Finished Flower

I finished the small 3"x5" acrylic daisy!  I am not able to get a very good picture of it, I've taken so many and NONE show the background color accurately.  It's much more violet than blue.  The top left corner is straight out of the tube prism violet and the rest of the background is a blue violet color, not just blue. I wish you could see it in person, I don't love these photos:

 This one is too dark ^^^ and this one is too washed out vvvv

But you get the idea :) Meanwhile I'm still working on the watercolor and colored pencil daisies. I'll post pics of them when I'm finished! 

Works In Progress

I've been working on a few different pieces, all different sizes and mediums, but one common theme.  I love gerbera daisies and I have a lot of pictures I've taken of my own flowers that I'm using for reference. I have a larger (well, large for me) watercolor 11"x15", a small 3"x5" acrylic on canvas and a 6"x6" colored pencil on bristol paper. Here are a few shots of the watercolor in progress:

I love this picture! I'm having so much fun painting this, and I love the angle of it, the "worm's eye view". It's a little more of an unusual viewpoint, which I think makes the painting more interesting. The unpainted left flower will be yellow. I'm a little worried about the background, I'm not sure what to do yet. I like the idea of a dark, almost black, background to make the bright flowers pop and create a lot of drama but then I don't want to overwhelm with so much dark. Any ideas and suggestions are welcome!

This one above is my little 3x5 acrylic on canvas. This painting is going to be bright all over, the background is going to be blues and violets (a little darker in value than the flower, so it pops). I don't usually use a lot of complimentary colors together because I'm just not a fan of those combos, but yellows and purples are nice together. Other complimentary color combos, like red and green is too Christmas-y, blue and orange is too NY Mets (I'm not a a sports fan). Maybe different shades of blue and orange would be ok, just not that dark primary blue. Anyway, getting off topic a bit ;)

This is the 6"x6" colored pencil.  Obviously all I have so far is the outline drawing.  This daisy is going to be pink. I'll post some more updates soon! :)

Sketching

So I've been trying to work more from life than from photographs when I can, it's good practice.  When I have fresh flowers, I always think, "I have to do something with these before they start to wilt!", but that rarely ever happens. But lately I have been drawing some of my flowers after they've started wilting and it's kind of fun, and makes an interesting sketch. This was a yellow gerbera daisy, one of my favorite kinds of flowers. (Ok I have a lot of favorite kinds of flowers, I just really love all of them!) I sketched it in pencil as it sat in an old blue wine bottle I use as a vase.

This next one I did last week, I had been given a potted flower plant for my birthday and it had started to die. (It's even more dead now, no matter that I keep it watered and sitting in the window. Potted plants just always die on me *sniff*). I used colored pencil on this one.

This plant was very funny, because the night my friend gave it to me, we were at a restaurant to celebrate my birthday. When she handed it to me, all three flowers were just buds. But every time I would look at it, one of the buds seemed to be opening up really fast. By the time we left, maybe 2 hours later, that one bud was fully open and I was afraid it was almost going to die, start wilting right there. Of the other 2 buds, one was open a bit and the last was still a bud. I've never seen a flower bloom so quickly! I wanted to draw this because I loved the way the leaves were all twisting and turning and curving around each other and I loved the gorgeous bright spring green they were. The flowers petals were also fun to sketch. :)

Inspired by Strathmore workshop...

Hi Everyone,
It's been a while since I've posted on here! I've been playing around with some mixed media stuff and some watercolors and watching the video workshops Strathmore has put out and have really enjoyed them so far. The first workshop was open in January and the second one opened this month. The first workshop was mixed media and faces called "Doodles Unleashed".  I've forgotten how much fun it is just to doodle and draw stylized faces. I haven't done that since grammar school days, doodling away in my notebooks (and of course getting in trouble for it). 

 I bought one of the Strathmore Visual Journals in mixed media, size 5.5"x8". For the background I first took a large brush and just plopped down some turquoise watercolor. I then mixed turquoise blue watercolor with some blue and violet pearlescent liquid acrylic ink in a spray bottle and sprayed the paper so it has a bit of a sparkle in the light. I took some scraps of lace (I worked in a bridal salon and we have in-house alterations. There's a scrap box with the fabrics they cut off when they hem dresses. So many great pieces of lace!!) and laid it down on the paper and sprayed again so there was a subtle lacy patten. I then drew my girl in pencil and the flowers behind her. I wanted to do all the flowers in just writing (like the one next to her head) but it was getting a bit tedious. I wrote lyrics to Eric Clapton's "Change the World" (just because I love that song and it was playing while I was making this). There is really no special meaning to any of this, just playing and having fun. I enjoyed drawing the birds flying out of the wisps of whatever that is coming out of her hand and playing with her hair with those shades of blue and purple. I really need to draw more faces, it was too much fun :) Other supplies I used were micron pens and Caran D'Ache watercolor crayons.
I also played around with drawing some octopus' (octopii?) just because I love drawing them too.  Their arms (legs? tentacles??) are fun to draw and they're just really interesting creatures. 

 This one is more pearlescent liquid acrylic ink, gouache (opaque watercolor) and micron pen outlining the octopus. This was more playing with backgrounds, playing with the acrylic ink. I just love this guy :)

This one I mixed up the background with blues and oranges. I splashed down some golden crimson watercolor and then took that blue mixture I mentioned before and a swirly cardstock template and sprayed it, so it left behind this blue, shimmery pattern, which reminded me of octopus legs (tentacles? arms?) so I went to town with more octopii just doodling and having fun. The little black guys were done with a micron brush pen while the alien octopus with the hat wad just a regular micron pen. The large blue guy is acrylic. The little guy in the top left corner I saw on the internet somewhere and I loved how cute and simple he was so I copied him and the one on the bottom is my own, as well as the one with the top hat. Hope you enjoyed my doodling! :)

Pen and Ink Art

So here's some older work, but some favorites.  I first heard of "stippling" when I was in high school.  Stippling is where you take a fine point pen and use dots for shading.  The first piece I ever did was the dragon from the movie "Dragonheart".  The assignment was to do a large scale project in pen and ink stippling and the theme was an animal.  I wasn't ever interested in animals as subjects for my art and wasn't overly happy about this theme.  I was into dragons at the time, so I asked my teacher if I could do a dragon, and she said as long as it was realistic and not too cartoon-ish.  She suggested the one from Dragonheart, so that's what I did. 

 For a first stippling project, I think it came out pretty well.  As a school assignment however, I  managed a C grade, only because I didn't finish it in time.  I had the face done, the most important part, but the neck part wasn't finished so my teacher had to give me a crappy grade because it was "incomplete".  I don't blame her and I know she didn't want to give me such a low grade, but it wasn't done.  It was almost the last project of the year so I had plenty of time to finish it over that summer and, as you can tell, I did.
When I was in college, I took an illustration class and pen and ink came up again. I did another project that used stippling and some other pen and ink techniques as well. This assignment was was to take something "organic" or natural and pair it with something man made.  I wanted to use dragons again, so I did this:

 

I'm sorry I don't have a better picture of this, I took this photo while it was in it's frame, trying to avoid reflections from the glass.  I don't have it with me now to take it out and get a better photo, unfortunately.  For this, I found the picture of the castle in a book of mine and the dragon is from a pair of candlesticks.  That dragon is wrapped around a candle stick so I just made him wrap himself around a tower instead. The dragon is all stippling but the castle is a mix of techniques, from hatching to just plain scribbling. I had a lot of fun with this one. 

After this semester was over, I decided I wanted to do more stippling projects over the summer and I decided to do some of the Titanic.  I've always been fascinated with the history of Titanic and had done some projects with it in the past.  Now I wanted to do something big and do it in stippling.  I actually had a series in mind of Titanic in stippling, from a picture of it being built, a picture of it sailing, a picture of it sinking and a picture of it as it looks today, rusting away under the sea.  I only managed that last one, because it took me the entire summer and I was a little burnt out afterwards! But I'm very happy with it:

 I forget the exact size of this, but it's cut down slightly from a 16x20" sheet of paper.  I used a 005 Micron pen for the ship (ridiculously fine point) and for the black background, a 01 Micron (only slightly less ridiculously fine point).  The background was very tedious, because it's just plain black.  The ship itself was a lot of fun to do.  I've wanted to enter this into contests, but I'm always worried about copyrights.  I did this from a picture from National Geographic, so it's not original. But again, no one can get an original photo of the Titanic, because of where it is.  I don't know if I could sell prints of it, either.  

Well I hope you enjoyed my pen and ink work.  More work to come soon!

 

First post of the new year...

Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas or Hanukkah and New Years!  I got some new art supplies for Christmas and some I already had...I had asked for a new ruling pen (a small device you can dip into something like gum arabic or watercolor resist and you can adjust the pen to create the width of the line you want, super thin or very thick).  I had bought one when I was living in Arizona for my lithography printmaking class and I thought I had brought it back home to NJ with me.  I tore apart my art supply stash (which is all over my room) and I couldn't find it, even though I knew I'd have never gotten rid of it. So, reluctantly I bought a new one (the people at the art store didn't even know what I was talking about and we searched for a while before we finally found them).  A few days later, I was cleaning my room and what did I stumble upon but my old ruling pen in an art box stashed in my closet with monoprint paint in it.  Luckily, I still had the receipt and I plan to return it tomorrow after work and I think I want to get some more liquid acrylics.  I  think I have one of everything in the art supply world, but seriously can you ever have enough art supplies?? I don't think so. ;-) 

 I have so many plans for new projects this year and I can't wait to get started on them.  I want to try some new things, like acrylic seascapes and some architectural watercolor paintings from photos I took on trips to Turkey and Italy.  These plans will have to wait a few weeks until I get back to Poland and have the free time.  Until then, I'm working 40 hour weeks at the bridal salon and next weekend I'm actually going to a bridal fashion show in Philly.  Should be interesting! 
What I can do while I'm home is doodle and sketch in my (miniscule amount of) free time and if you haven't heard about the free workshops Strathmore is offering, you should check it out.  There are 3 workshops, on in Jan, March and May.  A new lesson every week for a month of fun techniques for mixed media art. If you're interested, check out Strathmore Online Workshops. (I am in no way affiliated with Strathmore, I just enjoyed the workshops last year and looking forward to them this year).  Happy 2012!

Wow, I have been neglecting my blog the last few weeks!  I came home for Christmas and ever since I got back I've been so busy Christmas shopping, running errands and working.  I haven't had time to work on anything new and my work schedule for the next few weeks is pretty full as well, 30+ hours this coming week and the next 2-3 weeks after that is 40+!! I probably won't have time to do anything new before I go back to Poland in late January.  Here it is on Christmas Eve and I haven't even wrapped a single gift. That's how crazy it's been! :)  I'm lucky I even finished my Christmas shopping at all lol.
I have signed up for a free Strathmore workshop online though, it starts January 1st. The workshop is a lot about art journaling and having fun. I did a workshop with them last year too, and really enjoyed it. If anyone is interested, here is a link. :) http://www.strathmoreartist.com/online-workshop-enter-classroom.html
I should probably get back to my Christmas wrapping and cooking so I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever it is you celebrate. I will enjoy my weekend off for Christmas and then....back to work!