Drawing From Life

I've been thinking that I need to draw more from life.  My usual MO is to take a lot of photos and pick one or a few as reference and draw and paint from that.  I especially never wanted to do much "en plein air" work because, well, dragging art supplies from the studio to wherever was a pain, wind and rain are uncomfortable conditions to try and focus on drawing and the biggest reason, I am pretty introverted and like to be left alone while doing art.  Drawing outside draws people, who can potentially hover or even talk to you. To some of you, that might be fine and even welcome.  Not so much for me, it's distracting and I'm not in the mood to talk to strangers while I'm trying to work. 

These sketches are all done in my little 5"x7" sketchbook. 

My first recent attempt was drawing some flowers I had in my house, orange gerber daisies.  I didn't use any color, this was just pen and ink.  I placed them on my coffee table, put the tv on and just sketched away.  It's definitely more challenging than drawing from a photo, but I really enjoyed it and was happy with how it came out. 

 You'll probably notice "shadow dancing" written up in the corner.  Well, the show I was watching had that playing and I wrote it down because I like the song.  Don't hate me for liking the Bee Gees! haha. 

These next three drawings were done outside in my yard back home in New Jersey. I was just back for a few weeks visiting and there were flowers popping up all over our yard.  The weather was a bit bi-polar while I was home, some days hitting 80 degrees, another day there was snow. Go figure. But those gorgeous sunny days found me outside sketching flowers. This time I used some watercolor with my pen and ink. 

I really love these Daffodils my grandpa gave my mom. They come up in the little garden behind the kitchen. This day was pretty windy though, and it was hard to draw anything, since the flowers were all waving around like crazy! So I got one and called it a day.

Cannot remember what these flowers were called. My mom told me, but it was some weird name that I'm sure I can't spell. 

Now, I am back in Edinburgh and everything if flowering and blooming like crazy. It's absolutely gorgeous here!  

So far, baby steps. Sketched from life inside with some flowers I had in my window.  Then, I was outside at home in my yard sketching flowers where they grew.  Next step...going outside in public here in Edinburgh to a little park and sketching this...

 

I will post a photo when I finish!

Finally Finished.

For anyone still interested in these freakin daisies, I have finally finished. ;-) It really didn't take me too long to do the actual painting, which is why it is strange it took a year and a half to get it done. Well, now it's complete and we can all move on with our lives!

I can't honestly say this is my favorite painting I've ever done, it was really more of an experiment for me.  I'm usually very tight and detailed and I wanted this one to be a little more free.  

When I was doing the background, I had the flowers outlined in masking fluid so the background wouldn't wash into them.  When I decided to give the background a very spattery look, it started dripping into the flowers and I thought, "oh no!" But then I just decided to go with it.  I knew the spatter and drips would show through when I painted the flowers, and thought it might give it an interesting effect.

I'm also not thrilled with the composition. I don't know what it is...but either way, it was fun to paint and I love the colors of gerber daisies. I'm sure I'll be doing more in the future. 

Many things all at once!

I've made a little more progress on the daisies.  I finally finished the yellow one! 

Yes, it's been slow going on this painting, I think it's been in the works for about a year now. Or longer? I know it was started in Krakow last year before going home for the summer. Yikes. 

I'm taking an art class at the local art museum here in Edinburgh.  We're using an exhibit at the museum called "Witches and Wicked Bodies" as inspiration to make an artist's book full of fun, witchy artwork.  The final class is on Tuesday, and I will really be sad when it's over. It's been one of the most fun art classes I've ever taken. Here's a sneak peak on what I've been doing for that class:

I'm really loving all the fun creatures and familiars.  I'll do a separate post on this when it's finished. :)

Art Show!

Sorry to have been neglecting the blog again, this has been the most hectic month! First of all, my boyfriend and I got engaged! Yay! So I should say, my fiance... And then my fiance graduated from medical school 3 days later, YAY again! And family came, then we went on a crazy vacation. We were supposed to spend two weeks in Croatia. One week with his mom and sister and some friends, then a week just the two of us. Relaxing, unwinding, etc. Well the weather forecast for Croatia was nothing but rain for the whole time, so we decided to drive down to Greece where it would be sunny and hot. What an adventure driving through the Balkans. Then we came back to Krakow where all our friends were packing and leaving, then we went to Edinburgh to look for an apartment for ourselves, since that is where Fiance will be starting residency. Just got back last night. Whew! I have been working on some art and I honestly can't wait to have all of it done, as I'm pretty excited about all of it. I'm still working on that flower watercolor but I had to put it aside to work on the two other commissions. 

Anyway, I just realized I titled this post "Art Show" and haven't mentioned anything about an art show yet. So a co-worker of mine from NJ contacted me and said her theater company puts up kind of a gallery in June/July and said my artwork, florals in particular, were really fitting with what they were looking for and asked if I would like to be part of it. Sure! But since I am in Krakow, I had to call my mom and ask her to 1) Locate my artwork I wanted to enter (I knew exactly where it was, but still had to talk her through it) 2) Find out where I could do inexpensive framing, 3) Have my  mom take it to the framer and then pick it up when done and 4) Arrange my friend to pick up the work for me. So through a team effort, my work got framed and hung! It is for sale, so if I got a sale that would be so exciting! This is the artwork I entered:

So that's all for now, hopefully soon I can post a new painting! 

Part 3

Still working on this painting, although a bit slowly. Not going for photorealism here, just picking colors and having fun. I finally got the stems painted, and now will be starting on the petals! 

A step by step daisy painting...

I want to start another painting of gerber daisies, and I've had this particular one sketched on watercolor paper for about 8 months.  I had been busy with commissions and now I have some time to work on my own projects. So I'm going to post step by step as I work on it. I forgot to photograph the drawing before I started masking, but you'll get the idea. I'm using my own photos of gerber daisies, three different photos and made them into one painting. So first step, I had to go buy some masking fluid because I left mine at home in the US.  Then I got out my ruling pen so I would have nice, even lines and not worry about using a brush. 

Also, you might notice the ripped tape around the borders...I want it to have an uneven, kind of ripped paper looking border, hence the strange tape job ;)

I'm going to mask only around the outer edges of the flowers, since I'm going to work on the background and I want to keep the edges of the flowers crisp and visible and not worry when I'm busy splashing paint around.  I'm using the ruling pen carefully, to avoid gouging the paper.  You don't need to press hard. 

I really love the ruling pen, it gives you such clean lines! I highly recommend it!
So now the flowers are all masked...

And I wait for it to dry, then have fun with the background!
With this painting, I really want to try loosening up and not do my usual tightly rendered style. I want to splash paint around and not worry about a lot of detail.  I want to mask the flowers to keep the shapes while I go nuts with the background, but after that all bets are off. We'll see how it goes! More tomorrow...