Variety of Tulips

A friend and I recently decided to do an art swap. She makes beautiful crochet blankets and she said she would make one for me in in exchange for a painting of tulips.  Good deal! She likes red ones, so I bought a bouquet of red tulips and took several reference photos for her painting (which I'm doing in watercolor). 

I had two other commissions I was working on though, before I was able to start her painting.  By the time they were finished, the red tulips had died, but I really had wanted to practice some more drawing straight from life, so I bought another bouquet of multicolored tulips for sketching (and decorative purposes, of course!).  

Here are my life drawings of tulips.  

I just bought myself a little Moleskine watercolor journal and I was so excited to start painting in it. This is my first entry.

Quick pen and ink sketches. This sketch and the one below were both done in my 5"x7" sketchbook.

Getting detailed in pencil. 

The tulips were starting to wilt and die, and I always find drawing wilting flowers a good exercise. This one is a bit larger, done in my 9"x12" sketchbook.

These ones were really falling apart! 9"x12".

Sketching Outside

So the sun was out this morning (finally!) and I couldn't wait to get outside to draw that little park! (I posted the photo in yesterday's blog).  I had some things to do this morning, then I came home for lunch and went right outside, and of course, that's when the clouds rolled in to stay. *sigh*. I really wanted the sun because it casts more shadows, which of course add nice contrast.  I'm not sure how long these gorgeous trees stay in bloom like this. That and the serious lack of sun in this country made this sketch pretty time sensitive.

When I walked outside into that sunshine, it was so warm and made me so happy.  I was outside for a good hour or so, when I noticed my hands were getting cold and it was a bit windy. Grr, Scotland...

Well, at least I did it. I went outside, into a public park and did some art.  No one bothered me, if anyone was looking over my shoulder I didn't  notice, so besides the clouds, an overall success!  I didn't do the whole thing outside.  When I realized the sun was not coming back and my hands were cold, I went inside to finish painting from the photo I took the other day. 

I really love these trees, I wish they would stay this pink and flowery all spring and summer.  It's so nice to look out my window and see so much color. 

The Slacker's Guide to Making Art

Hi Everyone,

I'm so sorry I have been slow with the daisy painting demo. I promise I haven't forgotten about it! I painted a little more since my last post, but only about half of one flower lol. I will get it done, but maybe not for a little while. 

Life has been crazy this year, this is my boyfriend's final semester of medical school here in Krakow, he's graduating in less than two weeks!! We are moving to Scotland this summer, where he will be starting residency. Yay to finally making some money lol!! So we've been busy trying to figure out all these details, plus his family is coming to town for graduation, and then we're going on vacation with them. I've been slowly working on the daisies, even though I probably should have been working on the other two commissions I got before I came back to Poland.  I have to admit though, I was a little burned out from all the commissions at home and needed to paint something for myself. But a combination of lazy and other things needing to be done has put my art on the back burner. 

The other commissions I'm starting are for my best friend's sister for her wedding present and my neighbor who I did the dog and horse painting for.  My neighbor wants me to paint his barn, he has a photo he or his wife took just before sunrise with the moon still out.  I got the basic sketch done, and now I need to grid it, enlarge it and get it on the watercolor paper. (I'm doing a watercolor instead of acrylic painting this time).  

The second one for my friend is more complicated. (I won't reveal too much now, in case she's reading this. ;-) She knows it's coming, she just doesn't know exactly what it will look like yet). I don't have a photo to work from, just a theme and setting that she would like. So I have to hunt through all sorts of photos online to get ideas to totally make up a setting and place the figures in it. Then, with a combination of random photo sources, I need to make up the setting, make sure the lighting, perspective and all the figures are consistent and work together in my final piece without looking choppy. No sweat, right? lol. I'm excited though, I have a general scene now and it's going to be fun to paint. Of course I will post when I finish and have given it to her. 

That is about all for now, I will of course post updates on my work as I go. Happy Spring!

A Collection of Self Portraits

I just finished my latest self portrait, what I call a random experiment in drawing completely from life. I sat and stared at myself in a mirror, sometimes a large full length one, sometimes using my little handheld mirror, and drew. This is the first project I've ever done completely from life, aside from some small studies of fruit and veggies. 

This is called "Self Portrait with Dragon".  The dragon is a little plush toy I've been wanting to draw for a while because it's so friggen' cute ;) My hair isn't really that color, but I kind of wish it was! My facial expression is very serious, and that's about the only real problem I have with the finished product. I wanted to be smiling a little without looking too much like I'm posing for a picture but I kind of got the opposite result. Oh well. For this I used pencil, colored pencil, micron pens, acrylic pearlescent ink and silver ink pen.

I've done two other self portraits previously.  Every now and then I get the urge to draw the figure, and what better figure to use than yourself?  Rembrandt did it all the time!  So much easier than bribing friends or family into posing for you and trying to get them to stay still and stop whining "are you done yet"? ;) I've always used photos though, and it's much easier. But I really felt I needed to challenge myself with the new one by not only drawing the figure and face (my weakest subject matter) but doing it from life instead of a photo.

Anyway, here are my other two previous portraits done from photos to compare.

 This one I did two years ago using only Caran D'Ache watercolor crayons. (And a pencil obviously to sketch the outline). 

This one I've posted on here before, I just did it this winter. I only did this one for the hair. I came across this picture my boyfriend took of me and thought my hair looked like a lot of fun to draw. So this is more of a portrait of my hair ;)