Karen and Ted

I painted this engagement picture for friends of ours.  The picture was taken in Brazil when they were there visiting her family.  It was given to them as a wedding gift. 

 

Artist in Wisteria: Hardy Gallery Mosaic Project

Happy Mother's Day

This was a fun quick painting.  Also a good study in what I'm going to look like when I'm older!  

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

 

            

Emma sketch in colored pencil

I got a few hours to get out of the house and drink coffee and sketch!  Hooray!  I haven't done any colored pencil in a very long time.  It was a favorite in high school.  Maybe I'll get out again soon and sketch my other daughter.  It's funny being a parent, it's so nice to get away for a bit but then when you do they're all you think about.  ❤️

Plein Air painting Sunflowers

It has been a long time since I've painted plein air!  This little painting took almost 3 hours to paint.  We enjoyed the wonderfully mild August weather.  It was such a treat to paint with Natalie!  I hope we get to get out and paint again soon!

Mekai Painting

This is my latest project, it's a commission for one of my friends.  The painting is of her son Mekai. The photo credit goes to his dad.  I worked on this one while expecting my 2nd babe and it was slow going!  It was so wonderful to hand over the finished painting and see it up on their wall. 

Almost finished with the first pass!

Finished!  yay!  

"Mekai"

22"x 28"

Acrylic on canvas

Carolyn and Carl

A speed painting for sure!  This was a gift for my friends wedding.   I was pretty happy to paint at all at 6 months pregnant and still feeling pretty sick.  The skin tones only had one pass but I was still pretty happy with the result.  

Carolyn and Carl

Acrylic on canvas

The Kiss

I decided to expiriment with gouache.  I chose a wedding photo from a friends wedding that I had wanted to paint for some time. Instead of approaching it like watercolor I used them like acrylic paint.  It made a big difference in the results. I'm excited to have a new medium to add to my favorites!  

The Kiss

16" x 20" 

Gouache on paper

Jesse in-progress

Painting Jesse has been a fun and ongoing project.  From makeup, hair, to the photo editing this project has been bigger and more time consuming then any of my previous paintings.  The lacy woven shawl, crystals and gold have been a challenge and fun to paint.  Here are some in-progress pictures.  I hope to post more as I get closer to finishing it.  Acrylic on canvas.

Hardy Gallery Submission

I joined a few of the people in my class in a mosaic fundraiser project for the Hardy Gallery.  How it works is you sign up, they send you a 6" x 6" stretched canvas and you paint it and send it back to them.  All the canvases are displayed together as a large mosaic and raffled off as a fundraiser.

I sketched out my idea on a small notebook and then scanned it, enlarged it to fit my canvas and then sketched it on canvas.  After my sketch was finished I painted the background color and started with the hair, then worked on painting the face, starfish and kelp shawl.  I painted my line drawing of the scales and then went over it with a wash of color before doing a finishing touch on the fins.  This project is about 4 hours of work.

I really enjoyed this project.  I don't often paint my dreamed up sketches, lately I've been big on photo reference.  But with a canvas so small I think you can get away with invented details.  I hope whoever receives my painting enjoys it.  :)

Venice

Welcome to my art blog, sorry for the long pause in updates.  I began this painting before I became pregnant last year and it sat unfinished in our basement for quite a while!  :)  But after having our daughter I signed up for a painting class to cut out a few hours every other week to paint.

So the inspiration for this piece came from our trip photos.  I found this beautiful carved gold picture frame in a garage sale that set everything in motion, I ordered a canvas to fit the golden frame.  I had already narrowed down a few of my favorite photos from Italy but finally my husband and I decided on Venice.  So next I picked a composition that worked well in the frame size.

I began by getting the drawing down on canvas with pencil.  I printed a black and white version of my image to the size of the canvas.  Then I used scissors and cut out the silhouette of the buildings and important perspective lines.  I then free-handed the areas I didn't get with my cutting out method.  When I was finished and felt confident in my sketch I began to break into my paints. At first my method was wrong, I was trying to speedily paint the buildings in the distance all in one layer of paint.  I realized I was getting flat colors by attempting so much in one coat.  So I returned to my usual method that has a slower process.  I begin by tracing my sketch with paint so it didn't get lost.

  Then began with a wash of color as my 1st layer of paint.  Covering the last of the white canvas feels so good!  I also make calls on what I want to change about my photo at this stage.  I decided that I needed to tone down the heavy dark shadow being cast on the building. I wanted to use reference to brighten and restore the Venetian flag and add in the emerald green color that the water had in some pictures.  A lot of people in the class thought I was finished at this stage.  It's true, in the foreground it's more then a wash, more like a first coat but it didn't feel done.  

Previous experience has shown me in the second coat so much richness and vibrancy comes through in the 2nd layer of paint as you can see in the photo below.  I'm almost done with this second layer of paint.  I've adjusted my colors, and I'm getting close to finishing!  

My next photo should be the finished painting!  I'm just adding a few more details and then varnishing.

This has been one of the most challenging paintings I've worked on.  It required so much patience!  I haven't finished tallying the hours but my guess is over 80 hours of work!

Portrait of us

We returned from a trip to the beautiful state of Oregon the day before my painting class (eek!) so I found myself in a rush to pick a new subject and prep my canvas for class.  I settled on one of my favorite pictures of my husband and I back in our dating years. It was taken after a long motorcycle ride to Kettle Morraine State Park.  I braided my hair to keep the wind from whirling my hair into a knot.  Anyway it was a fun hike even with the hordes of mosquitoes and my poor moto-sore butt because I was crazy in love with that cutie beside me.  :)

Anyway back to the painting.  So I started Just washing in colors. I always feel so relieved when there's less white canvas. Then I did another pass with thicker paint.  As I worked I decided to change the background.  I knew right away I wasn't happy with the thin spray of branches and countless tiny leaves so I found an out of focus forest and photoshoped it into my background. 

 

 I also had a cloth slung over my shoulders that was an awkward shape so I removed it in photoshop using a layer mask.  

I used the Nova Color acrylics again I just love that paint!  It's not too thick and mixes so nicely.  This is actually the first portrait I've painted of my husband and I.  I guess I was scared to paint one before because it's always hardest to paint people you know.  But in this case I didn't want to finish it because the memories of those days are so sweet.

Anyway this painting will be up at a show in November at the hospital gallery.  It won't be for sale but maybe someone will be interested in commissioning a portrait.  :)  I'm so thankful for my teacher getting us involved in showing our work.  I hope there will be more gallery showings in my future!

14" x 18" 

acrylic on canvas

Mucha style portrait of Mary and Tom

I'm a big fan of Alphonse Mucha's artwork.  My husband and I got to go to a showing of his work in Debuque, IA last December.  I really wanted to work on a decorative, Mucha-style art project.  so when my sister-in-law got engaged I began sketching out ideas and doing color mock-ups in the ipad.   Here's my 1st go at it:

But in this concept my details were too tiny for the scale of my canvas so I started again.  

For the new concept I tied in more details that reminded me of Mary.  My sister-in-law said she might use curly willow and green lady slipper orchids in her bouquet so I worked that in.  The little mushrooms and white trillium flowers are native to the Oregon forests.  I remember her telling me that Trillium flower was protected and that reminded me of her too.  The two rings that the portrait is framed in are their wedding bands.  And the warm color pallet match her wedding colors. 

I did the line work in Photoshop and then color mock up on my ipad.  I stenciled the line work, you think that would be faster but actually making the stencil was pretty time consuming, but worth the effort.  

 

                                                                                 

With my sketch completed I began painting.  I started painting left to right, background to foreground.  It was really helpful to work this was to prevent smudging paint.  Having the white of the canvas mostly covered before working on the portraits also helped me to pick colors with out my eye blending in the background white.  

One of my teachers really saved me by pointing out I should use a wet pallet with acrylic paint.  The portraits wouldn't have gone so well without it!  I used a cookie sheet for my pallet. Lined the bottom with a wet paper towel and then wax paper.  Using this method my paint stayed wet for an hour instead of 5 minutes!  And I didn't have to use any acrylic retarder to slow the drying time. Here are a few photos of my progress: 

                                  

And finished!  I have to say, I really liked working with acrylics.  It was so nice to have a finished piece without the long drying times.  :).  Mary and Tom loved the painting.  I hope it always reminds them of their beautiful celebration of the sacrament of marriage.  :). Love you both!   

29" x 29" Acrylic on canvas

Photoshop Painting Class

So Here was the final project for the class.  I learned a lot about making my own custom brushes for hair and grass.  We spent time building off of silhouettes, building form from black blob thumbnails and then going over them with low opacity brushes in white and black to build form.  I'm still trying to pick up all the quick keys that will eventually increase my painting speed.  All and all I learned a lot in this short summer course.

My teacher wanted to submit it to the student art book.  If it gets in that would be pretty cool.  :)  

Stations of the Cross: Coloring Book

We finished ink drawings of the Stations of the Cross about 4 years ago for a friend who teaches at our church.  John and I split the job in half so we had 7 each.  Recently I went back and cleaned them up for an 8 x 10" printed coloring book for her students during Lent.  Who knows, maybe one day it'll be published.  :)