Dancing Woman in Red with a Boa

I have been wanting to paint for a few days, and even though it was late I decided I wanted to do something. I had this sketch in my book and decided to just lay it on there loosely, without drawing on the canvas first. Just for fun. this is not the dancing woman in red I mentioned before, but it was just sort of for fun. And not too bad considering I did most of it with a three year old in my lap.

The New Creative Artist

Today I had to kill a lot of time while waiting for Eric to attend his Yearbook workshop in Lexington. Little kids are not allowed at the workshop, so I was not allowed either. We went to several stores until I ran out of ideas. So we went to Books A Million and I let the Littles play with the train set for an hour while I looked at art books.

I found one I really really wanted to buy, but it was $30, I have already bought 2 art books this week, I am getting ready to take a trip to Georgia, and anyway I had just bought rugs at TJ Maxx. I showed a lot of restraint and did not buy. I wrote down the author and title and decided I would look on eBay. They do have it some cheaper there, but I am going to wait. Oh, the book is called The New Creative Artist, by Nita Leland.

I got to thinking she might have a website, and by-golly she has several: nitaleland.com and a http://nitaleland.blogspot.com/ too. I am enjoying looking at everything. Her book was so neat and I can't wait to try collages and some of the other things. She writes, "You dream of being an artist. You are an artist. Begin."

Everything for a Dollar

(Post for Thursday, actually)

I spent a lot of today in town running errands. I bought a magazine and enjoyed it so much that I read instead of painting. It was a magazine for women over 40. I am not 40 yet, but I am in training for that, so I thought I could practice. Apparently, 40 is when you begin to think about "Act 2". So I better start planning now.

I went to the Dollar Tree store today, and guess what they had?! They had small art board/canvases for sale, for a dollar of course! A 9x12, or a 2 pack of 4X5s. I bought a few. I will have to go back and get some more; that is really cheap!

Brothers in Unity

Today I am feeling really tired, and won't get to paint although I wanted to. I am going to post an older painting I did at least 10 years ago. It is acrylic on paper, entitled Brothers in Unity. I remember doing it like it was yesterday. I remember having the boys "model" for me, holding their little book bags. Hope you enjoy it.

Painting a Young Adult with Glasses

I was not feeling so hot today, but forced myself to try to start a new picture. I chose this one from the how-to book, was pleased with the sketch and got excited about painting it.

I really like how this one turned out. The subject was appealing to me. I guess she reminded me of a combination of myself and a school friend when we were younger. My oldest son just came in and asked if that was supposed to be me. So I guess I am not the only one who sees the resemblance. right now I am wearing my glasses, which most of you haven't seen. (and a butterfly antennae headband because I could not find a scrunchie.) I have worn glasses since I was 6 or 7. Anyway, The point of this study was to learn to paint glasses, and I think they look pretty good. I also managed not to give her the sunburned look a lot of the examples seem to have, and my Eskimo baby from yesterday had. I mean, that is how the shadow is portrayed in the book, I just don't care for it much yet. I don't think this method is going to be quite the same as working with oil paints as I hope to do in the future, but I guess I will see what happens when that time comes. Right now I am just enjoying this.

I took a photo of the sketch just in case the painting didn't look so great. I liked the drawing. So I am including it today too; hopefully you can see it. In taking the pictures with my phone camera I noticed it does not look as good as in real life. She looks happy, bright, very avant-garde, very warm. She also looks a little like Velma from Scooby Doo. Hmmm. Hope you like her.

Study- Shading, Eskimo Baby...

Today I got a book on how to paint people. I saw it the other day when I was at Hobby Lobby, but it is really a water color book, and I planned to use acylics, so I got the basic acrylic book instead. But this seems to be what I really needed, so I think it will be okay. I want to learn how to shade stuff properly and have it look realistic. Need a true "how-to" book that goes step by step, and that is what this is.


The book is in the other room, so I don't know what this is called, but I think it is a baby a little over a year old; I am not sure what race she is. I think she looks like a little Eskimo baby. Only she looks like she has a sunburn. It looks a lot like the shading in the book, but not exactly. It turned out better than I thought it would. My two youngest children like it. It is nice to have someone so easily and enthusiastically impressed!

This was the first time I used the water color paper. It is not too bad. I liked the stretched canvas best, but it is the most expensive. I will have to wait until it goes back on sale and buy more. I think I would really like the 16 X 20". I read this quote on an artist's eBay listing today. It said something like, "If you can't paint it well, make it big. If you can't make it big, make it red." Lol, I liked that. Chris sent me a few links to other artists' sites and I got to look a little bit, but with dial up it is sooo slow. Chris also suggested I paint something I see in my imagination. I keep imagining this large woman dancing exuberantly in a RED dress- sort of a mumu, lol. I cannot see her face but I feel her movement and her joy. Maybe I will be able to paint her some day.

Ever Feel Like This????

Hazards of Painting with Children

I don't even remember anybody even saying it was time to paint.

We had been doing schoolwork when we decided to take a little break and put a cake in the oven. While I was doing that, Joshua decided it would be a good time to open the manila art paper I had picked up for him that morning. I heard "the littles" getting stuff out in the family room- aka the studio- but thought well, okay. I'll just clean this up here in the kitchen. So they are getting brushes and water and the bottled craft paint, which was fine, sure, whatever. Then I hear this swush-swush sound, the sound of paint being forcefully squeezed from a bottle. I went to investigate, and Josh was putting big puddles of paint on his paper. Anna was daintily setting up her palette on a sheet of paper, but they were both sitting on the floor. Where else were we supposed to do it, darling daughter asked. How about the TABLE?!

Okay, well, be more careful. I sat down at the dining room table (opens to family room) and started trying to sketch out a picture I was going to paint later. I was not very far along, I swear, when Anna said, "Mom, you do NOT want to come in here!" Well, at my house, that is code for "someone made a really big mess." And sure enough... Well, the pictures are self-explanatory. Josh was laughing his head off as I dragged him to the shower, giggling and trying to hug everyone as he passed.

I guess if you get to the point where you take a picture instead of yell over something like that, it is a sign of maturity. Or something?

There's Sand in my Meatloaf

Today I had the idea that I would try to paint from a photo. I had a certain picture in mind and dug the photo albums out from under my bed and found it. It is my daughter at Myrtle Beach when she was about a year old. I always liked this picture and thought it would be great to have it enlarged. In the photo she was running across the beach and smiling, and the sand filled the entire background.

For the painting, I decided I would try to put a little bit of the water and sky in, just to make it more interesting. I am not sure if that was a good idea or not. The sand turned out okay, although it is not as white as in the photograph. I see now that the fleshtone is almost exactly the same as the sand. Probably could have used more contrast. I did do better on the light values. Once more, I had the problem of the head growing out of control. I had to do two non-surgical reductions of the head size. Also, the eyes are too far apart and all the features look sort of out of whack. But it is okay. I don't hate it. I like the shadow under the figure, and I know it is right because it is just like that in the photograph. The surf looks pretty good to me too.

It does not really look like my daughter, but she liked it. My 3 year old kept insisting it was him. My daughter pointed out that I had failed to paint Winnie-the-Pooh on her bathing suit, but that was a little more than I thought I was capable of, so I just made some yellow flowers.

I painted this while listening to the new Meatloaf CD for several hours. I cannot help but be inspired listening to his wonderfully rich voice. Now that's art!

I call this one "Beach Baby". The only camera I have is on my phone, so the lighting is not very good on these. This whole picture looks very dark and you cannot even see some of the finer details that I thought looked good. It looks better in real life.

"Warmed By Joy"

I have this problem of wanting to draw or paint something, but not really having any ideas. I looked through a lot of books and magazines I had, but couldn't really decide on anything. I spent quite awhile trying to draw a still life based on the stuff on my front porch by the door. There is a (broken) chair propped in the corner, and there is a tall, gothic-style, decorative, slate-blue-and-maroon birdhouse setting on it. Then, between the wooden porch rails, you could see the green of the bushes along the front of the house, and then there was the grey siding and the maroon shutters. So I liked that combination (it IS my porch...), and it just wasn't coming out right. I thought at the time. It looked okay to me later, but you know how that goes. I tried to add some color with pastels, but decided I would not try to paint it. Later that night I went to Walmart while I waited for my son to get off work, and I bought a copy of Essence magazine, because there was an illustration in there I thought I would shamelessly try to copy.

I did not copy it exactly, but a lot of the elements from the magazine illustration ended up in the painting. The drawing I did actually looks better than the painting turned out, but it looks okay for the first one. My 17 year old son made a fuss over it, so if I can impress a 17 year old boy, I guess it was allright.

After I got the drawing on the canvas, I just sat and looked at it, too scared to even start painting! I have not done this in so long. I had to take a deep breath, and write a friend for support, then look at it a little longer before I could actually open the paint and start doing it. I saved the woman for last, and of course I messed her all up. She has an extremely fat head and a rather long chin. She does not look quite as happy as she did in the drawing. In the drawing she looked like the sun was shining down on her and she was just really enjoying the setting. She also did not have any clothes, but that was okay since she didn't have a body. I really like how the dress turned out. That dark red is my favorite color, and then I also like purple. My son asked what the purple thing was supposed to be. I said it was supposed to look like half of a doorway, but then the flowing part on the bottom reminded me of a waterfall. He wanted to know why it was purple, so I told him it was because I like purple! Does there have to be any other reason?

So anyway, if I can get it to work, I am unveiling my first (in a long time), slightly plagiarized painting, entitled "Warmed by Joy".

Unleashed!!!! :p

Well, I decided to start this blog "showcasing" whatever artwork I manage to create- in imitation of my friend Gloria, who set the example for me in blogging her paintings. Aside from being a fabulous artist and photographer, she always has taken the time to answer my nosey questions.. I have been further inspired by my friend Chris (An artist in her own right- one who gets paid!), who innocently asked, "Do you paint?" and thus got me thinking about it again.

It took three trips to Hobby Lobby before I could get myself to buy anything. On the third day, I went to check out and discovered that not only were all brushes 50% off, ALL art supplies were 30% discounted! Whoa! After I put my bags in the car, I did what any sensible person would do....I went back in and bought some more. I like the look of oils, but remembered from my childhood when my dad tried to teach me a thing or two, that they are not quite so easy to clean up. So I chose acrylics since they are water-based. After some of the research I did online today, I think I may like to switch to oils later on, maybe give it 6 months? I would like to do portraits.

I bought a book on beginning painting and set to it. Well, first I was trying to draw something so I could paint it. (I am better at drawing than painting.) I sat on the porch reading the book and trying to draw, but my 7 year old daughter was dying to open the paint and stuff I bought. She LOVES to do projects. She even has a pretend TV show she stars in, called "Project World With Anna". (In fact, she is currently doing a project whereby she tears up pages of magazines and tapes the pictures to a piece of notebook paper, then does a crayola drawing around it. This can get quite messy.) So anyway, I told her I would let her use my bottles of acrylics that I already had, along with some extra brushes I had bought with the little ones in mind. (I also have a 3 year old son.)

It must have taken at least half an hour to get all this stuff set up on our front deck. Thank goodness I had help! Anna and Joshua brought two children's tables, two children's chairs, and a small patio table, and lined them up with the two discarded dining room chairs and plant table that were already on the deck. (In addition to the small bistro set I was using for my stuff.) So it was rather crowded. We got the paint, and Anna found one of the few remaining packages of notebook paper...left from the 50 or so packages I bought during back-to-school time. The girl is a menace to trees. I forgot to get them any art paper. Josh did not think he had enough water. He kept going inside and geting new water, and it took me awhile to wonder where he was getting it. Anna had helpfully brought out a large stainless steel mixing bowl of water and spilled quite a bit, so I went inside to get a towel, and found the bathtub faucet running- that was the faucet within Josh's reach, duh!

I spent most of the time trying to keep Joshua from painting the porch. There are several red patches out there now, and some green. My husband has not said anything about it yet, but that's what he gets for going fishing. Josh also made some corrections to Anna's paintings, which were laid out to dry, which she did not appreciate. I finally convinced them they should do something else, then I spent another half hour or so cleaning the mess and carrying all that stuff back inside. It was quite exhausting and I never painted a thing!