In my last post about Sister Painting II, I said I would get into the details of how I painted their hair. I found an interesting way to do it, so I thought I would share.
The painting itself is fairly large (20"x24" is large to me, anyway!), but the figures themselves were small. I knew my friend loved the intricate hairstyles with braids and flowers, and that was going to be pretty detailed. I really wasn't sure how I was going to tackle that, so I just dove in and found a way through trial and error. I was originally just painting the hair medium brown and trying to add the dark and light highlights separately, but being so small, any detail was getting totally lost and didn't look good.
I realized it's much easier to paint on a light surface, so I painted all the braids and highlights white and then slowly added in the darkest details and shadows on the braids. I left the lightest parts white, because I was going to go over it with a glaze, later. I also painted highlights and shadows where there were no small details.
After the darks were all put in place, they reminded me a lot of lino cuts or woodblock prints, and I thought that was pretty cool.
I then glazed over the white with a few transparent coats of lighter brown, so the hair would have highlights and show off all the intricate braids. It ended up that the girls in the painting have a little lighter hair than they do in real life, but that's artistic license ;-) I know my friend really loved the braided styles, and her sisters all wore their hair in styles like this for her wedding, so it was important to showcase it.
The fourth sister, the girl with the lose, flowing hair, I don't have a lot of in progress shots. Hers was very simple and I used a similar technique, painted the lightest sections white, filled in all the darks, then glazed over with lighter brown at the end.
For the final details, I put flowers in all their hair.
Hope you enjoyed!
I've finally completed a belated wedding gift for my best friend's sister (who was married in June of last year). When my BFF got married in 2011, I did a painting for her wedding gift. It was a painting she had seen when we were together somewhere and it stopped her in her tracks. I later went back and photographed it and decided to paint it for her. It was a scene of four girls in Victorian/Edwardian dress on a beach facing away towards the water with a little dog and sailboats in the distance. I modified it slightly to personalize it. My friend has three sisters, so the four girls were perfect. I had all the dresses be the girls favorite colors, which most already were and only changed one dress from a pinkish orange to yellow. I also took out the original little dog and put their two border collies in. My friend was marrying an engineer who works on an "articulated tug and barge" so I put it in the water among the sailboats, so he could be part of the painting as well. I don't know the original artist, as I couldn't read the signature on the painting. I tried google and found similar artwork which was probably the same artist, but never found that painting. Here is my version. Acrylic on canvas, 12"x24"
My friend and her family all loved this, and when her sister got married this past year, she really wanted a "sister painting" also, but set in a nature, garden setting with lots of flowers. Her wedding reception was in their back yard with lots of beautiful flowers everywhere, lights and lanterns in the trees, very earthy and pretty.
This painting was going to be more of a challenge, because I wasn't copying from something else and I had to make the whole thing up myself. I used countless references I found online and my own photos and mashed it all up into one (hopefully) cohesive composition.
Sister Painting II, acrylic on canvas, 20"x24". I put the two border collies back in here and my BFF's cat she got last year. I have the dogs chasing a rabbit, but don't worry, the rabbit gets away. ;-) Of all the references I used, I never copied any of them exactly, even from my own photos. It all just kind of evolved on its own.
This girl is my best friend, since her favorite color is pink and she is standing my her little kitty who is swatting at some fish in the pond. She is the oldest, and the matriarch of her family.
This is the next youngest sister, the one I did the
painting for.
The third sister, who I actually had to model for, since I could not find a reference that had exactly what I wanted. The hair though, is not mine. ;-)
The youngest and the tomboy of the family, which is why she doesn't have a fancy hairstyle like the rest. ;-) I think she may actually be my favorite girl here. I love the way she is sitting, I love the way her hair is flowing and the strap carelessly falling off her shoulder. She might show up in some other artwork later on. ;-)
Hope you enjoyed! I actually really love the hairstyles on the girls, and the 3 girls with the intricate styles were a bit of a challenge and I found an interesting way to paint it. I'll save that for another post. :)
We moved into a furnished apartment here in Scotland. I don't know if it's common to have furnished apartments in the United States, I've only lived in houses. Living in Poland and now in Scotland, furnished places are very common and they usually come with some kind of artwork.
In our friends' places in Krakow, I'd noticed a lot of cool artwork. The two apartments we had in Krakow had none whatsoever. When we came to Scotland, the few pieces hanging on the wall were absolutely awful. Of the 3 paintings, only one was acceptable. Not something I would have picked myself, but it was allowed to stay on the wall. The other two may have been painted by the same artist (no, I didn't bother to even check) but they both had the same icky, muddy palettes. One was a large framed rabbit that was just creepy and ugly. Muddy colors, I think the rabbit had red eyes...maybe I'm making that up, I don't remember. We took it down and put it up in the storage area and hung our own stuff in it's place (a round Aztec calendar from Mexico and a large, wooden carved face from Jamaica that we call Bob), but there was still the ugly painting above the dining table.
The painting above the dining table was a food painting. Now, I am a big foodie, I love food, I love to eat, I love paintings of food and a painting of food above the dining table is something I would really like. But this painting was another that just looked like it was painted with mud. I did take a picture of this one before it got banished to the attic space with the creepy rabbit.
Now this is just bad. It looks like maybe artichokes and garlic and a coffee/tea pot? Either way, blech. I wanted something brighter and more cheerful. I'd love a food painting, but I wanted to do something quick and fairly easy and painless, as I have a lot of other projects I need to work on. A good still life of food in that large size would take months. So, I did this:
Queen Anne's Lace (or as it's called in the UK for some reason, Cow Parsley...) 30"x30" acrylic on canvas. I think it looks much better than the muddy veggies that were there originally.
I found this picture on Pinterest and thought it looked simple enough and I just wanted to do something quick so I kind of copied it. I was originally going to do something even simpler, more a graphic dandelion with the little petals flying away but then it evolved into this. Either way, I'm happy with the result and the more cheerful look it brings in. Good bye mud, hello sunshiney sky and flower :-)
Here's the most recent painting I did, another commission for my neighbor. He had asked me to do a painting for him to give his wife for Christmas, and after I completed it (sorry, I forgot to take a picture), he asked me to paint their Christmas card, which had pictures of all of their animals on it, seven dogs and three horses.
His wife does dog shows with some of these guys, and the grey dog on the far right is like a national champion pure breed or something. I don't know much about these things, but it's pretty cool that they have one of the top show dogs in the country. They get on tv! So this is the painting I produced from the card:
Acrylic on canvas, 16"x20"
The black and white dog, 2nd from the right, was in a different position on the card, but he had sent me a couple of photos of her for the other painting I did, and I liked her better in a different photo. The way she was cocking her head and the adorable expression in her big brown eyes was just calling me to paint. I'm not really a dog person, I prefer cats..but this little black and white girl, Eva, is the cutest dog ever.
This painting was probably the easiest painting I've done in a while. Most of the commissions I've been working on in the last several months have had me in a fit of nerves and some tears because I just couldn't get something right and they took me a long time to complete. This painting almost painted itself. It took about eight days total, which for me is lightening speed for a painting.
I have to say, it's pretty funny that I've been getting all these commissions in the past 6-8 months. I never had that many before, maybe one or two in the last several years. Then, this summer, I opened my Etsy shop for custom wedding gown sketches and bouquet watercolor paintings, and suddenly everyone wants me to paint.....animals (mostly dogs) and landscapes! Two subjects I don't actually paint, which is why I had a little trouble with some of these projects haha. :) I'm grateful for them though, for the extra income and the experience in painting things I hadn't before. And everyone was very happy with their paintings, which makes me happy too, of course!
Finally, a new post with new artwork. I'm sorry I've been neglecting my blog for so long, I've been crazy busy with commission work and haven't had time to sit and write about them. I'm the world's slowest painter and it's been taking up all my time. But I'm very glad for this commission work because my "day job" has had no hours for me. Literally. I haven't been to work since before Christmas. No good. So earlier this summer, I had a family friend ask me to paint her dog, (see blog post Portrait of a Dog)
another person we know ask me to paint a landscape (kind of a re-do of a painting she already has and loves), one sale on my Etsy shop of a wedding bouquet (see blog post First Sale From My Etsy Shop!) and my neighbor asked me to do two paintings for him. The first one I forgot to take a picture of, but I have pictures of the second one I just finished yesterday, and I'll write about that one in another post.
Here is the landscape. I actually call it the Moonscape. Acrylic on canvas, 16"x20".
And here is the original painting she had:
She loves this painting because she grew up somewhere that looked a lot like this painting and it brought back happy childhood memories. The painting is very 80's though and very pink. She asked me to re-do it, and I chose to do it at kind of twilight, which she was thrilled about, since it is her favorite time of day. I also made the moon much larger and dramatic, because I love the moon. I changed the format as well from a panoramic to standard size canvas. She chose the size, the original was too large and she wanted it a bit smaller.
She was thrilled with the final painting, I wasn't home when she came to pick it up but my parents told me how happy she was. She had written me a check and wrote lots of "thank-you!"'s on it. That is my favorite part of doing art for other people, knowing that they're happy with what I did. It's a relief too! :)
I've just completed a painting I've been thinking about for a while. I actually drew my picture on the canvas in late June or early July and hadn't gotten around to painting it until this week.
Sorry for the not-so-great quality photo. I left my camera in Poland accidentally and all I have right now is my camera on my phone. I have a friend with a "real" camera (as opposed to my point-and-shoot) and I want to try to get some more professional pictures of my art soon. ANYwho...
So I painted (most of) this with a palette knife (the exception being the background because I wanted it smooth in contrast to the flower and also the stem because I got sick of the palette knife). My original vision for this painting was to have it a little more abstracted than it is, but I really do struggle with abstraction.
Also, I had to do a lot of experimentation with mixing reds. Red isn't a color I use a lot and I had a lot of trouble creating a very light value red. I liked my dark reds, but lights were trouble. In my reference photo, the rose was sitting in front of a window with light shining through the petals. I wanted to get that bright, vibrant light value but I don't think I did. I think I got a medium red and had to compensate by making the other values darker than they were. That is ok, but I still wanted that light value and I couldn't do it with out adding white and making it pink, totally wrong. If anyone has any suggestions for this, please leave me some comments! Thanks :)
My inspiration for this painting was a photo I had taken of a rose that was wilting. If you've seen some of my other flower art, you might notice I like to capture flowers when they start to droop. I sketched it and sort of scribbled it for shading in my sketchbook, and thought it would make a really cool painting. I wanted the painting to be more like the sketch, but oh well. I'm still pleased with the way it turned out.
I liked the idea of having more straight and sketchy edges. Maybe some day I'll try it again, perhaps on a much larger scale.
I took a photo of my cat a few weeks ago and have wanted to make a painting out of it ever since. I had another mini canvas floating around with a painting on it I didn't love. So I gessoed over that and painted my kitty. I'm liking this little gem much better!
This is Shinobi. Acrylic on mini canvas, 2"x2 3/4" on a mini easel. I painted the edges gold. You know, one of these days I either need to buy a professional camera or find a friend who has one to take pictures of my art for me. Looking at the painting sitting right next to me versus looking at this picture, the photo distorts it a bit and the colors aren't quite right. The background blue is brighter than the photo shows. Anyway, enough of my camera problems.
I had done the painting of my friends dog and it made me want to paint my cat. I did this painting today, took me a few hours. I'm so bad at keeping track of my hours on artwork, I really should do that...So I made up the chair he's sitting on, in reality he was sitting on a bench in front of a window and I didn't think that would make a great background for a painting. I'm happy with his little chair. :) And I did the background blue because I wanted to keep it simple and I liked that color blue. Hope you like!
