Intuitive Fly By The Seat Of Your Pants Painting

What. Why? Why did I do this? Why did I spent 2.5 hours covering a page with diamonds? Seriously. And my arm is particularly sore this week. It hurts to touch things with my index finger. So why the heck am I painting this? I don't even like it. 

Oh geez. What the heck am I doing now? I can't even draw perfect ovals. I just covered up an hour's worth of triangles that I painted for no reason. What am I trying to do here, art nouveau? The pattern is still blindingly bright. 

WHAT HAVE I DONE. What. You can't use heavy gel medium as a glaze, you just can't. Nice try, wiping it off of a WATERCOLOUR PAINTING. You just wiped off another hour's worth of diamonds and covered up the rest. Sheesh. Nice planning. 

On the other hand, it's looking a little bit more like a painting now. Looking all "weathered" and shiz. Yeah. Not nearly as blinding. I'd say it has potential now. What could be next?

step by step - Unfit Creature of the Night part two

Yesterday I wanted to post a photo of all the cupcakes I'd been slaving over for the past couple of weeks, but wouldn't you know it - I didn't bring a camera. D'oh!

So instead, here's Unfit with a layer of colour. 



Second layer with splashes off of the side...

 

Then finished it off with some charcoal and ink details. Tiny but cute. 

Step by Step - Unfit part 1

As an artist, I don't actually do a lot of planning. The impression I get is that ideas need to be hatched out a million ways, sketched until they are just perfect before they can be properly used. 



Ehhhhh I don't really do that. I probably go about as far as a composition sketch. Or I might practice something a few times if it looks difficult.

Instead I just make smaller paintings. Less pressure! :D

This week has been terrible for sleep, so not a lot has happened this week. Sorry about that.

Mini Painting - Whirly Curls

 While I was waiting for something, I decided to make another mini painting from an old sketch. This one is called "Whirly Curls".



Adding a layer of colour immediately made the pen ink run. Oops! But that's okay.



Purple curls!



I guess she is going to have red hair, too!

 

Fix up the inky lines and we're done.

I've been hella busy this week; the blueberry art show is one day away and I am completely flipping out over my undetermined set up! eep! They only just sent out an email with actual useful information that I can use but alas, it is too late. I am self conscious about our DIY wooden display easel and the fact that my art is just too small to look normal on one, heh.

I'm getting the idea that other artists who didn't make it in time will be looking and judging, saying, I could have made better use of that space! Yeah. 

Step by Step - Pitcher part 1

I started a new painting today, though I don't have a working title for it yet (that usually comes later). I took some care in the pencil drawing. The one thing about sketching details first is that they tend to disappear, even under transparent mediums like watercolour! Ha. 

 

I started by filling in flat blocks of colour (with a bit of shading but not much). I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about colour combinations and I will probably regret that!

I consider this to be the "ugly" stage. It's easy to look at the flat colours and blobby shapes and want to quit right away! If you ever feel like you're forever stuck in the "ugly" stage, usually a bit of contrast will fix it. The dark shadow on the crow's tail is appealing to me already, so we'll need more of that.

Later :3

Step by Step - A Cover-up (part 2)

Wow, you would not BELIEVE the technological issues we've had as of late! Here's the scoop:



- John decides to update his desktop PC and splurges on a new motherboard, cpu and second disk drive
- Can't get the computer to start up, spends hours trying to fix it. The perfectly functional CD burner turns out to be incompatable. Has to buy a new one. Eventually decides the motherboard requires a brand new OS. Installs Windows7 and everything is fine. Or so we thought.
- I realize I can't use my scanner (!!!!!) because Canoscan8400F doesn't work on Windows 7 despite being "compatible". Jerk.
- I go nuts trying to force it to work. Find a bit of success finally finding a useful driver online.
- We spend hours troubleshooting, searching to absolutely no success. Find plenty of scanners on ebay because everyone else has given up already.



- Discover Virtual Machine which, get this: creates a second "computer" on the computer so that it can run a different OS. It's like... having two computers in one! It's adorable! And insane! But the solution to my problem is downgrading to a version of Windows that isn't an asshole.

Well guess what, it freaking worked. In your face, windows 7! hahahahahahahaha! I BEAT YOU.

So now if I want to scan something, I have to "start up" my second "virtual computer" and use it there and save files into a shared folder, but it's significantly better than buying a new scanner all because Canon doesn't feel like updating their crap.



*Deep breath*



But now it's 11pm and all I've got to show for all of those hours is a low-res scan. I will have to install photo editing software onto the virtual computer which is only a bit of a drag, but then I'll actually be able to get 300dpi images.

MsPaint just... it just doesn't get the job done.

Step by Step - Feathered Pair

Super quick step-by-step today! Taking a chance with my brain to see if anything will happen.



Ok, so I played with the bubble wrap, but it got a bit lost (and smeared) under the white paint. Shucks. I also lost all of the lovely text, too. Sometimes when there is an interesting sentence on the page I will preserve it. Oh well, there will be other paintings.



I had a brief discussion yesterday about crows, and about how I personally suspect that they mate for life. That might not be true, but it seems that way to me. They are very sweet with each other!



Didn't care for that blue underneath so I added warm layers of watercolour. It reacts kind of funny on top of acrylic.



Think I'm done with it, really. I kind of like it! It was pretty brief, maybe an hour at the most. Hoping this will work up to something bigger later...

Step by Step - Cosmic Shower

From the Etsy Listing: "Sometimes, it feels like I am caught in a cosmic wave of fortune and that the entire universe is looking down at me and smiling. This painting is sort of a part two of "Gifts From the Universe", because that is what this feels like. I want to collect all of these gifts and hoard them for myself because I know that one day, they will vanish. Do you save up for a rainy day? Or do you spend every gift fast and feverishly, living in the moment?

I don't know. I want to save them and enjoy them, but I also wish to share them with others who aren't feeling quite so lucky. To spread it around."



I really wasn't sure if I wanted to make this. I expected it to be really lousy, actually. But you have to get the lousy ideas out before any good ones come in. I worked on a small piece of paper because I feel less pressure with them.

Oh, and I lost my kneaded eraser and had no idea how awful it is not to have one! haha.



Threw in colour really quickly here.



Darkened some lines and shadows.



Coloured in some flowers, still a bit skeptical about the whole thing.



Layered some more flowers under the other ones. This is where it gets kind of tedious and I have more memories of whatever was playing on tv than anything else! All I can think of is star trek looking at this now... yeesh.



Threw on some background colour and quit for the night.



Available here.

I added some more layers and cut out some extra flowers to "stick out" from the page because I kind of like it and it matches up with last year's "Gift" painting.

Step by Step - Jewels 2

I suppose my painting pattern is:

Colour blocks and highlights
More and more shadows

I think you would do it backwards when using an opaque medium like oils and acrylics.









So sparkly things are pretty challenging I guess! I couldn't get a consistent grey because I'm using colours, but it's probably more interesting that way.

step by step - jewels

When I waffle and procrastinate about a painting, it's probably a sign that it isn't working out too well. So I've abandoned the dragonflies for a moment and decided to practice using watercolours to paint from life.

So I decided to focus on jewellery. I don't actually wear jewellery very much so I'll take this exercise as an excuse to look at sparkly things.

Step by Step Painting - Dreamcatcher

Yesterday was a total write-off; I bravely marched off to a dentist appointment (read: dragged) only to sob like a child throughout the entire process in front of everyone during what was just a routine cleaning. Dental-related childhood trauma aside, I think I'm turning into a big whiny baby. This is the only logical explanation.



Afterward I was just too exhausted to do any of the other things I wanted to do (finish painting, label prints, ATCs) and ended up spending the entire rest of the day on the couch. Even Minecraft was too complicated yesterday.



We did watch Fear Dot Com out of curiosity, and it truly was terrible in every way possible. If it wasn't for the torture scenes you'd think the characters were just cardboard cutouts.

Anyway:



Dreamcatchers. They've been getting attention lately. Listening to people talk about how tacky they are as a decor item makes me cringe slightly. But then again, maybe a crucifix hanging on the wall would be considered tacky, too?



I originally had a different plan for how this painting would turn out. I expected some lines, a window setting, maybe a glimpse of the outdoor scenery. But this is much better. I like how the "night" oozes in. I like how the feathers are surrounded by a different "energy", as if the nightmares are trapped inside waiting for the burning sunrise.


Available in my etsy shop.

Where is my burning sunrise?