n2cre8n

Picasso-style Painting by Alisa Burke

Had to share this post by Alisa Burke.  She shares a video of her doing a painting and does it with her baby girl, Lucy, in a back carrier.  It's adorable.  She's a great example of how one can be a mom AND an artist.

 Video Here

Scotland Highlands Painting, Part VI

As I mentioned in my previous post, the water had me challenged.  I made several attempts to fix it, but it seemed it was one step forward, two steps back.  I finally had to take a break from it around Christmas.  When I finally went back to it, I ignored the funky water strokes I'd made and moved onto the rocky shoreline.  

I painted the rocks while my youngest son was home with the flu, watching 3 movies!  The rocks were actually fun to paint!  My fear was knowing I'd have to go back and finish the water (eek).

Scotland Highlands Painting, Part V

I've made lots of progress since last month.  I painted the water not once . . . not twice . . . not even just five times (more on that later).

I blocked in the left side with brown so my eyes could balance the future color there.

Several more tweaks went into the water.  Sometimes my colors were off, other times my lines were too curved.  My eye knew something was fighting, but it took several weeks before I figured out how to get my brain out of the process.  

More later.

Horse Painting gift

1. My mom's birthday was coming

2. I had been sketching horses a lot

3. I told my mom I would make her a custom iPhone case (months ago) from a piece of artwork I made

SO . . . 

I got this idea to do a practice painting for my daughter's bedroom (see previous post) and make something for my mom.  My acrylic painting class instructor showed me photos of other artists that had added color into animal paintings.  My favorite artist was Laurie Pace. I was instantly hooked and had to try it. Here are some of her paintings.

I chose my favorite sketch and drew it over and over until I had it the way I liked it.

Then I cleaned it up in Photoshop, printed it out, and used my projector to make it the exact size I wanted it on my piece of plywood (w/ 2 coats of gesso).

I wanted my personal touch on the background, so I did my tradition steps of paste texture and added some drywall and masking tape.

I started with some typical shade of brown that you would see on a horse.

Then painted my background shade of blue (my mom's favorite color).

Here comes color!

And here is how it ended up online, as the iPhone case was in progress!  I have uploaded several jpegs of artwork for custom cell phone cases and Case-Mate does an awesome job!  

 

Then I played around with some close up shots, using my 50mm 2.8/f lens.  

I love the short depth of field it will give me.

This might be a new favorite painting style - I got to combine drawing, texture, bright colors, and I learned a lot!

 

Art with Kids

I homeschooled my kids for the last three years . . . until this year.  They are in Montessori school and it's going well . . . but there are days I miss them.  I miss the time we used to spend together, the discussions, the stories, the laughs.

So when my 9 yr old son is home sick with bronchitis and wants to do art with me, I love it!  I think once a month, I should make each of them play hookie so they can do this! : )

While mom plugs away on the Scotland painting, he draws Mark Kistler style (3-dimensional cartoon drawing).

Bliss.

 

Journal Pages

Not all days are happy days; therefore, not all art journal pages are happy pages.

Sometimes, they have to be dark and messy . . . and therapeutic.

But through all hurt feelings, we eventually come to terms with the situation and make a decision on how we are going to handle it.  So I decided to make the other page about that.

I blurred out the words so you don't have to read my temper tantrum . . . but it just talked about how we try to forgive, but never forget how people make us feel.  I think there's a similar quote by Oprah or Maya Angelou.

And my decision to accept the things I can't change, forgive the ones I can, and let it go.

Thanks to Zac Brown Band for those lyrics.

Scotland Highlands painting, Part III

 

Canoe is painted.

Time to start painting the seafood restaurant . . . the tiny, tedious part.  

Shadows, reflections, multiple shades of one color, and many angles.   Eeeek, can I have a glass of wine to do this?  

What I would really appreciate about now is to be able to walk all the way around this place to see the angles, colors, and if there are one or two boats at the pier.  I'll just have to improvise.  Who will ever know, right?

Scotland Highlands painting, Part II

Time to paint the mountains!

The dark mountains gave the sky more of a sunset feel.  They were a little tricky because the sun was on the upper half of them, casting a cloudy yellow tone.  I brought each of the colors down into the water for their reflection, adding a bit of white to lighten them.

 

Here was the palette I started with.

 

And here's how it looked after a bit of experimenting and mixing.  I've learned to add a little and pull it to the side.  It helps me see the progress of how I arrived at the color.

 

After I got the basic colors blocked in, I added some dark shadows and lighter highlights.  I'm happy with the progress so far.  It's been slow, but wonderful.

Next step: the seafood restaurant

Minis: Go Play & Live Simply

I made a couple of smaller canvases recently and loved the fun sizes.  The mini one above that says "Live Simply" is 3x3" size with it's only little easel and the "Go Play" canvas is 8x8".  

For the mini one, it literally took about 5 min.  I spray painted the easel, addes some paint around the edges, stamped a leaf and two words, and it was done.

For the 8x8, I wanted to create lots of warm colors by dripping paint, so I did it in stages.  I knew I would use the words GO PLAY in white when it was done.  I instantly fell in love with these words when I saw them on Pinterest and quickly pinned them to my Words To Live By board

I let the paint dry in between each layer.

Drippage, drippage, and more drippage!

(as Donna Downey would say).

I doodled on some white chipboard letters (not sure if I like it, but it'll do) and attached them to the canvas.  

This little canvas sits in my foyer and I walk by it about 25 times per day.  It's my little reminder to not take life too seriously and to sometimes ignore the to-do list and just do something totally fun - GO PLAY!

 

Scotland Highlands Painting, Part I

I signed up for an acrylic painting class through a local art gallery This Century Art Gallery.  I haven't taken a fine arts class since college, so it's a bit intimidating.  My goal is to keep learning, trying new things, stretch my comfort zone, and expand my horizons.  Oh my, is all of that ever happening!

We are all painting from a photo we brought in.  I chose one of my favorites from our trip to Scotland this past summer.  This is in Ft. William (in the Highlands).  We were walking along the loch at sunset, so the lighting was perfect for taking photos.  This is a seafood restaurant on the town pier that also offers loch cruises, Crannog Restaurant.  

Notice the vertical and horizontal lines on the photo.  We also drew these on our canvas to help keep things in proportion.  I haven't done that since high school drawing class!  I definitely needed it - was very helpful!

 

I quickly learned I don't know much about acrylic paints - even though I use them all the time!  The little bottles of craft paints we buy are very different from the nicer acrylic paints.  The nicer paints have more pigment, less fillers, and no white.  The richness of these paints is amazing.  

I'm learning what transparent paints do, how to bring colors together to mix colors, and how many colors you can make with a very limited palette (about 6 colors + white).  It's been great!

Week 1, I sketched out the layout and started on the sky and water colors.  Oh mercy, this was going to be harder than I thought!

I brought it home and worked on it a different day for 2 1/2 more hours - just on the sky!  Finally, I was happy with the results.  

Frustration + Time = Growth

right?

 

This will be an ongoing project for a while . . . I'll post again soon.