Painting of Retro Fan

Tonight I finished the last painting for my Fall class. Earlier in the term we put together a still life display using items from the Art department prop closet. There was a whole bunch of stuff including a skeleton, some vases, bottles, a toaster, a tea kettle, a plastic baby doll, and this old fan.

I recently saw some prize-winning paintings of retro/50's appliances in an artist's magazine. There was an old Electrolux canister vacuum cleaner with hose and an old electric mixer. I wanted to try something similar with this fan.

This was a fun project but it was a bugger to paint. I had a hard time getting the blades and metal cage to look right. I like it! It's 16"x20" in acylic.

EP

Yellow Headed Blackbird

Here's the other painting I've been working on in class this fall. I've always wanted a painting of a Yellow-Headed Blackbird.

When we were kids we spent summers at Lake Poinsett in South Dakota. The Yellow Headed Blackbirds hung out in the swamps near the lake. Grandma always looked for them when she came to stay with us.

So, here's my version. I think it's almost done, but will have to see when I go to class on Tuesday. This painting is 12x16 in acrylic. It started out with a very pale background, which was too pasty looking. I changed it to pond colors.

Cousins Painting Reworked

I'm taking a painting class again this fall. I took in my summer painting from the old snapshot and got some good ideas for making the background better.

I repainted the house and the window reflections. My teacher noticed the house eave in the window reflection on the original photo, so I added that. He also pointed out that all of my background house and ground textures were the same style and were too bright. They needed to be grayed down a bit, cleaned up, and shadows defined.

I retouched the figures too. I think this is getting better and almost done now. Although, seeing this on the screen, I realize that the clouds and the tip of the building corner all converge in the window reflection...I'll probably have to fix that. This is 16x20" in acrylic.

Here's the original photo:

Hawaiian Flower Painting in Progress

I ended up changing the background color to better go with the wall color, which is a "cork" color.

Here's my almost finished Red Ginger painting. Since the last picture, I worked on the flower, reworked some of the leaves, and put a few more colors on the leaf edges. I'm close to being done.

The background color looks better in person.  I'm not so sure I like the flower petals - they look too sculpted.


I started making the background Naples Yellow.  But changed it to go better with a cork colored wall paint.

Here are some earlier versions and close ups:

Almost done, before I changed the background color and added some accent colors.

Later version, adding colors and definition

1st Block-in sketch

EDM #137 - Draw Something From a First Aid Kit

This week we had to draw things from a first aid kit. These are three items from my Hawaii First Aid Kit.

I take Bandaids, because I'm always cutting something, or stepping on something, or getting a blister.

And I take Bonine tablets for sea sickness. I used to think I had great "sea legs" but learned a very hard lesson about that one day!

And the tube of After Sun Gel was a freebie from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. I picked up several tubes. It's great for sunburn.

I also take along drops to get water out of my ears and hydrocortizone cream. But I couldn't fit them into the drawing. ALOHA!

One Million Giraffes

Ok, so here's a fun thing....I just submitted an entry to One Million Giraffes!

Here's the link: http://www.olahelland.net/giraffes/

"My friend, Jørgen, doesn't believe I can collect one million giraffes by 2011. I'm gonna prove him wrong, but I need your help. You can create your giraffe(s) in any way you like, but not on a computer and no store bought objects. You must create your giraffe(s) yourself! Click here to read why. So far I've got 146 399 giraffes, so I need 853 601 more and I have 493 days left. Let's show Jørgen how amazing the internet is."

Ya GOTTA take a look and see all the creative giraffes! There's one made from an orange peel, a "Giraffe with a Pearl Earring", a "Last Supper" giraffe, a "Scream" giraffe, giraffes made of twigs/leafs/coins/fruits/potato chips/Legos/origami/clay.....from all over the world! It's amazing!! Whole classrooms of kids have submitted drawings.

I saw this on alissa4012's flickr account. She submitted two beautiful drawings.

fun, fun

EDM #237: Draw What's Under Your Bed

EDM #237 is to draw what's under your bed. Under my bed is where I store boxes of old photos, old cassette tapes, and other items that I periodically pull out to examine. It's also Emu's favorite hiding place.

She goes there when I vacuum, when the dog barks at her, when strangers come to visit, when it thunders, and whenever she hears the dreaded cat carrier.

She has such acute sensitivity to the cat carrier that I have to remove it from the closet and open it's creaky door several days in advance of her vet appointment. Then she forgets that it's out and I can ambush her.

Emu is our 12 year old tortoiseshell cat. Here's a photo of her on top of the bed. She was the baby of the pet group for a long time, but through attrition, she's become the matriarch. She used to be a submissive creature, but now she hisses, eats first, swats the other cat and generally plays the Kitty Diva whenever possible. She's a tiny thing but has a big personality.

EDM #236: Draw The Palm of Your Left Hand

This challenge was to draw the palm of your left hand, which sounds easy enough to do. But it was hard to hold my hand tipped over for so long! And I have more lines and wrinkles in my palm than I ever noticed before! And then I had to make a hand shadow.....

It would be an interesting task to draw my right palm with my left hand. Maybe I'll try that next.

EP

Roadside Attractions in Crescent, Oregon

Last weekend we took a loop through Central Oregon. We went camping at Diamond Lake, which is south/central, just north of Crater Lake. And then we drove north on Highway 97 to Sunriver. On the way we passed through the small town of Crescent, Oregon.

I'm a big fan of Roadside Attractions (some of the best are in my home state of South Dakota) and I like to take pictures of them whenever I can. Here on the main street of Crescent were four great examples!

At the Woodsman Country Lodge we found this Lumberjack atop their sign. It's quite clever because both sides have the exact same face, so travelers from either direction see the same view.

Next door is Ken's Sporting Goods and Liquor Store (because of course, booze, guns and recreational items go together). There's a large carved grizzly bear on the roof.

And it looks like Big Foot is holding up the north end of the porch.

On the next block is the Crescent RV Park.
It's graced with a very nice bronze/metal elk on some rocks.



Later I'll post some other photos of our short trip.

EP

San Francisco Street Challenge

Today I learned about a blog that posts photos for people to base a painting on. It's called Different Strokes From Different Folks.

The current challenge is to paint a San Francisco street scene. It's due August 12th, so I didn't have much time. I just did a quick watercolor sketch in my sketchbook. Thanks to Leigh for the info on this fun project!

"A bi-weekly challenge for any artist who would like to join in - I'll post one photograph every other Wednesday evening and I want you to paint or draw or etch it your way." Karin Jurick

There are some beautiful paintings already posted on the blog

EDM #235: Draw a Butterfly

The EDM Challenge this week was to draw a butterfly. I drew the hippo in my sketchbook on Friday and added the butterfly when I saw it was the new topic.

I haven't seen any butterflies around here lately....of course, I haven't been looking for them either! But I will now.

Several Sketchbook Portraits

I've been working on drawing faces. Here are a few of my recent face
sketches. These are from photos and magazines. The "Gorilla Dog" is my friend Melissa's new dog Boo with her husband. Boo is a big Newfoundland puppy and she kind of looks like a gorilla......though I did enhance her face just a bit!

This is Baby Boo

Boo with a Gorilla Face!

The drawings below were done on thin, sketchbook paper, which wrinkled with the watercolor :(

  

EDM #232: Draw the Last Thing You Bought

The last thing I bought is a Winsor Newton Sketchers Pocket Box of Cotman Water Colours. It comes with 12 color cubes and a nifty little brush. And I got it for 40% off at Aaron Brothers!

This is Challenge #232 from Everyday Matters.

(Like I don't have enough watercolor kits already, but this is so small and cute and I really, really needed it, and it fits in my purse, and the colors are so nice, and......well, you always need more paints, right???)

EDM #233 - Draw A Favorite Drink

I finally did a challenge from Everyday Matters! It's been such a long time and I wanted to get back to it. We were to draw a Favorite Drink.

Last night I sketched the Iced Tea I had prepared. This is my favorite summer drink.

My two other favorite drinks are Coffee and Mai Tai's, but it was too late for coffee and too early for a Mai Tai.

It was really hard to wait till I was done drawing before taking a sip....

New Tropical Flower Painting Blocked Out

Last night I blocked in the shapes and colors for a new painting - it's 16x20 in acrylic. I'm using a photo from our June trip to Maui. I can't remember what this particular flower is called, but it's a waxy, tropical blossom with beautiful variegated leaves. I have to decide how much to include in the painting and what colors to use in the background. So far I've just put on a thin wash to determine shapes and composition. I'll still tweak some things.....

Here's my original photo:

Spirit of the Sketch Class

Last weekend I took a weekend class called "Spirit of the Sketch". My friend, Leigh Bunkin (findingmywings-leighbunkin) recommended it to me and it was great! Another friend, Ann, also took the class. There were 24 students in all.

Leigh and I worked together last year and we discovered that we both love art and we both participate in Everyday Matters (though I haven't done any of the challenges for quite awhile). I had never met a live person who does EDM. Leigh has just finished a self-challenge to draw and post to her blog daily. Congrats to Leigh for completing her year! She posted her sketches from class on a daily basis: Day 1 , Day 2, and Day 3. I'm going to post mine all together.

We learned lots of neat things in the class:

Gesture Drawings- this is a quick sketch of the movement or gesture of an object/person. We had from 30-90 seconds to draw each pose. We used graphite pencil, micron pen, brush pen, and three colored pencils. I really liked this because it forced me to be quick and and will help with sketching people in public. Here are just a few of the many poses we sketched:

Memory Drawings - for this exercise, we intently studied a picture for about a minute and then drew what we could remember. The picture was from a calendar and had a number of elements. I found the original calendar picture on the web. It was interesting to see what different people remembered....most people got all of the objects and general colors, some drew in the dog's little red tongue, most people got the purple outfit, but didn't get the sleeves correct. Almost no one remembered the hair exactly. It's a good exercise for capturing an image to draw later.

Drawing Values - we practiced various methods of adding value/shading: pencil shading with watercolor wash on top, ink shading with wash, watercolor shading only, w/c wash with ink on top, watercolor pencil. Ann and I went out to the college garden to draw nasturtiums.

Sketchbook Drawings - we collected natural and human-made found objects and made a page with comments; we copied a painting in the gallery and made our own painting in response and commented; we looked at lots of books and sketchbooks for ideas.


Sketchbook Page Treatments - we practiced collage, paint splatter, color wash, various borders, frames, lettering styles, drawing and writing placement/design.

Contour Drawing - where you carefully follow the outer contour of an object and capture it's shape - we drew right handed, left handed, and blind (without looking at drawing). I drew a padlock on a color-washed background sample.

Face Drawings - we did quick 1 minute sketches of everyone in the class. Mine are too bad to post!

Greek Bistro Kitty

This was the last painting I made for my Spring class. I finished it in June. It's from the Greek Bistro in Kihei on Maui. The restaurant is in a garden-like setting, just off the beach. Several cats hang out in the urns that surround the outdoor patio and this is a painting of one of them. I used a photo from several years ago for this painting, 11x14" in acrylic.

When we were in Maui this year, there were a couple of new kitties at the Bistro. Below is a picture of two of them. I think the one on the left is the same one as in my painting! He looks like Barney, my sister's (The Old Bag) dearly departed cat.








As The Old Bag says...

Orange Kitties
Are the Best!

Dakota Cousins

Here's my most recent painting. It's from an old photo of my husband and his three cousins when they were teenagers. I thought it was kind of cute and dweeby (is that a word??). The photo is an old Poloroid from 1969 or 70. The painting is 16" x 20" in acrylic. I haven't painted many people and find faces and heads to be a real challenge.

Here are a couple of detail shots: