No excuses, inspiration and summertime

No excuses. I saw this video on Facebook this morning and I thought- what an inspiration! I've had some issues lately with my hands due to a long time living with Rhuematoid Disease and of course the first thing that goes through my mind is.... what will happen if I'm not able to use my hands anymore? What if I can't hold a paint brush or colored pencil? Then I saw that and thought- hell, I'll just strap the brush to my arm if I have to. If you want to create or NEED to create like so many of us do, you'll find a way.

"Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway." ~Robert Henri

So.... on to painting. Remember the bird's nest from the last post? Airborne is done- 12x12, mixed media on canvas. These are fun and a challenge to do. You know how much I love texture but I can't decide if I like it with these particular paintings. I think the nest itself might be easier to paint if the canvas were smooth but I do prefer the texture behind the gold leaf. Putting the gold directly on the canvas without texture tends to show off the weave of the canvas too much for my taste. I'll do the third one with the texture but maybe I'll play with something different for future pieces.

In the meantime I received a request for a portrait from someone who loves the gold leaf that I use in the landscapes but wants it done for a baby's portrait. Here's my first foray into gold and people painting. I have 7 grandchildren so I'm never without subjects to test techniques on. This one is Mila Blaze.

I think this will take some experimenting with surfaces. I love using Canson Mi-Teintes for portraits because I love to work on colored paper but the adhesive size for the gold does make the paper buckle. You can tell in the photo- especially on the left side. I did this one pretty small because I had a feeling that would be the case. The paper size here is 8.25x11. Maybe it would buckle less if the paper were larger? I don't know. The Canson also absorbs the size so it took 2 coats of the adhesive in order for it to work and get tacky. We'll see how the next one goes....

In the "catching up" post I shared some new landscapes. Since then I've shipped them off to the Signature Art Gallery in Tallahassee FL. and my wonderful rep Vera emailed me the photo of how they have my work displayed there- you can see the brand new ones on the left. I love this gallery and am so happy to be included with the fabulous artists they have there. Check out their website, or better yet, visit them if you can.

What's next? NOTHING! I'm not painting a single thing for the next week because tomorrow I head to the beach. I thought about taking some art supplies with me but then I thought about the hundreds of books on my kindle and decided to make a dent in that list instead and this will be my view for the next 7 days. Ahhhhh.......

Here's to creativity, inspiration, summertime, relaxation, peacefulness, and sunrises over the Atlantic. I hope you're getting your own time to rest this summer. See you when I get back.

Stages of the latest portrait

The days of the week have all run together lately. I had a rush job portrait commission so this piece has been my only focus for the last week. It's now done and in the mail to the client. YES- made the deadline! While I was working I took quick shots with my phone so I could share the progress online. Here are the steps as it went.

 I used a blue Canson Mi-Teintes paper. I know some of the photos look more grey than blue but I did shoot with the natural light from the window in front of my drawing board.

 First layers on skin and shirts.

 I used a variety of browns and golden yellows on his shirt. Building up the skin tones was trickier- using a lot of deco orange, pumpkin and mineral orange and burnt ochre.

 To get the blond hair to be blond and not turn green on this blue paper I had to layer white pencil first to keep the yellow and blue from mixing.

 It took a little while to figure out the reds for the other shirt. What finally worked was using peach and vermillion in the light areas and permanent red for the overall color, tuscan red for the shadows.

Calling it done!

The stages of Pouty Face

Many times when working on a portrait I post pictures of the piece in progress on my Facebook page. I've found that people really love to see the progression and the layers build up. I've noticed that artists and non-artists alike enjoy seeing how it works so here is the progression of colored pencil layers as I was working on the Pouty Face portrait I shared in the last blog post.

Here I've just got the basic outline in and I'm working out my palette while starting to get some darks blocked in.

You can see that little strip of paper on the side- that's where I test my colors. For this portrait I'm working on a dark blue Canson pastel paper. It's actually darker than it looks in the photos. When I took these pics I was just using my phone at the drawing board. The board is right in front of 2 windows so sometimes the colors shift depending on the time of day I took the picture.

So here I'm beginning to build up skin tones. Any time I'm working on colored paper I cut an extra strip of the same color paper to test the pencils on- especially for skin. On this paper I couldn't use any of my usual portrait colors that have yellow in them. You know what happens when you mix yellow and blue..... he didn't need to have green skin.

I used lots of peachy and orangey tones to work the skin. Surprisingly deco orange got used a lot. I hadn't considered it right away but it really worked.

In this pic the lips look a lot more orange than they really were. They were a bit of a challenge though to get them pink enough without them turning purple on the paper.

He's almost done here- just building up the background colors and the red of his shirt. I went back into the eyes to push the values a little more and then back into the hair to fill it out with more strands.

Pouty Face is done and Pouty Face happens to be my youngest grandson. He is quite the character so I'm sure I'll be doing more portraits with his very expressive self.

The new portrait page

Just wanted to let you know that I added a new page to the blog - Portraits. There are only a few posted right now, I need to take pictures of a couple more that I did. I had pictures. Do I know where they are at the moment? No. It's been a few years since doing the pieces and at the time I only had my 35mm SLR so somewhere there are actually prints. Oh, how I love digital. Anyway, most of these portraits are done with colored pencil.

Kayla with Bubbles

colored pencil

This painting of Kayla was done on Canson pastel paper. The paper is a beautiful magenta color (I wish this pic was better. I had to take a new one from an old print so the photo isn't the best). Trying to work out the skin tones on that color of paper was a real pain in the rear!

Journey, Portrait of Kristen

mixed media

Now this one, it almost ended up in the trash. This piece is watercolor, gold leaf and colored pencil on Stonehenge printmaking paper. When I started with the watercolor washes I goofed and ended up with a splotch on the face where I didn't want it. I really wanted to keep the face pure and clean. When I tried to lift the color it wouldn't work. I was so aggravated I threw the thing down and walked away. Later I took it outside on the picnic table and just started throwing paint at it - literally. I added the gold and then just started scrubbing with the colored pencils. Sometimes it works out for the best when you attack something with a "nothing to lose" attitude.

Portrait of Sarah

colored pencil

This portrait of my daughter was done on a cream colored Stonehenge. I did this one slowly, building up the color layer by layer for a smooth, soft look.

When I can get to where the other 2 portraits are I'll take some photos of those and post them. I added the portrait page because now that I have the studio I have more time to take on commission work again. I'd especially like to play some more with the mixed media portraits. I also have some more landscapes I want to do and there's another series I'm deeply entrenched in, that I want to share soon. So many projects........... did I just say I have more time?