Watercolor - Lara

Lara has to be one of my favorite models. She has excellent features, a great look, and she naturally stays still.

I did this watercolor from a sketch in my book. It doesn't really look like Laray, but I think the painting turned out as a good painting sketch. Might do something similar next, because I like this style. Sorry for the bad photos. I've been out of town and it's all iPhone, when I have anything!

Sketchbook - Italian Sketch

This is a sketch in my sketchbook from Italy. I sat on the beach and painted the hills and houses, and I turned around and painted the mountains on the other side of me. I wish I could remember where we were, but we went everywhere and I pretty much just could not keep up.

Anyway, I'm doing a lot of coding for a project, so I won't have a ton of new paintings, but I'll try to post some things. Probably sketches from my Italy trip, or small things I'm doing around here.

Sketch - iHop Sam

Sam at iHop
iHop menu size
iHop menu and iHop crayons

I had mentioned this in my "What I Do at Restaurants" post a couple of posts ago and I happened to have this on my iPhone. It's such a bad photo, and the drawing is off, but it's what I get for working from life using very hyper people as models. I miss Lara as a model, as she was so still, and had such great features!

This I did with the pen I always have with me on the back of the ihop menu. The color is from their crayons. You can do a lot of neat stuff with the crayons you get at restaurants. I use them whenever possible.

I keep reading, "If I only had good pens/inks/markers/crayons/colored pencils/computer software..." and I just have to say, if you can't do it with bad materials, good materials aren't going to magically make you better. They will make things easier, but not better! Having better materials wouldn't have made my drawings any better.

Painting - Poppies

Poppies
ACEO
Acrylic

I've been going through my phone and the photos that are on it and I have been doing paintings from my photos. Here are some poppies from when I worked at Lowes. Unfortunately, these were planted in our garden and they did not survive. I am not a horticultural expert at all.

Don't have much to say about this one I'm afraid. Just more painting practice.

Master Copy - Paint Chart

Here is what I meant by a paint chart in my last post. I recognized quite early that my normal methods and knowledge when it comes to color theory were quite useless when faced with these less than ideal paints. This is why you should always use the best paint you can buy whenever possible. Because good paint will actually work.

As you can see, these paints had a hard time greying down, and mixing doesn't always produce what you would expect. Doing a classical painting was a challenge. I had done some landscapes that turned out better, but I sold those before I could get a good photo.

Anyway, I'm off to paint more!

Master Copy

Here is a new painting I did using some cheap paint from walmart and some ACEO sized Bristol paper. It's really difficult to use bad paint because it doesn't mix as paint is supposed to. I did a large grid of paint combinations and used that to see how the paint would mix and that's how I worked everything out. Working this way does make me a bit more sensitive to color because I can't put my brain on automatic. I have to think about everything I'm mixing and how it will all work out.

Also, I like the challenge of using paint most people associate with terrible craft projects to create something nice. Plus, it's what I had left over from a project and I really didn't want to break out the oils for a bit of practice.

Mastercopy - WIP

So, what do I do with left over two dollar wal-mart paint in little tubs? That's right! Master copy time! This little thing is done after a miniature my friend has. It's not done, but I thought I'd post what I had.

I'm sorry I didn't post a picture of a blue dog copy I had done for my friend's second cousin who was visiting from jerusalem. I'll have to ask her to send a picture. That was the reason I had bought the cheap paint to begin with! Even though the cheap paint comes in horrible garish colors, you can if you are sensitive, get something really nice. Though truth be told I am not sensitive, I did a huge chart of the colors and how they mixed together. They do not act like normal paint at all!!

New Dress

I've always wanted to do a large knitting project, and so I decided a long time ago that I was going to knit this dress. So I had been trying for awhile, and I actually had to frog it twice. But after coming back from Italy I knew I had to finish. So I locked myself in my room and now this sucker is done! It's a cotton acrylic blend yarn and I put it in the washer and drier now in the hopes it will get a bit smaller. As you can see, it's a bit large for me. And that's after I changed up some of the measurements!

Hopefully it'll come out looking great and I can get back to painting! And cross this off my bucket list :)