A couple weeks ago my sister brought me over a box of oil pastels. I hadn’t used oil pastels since I was a little girl, about ten or eleven. At first I was a bit nervous with them, but I found them so much fun to work with. I quickly drew up this little lovebird in ink, and colored it with the oil pastels. The colors ended up looking more like a parrot though…I clearly need more practice, but I sure had fun with them!
Photo from Foxtongue
I had been looking forward to a day spent working on two of my paintings and starting on some other projects. Unfortunately however, I have had a horrible back ache since yesterday morning that has refused to get any better. Rather than painting I have been pretty much lounging around on the sofa, trying not to move too much with my laptop on my belly!
I am really hoping that tomorrow will be a far more productive day…whether or not this pain in my back has eased!
A lot of times when I have extra time on my hand I sit around and like to look for photos or quotes that fit my mood at the moment. Here is one that struck me today:
“The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.” -Eugène Delacroix
Hello all! I am home from San Francisco, and I had such a lovely trip. I was hoping to get some sketches done in my drawing book so that I would have some stuff to post when I got home. Of course, I got too caught up with everything else going on, I really didn’t have the time.
It has been almost a full week since I did any painting, or anything artistic at all. I am really looking forward to Tuesday. I plan on spending the entire day working on my current painting. Right now though, I am going through some Flickr favorites that I have saved trying to find some inspiration for new pieces. Here are a few that I am especially in love with at the moment.
This image is from one of my favorite Flickr users, Lulu at Home. She has the most amazing photostream filled 100’s and 100’s of images from her collection of vintage childrens books. There are so many different styles of artwork she has posted, that it is easy to get lost while scrolling through all the images.
I love when I come across an image like this. This young girl has such an intensely sad look in her eyes. The snapshot is absolutely beautiful (oh, and I want her hair!), and she looks wise beyond her very young age. It is so hard to capture such a strong emotion as this girl is portraying, so finding a photo like this is really special.
Lately I have been craving nature. I have been really wanting to go up to the mountains just outside San Diego and snap some of my own photo inspiration. I love this mushroom photo by Brian Hathcock, it looks so magical to me.
What can I even say about this photograph?! It is absolutely amazing. It was created in 1875, which totally blows my mind.
So sorry for the lack of updates over the past few days. I have been working my tail off to finish this painting, and to get everything in my house cleaned up before I leave for San Francisco, (I am updating from the airport waiting to board my plane!).
I am really happy with how this painting turned out. I didn’t get a chance to take a nice photo of it, I will have to do that next week when I return to San Diego.
The text on this painting reads:
You can really have no notion how delightful it will be,
When they take us, and throw us up like lobsters out to sea.
Last weekend I whipped up some business cards for myself using my beach painting. Since I recently printed out some photographs of my artwork to carry around to show people, I decided it would be stupid not to also get some business cards made up.
They should be coming today or tomorrow, and I am so excited to see how they look in person.
Last night Russ and I went over to my dad’s house for dinner. My sister, who is in the process of moving out of my dad’s house, was scurrying around the house trying to pack up her things while we were over. Among them I noticed three large rolls of art. I asked her about them and she said she dumpster dived them, and that there were around two hundred pieces of crappy art on canvas. Bless her little heart, she offered me one of the larger rolls.
Thrilled, I decided to look through it first to see if any of the art was worth saving. We found one piece, that was a portrait, which my sister decided to hold on to. This afternoon I am going to go buy some gesso and stretcher bars at Blick so I can get down to business.
No posts since Friday–how dreadful!
I spent the weekend working on a paper that was due in my class yesterday. It feels so incredibly wonderful to be finished with it, and have an entire day free to do whatever I please! I plan on working on my painting (below). It is coming along pretty nicely, but it is due next Monday. I have so much work to do on it still! Painting classes can be so frustrating at times, I can never get as much work into a painting as I would like. Because I work with oils, a lot of times I have to wait for portions of the painting to dry before I can add more details or work on that section.
I have so much other things to catch up on as well before my last day of class next Wednesday….and as soon as I get out of class I am going to rush home, pack, and hop a plane to San Francisco. Exciting! Time is really going to fly this next week.
Here is where I plan on spending all my time until then.
Whenever I am dry on ideas for art, the first place I turn to is Flickr. I regularly spend hours doing searches or browsing various groups. Lately there have been two groups I have been enjoying more than others. They are 100 Years Old and The Smiling Victorian.
I have hundreds of images saved in my favorites on Flickr for future inspiration. Every now and again I come upon an image that I just can’t get out of my head and stands out among all others. This image is one of those. I came across it in the 100 Years Old group, and can’t stop looking at it. The look on his face is so eerie yet serene. It is pure perfection.
This is the page from my naughty ABC book that I finished a few days ago. I will probably re-illustrate it fifteen times before it is done, but here is what B looks like at this point!
This painting was due last week in my class. I had to put a few last finishing touches on it this morning before I could photograph it.
Our assignment was to go take a photograph at the beach and paint it with something added in. I was pretty intimidated by this assignment, because I have never painted a scenary before. It was a ton of work, and I had to expirement and make up my own new techniques…but I am quite pleased with how it turned out. I think it may even be my favorite painting I have done thus far!
