Pencil sketch of an elephant

Here's a sketch of an elephant that I have been working on. I have been thinking about working on a watercolor piece of an elephant but wanted to get the feel of it first. I need to work a little more on the symmetry of the face and decide how detailed to go on the background.  It will definitely challenge my shading work, which is so much easier for me with pencil than watercolor.                                           See Watercolor of and Elephant.

Portrait of an African-American woman, watercolor

I have been going to my regular long-pose model group at Patris Studio and Art Gallery for a while and each time I find something new with which to challenge myself. Today's model was African-American, which led to a couple of challenges. First, skin tone...I had just gotten a grasp on light skin color. And second, her curly hair.

I started out with a rough pencil sketch
Then added in a background color.  I'm always using blue so I thought green would be a good change of pace and contrast well with her yellow shawl.
Overall I think it turned out pretty well. I am pleased with the skin tone but it did get a little muddy. The coloring on the shawl was quite by happy accident because I was trying to get a slight orange color, but I didn't get the red mixed in all the way into the yellow. Overall it has a cartoony look to it which was not my intention, but I'm happy with it.
It's always interesting learning from other artists at the studio. There was actually another watercolor painter there this month. He did an amazing job letting the white of the paper show through to highlight the hair and face. When I look at my painting, I had to add white to create those highlights...I need to let the paper do the work of the white! Maybe I forgot I was painting with watercolor instead of acrylic since my last few pieces were acylic.

Meditative art with Artists' Way for the New Year 2014

My Artists' Way group got together to bring in the New Year with some meditative art. We laid background color first, just whatever inspired us. Then we came up with one word that would be our intention for the year 2014 - I picked JOY...I can always make a situation better by looking at it from a state of joy! With this word in mind, we went on a guided visualization/meditation.  This is what came to me...a big oak tree (no surprise since being out in nature always brings me joy!) with a little door...kind of adds that little bit of curiosity to what is inside?  I did a quick sketch with a ball point pen just to get my ideas down and then went to work on the canvas. I love the bright colors that I created in the background before I even knew I was going to paint a tree! I get more comfortable with acrylic every time I work with it.  Quite unlike my Empowered Kids logo which took over 6 months, this was done in less than 2 hours.  I think I captured my sketch very well with the painting.

 I used a gold paint for the word "joy" so it really catches the light, I love it!

Here are some of the other creations made by the others in the group...what a creative group we have!

The background with some texturing added in

Here is my intention on the canvas

Empowered Kids' logo acrylic painting

I've been working on this for quite a while and have been working on a lot of new things. I started this project with stretching my first canvas. Then white washed it with primer...it stretched it so tight the frame boards warped a little. Definitely the biggest piece I have worked on by far at 4 ft x 4 ft. The concept was to combine the imagesof the kids holding hands around the world and the ripple effect to create a logo for the Empowered Kids program at Clarity Academy of Spiritual Arts.

I started with just a big blue circle...and it sat like that for a long time as I mulled over what this was going to look like. Once I started putting down the kids bodies, I was inspired. I was finally on a roll and really got into the details on each of the kids, especially on each of the faces and outfits.  Some of them are loosely based on actual kids in the Empowered Kids program!
Now I just need to figure out how to un-warp the frame ...maybe some braces in the corners to straighten it out? Otherwise, I can pull the canvas off the frame altogether and hang it on dowels...

   

Evening landing of a mallard watercolor

"Evening" by Mikko Tyllinen

Happy New Year! My resolution this year is to paint more...so here is my first painting of the new year. I am trying to loosen up my paintings and not get too caught up in details. The inspiration for this piece was "Evening" by Mikko Tyllinen.

I really like the wet-on-wet effect that I got in the sky. I think I was able to catch the style and color of "Evening", not so much though with the foliage...

Detail of mallard

Funny story with the mallard, it was supposed to be one of the little birds that I was experimenting with. But the paper was still too wet and it bled into a large mess so I decided the blob looked like a bird coming in for a landing.  So I added in some detail and voila! I guess I just couldn't stay away from the detail...