 Welcome to a new edition of rational art. I'm joined at the table today by Amanda Maldonado. Did I get that right? You did. Thank you. Amanda, welcome to the table. Welcome to the Captain's lounge. Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here. It's wonderful to have you here because I love talking to our local artists. Awesome. And we have got some really good talent in this town. Yes, we do. And looking at your stuff, you've got to be bubbling up to the top. Thank you. So let's start off with the basics. What actually got you into art? So I've always been into art since I was a kid and went to art school or art school, but I studied art in college and became a graphic designer as a way to make art professionally and still have some sort of creative career. But it wasn't until about six years after college that I felt good making art again just because it was a bit of a painful experience. And then I finally said, you know, I don't have to pay attention to the teachers anymore. I'm successful now. I am successful because I've made it as a graphic designer in art career. I achieved my goal. Just a matter of interest, can you explain the differentiation between a graphics designer and a fine artist? Yeah. What is the difference? Okay. So fine art is really broad. It can be really whatever medium and creativity you want to choose, but it's more for you or commissions. Graph design is a little bit more narrow and it's more commercial based. So you're doing stuff for businesses, for nonprofits, you're trying to like help get the message out and communicate design. So really one is doing what someone else wants, like in advertising, and the other of course is doing what you want. Yes. Although you can still get paid as an artist doing commissions. Absolutely. Absolutely. But yes. Okay. That's great to know that differentiation because really they're one of the same except who the audience is. Yeah. Very similar. It's a nice way to have creative expression and feel like you're in a creative field and not stuck in a job that doesn't suit you if you're wanting to do something creative still with your career. Do you miss doing the graphic art stuff or are you really happy and embedded doing what you want to do? I love this. I also do some freelance graphic design for downtown Longmont and then I might be doing some for the city soon too. I like that my previous job was art director for Simply Organic. So it was graphic design but also kind of leading the charge on what that looked like. And I didn't care about spices. That was the company and I was really falling in love with Longmont at the time. So I was making these sort of products and just felt more drawn to being in Longmont and spending more of my energy on it. And so now that I get to do some of that communication work for the city it allows me to highlight the things that make me feel good and feel welcome here as profession getting paid while still separating myself a little bit from that and doing some of the sketchbook art that's like this is something that's just me, what I want to do. Right. Does any of your work end up in the local galleries? Yeah, I've got stuff at Firehouse Art Center and the map here is at Walnut Gallery as well. We're going to talk about that in a few minutes. Yes. So and then I have some of my prints at Miko Coffee Shop on, right by Cheba Hut on Long's Peak. And then Mountain Fountain and Hygiene, the Boulder Bookworm, Java Stop. Excellent. What mediums do you like to work in but I think you cover pretty well everything don't you? Medium-wise? No I mostly do watercolor and pen and ink. Oh okay. Yeah and I don't know if I can show these now. Absolutely please. So this is my watercolor set. I keep this in my purse at all times and it allows me to do these sketchbooks and do work on the go. And then I also use my fountain pen a lot which is pretty awesome. I love this guy. It makes me extremely happy. It does and what I like about having this is it gives me the chance to pursue whatever is in the moment and engage with it a little bit more deeply or experience it or if it's a place that I really love I can celebrate that by making something that recognizes that space. Right. I mean I did look through your notebooks and it's as if wherever you go you sit down and go hmm and out it comes and you start drawing. Is that basically what happens? Yes and no sometimes it stems from like stress or anxiety where I'm feeling like a little awkward and this just calms me down. It's kind of like a soothing moment but other times I'm just with friends and it feels really good and I'm just like all right we're going a lot of it we go on art dates. Oh okay. So we're doing an art date tonight with some friends at a house. Oh nice. Yeah so it's one of these pieces we went to a coffee shop there were four of us and I was like let's all go make art together and I'm going to draw the space and they all drew their own projects so it was a really fun. It's a fun way of doing it. Yeah and some of it's just like I'm feeling creative but I don't feel like making something special. I just want to like get that energy out like with practice and so it might be the salt shaker on a table or just working it into when I have time instead of you know if you're really busy especially if you're a mom I'm not a mom yet but I'm going to be soon or not pregnant yet but it's nice to just work it into what you're already doing so if you're waiting for your food at a restaurant you can work it in anytime you might normally pull out your phone right it's a great time to pull out your sketchbook instead and then just yeah and then just draw it some fun to get there like wow that's cool. My artistic talent when it comes to anything like that is about that much I can't I can't draw to save my life put me behind a camera I'm fine. I teach glasses but when it when it I've got a funny feeling my daughter and my wife forget very upset if they knew I was going to you to learn how to do this. I get it. They're both fine artists. This is great let's let's talk a little bit here individually let's talk about this one first the Callahan house that's up on Hova okay now this is something that you did out there what what's the backstory? This was another friend date a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go to Callahan house to have coffee and she was going to write in her novel and I was gonna just bring my sketchbook and relax and kind of get out some of the stress that I've been feeling in preparation for holiday markets at the time okay and luckily there are a lot of flowers still blooming at Callahan house it was like in October perfect and because Callahan house is like a public building and like a public park you can just hang out at the garden on their wrap-around porch and just have a nice little friend date so actually I'd like to put a little plug in here if if you have not looked around the Callahan house gardens it's well worth it they've got a nice little car park there it is all built up there now but find somewhere to park have a look around it's a great place to visit if you've got to spare 10 15 20 minutes and totally free and totally free and java stop coffee shop is just around the corner I'm free is good and their java stop coffee is pretty darn good as well yeah so I knew I was gonna be doing a class the following year this year right on Callahan house flowers garden tea party paint and sip and I was like well I'm just gonna start practicing painting flowers and it's a very relaxing fun way to just get some energy out too so right that was in preparation this is the graphic let's spin the page okay so this piece here is a study for a commission that I'm doing for martini's bistro they wanted me to take a nice historical painting of of a there's a snapshot of the historical building that's going to be unveiling on March or April 19th okay gonna have like a wine tasting and stuff I'm most I'm halfway done with it now so it's really fun excellent thank you it it just stands out thank you it just stands out it's beautiful I also did this one because it was I did this at this time because she wanted a fall theme and I was like all the leaves are about to fall tomorrow because it's gonna snow and it was like so pretty it's just nice sitting out on a warm fall day I also like the one over here about the coffee with the council yeah that's fun it's something that they do here in long months every month they have coffee with the council and you're able to go along meet some council members sit down ask your questions it's one of the nice things that does happen here in longmont we're going to talk about a fun one now this to me is amazing um this is going to be quite a challenge because hidden in this drawing and this is the smallest version of it hidden in this drawing are 39 pumpkins 33 cats 15 dogs and six ghosts talk about this and talk about the real size okay so um I made this map um in october of 2020 it took me nine months wow um I don't know if you ever heard of incotober before yes so for anyone who doesn't know incotober is a month long of prompts every day you do a different prompt and you try to draw an ink um some people are branching out from me and it's just a good excuse to try and make art every day and um my uh my own prompt that I made for myself was to do a building every day from downtown longmont and in order to fit um the minute details of bricks on buildings I had to choose a very small section of long months so it's late um just the 300 block of downtown and a little bit of kimbark and um and kaufman and um it took me nine months to finish I finished it in june of 2021 oh wow this is six by eight you should have stretched it to a year like that you could have started ink month and finished oh goodness and then you could say buddy I need to have a month yeah I was so excited to finally launch it and share it with people though and because that summer in 2021 we um things are starting to open back up and I could go to restaurants again and share it with friends and doors I um was very excited about having that um launch because then in the fall we were all wearing masks again right um but another part of why this being done during covid was significant is um the feeling of community and connection and the celebration of long when it was really when I fell in love with longmont I really wanted to quit my job as a graphic designer and just be be able to devote more of myself and my time to the community right I noticed it's the speak easy mm-hmm my favorite bar top favorite bar down here in longmont yes so you know we often have our staff meetings down there um you want to come you want to come down and and paint one of our staff meetings that would be that would be delightful would that be fun yes and if we sit in the back it's nice and quiet and won't get disturbed and for some reason I'm picturing that um that uh image of dogs playing poker on a poker table oh yes I love that picture I feel like we can stage it and do something similar yeah why not you've got three dogs here so you know that's wonderful thank you now let's talk a little bit more about this this comes in other different sizes mm-hmm that people are able to purchase yes so talk a little bit about that yeah so um that size is six by eight and it is double-sided there's a postcard on the back that is really neat thank you what a great idea and then in here they've got fun facts here in here this tiny type is another fun fact about the city that's wonderful thank you um and then the 18 by 24 size you can get at walnut gallery um on my website um firehouse art center or java stop coffee shop um and that one is 150 for the big print for the big print yeah I bet that I bet that keeps people guessing yeah yeah it's fun I am like you just need a magnifying glass it's a prize in the amount of detail you can see at six by eight you can still if you're looking really hard many many eons ago we're going back decades now the company I work for I used to be in computer aided design and um the company used to sell um flatbed photo plotters because we used to have to uh the way that you produce a printed circuit board is you design it you digitize it in and then you photo plot it at one to one scale so you can then go and make the printed circuit board anyway the the plotter had arrived I'm in Switzerland at the time uh Metler instruments and uh they wanted a test to make sure this thing maintained accuracy across the whole bed and it's something the company had never thought of so I made the amazing maze nice and I designed 10 templates and I covered a piece of uh I covered it all I don't know it had to have been about 30 inches by about 20 inches and we're talking about gaps that was so small and there is only one way through it is this hand drawn no this I managed to copy and paste so I I made it so I could copy and paste and rotate and everything would match that sounds like a lot of fun oh it was it really got wonderful in a great way it was it was so fun to do but of course I'd also made a uh solutions because there's only one way through it and I do know of one person that did actually do it wow because I gave it to a few of my friends and they made coffee tables out of them because it was so interesting yeah I want to talk about this one okay because this one is just wonderful let's take the clips off all right let's put this down here tell us a little bit about this so um this was done at um Old Oak Coffee House in Niwa and um I had just gotten my new fountain pen ink which is now waterproof and I was excited to finally test it out and I wanted to really just draw the whole scene of the room I started thinking I'd just do like one side panel and then um just kind of like in my in my head trying to like crop it and be like what would this look like as a panoramic um and then uh I just love drawing people and different scenarios because like oh there's a guy reading a book there's a guy reading a newspaper these are like moments that we can all relate to and be kind of excited about like it's nice seeing it's like oh man that sounds so nice having a cup of coffee right now or having a date with a friend and getting a chance to catch up I really need that connection and I like highlighting that in here there's so many little moments that you can relate to and just kind of feel that sense of like longing right and and it was also just a lot of fun it took me about three hours and it was while I was on a date with some friends um we're all making our own art projects right so have you ever been down to speak easy I have twice okay yeah because I think that because of your absolute attention to find detail if you just did a picture of the back wall bar it would be stunning I've done a few bars um but not not in a fine amount of detail because uh I'm out of energy there's so many tiny pieces and labels that's right but I'd love to do that that be a fun project and remember something like that I can always take photographs but I do love painting in person I know I understand there's something about it that just feels more tangible and like really meets that need of like connection right being a part of a space yes so um yeah most of my art and why they're in sketchbooks how often do you get interrupted do people come across and say what are you doing can I have a look not that often really yeah it's it's not too bad most of the time um I'm trying to draw someone and trying to to make sure they don't notice because you're staying people can feel and they're staring you're staring at their face like their profile and sometimes they tend to keep turning their head just away and I'm like well like the corner of your eye and not a none of your nose is not interesting that looks weird that's true so I have to pretend that I'm not looking at them and then quickly get like a get the bit you split second the moment their head goes back um but sometimes afterwards I'll show them because I don't want them to think that I'm a creepy stalker and I'm like I was just drawing you here it is that's nice and then we got this one which I think is is just gorgeous talk a little bit about that thank you so um this is a friend of mine we were playing um a fake campaign and I'll know if you've ever heard about fate but it's like D&D but it's like a mini campaign with slightly different rules oh okay so it's meant to be done in one sitting or like a handful of sittings compared to like something and stretch on for years um and uh we were just all world playing and being silly and I um was getting a little tipsy and awkward and I was like I'm just gonna draw her because I need to like chill out right now um but it was just really fun like oh cool I like I'm like inspired by this moment I love it yeah I just think it's a beautiful beautiful drawing thank you see even even though it's two colors the face is flat you can see the expression yeah that is very very difficult to do thank you along the lines of the art we talked about this let's talk about the coffee mug okay where did this come from so um this is a coffee mug that I hand painted um uh it's originally from a thrift store and then I bring it home and I get these enamel markers that uh are dishwasher safe so you just draw on it you let it dry for four hours and then you um put it in the oven to seal it after doing the map people really liked all the different um buildings and stuff and I didn't have the energy to do another map to include more stuff well you didn't have a spare eight months no I didn't so um I wanted to uh kind of take a shortcut and do like little sections so in this mug you have the Longmont Museum um you have Kanimoto Park um and then you have the Sugar Bee Factory so it's kind of a way to bring in some of the places that are on the outskirts of Longmont that didn't have time to draw a whole big city map understand and and make hand painted art that I can share with um with the community yeah I mean I have seen uh those maps that they do as cities where they use a very strange perspective and buildings three times taller than they're meant to be but that is is spot on scale wise thank you which is takes them doing yeah it's definitely not true accuracy but it's meant to fool the eye into thinking it is and that's one of the really fun things about being an artist is you can you can make reality not reality and it's and still get away with it and um and also just one of the fun challenges when you get to that point where you're like oh maybe I could try this right and that play is so so awesome that's good Roosevelt Park yes one of the most beautiful little parks we have in town yeah talk about Roosevelt Park for a little bit okay so this piece here I made during a um a class that I was teaching nature journaling and um it's just kind of a easy entry into getting into watercolor and ink and um the same experience of drawing from from what you see right and um the the piece that I've made here is you have um Manilda the um the giraffe statue um this is the one of the pillars it's the entrance to the park where it has the name we've got Long's Peak and Meeker and nowhere in the park is this a scene and that's again that's that fun play on reality versus fantasy but it's something that you can take and pull together to highlight the best parts of the park so you've got that giant cottonwood outside of the um memorial building um you've got the statue you have the rose garden that um cool uh like house shape frame where all the roses grow on it and it's just a it took something kind of dead and wintery and pulled out all the beautiful browns and greens gave it life purple yeah and it doesn't feel winter it feel but and it still feels vibrant right so I mean that almost looks springy yeah which is kind of nice yeah before we wrap this up why don't you talk a little bit okay about these awesome so this piece here is um one that I made at the Longwood Artist Guild meeting um it was a talk being given by um someone from a gallery just talking about like how to get your artwork in galleries one of the easiest ways to draw people is when someone else is talking so they're um drawings that I may wear two people are sitting on a couch when they're talking if someone's looking at me and talking to me like one on one it's much harder because they get uncomfortable or they're they'll start moving their mouth while I'm but I can catch people while they're listening right and um so that was a really fun way to get that in and um the guy in the middle Bernie um he came right up to me at the end of the meeting he was like let me see what you drew I saw you looking at me so I'm starting to build a bit of a reputation around around the artist community where they see me doing that they're like let me see it afterwards and I I love that um I love being caught out afterwards and I'm being like yeah that would show it to you so that's nice yeah and last but not least about this okay so this piece here I really enjoyed it was the first time that I um made a piece where I started with a subject matter which is the bench and the guy on the bench and then I was like what if I try to connect from behind him to the light post to the tree to the bouncy house to the people in the crowd because normally it would have been too much of a challenge for me to want to try and this time it's where I started really investing in my sketchbook and I was like but what if right and it was so exciting when just seeing that come to life from something you don't think you can do to while I've really created a depth in like this much space um where you only have like an inch of height but it looks like it's going off like a hundred feet into the distance and that's just kind of thrilling that's nice but this is uh from the june concert series oh okay um downtown on fourth and kim bark um that downtown lawnmower was putting on in june excellent I know that you would like to talk about this and I think it's important you're also a teacher yes talk about that okay so um my creative business is queen studio and um it's queen studio meant to kind of encompass more than just the arts and the other assets that I work on um and I I love trying to help people give themselves permission to be creative I meet a lot of people who are just like this sadness and deep sense of longing when they say my art and they're like I just wish I could do that and I'm just like I'm here if you need it like I want to help you heal from those experiences and that pain of like every time you make art you feel like crap about it and it doesn't it's not a rewarding experience so my goal as a teacher isn't how to make you better as an artist because I have my own healing process that I had to do and I like trying to help facilitate and give those words of affirmation that people need to hear to get past that point of pain and so not making it be better but helping them find ways to do it more often so that they can become more prolific and then be more comfortable creative rewarding positive reinforcement and then because of that when they start having fun they'll start seeing themselves get better naturally you just need to keep doing it right so and but I don't want to be like a chore oh I just have to practice I want practice to be like oh these oh what about this these experimentations you know the thing is when you're studying music you have to play the same chords over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again okay and I could never ever ever do that when it comes to art like this the subject is wide open exactly the problem I have is whenever I try and do art like this it looks like it was done by a one-year-old with a crayon I am absolutely useless useless put me behind a camera I'm great yeah but this it's way over my head and I it's it's part nurturing environment and part simple lessons and tools right so you know I don't expect you to be able to take amazing photos on your phone you know it's it's trying to give them a few tools so and and I did a class last night and that aha moment three of the women were like oh I get it I really want to I want to keep experimenting with us I can't wait to take it home I can't wait to show someone else and I can't wait to keep playing with watercolor and that that's the moment that I look for is giving you just enough enough tools so that you feel excited about experimenting you know just just enough and then you'll start pushing it you'll start trying how do I get past here and as a teacher when you hear that that's got to be yes we did it yes it's such a great feeling I'm like oh yay I'm succeeding as a teacher so Amanda thank you so so much for coming in it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you do you have any final words um obviously not yeah be awesome and love art I'm Nigel Aves your host this is rational art coming to you from the captain's lounge studios thank you goodbye