Saturday, July 14, 2018

Rose Painting?

I went to an in-house paint and sip last night. The teacher brought us roses! Yay!
We had to paint the rose... oh no....
I can't paint roses. They come out a garbled mess of lines that go no where, but I soldiered through.

Now this paint night had no rules. We got the basic architecture of the rose and how to paint and blend. We had our roses and photos (with quotes! I love quotes!) Then off we went to interpret the rose however we wanted.

There were new and experienced painters and lots of laughs. We came to the conclusion that roses are a hard flower to paint! Yet, the spirit of Valentine's Day called and we painted.
I can't show you mine...it was bad!

I stared at it all day today thinking...how do I fix this?

So to google I went! And found this video on painting a rose;
This guy's got talent!

Monday, February 5, 2018

Painting Dragonflies & Sunflowers

It's just a cold, blustery day in the north east and there's no way I wanted to brave the frigid temps, so it was either work on my next book or pull out the paint.

Guess which one won? :)

This canvas had another painting on it that just wasn't working out. So I mixed some green, blue and yellow and blocked out the old stuff.

Then did the center of the flower in shades of brown, yellow and black. The petals were done in two shades of yellow and green. A little of the brown mixture was streaked up through the petals for texture. The dragonfly (first time I ever painted one!) was done in light and medium purple, blue, black, and white.
Sometime ya just gotta have some fun. 
Paint on my friends! 


Sunday, January 21, 2018

Faded Garden Table Redo

A while a go I did this table with stain. It was a technique I saw in several sites on the internet and it was surprisingly easy to do.
My fail? I left the tables out year round and in Jersey, winter can do nasty things to art work. Did I not seal them good enough? Was it an especially harsh winter? Probably yes to all of the above. :(

So, I've been wanting to update it and didn't think the stain would work again so I dragged out my acrylic paint and a can of clear sealer and went to work.

First I sanded the top to have a smooth canvas. Then painted the top black so I'd have a good base and maybe the paint would help seal the wood a bit so I could work on it.

Next I filled in the peacock body in with a couple of shades of blue to give it some texture.
The green feather-like area was put in with strokes of green, yellow, and purple. After the wavy lines were in place and still wet, I dipped a paper towel in water and dragged it from center to the outer edges to get a blurry streaked effect.

Next the eyes of the peacock feathers were painted with a blend of orange/yellow, a heart shaped blue, and purple dot.  After that dried, long wavy lines were shadowed in to create that feathery look.

On the blue body, the eye was painted in yellow for the iris and outlined with white. The beak is an off white. The hair like spikes on top of the head were outlined in black and highlighted with a blend of yellow/orange (heavy on the yellow) Dots were placed on top of the spikes in white, purple and yellow. 

For the body lines of purple were placed just to give it a little feathery effect (without actually painting feathers.)

Three coats of sealer were sprayed over the top and sides to (hopefully) give it some protection from the elements.




Saturday, January 6, 2018

Snow Days & Frigid Temps

Here in the North East we're in below 0 temps and hiding in the house. Fire in the wood stove, wine is poured and it's a great time to CREATE!

We're looking to sell our house and move so my art studio is packed up in boxes. Wahhhaaaa!

So my awesome family got me a few things for Christmas. Brushes, canvases, and an easel. All I had to get was some paint. Forgive the quick pics. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these yet, might just go in the closet with the rest of the artworks. :)

As the temps drop, I'll be filling some canvas with day dreams.


How's by you? Keeping safe and warm?

What's your cold weather craft?