Illustration Friday - Snap

sketch journal, 5x8.5

My simple offering for "snap" in my new hand*book journal - can't wait to fill it up.

Have a great weekend, get out there and enjoy that Spring weather!

WIP - Call for Art, *Bridges* theme

A local call for art and the urging of my drawing teacher prompted this work in progress. It's my quirky interpretation of a *bridge*, I came up with other ideas too but decided on this one. Hopefully I can meet the deadline, although I'm late starting it. I am going to finish this even if I miss out on entering it. I find lately I've been leaving a lot of work unfinished - does everyone do that as a beginner?? I've got lots of great ideas that I want to see come to life but my technical & application skills are lacking so I'm hoping with lots of work and patience (who said that?!) that I can get past this phase and just get some *good* art done! My teacher actually told me that it's standard to just draw for at least one year, sometimes 2 years depending on your schooling and/or field experience before getting into paints so......here we go =)

This is a life painting, no photographs used and also a totally new medium for me - acrylic paint. I'm using fluid acrylics as I don't like the way tube ones dry out so quickly plus I love the looseness of this paint and the extended drying time for blending. I'm not sure how to display this just yet ie. mount onto matboard, type of frame/ no frame etc. Any suggestions or tips are welcome!

acrylic on heavyweight Daler-Rowney canvas paper

Step 2 - Added details and shading to the bananas, started on the vintage sundae glasses. The distortions of the bananas inside the glasses were very cool and caught my eye enough initially to give this a go. Will continue on to finish the glasses and add the draping background....















Step 1 - After transferring my pencil sketch, I laid in the base colors and started on the bananas as I read somewhere that you should always do your perishables in a still life first - makes sense to me as the bananas ripened very quickly, overnight it seemed =)

EDM #111 - draw a bowl

5x8, prismacolor pencils on white Bienfang drawing paper

A bowl, upside down and metallic - with reflections everywhere. I love a challenge, did I mention that before?!!

I decided on a loose, sketchy interpretation for this and it went fairly quick - for me. I started to draw this from life and then I snapped a digital (that would be me just behind my daughter in the sketch with my camera) . She said there was no way she could hold her hands on the bowl longer than 15 minutes - no matter how cool her reflection looked!!! =)

Overall, great fun with this one!

Time: approx. 1-1/2 hours

Illustration Friday - Total

"Out of the Bowl" - 9x12, colored pencil on Strathmore light blue paper

At first I thought total was a tough one because all that came to my mind was math for some reason or maybe it's because I've been super busy with stationery orders these past few weeks and keep thinking how much I've been typing "the total on your order is...."

Anyway, here's my offering and I decided to post this as a work in progress as it's more interesting that way (well not really but I got a late start on it yesterday and most likely won't get to finish it this weekend!). Most of the main work is done but needs some refining and of course the base needs to be completed.

There's also some total trivia to go with this: What is the TOTAL number of gumballs in this piece? (hint: remember to add in the ones you can't see at the bottom of the bowl). Will post the finished piece early next week so come back and check it out, you can see how close you came on the gumballs too =)

P.S. - Happy St. Patrick's Day!

EDIT: March 21, 2007

Although I didn't finish this piece yet, here's the update on How Many GUMBALLS? One person came very, very close on it - it was none other than Tony LaRocca whose guess was better than bad at 22 as there are 23 TOTAL gumballs in this piece. Thanks for playing along everyone!

Artwords Topic #44 - "Paper"

"Paper Dreams", journal, mixed media collage 12x12

An idea that I hastily jotted down earlier this week when I seen the topic for this week paper, came to life this morning in my journal. It's been a while since I felt like *playing* in it and it was so fun & quick to do, everything flowed intuitively which doesn't happen all the time for me. What made me think of a paper plane? I have no idea - but I do know that they're fun, whimsical, easy to make and who doesn't want to fly one now & then? =)

Also, I've been thinking a lot about dreams lately, how things manifest themselves in our lives and how powerful our thoughts and words are. At the beginning of this year when I started on my artistic journey, I came across this quote and it resonated with me very much - I thought of it as I finished this piece:

"Imagination is stronger than knowledge. Myth is more potent than history. Dreams are more powerful than fact. Hope always triumphs over experience. Love is stronger than death. It’s been said that each of us can influence up to 250 people in our lifetimes. How will you be influential? Be bold, and mighty unseen forces will come to your aid.” -- Robert Fulgham

Illustration Friday - Wired

"Wired Basket" 5x8, colored pencils on white strathmore paper

This piece for "Wired" was inspired by a photograph (except for the spool of yarn that I had in front of me!) that I seen a fews weeks ago on the blog of a wonderful artist, great girl and new online friend, Susan Tuttle at The Purple Studio

She was sharing her thrifty finds of a wired basket and some vintage items which I adored but all I could think of when I saw this pic was, "Wow! I wanna draw that!!"

Thanks so much for the inspiration Susan and I hope this makes up for my lack of entries at Artwords these past few weeks!

EDM # 1, 12, 15, 17, 22 & 39 - Vignettes, Series 1

I've decided that if I ever want to get through the list of past challenges and start on the new weekly ones that I would take on some of them as vignettes and group them together. I tend to be very detail-oriented and large sketches of one subject are too easy for me to get lost in and nitpick at so......

The challenge for me with these 2-1/2 " square vigettes is that each one has to be done in 15 minutes start to finish and also that they have to be real subjects set up in front of me - no working from memory or imagination allowed to help keep things in proper perspective, so to speak. Also I think keeping them small and working within a time limit forces me to work more accurately and make quick decisions.

I'm hoping that working in this manner at least for now, will satisfy my curious and detailed muse's eye and at the same time appease my goal-oriented left brain that is constantly tracking my progress and looking for results!

EDM #33 - draw an eye

pastels & colored pencils on strathmore natural white paper

Draw an eye (my eye) and sans makeup as i wanted a fresh look plus it helped to see all the details and coloring better. Point taken from my drawing class that just finished was to take up a full page when sketching so this is fairly large for an eye sketch as it's about the whole page of a 9x12 sheet! More practice is needed as some parts of this could be better and it doesn't have the realism look that I prefer but I'm developing my techniques steadily. I'm at the 3 month mark of daily drawing now so as they say - onwards and upwards!

Illustration Friday - Hide

colored pencil & pastels on paper

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1 -- Ready or not you must be caught!"

A couple ideas came to mind when I seen this week's IF theme word Hide, but what stood out the most to me was the game of Hide and Seek the popular childhood tag game. I also found out that it is a professional game with tournaments in many countries (who knew?!)

Let your inner child out and play a game this weekend with your kids or grandkids - weather permitting or.... play it in the snow if you've had the *pleasure* of March's in like a lion wrath recently like us here =)

Shown below is the original line drawing for this illo (my sweet daughter was my model - again - and actually no one stays in one spot for too long around my place anymore, especially when they see me with sketchbook in hand!!)