art and creative and puts that passion into all assignments. Humorous illustration and cartoon surrealism is what he is drawn to. Some topics you’ll find showing up in his recent work are dreams, the tyranny of time, life & death, childhood versus the tainted adult world we all exist in, good and evil and just plain fun whacked out made up worlds that swirl around in Jim’s brain.

Rania Hassan’s Hat Trick

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imaginary friend moleskine illustration

Rania Hassan is a well known Washington DC artist who has mastered three art forms at once. She is a graphic designer and illustrator, a painter, and a knitter, and she has found a way to integrate all three of her skills into her artwork, under the label goshdarnknit.

blue tulips

Her whimsical illustrations of big-eyed, somber girls and tangled, beautiful botanicals are individually hand printed on Moleskin notebooks in various sizes. She also prints her images on neoprene lunch bags, also individually and by hand.

fly away

Her other skills come into play with what she calls her “knit paintings.” Unique collaborations between flat and three-dimensional mediums, her paintings depict two pairs of hands in the act of knitting. The two sets of hands share the knitted fabric, working on the same piece from both ends.

knit painting: knit together (ktog)

Like many new knitters, when Rania first learned to knit she became obsessed. Obsessed with yarn, with the process, with the seemingly endless patterns and designs to be made from just one stitch and just one length of yarn.

Unlike most new knitters, she translated that obsession into artwork that transcends the fiber and the process. She was intrigued by the community of knitters, and how the act of knitting connected individuals across physical and generational boundaries. Her knit paintings evoke those connections in a pretty, visual, and tactile way.

Rania Hassan at Artomatic

Originally from New York City, Rania has studied and traveled all over the world, and is now settled in Washington, DC. She has served as an art director for extremely esteemed institutions, including the Shakespeare Theatre, the United Nations, and the White House.

She’s also been awarded the prestigious Craft Award of Distinction for Fiber from the James Renwick Alliance, and an Artist Fellowship Grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Not only has she mastered her mediums, people have noticed!

ghostwriter moleskine illustration

You can find Rania’s illustrated Moleskine notebooks and her paintings in her online shop, and at many DC-area fine art and craft shows. Visit her web site for news regarding exhibitions and installations of her paintings.