Friday, November 28, 2008

Cascading Flowers


Since I have a long weekend (thank you, Thanksgiving!) I decided to be proactive and do some more painting. I've had lots of fun ideas swirling about my head, and this one actually came upon me by accident. I painted the blue square background a few days ago, but wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. I had decided to paint some flowers on another canvas, and absentmindedly laid them down on top of the blue background. I took one look at the way the real flowers broke through the stark blue and was inspired to paint them on this canvas instead. I'm actually really happy with it. I used a lot of very watery, light washes to get the petals just right, building them up in many layers. I think the decision to leave the bare outer layer of wood untouched was a good one.

You can buy this little gem (and see more pictures) in the shop.

Materials: Acrylics, wood panel (9 1/2 inches by 9 1/2 inches by 3/8 inch)

Sunday, November 23, 2008

More, More Shoes


I've been inspired by my last painting of shoes, so I decided to paint some more. The above image is actually a digital print I made of a painting I finished earlier today. It's a view of stilettos from the back, if you can't tell. The lighting right now isn't very good in my apartment, so I'll have to post a picture of the final painting later. Basically, I took a not-so-good picture of the final image, and then imported it into Photoshop, where I went over it with vast, bold colors. I kind of like the result.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Shoes!


I just now finished the above painting and boy, are my fingers tired! This was actually my second attempt: I will spare you the first one as it was horrible and all wrong and embarrassing. Anywho, I painted this for my friend Dana for her birthday, which was earlier this week. I'm almost positive she doesn't look at this blog (and she's not on Facebook, where I posted a link), so I feel pretty good about writing about it even though I have yet to give it to her. If you know her, SHHH!

My first attempt was terrible in many ways; the shape of the front shoe was all off (not tall enough and too wide where it shouldn't have been) and I had a lot of trouble making any straight lines. I spent a day or two thinking about that and why I had those issues, so when I sat down earlier tonight I had a plan of attack. I decided to use a lot of water with my acrylics, which would give me a nice, smooth, inky edge. It worked quite well. I used a very small brush to achieve this, so my fingers are sore now from gripping it so tightly and from being so tense and focused on making things straight. It took me quite a while to finish, but I'm really QUITE happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to give it to Dana!

Materials: 9 x 6.5 x 1 inch beveled wood, acrylic paint, lotsa water

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

I voted. Did you?