Drawsome Addiction

I must admit it. I'm addicted to drawsome. It's this really fun app that combines apps and pictionary. I have been actually painting during the day, and doing actual work, but at night I stay up doing fun drawings like this one. I can't help it! I know all I have is this iPhone and my finger, but it's such a challenge to make something that doesn't suck!

Anyway, I'm going to post a few drawsome images every once in awhile, and if you want to play, please start a game! I'm Violinagin there, and though I can't promise a good picture every time, it'll be fun!

I've been getting a lot of starwars words as of late....

Painting - Colorful Lemon

Colorful Lemon
6x6"
Oil on Gallery wrapped Canvas

Normally I do my paintings using indirect north light, which I love, but for some reason today, I saw this lemon sitting by itself in direct light and I really liked it. It kinda looked a bit introverted too, which is always a plus. I usually paint very outgoing fruit. So I decided to paint it as it was. It was very, very colorful, despite its shyness! And the light kept changing. A lot. But I do like how this came out.

Also, I have great news! I get to show my work at a local restaurant here in Memphis. Very, very cool. The Trolley Stop Market is one of my cousin's favorite places to eat, and I decided to bite the bullet and ask if I could display my work there.

Yay! I can! So if you are in the area and want to see my paintings up close and personal, in the next couple of days I'll be setting up. Actually, I just finished painting and saw the email that they like my painting. I have to go answer it now @_@ (yes, I'm doing this a bit backwards... But I figure I'll put all the exclamation points here, and try and be more professional in the email :)

Probably... Maybe. :P

Painting - Dog

Dog
Oil on Mat Board
2.5 x 3.5

I thought this was one of the cutest little dogs I've gotten to paint yet. It fit perfectly with my tiny painting theme I've been working with. I was a bit worried that the colors were going to be too, well, blah, but I think I hit a good medium with those.

I've been working more with my vermilion paint, and I have to say I love it. I kept using cad red light here, and the color kept being way too intense for this painting. So I used the vermilion and it toned down beautifully! Not too orange, and not too brown. It hit that sweet spot I like to paint at just perfectly.

I'm about to start work on the faces of a new portrait commission, and I'm very excited about getting to use vermilion in actual skin tone. I've been working it in a few paintings, but I haven't had many portraits to do. I'm actually really excited about the whole commission. It was really fun to design and it's turning into something really fun to paint. I hope I'm still in the painting mood tomorrow. I plan to do some more daily painting along with this commission!

As long as I get the commission done!

Drawing - All That (And a bit of Painting Advice)

All That
Carbon Pencil and Chalk
4x6

Yay, a new drawing. Sorry for still not posting some of my commissioned paintings. I've got two that I want to post, one is in Baton Rouge right now, and one that I'm in the middle of working on. So I thought I'd post this one, which I think turned out pretty good.

Hopefully I'll be done with my second commission painting today, perhaps tomorrow depending on how the painting goes. The one I did before I thought was going to take me a day. Nope. It took me /forever/ and I was not a happy camper. Or a trailer, or an RV. I was just not a happy anything! I don't know how y'all paint when y'all are in a bad mood, but with me, I paint badly. Horribly. And the whole experience is a meltdown of epic proportions if I have to continue painting while in a bad mood.

Like when I'm on a deadline. And I'm on the 12th rub out of the poor kid's head. I start to wail and cry and gnash teeth and say how I'm going to go back to retail sales and live a life of quiet, hopeless, desperate mediocrity because, well damnit, I can't paint one kid?! How did I think I was suppose to be an artist???

Usually this only lasts for several hours and somehow I usually manage to create a piece of art that doesn't suck as bad as I imagine while painting it.

The only advice I can give to artist who experience this to make it better? I have no words of wisdom. I tend to blow up and have a meltdown, work through it, and then go back to art creating. So far I haven't put in an application to a retail giant yet, so I think I'm doing good.

How do you get through those days where you really don't want to paint, but have to? They don't happen to me a lot, so I really don't have any good advice except it's going to suck and work through it. Does anyone else have something more helpful? I mean, aside from copious amounts of wine or whiskey... :P

New Auction!

Well, I finally have the art auction up and running! I had some commissions to do, so I had to put off figuring out exactly how the auction worked, but I finally got a bit of time tonight to get everything done. If you want to go see, it is here: www.violinagin.com/daily-auction

For this first auction, I have it set to run for a week, but after this, I will be posting the auctions daily with my paintings. And if you want the paintings delivered to your inbox, sign up for my newsletter! (It's over there to the right...)

I wanted to post my commissions, but they are for birthday presents and I want to make sure the presents are handed out before I post them on my blog. I never know who reads my blog!

Painting - Cat in a Window Box

Cat
Oil on Mat Board
4x6"

I have received several commissions and I'm very excited about this! Unfortunately all three of them are on a deadline and this has pushed back my website auction fixing time. I'm not complaining though. It's allowing more people to sign up for my newsletter.

This one was a smaller commission. I've not done many scenes with cats. Mostly close ups. This was quite different. I might revisit it. The cat was such a strange color. A sandy, dusty color with some weird, brighter undertones.

Maybe it was the photo.

Anyway, I've two portraits to do. Technically three, as one of them involves two people. And one involves a small baby, who is adorable,  but needs to have a bit of lazy eye fixed. Anyway, I'll post that one here. I might post the other one. Possibly.

And good news! I may be teaching a drawing class! I am very excited about this. If you live near the Memphis area and would like to be apart of it, please leave a comment or let me know through Twitter or Facebook. I'm trying to stir up some interest, and meet new people around here. Moving and making new friends is a bit hard when you work at home. I'm sure my roommates (Hi Melissa and Neill!) would love it if I suddenly developed a social life :D

Especially since the post office people suddenly don't like me any more. Sadness!

Painting - Baby Blue Eyes

Baby Blue Eyes
2.5 x 3.5
Oil on MatBoard

This baby is sooooo cute! I was really afraid when I saw the photo because it was just too cute and I wanted to make sure it was painted /right/ ya know? I didn't want to have one of my bad painting days with this one. And luckily I don't think I did.

I normally don't do portraits this size. Actually, the idea of it really scares me, but I saw this little baby and I wanted to paint! Which is very odd for me on many, many levels.

I've started doing these little ACEO paintings for not much. I don't post the link here on my blog, but every once in awhile when I don't want to come up with my next painting, I'll post a link to twitter @Violinagin so if you are interested in having a tiny commission done, and really don't want to break the bank follow me on twitter! I'll probably send you the link if you send me a direct message there too. :D

New Website is Almost Ready

I knew that I would run into some problems while trying to do this site. There always will be problems when I try to work with any sort of website, which is why I turned the site over to someone else to get it all set up. Well, as soon as it was turned over to me, I don't know what happened. But suddenly the gallery wasn't linking to the right post pages. My gallery just decided to link to its own pages that it decided to make. Weird, no? If it was just straight html, css, the like, it would have been an easy fix for me. Unfortunately the is wordpress. With a theme.

Ugh.

I know I should have just called my computer person right away and said, "help..." but unfortunately I decided to frustrate myself. He managed to get it fixed. The images look a bit different, but, eh, it's /working/ now! If you would like to see:

www.violinagin.com

Let me know what you think so far! I'm still getting work to add, but I think the design turned out how I wanted.

I have not set up any auction yet. That is what I'm hoping to do today and have it scheduled to start at midnight. Maybe. I'll send out a newsletter the moment it starts, so sign up! There probably won't be a blog post about it until tomorrow after the auction has been going on for awhile.

Now, I have to go figure out how to get my card to work to pay the nice IT guy :D
And post a painting.
And go to the post office.
And buy milk.
And paint.
And set up the first auction.
:D Exciting!

Site Update!

First off, a big THANK YOU! to everyone who signed up for my email newsletter yesterday. It was great that so many people were interested. Everything is still up, you can go to the last post, or I added a slimline version on the side bar so more people could join the fun. If you think anyone else would like to join and get paintings and art in their inbox everyday, please let them know about it! 

I just wanted to update and let everyone know that I am going to be working on the site at three today, and hopefully by Monday or Tuesday I'll have the first paintings and auction up. I'll know after three when everything is going live, and send a tweet, facebook post, and post here about it! But the newsletter people will be the first to know!

The paintings will be in a range of sizes, mostly from ACEO sized up to 8x10", and they will be oil on mat board, or masonite, or canvas board or canvas. I will make sure that information is in the newsletter, the paintings page, and the auction description so you know exactly what you are getting. Right now, everything is through paypal, but I'm going to talk with the person who set this up for me and see if we can offer other checkout options as well. 

Hold on to your hats, this is going to be fun! 

(I'm so excited, this is me before my coffee... maybe I should lay off for today ;D)