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Thursday, February 28, 2013

New Project, New Style?



For quite sometime I've admired the work of Shirley Trevena . Her style is colorful, expressive and delightfully/creatively free. She works a lot with watercolor but isn't afraid to mix it up a bit. I've spent the last few days studying her online gallery and I'm both inspired and challenged as a result. Last night I drew up a still life setting from imagination based on some of her works but today felt I should go through my photos and gather things that have meaning to me. I don't own gorgeous vases or have access to fresh flowers at the moment but I do have cats so they must be a part of my still life. I found a photo I took last Spring of Digby, my male cat catching some sun while I worked in my studio so I started a new sketch, using this image to begin.

Btw, don't pay any attention to that dirty window(photo) or the suncatcher that looks like a hubcap(sketch).

Monday, February 25, 2013

Daniel Smith Watercolors



Trying out some new colors today. New colors to me anyway. With my winnings from the DS art contest I purchased a few new watercolors that I've been anxious to use. I ordered DS Perinone Orange, DS Opera, DS Quin Burnt Scarlet among a few others. I took some inexpensive paper and banged out this silly little owl today.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Red Hat Ladies 2 ~ complete



It took me as long to complete as to get started but it's done. I do need to clean up the right edge on the hat of the lady in the foreground, though. I just noticed that but I had to snap a photo while the light was right. It's been so gloomy here. The painting was actually finished yesterday. I'd like to say this one fought me all the way but I think a lot had to do with my mind set. I'm 'winter weary' and it shows in my work. I'm a moody artist, it seems and it's a fight to stay in the mood to paint at the moment.

Second image: made the corrections to the hat, added some Quin. gold spatter to the BG and signed it. Done!

Reference photos courtesy of Judy Wright on PaintMyPhoto

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Red Hat Ladies 2 ~ WIP 3



I've been pecking away at this one a bit everyday. I ran out of light before taking the photo so it's a little blurry. At least I hope that's the reason. My camera hasn't been taking the best photos lately and I really don't want to buy another at the moment.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Red Hat Ladies 2 ~ update



February has got me moving in slow-mo. I blame it on the winter doldrums. My momentum is down to a crawl. The drawing sat on my easel until we had a brief (1 hour) power outage just a few days ago so I was left with nothing else to do but get started on this painting. I think it would still be sitting there naked today if not for that event. Hopefully I can get this finished faster than it took to get it started.

Monday, February 04, 2013

Red Hat Ladies 2 ~ WIP


I've just started a second 'Red Hat Ladies' after running into a slight problem. I had planned on doing two separate portraits as companion pieces for the original RHL (link) but discovered the leftover illustration board wasn't large enough for my purpose. I had forgotten I cut a strip from one side to use for painting trials so was left with an odd sized, square-ish piece to work with. Normally I would've gone back to the alcohol inks until I found a solution but that isn't an option at the moment. Finally a lightbulb went on in my head and I came up with this composition. This is just a photo of my drawing on tracing paper and, once again, I realize how much I would dearly love to have a lightbox, especially when working with human faces. Capturing the correct facial expressions of these lovely ladies is crucial to this piece and freehanding was challenging but I tried to keep it to a minimum. I'm really posting this so I can see it online to see if it 'works'. I invite my visitors to feel free to chime in with their opinions.