Scotland Landscape Quick Studies

 12 x 9

watercolor on paper

For Quick Studies.  30 minute studies.  In Scotland and crazy inspired.  The architecture is beautiful.

 12 x 9

acrylic on board

45 minute studies.

i love you, Freesia WIP

 i love you

12 x 9

watercolor on illustration board

For Still Life 2.  Trompe d'oeil. Previous step. I like the way this turned out and I enjoyed the process.  I may do more paintings like this :)

  Freesia WIP

14 x 11

watercolor on board

For Still Life 2.  Paint to board. The hardest part.  You got to start somewhere. 

I leave for Scotland for a week on Friday so it looks like this painting will be coming with me :) I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Lovley Lady Lumps

Lovley Lady Lumps

~ 3 feet

clay, aluminum wire, & wood

For Head and Figure Sculpture.  Finished. Previously called Standing Figure WIP.  If you recall when I began this piece I could not get My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas out of my head.  Well, as I finished I still had that song stuck in my head so I decided that that should be the title for this piece. 

 

As for the sculpture, I hate the face.  Love everything else.  After this is graded I will probably get rid of the face just to make myself feel better.  I like it more ambiguous and less in your face.   Personal style.  For this assignment though I felt I needed to include a face.  Tiny details are not my favorite part of sculpture so creating the face was pretty miserable for me.   

More Female Nude Quick Studies

 9 x 12

acrylic on board 

For Quick Studies.  Just like last week- Female Nudes working on exaggerated color. Top 3 are 25 minute and bottom 2 are approx 60 minute. More fun with a palette knife. This week I did not use pure white.  Week after week my instructor has commented on my use of too much white.  I decided to use a mixture of white and cadmium yellow light as my lightest light.  Overall I like the result.  I think it gives my pieces more life.

i love you WIP

 i love you WIP

12 x 9

watercolor on illustration board

For Still Life 2.  Trompe d'oeil.  I had huge issues coming up with an idea for this assignment.  I was thinking too complicated.  I decided to go for more of a modern take instead of a traditional one.  After quite a bit of struggle I finally got over my artist block and came up with an idea.  I like the way this is coming along a lot.  I feel like there is nice potential with this.

QOTD- 5 Simple Rules to be Happy

5 Simple Rules to be Happy

1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.

Standing Figure More WIP

Standing Figure WIP

~ 3 feet

clay, aluminum wire, & wood

For Head and Figure Sculpture.  Adding more clay to this. I worked on refining the forms and smoothing out areas. Loving the progress.  Dreading doing the face.

Quick Studies- Female Nude

 9 x 12

acrylic on board 

For Quick Studies.  Female Nudes working on exaggerated color. Top 3 are 25 minute and bottom 2 are approx 60 minute. More fun with a palette knife.  I had such a good time on my cloud studies that I though I would try my hand and using a palette knife on nudes.  Different process but nicely challenging. 

Candle Light

 Candle Light 

12 x 9

watercolor on illustration board

For Still Life 2.

There is a ton more I could do to this.  Some paintings flow and some fight- this one fought.
1st I couldnt find a good surface.  After I put a wash on the first surface on a bunch of unavoidable dark areas appeared.  Then I tried a watercolor canvas that worked too much like gesso so I scrapped that one.  I ended up having to cut and prepare another surface.  It is supposed to cure for 24 hours and it only had ~5. Hopefully it wont effect the final look.
I didnt get the colors as dark as I wanted.  I will probably work back into this at some point. 

Standing Figure WIP

Standing Figure WIP

~ 3 feet

clay, aluminum wire, & wood

For Head and Figure Sculpture.  Adding more clay to this.  I love the curves.  It is nice to work from a curvy model for a change.  I have painted/drawn/sculpted enough skinny people. I also love how lose I am applying the clay.  It gives the piece more character. Its about the overall picture and not just the tiny details.

I deconstructed the Female Portrait Sculpture and the Reclining Female and repourposed the clay for this sculpture.  It is so big that I ran out of that clay and will have to buy more.  

I get more and more excited with the piece as I spend more time on it.  Lets hope that excitement continues to grow.   

Cloud Studies & Fall Back

 12 x 9

acrylic on board

30 minutes

 11 x 14

acrylic on board 

45-60 minutes

Cloud studies done with a palette knife.

We have had some rain this past week and with the rain comes very beautiful clouds. I was inspired. 

In my Still Life 2 class one of my classmates has been using a palette knife.  I thought I would give it a go and see how it worked for these quick studies.  I think it was pretty successful and I had fun.  

 Fall Back  

12 x 9

watercolor on illustration board

For Still Life 2.  Previously called Autumn.  You can see the grisaille/ underpainting here. In honor of the recent time change I am calling this Fall Back :)   

I think the colors turned out wonderfully.  I really enjoyed the process.  Grisaille really lends itself to watercolor.  If you get the values down correctly it just becomes a paint by number :) I find it very helpful to map out the values first as it makes me slow down and really think about them.  In watercolor the biggest difficulty for me is not going dark enough and the grisaille helps me to get my darks nice and dark.  This is a technique I will be using again.

QOTD- Ira Glass

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. 

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. 

But there is this gap. 

For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. 

It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. 

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. 

And your taste is why your work disappoints you. 

A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. 

Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. 

We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. 

We all go through this. 

And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. 

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. 

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. 

And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. 

It’s gonna take awhile. 

It’s normal to take awhile. 

You’ve just gotta fight your way through." 

-- Ira Glass

Autumn Grisaille

Autumn 

9x12

watercolor on illustration board

For Still Life 2. Grisaille or under-painting done in Burnt Umber. I went on a nice little nature walk to find these leaves.  I know California doesnt really have seasons but we do have a few kinds of trees that change.  I picked leaves that had the prettiest colors and so I am excited to add the color to this. 

Standing Figure WIP- Block-In

Standing Figure WIP

~ 3 feet

clay, aluminum wire, & wood

For Head and Figure Sculpture. The very beginning stages of my block in.  Previous step.

Not at all as far along with this as I would like.  I thought I had enough clay for the block in.  Turns out I dont.  Lame I know but it is what it is.  I am trying to avoid buying a bunch of clay.  When I took the Foundations sculpture course I bought 50 lbs of clay and didnt know what do do with it when the class was done.  I ended up giving it to the local elementary school when we moved.

On a side note, I had this song stuck in my head as I was working on this piece-