NELVIA'SART.COM

Well here are this week's projects.   The top is Mountain Zen a picture from Craggy Gardens on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  It has an Oiental feeling to me.   We were higher than most other mountains peaks, the morning cloud deck curtained the valley, you felt you could step off and walk on top of the clouds, and the mountain Ashe berries were vivid reddish-orange against the blue skies above the cloud deck.   This hopefully will be the start of a new series I have had running around my mind now for many years.  It is a deceptive picture in that it looks simple, but as I started laying it out and had to plan color and material lay down I am finishing it as a mixed media piece.  Color pencil for mountains which are covered with trees, both hard woods and evergreens like hemlocks or firs and branches and berries are going to be pencil too I think.   Pastel however for the cloud work as only it can be wispy.  And when you do fluid clouds don't cover up a...

Well the battle has been fought for the second time and still not sure who won.  Again this is acrylic on watercolor canvas, size is big for me at 16"x20".   But think this is it for this picture, am going to let it sit on the board for a while and maybe if I have a frame that fits, will put it in my bathroom, as grooming appears to be in order.  Not exactly what I had hoped.  Maybe someone who can really paint give me some suggestions on how to connect with the brush.  I am going to go back and concentrate on pencils and pastels, but am going to keep throwing in some acrylic in the hope that I can learn how the heck to do it. Hope everyone is having a great weekend.  Thanks for stopping by and any comments would be appreciated.

Ok, here is today's ACEO, from my photo - Rainbow over Pisgah.  These have a dual effort, one to do something freehand from my photo or from life each day for the foreseeable future and loosen up and simplify pallet, strokes and subjects.  Sure got a long way to go.  Read the best quote this morning off of Karen Marguiles site, she quoted (and I read so many posts of hers that I don't recall the gentleman's name) but doing 100 of these small paintings is worth doing 1000 big paintings. The learning curve is faster as you are doing smaller paintings but working out issues.  You should see improvement quicker as you can whip through 100 of these much faster than larger paintings.

Here is today's drawing, an ACEO, size 2.5" x 3.5"

Well here is an update from last weekend as I have been under the weather not much happening.  But finally feeling better, nasty bug has been around for three weeks.  Still have more modeling to do and then need to get additional feather references and then it will be on to the fun stuff to do the back lighting which is what drew to the reference initially.  Going to try to work with the fan brush and see if I can figure out the technique.  Challenge to myself is to figure out how to master the brushes, as I just don't connect as my painter friends do. Since we just got a few days in the mountains in I have to do a piece for my Blue Ridge series that I have been thinking on, love th zen feel of the first piece I am going to work on while I figure out how to get my Egret finished.  Got the best pic of a restored 1930s Cadillac that I hope to do either in black and white or sepia for this series, at the high point of the parkway, make it olde time as that is why t...

Ok, it's been a while because new life changes have taken precedence.  Got a summer cold that I've been trying to fight off too.  So wanted to get back in the swing of things, but not in the most creative of mindsets. So I dug out something that I started quite some time ago and didn't like the way it was progressing, so thought I'm going to finish it.  Yes, I know you all have at least one of these hanging around your art space.  So time to dust it off and learn from it even if it doesn't turn out to be the "masterpiece". This is in acrylic and am doing this on watercolor canvas.  Size of this piece is 16"x20" which is a good size for me.  Was going to go for the dramatic green-black background but decided to mottle it somewhat to give it more life and sort of make a leaf-like feeling as they do nest in tree tops.  Not sure if you are really seeing it in the second shot, but maybe with more outside light it will appear as it does in real ...