Haiku for Mom

Another year gone

My tears bring forth a garden

Your spirit lives on

                        -- Pam Tucker

This is another exercise from Misty's class.

Studying Schiele

Self Portrait        9" x 12",       Mixed Media

Hello! This is my first self-portrait. LOL! It's also an exercise from Misty Mawn's new class. It is the first week and I am over the moon about how awesome this class is. 

Without revealing too much of the content, we were to study an artist whose work has influenced us. I chose Egon Schiele. We were to replicate one work of theirs to the best of our ability and then do a self-portrait in that artist's style.

Self Portrait by Egon Schiele

Here was my attempt at this. SO incredibly hard to draw those hands!!

I loved really studying his work and trying to capture every line. So much learned from just this one exercise. 

I am probably going to make a change in my blog header soon...  ;)

Linking this to Paint Party Friday  and Art Journal Journey. Have a great weekend everybody!

I am also working on a new wolf painting and tons of other things. Stay tuned...

Sketching Amy

I practice sketching faces every night while watching TV with hubby. I have a book of portraits that I use as inspiration for my practice. This is supposed to be Amy Winehouse. The portrait in the book really caught my eye and I wanted to try and replicate it. It was much better of course. Practice, practice...  :)

Spring Flowers

4" x 6", Alcohol Ink

4" x 6", Alcohol Ink

Since I can't see any Spring flowers right now (expected low temp. of -7 degrees tonight), I decided to paint some. These are actually small paintings that I made to go onto cards I'm sending. Just enough color and texture to make me happy today. Happy Sunday everybody! 

The Hunter

The Hunter                                  22" x 30", Mixed Media

This is the second painting in a series I'm doing on wolves. It is taken from this reference image we used in class:

Again, I used metallic accents to stylize the wolf a little. I really like this one. On to the next! 

Free Spirit

6" x 6", Mixed Media

"I have fallen in love with the imagination.

And if you fall in love with the 

imagination, you understand

that it is a free spirit. 

It will go anywhere, and 

it can do anything."

        -- Alice Walker

This is another one of my paint skin people. I really like this one. The "face" was lifted off the palette just as it is. I love when that happens... 

I am linking this to Paint Party Friday. Have a great weekend everybody!

Dancing with Wolves

16" x 22", Mixed Media

I just finished taking a class on painting animals in nature. I am so excited about everything I learned! The first project was a wolf. I'm working on the one from class now. I thought I would try a "practice" wolf first. I have a book about wolves so I picked this photo as a reference:

The painting is a stylized version loosely based on this photo. The main thing I learned was how to paint the fur texture and how to jazz it up once you are finished. NOW I am painting the wolf from class. He has a more menacing presence and I hope the painting will result in a more dramatic scene. 

This is the first in a series of wolf paintings I will be doing. I love everything about the wolf. We have a wolf park very near here and I LOVE to go and watch them interact with each other. So be prepared for more wolves in the coming weeks... 

Have a great weekend everybody!

Color Pencil Play

I've been re-discovering my art supplies through Jane Davenport's Supplies Me workshop. She has given all alumni lifetime access to her workshops. Woohoo! I've taken three so far.

Anyway, colored pencils! I have tons of them. So instead of having the supplies lay around unused we are to dig them out and play! I am trying to perfect the burnishing technique (blend, blend, blend that face). So this little lady emerged. Then of course I scanned her into Photoshop and played with some backgrounds.

I'm working on a big project I hope to show soon. It's very exciting and something totally new for me. Stay tuned...