Sketch

 Watercolor sketch to prepare for my next painting.

Painting

 Went for a walk and saw this scene; seemed like a good idea for a painting.

Work in Progress for Halloween

I had some leftover wood after re-uphostering chairs, and decided to make some Halloween decorations. Here are the creatures just cut out of wood (and placed in a suitable sylvan setting).

 And here they are with some paint on them. Finished work to come soon!

Giant Food

Moon

#celticmoon #moon #celticart

Smug Boy with Gnome

He needn't look so smug. Catching supernatural creatures in the hope of magical gain almost never works out.

This was a bit of an experiment. My daughter asked if she could paint in my sketchbook, so she made a tie-dye pattern. She didn't like it, though, so I asked if I could paint over it instead. I've never tried painting over tie-dye before, I liked the randomness of the field I was working on.

Goblin Bread

My daughter was helping with the homemade bread, and decided to make the loaves look like frogs. But after the dough rose and they were baked, they looked... like goblins. But since I like goblins too, I decided to draw what I saw.

The "ineffectual lackey" goblin. He will be given tasks that he will invariably fail.

The boss goblin. Perpetually unhappy with goblin #1.

This one is just so done.

The vibey goblin.

And, for good measure, the whole gang together fresh out of the oven. They were delicious!

Kitchen

When we replaced the microwave over the oven with a hood vent, it left a big hole where the tile was. So I put up some wood to protect the wall, then painted it to protect the wood. And THEN I got a little carried away, especially since this was just a temporary thing until we could get a real backsplash.

But, y'know, I just couldn't help myself once I got started.

Celto-Impressionism

Now, I love representational art and figure drawing and all. But every once in a while, I have to go back to my artistic roots and bust out some Celtic artwork. Instead of doing this in ink outline, or vector, I decided to go all painterly on it. Had such a great time this won't be the last.

Williamburg Fiddler

I've been wanting to paint this guy since we went to Colonial Williamsburg a couple years ago. Glad to finally get a chance to paint this! Granted, looking forward to when we all don't have to shelter in place, but getting some art done at least.

#colonialwilliamsburg

My little cellist

Three things I love in one: painting, cello music, and my daughter.

Bok Choy

More painting!

Dragonfurit - completed!

Finished the painting! Good thing too, because we ate the dragonfruit.

Work in Progress - Dragonfruit

A work in progress - a dragonfruit for Chinese New Year. Needs a lot more work on the end details, and more shadows, but it's a start!

Paintings

I'm up to the Impressionists in my art class, so I painted this to show them the assignment. And then, my younger class saw that the older class was painting. They asked if they could paint as well, but could it be something easier? So I painted this for them:

A total win-win for me, the kids are engaged in painting and I had an excuse to paint again!

Halloween House

My painting students asked if I ever did anything creative, since I teach them still lifes. I told them I prefer it, and said we should do one next week. They all shuddered in horror at the thought of doing something creative with paint. So I decided to compromise. This is my house, but not my house. They have to bring pictures of their own house, and get all Halloween with it. They have a model, so it shouldn't be too overwhelmingly creative... or at least that's what I'll tell them (I feel like I should cackle gleefully).

Preteen Pirate

This came about during a semi-private painting class I was teaching. One of the kids had two bits of news - one, that she got braces, and two, that she and her family were going on a cruise to the Caribbean. I commented that she was going to go sailing like a pirate, when her friend said "Pirates don't wear braces." I called Nonsense! and said that all you'd have to do is add braces to the skull on the Jolly Roger.

So while they painted their assignment, I painted this.

In part, it was just because I loved the idea. But also, I finished this in a half an hour, while walking around and critiquing their work. I made it part of the lesson - all the kids in the class were getting too particular, and trying to make just one spot perfect. I wanted to show them that they needed to loosen up and paint more freely. Always time to clean things up later, just get paint on canvas. Besides, it was an acrylic paint class, the more you mess up early, the more layers you have, and the final result looks richer in the end.

And here is the pre-teen pirate herself, posing with the painting:

My Next Painting (in progress)

Got a Red Riding Hood theme going on here, but I'm enjoying it.

Just like the last painting, this one will be in full color. But to start, I wanted to unify it by painting in all the shadow color as an underpainting. And I liked it so much, I decided to take a picture of it.

If I hadn't done the first one in full color I'd have been tempted to just leave this as is. So glad it wasn't the first one!

My First Painting of This Year

Not too long ago I finally got to see the movie Frida. Aside from being a really good movie, it also reminded me that I actually like to paint. Digital's fun and all, but it's nice to get all up in there with actual paint. I liked painting in the sketchbook too - I'll move to canvas sooner or later, but it was good to just paint something for the fun of it. The paper even held up well too, surprisingly.

Art Class - Color Mixing

It looks like this should be called "Art Class - Leaves," but the leaves were just the excuse to follow up on my color mixing class. I limited the colors they could use to yellow, magenta, cyan, and white. They did really well on it - in fact, I taught this before the pumpkin painting class, which is probably how they were able to get a whole painting done in an hour! This class took two sessions to complete (these posts are slightly out of order, but I wanted to put up my Jack O'Lantern pic before it got too far from Hallowe'en).

Since it was color theory, I had initially planned to have them paint the same leaf in complementary colors, like I did as well. But after two classes on just one leaf, they were ready to move on, and the pumpkin paintings were a lot more fun. But I like my purple leaf for it's own sake, so I'm glad I painted it as well.