Winter!!

So I have a winter break! This is a quick painting I did of my friends mom.  He had a picture of her and I asked him if I can have it so I can paint her.  Now that I think about it, that's kinda weird however he is also an art major and didn't think it was weird...I think.  This is on some nice 8 x 8 watercolor paper that my roommate gave me.  I don't really use watercolors too much so I painted on it with acrylic.  I'm used to a smoother surface from painting on illustration board but it's a nice experiment.  It requires me to load the brush more to get into all of the crevices of the paper and I usually don't mix a lot of color.

 Here are some sketches I just found after flip flopping through some sketchbooks of mine.  For the acrylic city painting, one thing I realized very quickly is how often you have to change the colors when you're painting the sun going down.  Without realizing it, I kept looking up and then down at my sketchbook saying "no, that's so much darker than that. what am I thinking?"  As I kept going, the painting progressively got darker until I realized it's because it was actually getting darker outside.  I figured that was a good place to stop, so my painting wouldn't become a big rectangle of darkness.

She's sanded and looking shiny with a few coats of gloss medium!

This is another 6x8 painting using acrylic and the rare and costly BIC ballpoint pen. I did this one in a quick hour and off it went to be hung. I added some random blue lines and dots to make it flow a bit more since the bottom was so empty. Well not empty, rather filled with a luscious sea green with a hint of washes of  similar hues laying on top to give the sense of depth, as my inner art critic might say.

 I've been wanting to make a doll for a while now and the highly addictive Etsy site sparked my interest to do it. I saw that a lot of people use paper clay to make dolls, which I never used before, so I bought some. It actually says right on the package that it's ideal for doll making.  It's exactly what you would think...it's clay made of paper, so it starts out kind of heavy, and when it dries, it is unbelievably light! This is what you should know about it to understand why I think it's so cool:

1) It's air drying clay. Dude, no kilns!

2) Once your object is dry and hardens (usually in 3-5 days), you can still add more wet clay on top of it

3) You can use any type of paint on it ( I know, righhhht!?)

So far, it's been really durable and there are hardly any cracks that form during the drying process.  I started sculpting the head and the neck and chest piece that will secure inside the head.  I still have a lot to do.  Can't wait to sand down all the parts to make them extra smooth and ready for paint.

This is a 6 x 8 inch painting that I did for a show in Beacon.  I started with doing this floral pattern in the background that you see in the window next to the curtain. That was done in watercolor with those cool portable brushes with the water inside. Of course I end up changing my plan of having the floral pattern cover the whole wall.   I decided to paint that purple pink color over it and I'm pretty happy with the effect because the floral pattern comes through in certain places. I put that same floral pattern on her dress and did a wash over it. Just messing around with colors. Oh and I also put a gloss medium over the black piano so it shines.  Doing these smaller paintings is working out pretty well because when I paint something bigger, I plan the whole thing out and end up changing it in the process anyway.

With toy design encompassing most of my life right now,  I haven't been able to paint.  When I was packing my stuff over the summer to go back to school, it was very hard to accept that I won't be needing my paints anymore for my major, but I couldn't just leave them behind. I took ultramarine, permanent rose, cadmium yellow, white, and some medium to school.  Yesterday I painted some pigs and it felt great to paint again! I almost forgot how exhausting it is...but so rewarding.