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Angels Among Us Nothing too fancy for this piece except that I cleaned the palette a couple of times to create the abstract background.  This week's lesson was to do an art journal page using an angel.  I didn't start with a collage or do stenciling on this one, but did think that it would be a challenge for me to do a  multiple portrait.  I haven't done many, or maybe any, because I alway think that just doing one portrait and getting it to come out is whew!! So, the only thing I really got right about this less is the angel part.  I have wanted to do these children and thought the story here would be pretty interesting.  Still working with the same palette of mars purple, turquoise and yellow ochre.   Thanks much for stopping by and taking a look.

Just doing a bit of work in the sketchbook.  This isn’t the best photo because the lighting can’t be controlled and taking the picture with iPad.   This is graphite but gives a more grainy effect due to sketchbook paper versus Bristol.  I think I am going to try putting some oil pastel over her in certain parts, but am afraid to ruin her, so maybe not.  maybe should just call her done.   Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.

Blues This week's lesson with Ce Duff was simply awesome.   It really is a mixed media portrait using paper collage, soft pastels, and acrylics.   Everything is built up in layers and a whole lot of matte medium is consumed covering each layer.   I started out making my own collage paper using dollar store white tissue paper.   Never thought about making it before but it was pretty fun, messy, but fun.  I also tried some dollar store hand-made paper I bought years ago (you can see it at the bottom right) which has leaves embedded in it.   Never have used it, but finally here is a reason to get it out and tear it up.  I only bought two packs, now wishing I would have gotten more. Then I learned a new technique using soft pastel which ends up being activated and fixed in layers of matte medium.  It makes perfect sense since pastel is pure pigment.  It sort of gets suspended in the medium and so like watercolor tends to reflect the light as it usually would if it was left d

Poppies At the beginning of the year I treated myself to a new sketchbook, one that had thicker pages designed to take mixed media.  I promised myself that I would work in it on a regular basis as a way to work out ideas and to gage improvement.  So today was spent noodling around. This is kind of a surreal piece in that the girl is emerging from the flower.  I had some ideas for the background, but changed them up multiple times and ended up with a bokeh effect.  I love painting poppies as they are just so charming and you get to use all that RED.  I like this girl too as I was trying to get some energy and movement, and also her head tilt was quite a challenge.  Remember, that while this picture is 11"x14" her entire head length is less than an inch.   So it was quite the challenge to get the features in and still try to make it look like her head is tilted up and she is looking down.  Think I need to try that on a larger head - what do you think? Thanks much for

Blue Moon This week's lesson was the first in mixed media.  However, I took some editorial license as I had also been watching a video where it started with a grisaille, then acrylic and finally oil was used as the final layer.  So of course I needed to try it out.  This was different as I did use the shadowed griasille as a guide but actually did put flesh tone colors over all sections once I got to the oil stage.  I got to admit that the oil is so creamy and blends so well.   Makes me shake my head at watercolor. I also wanted to work in a very limited palette of cad red light, cal yellow and prussian blue.  That is one of the reason I have some unusual hair and skin tone colors.  Actually the base of the hair is kind of a celadon color. One thing I did also since this was done in my sketchbook, was to take several pages and tape them together, making a sort-of block and it really did help the page not to buckle so much.   I have upgraded to a mixed media sketchbook, p

The Blue Hat Just a bit of playing in the art room today.  Started the morning off at 1:30am with a tremendous and unexpected thunderstorm.   It come so fast, rained so hard that I thought it was going to come through  the roof.   Since I haven't been using my soft pastels they were getting a bit unruly, so thought I better give this girl another go.  Used black paper.  I wanted to still try to have her emerge on the dark background, but felt it was just too stark and empty so added the blue on the left side.  I got a better image of flowers for the hat and added her 3D dress.  The dress is part of a is a napkin, collaged and then I painted and pastel over it to try to tame it down so it would fit better into the composition.  Just wanted to see if I could add curves and fold texture and, if so, how it would it look.   I do think you can still tell it is not flat on the paper.   But I don't think it stands up so much that you couldn't frame it with mat and glass/ac

Ok, I made it, I survived the watercolor segment of my course.   I got to say though that I am really glad that it is done and only am dreading one more segment, the one in oils.   I have learned that I can do watercolor but I like bolder color (though looking at this one it this is pretty pastelish) and I like to keep my watercolor pretty dry.  I haven't really learned the aspect of mixing color on the paper.   I did leave the layers more prominent in this painting and still not super sure that I like it, but, well, it is a watercolor look. I have to admit that this has taken me all week to get the up courage to have a go at this.  And, if it hasn't been a 1920's look I probably would have passed this lesson and painted some of the other ideas that I have been toying with in my head.  However, this lesson did give me the opportunity to try something I have been thinking of, utilizing Pinterest, and that is flowered fabrics and wallpapers for the backgrounds.  Think you

Shy original size Cropped to just portrait The inspiration for this picture was that I was thinking of my friend instagram friend, Dyahtrin, who has been hospitalized.   Got to say, I am not really sure what I have here.  I had this sheet of fuchsia/pink background, think I cleaned my palette on it.  Even though it was taped when I did it, the paper really buckled.  So I tried to reflatten it out and it did a little.  So I decided I would use it for this piece, add some collage and other mixed media to see what I would get. I found another reference that had a lot of fuchsia in the jewelry, but then saw this and liked the reference and the way the woman's gaze was directed.   But, after I placed the woman I began to worry that it was going to look like it was two different pictures.  I am not sure that the teal strip on the left side is enough to tie it together.  I did a little research on Indian paintings to see what was included and many have the Lotus, so since th