Couples Portraits!

 I haven't been able to post these because for one, I had to wait for the save the date to be sent out, and the picture below was meant to be an anniversary present for the middle of this month, but oops, someone got too excited and gave their gift early! 

This is actually cropped from the original. this is about a 3rd of the painting, the rest was my attempt at a South African landscape, luckily I had their pictures to construct it from.

The above picture was my first couples portrait commission from etsy yay! It was a birthday gift for the young lady, so yet again I had to wait to post it on the VERY slim chance that she might see it.

I've been having a lot of fun doing the portraits, even though they are rather time consuming for what I charge. Still I hope I keep getting people who want them. Get yours quick because the price will only go up, heh heh heh, (Stephen told me to up it 5 dollars every time I sell one).

Characters: My Watercolor Children

 I don't know how I didn't start this earlier, but I am now doing a lot of characters. One of my friends, Ndeme, said I should make a profile for each of them so here it goes.

"Aloha, My name is Sachiko Nakama. My parents moved to Hawaii before I was born, so I am American even if my name is Japanese. They did try to teach me all the kanji and writing, but I like time in the garden practicing making my own kind of banzai trees better. Kawaii usagii, ne! (cute bunny, huh! for those of you who aren't bi-lingual)."

"Hi! My name is Angelic Ferraro, and yes I know my last name sounds Italian. Actually a long time ago my great-great Grandpa who came from Italy married my great-great Grandma who was from Haiti.  But who cares about silly history, wanna see my birdie?!  I don't like cages, but my lil' bird seems to think it's home so I keep it anyway. He can fly away if he wants, but he loves me so he doesn't."

 

"Hiya. I'm Peter Bittinger. I really hate this costume, but my mom thinks it's "soooo cute!" The only good part about it is my parents let me go fishing when I wear it. I love fishing. I love the hooks, and the bobbers,  and the cool lures! My Dad is really good at fishing, he once caught a fish the size of my head! I feel real hot right now."

"Anyeong! My name is Simeon Ha. I am from Korea, but my father moved here for his job. He helps me with my robot. We built him and like to take him to competitions. He is a winner and his name is Chamchi. It means tuna and that is my favorite food, but it has to be mixed with rice and kimchi to be my very favorite. I know it sounds strange but it is delicious! One day I want to make robot cars that take us everywhere and do our laundry for us when we aren't inside them and run on sunshine and rain."

Flowers and More Flowers: Paintings

Well I have been at it again. I didn't really know (because I don't usually paint flowers), but I REALLY like painting them. I feel so satisfied when it looks pretty at the end and flowers are almost always pretty.

 

The Lily of the Valley is actually the flower of May, so Happy May!

My Mother wanted a painting with a blue bird in it. I found I am much more comfortable with painting sitting birds, flying is much more complicated. Irises are one of my favorite flowers, so sticking with the trend of painting my favorites I threw them in with the blue bird.

 I enjoyed the irises so much I did a small one too.  It's funny, I painted the shapes of the petals and didn't worry too much about making them look rounded or getting the shadows right, and although my irises don't look particularly like the pictures they were done from, they do look like irises. I think irises are just such a bizarre flower and shaped so differently that you don't really have to be super perfect to portray them.

I did a fourth painting but it is a gift so I don't want to spoil the surprise in the off chance that they check my blog.

Till I have more to blog, tata!

P.S. Check out my Etsy shop I'll be posting some of my latest paintings so if you love them you can buy them! 

Inspired Spring Paintings: Layered Painting

So I found this artist on Etsy named Julie Fillo, if you click on her name you will see the image that inspired me. I really loved her painting, and I didn't know if it was the flowers or the birds, colors or the style, but I knew I wanted something in my house with more muted soft colors so I thought I would make a painting.

So when I looked at the painting again, after a failed attempt to make something 'pretty' I realized what made the painting different. Everything in it was outlined with a red color and she didn't go in and outline it. I realized she most likely painted the whole painting a solid color and then went in and laid down her flowers/birds, THEN she went back in with a new background color, carefully going around all the flowers and birds and letting the red peep through around the edges.

 I tried it and it worked! At first I kinda hated the above bird, image, but after adding the nice pastel green, the outline really made the simple painting pop. 

The above images should give you a little more of an idea of what I did, if my written description didn't. I actually loved this painting with the navy blue background, so I took a lot of pictures in case I botched it up. Still, I think I love it even more with two colors (although I'm sure my Mom prefers the all blue). Part of the reason I was hesitant with this second one was that the original painting took so much longer! Where the first painting took about 3 hours total, this one took closer to 10 total.

If you were to try this yourself you need to remember that you are not painting the lines, you are painting a little in reverse. This actually often makes for cleaner lines and thinner. I still messed up a number of times, accidentally painting over my dark lines with white/light blue (or even the salmon later), but I kept some navy close at hand so that I could quickly with my smallest brush go back over any mistake. 

I definitely felt more at ease with the second one and more free to experiment more with this technique. Although it is extremely time consuming I think the effect is beautiful! It's also rather fun to paint in reverse and a bit challenging to the normal process of thinking when painting.

Both paintings are 11x14 inches, painted with acrylics on canvas board.

DIY: Jewelry Display

Please excuse my flash photography.....my camera had a bit of a freak out and doesn't like working normally now.

Anyway, I made this from a scrap of 1x4" wood and some bits and pieces. I used picture hanging loops on the back to hang it, but one could also just put to nails in the ends and hang it from a ribbon. I put the two metal loops because I felt it would be stronger, particularly since the stud in the wall wasn't in the right place for one nail to hold it up.

I spray painted the wood with a white primer because I didn't want to waste my purple spray paint. Then I coated it twice, I believe, with the purple spray paint.

Next, I put nails in various spots across the board.

After the nails, I decided it was too boring being just violet, so I got some acrylic paint and attempted to use masking tape as a mask and went to paint some rectangles/stripes. Well I hated it. So I painted it violet AGAIN. (THIS is the point of the tutorial where you learn from my mistakes and wait till AFTER completely decorating your piece of wood to put your nails in, unless you want them to be the color of your spray paint of course)

Funny thing though, there were all these feathers in the yard and I was having fun on paper using them with spray paint to make a feather shape. It was a little tricky because sometimes the feathers would fly off in the wind of the spray paint, but I realized this could be nice design on my jewelry holder.

SO, I got some feathers and took out some gold spray paint. I made sure the feathers were down and no wind was blowing, then sprayed starting at the tip of the feather down to the bottom. I think it turned out alright.

It was super easy and I suppose you could use all kinds of shapes or things to make the same effect.

Watercolor ACEOs: Monsters and Things

There is not much to say about these. I did a watercolor test strip and then cut it up and added characters that I saw in it. I had fun though and I believe I have already sold 3 of these.
This one is not sold yet.
Or this one.

Sketches: Hunger Games Inspired.....Kinda

So I started drawing this girl-bear and then I thought, hey! It's Katniss E-Bear-Deen!

(I drew all of these on the backside of photo-paper that was stained with coffee. I thought it gave it a nice look, and the pen flows so smoothly on the paper!)

AND you can't have a Katniss E-Bear-Deen without a Peeta Rabbit!

This underground really has nothing to do with Hunger Games, except that all these things would be eaten in District 12 in one of Greasy Sal's soups.

I think seahorses are fantastic. They just don't seem to fit in, I mean are they fish or what?

Of course, I am still making more dragons. You just can't get enough. I mean they are flying dinosaurs!

I put these up for sale in my shop on etsy for about 5 dollars each. Along with these I put up a number of watercolor ACEOs (Artist Cards Editions Originals), and you can see those in my next post!