Art by Frances Bates
Happy Cups (2023)
This painting was done as part of a project to repaint a thrifted canvas. I was immediately drawn to this piece and knew I had to make the little cups even cuter. Wanted to give it a little sparkle so I created a bit of a border with glitter mixed into my paint. The cups seemed happy to me leading me to paint smiley faces on them. To add some soft texture I embroidered directly into the canvas using wool yarn.
Before
After
In a Different Time (2016)
During one of my drawing classes in college we spent some time studying faces to create portraits. We were prompted to do some of ourselves and some of other people. This piece was one I did based off of Gwen John’s painting of her sister. I chose to make a version of that painting for two reasons. The first being that I thought it seemed like an outfit I would enjoy wearing if I lived in that time. Second, I related to having a strong bond with my younger sibling.
No One Can Do Everything, But Everyone Can Do Something (2014)
First, I took a lot of photos of myself. Then I drew the shapes coming from the photo in a scaled-up version as a base for my pen drawing. After that I had to draw everything in using pens of varying thickness. The catch - it all had to be done using a quote instead of just lines.
Print available for sale, contact for details.
Painted Objects (2014)
This is a simple yet interesting way to bring objects to life that I learned in elementary school. You can do it in a variety of mediums, for this I chose paint. All you have to do is the lines and object outlines, then fill them in with no same color touching.
Tiger Mosaic (2013)
I have always been inspired by Greek mosaics and happened upon the opportunity to make a mock version of one. They often had jumping big cats in their mosaics, so I knew I wanted to make one like that with a white tiger.
