A quick little doodle inspired by a friend’s great post about her own 4 porcupines .
And a reminder to self that even porcupine children are a gift from the Lord.
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Feeds
Porcupine Children
November 20, 2009 – 5:40 pm
Projects
November 1, 2009 – 4:25 pm
Once upon a time there was an artist who had a habit of putting too much on her plate (or more often others serving way too much and she just went along with it.) One day she had many artistic projects coming her way, more and more people commissioning her to do paintings, not to mention 3 lovely children who wanted a lot of attention at inconvenient times, plus a side business of webhosting and design. And whilst she had too much on her plate she would get an idea and decide to run with it.
Part of the process
April 15, 2009 – 5:59 pm
I am currently working, in my head, on a project. It has taken me a long time to realize that part of the painting process, for me at least, is in my head. The process goes something like this:
- Get an idea–usually it is a request from someone or an idea that is inspired by something or someone.
- Push the idea to the back of my mind since I am busy with something else.
- Idea keeps coming forward, eating at my brain.
- Chew on idea, consider beginning but decide to keep working on it before I start.
- Consider idea some more, start thinking about possible execution.
- Come up with multiple ways idea may present itself.
- Chew on it some more.
- Begin to consider paper size and possible colors for idea.
- Change mind multiple times.
- Get sudden bee in bonnet to just do it already. Push all other projects out of the way while work on new pet project.
Am I the only one who works this way? I am surprised to realize that despite it only taking me an hour or so to execute a painting it has taken me weeks of brain work to get it right–and the paintings I have put the most thought into are the ones that turn out the best. Some of my favorites–like the shoe painting took years in the making even though they only took 3 hours from the moment the pencil hit the paper to finish.
And what got me thinking about this? I have a project for an illustration for a Homeschool Zine that has been running round and round my head and I am itching to begin but am forcing myself to wait until I have it worked out before I start. I have learned that that makes all the difference.
Idea: 3 years in the works Painting time: 3 hours start to finish.
Idea: 1 year Painting: 4 hours
Idea: 3 days Painting: 1/2 hour (small painting–5x 7″)
Idea: 3 weeks Painting: 1/2 hour
2 ACEOs
April 10, 2009 – 3:26 pm
I have a potential project for which I am doing some ACEOs (art cards–2.5″ by 3.5″). I am not going to go into it now in case it doesn’t go through but it is rather exciting to me and I wanted to share the results so far. The ACEOs need to work in black and white so these are ink (Micron pen) with a bit of watercolor wash instead of straight watercolor.
The 2 photos down below are actually larger than actual size–which is why I took a few photos with my brushes and whatnot–to give you context. After working on the much larger series it was surprisingly fun to go back to working small scale. Tiny details are fun to do and get lost and forgotten when working larger scale (when I was working on the large series I was too sick of the painting by the time I was at the end to do small details). An ACEO only takes maybe half an hour or so from start to finish including a detailed beginning sketch-which I usually don’t do when working straight watercolor.
And yes, as you can see from the photo I like using cheap mechanical pencils (.5 preferably) –I HATE broken pencil led and sharpening pencils and like the crisp line I get from a plain old #2 mechanical. And the gumband on my paint brush is to make it easier to hold–when my RA is bad thsoe tiny brushes are tricky to keep hold of–most of my pencils and brushes have gumbands on them as grips.
Fruits of the Spirit series
March 27, 2009 – 2:41 am
I finally finished the series–despite many setbacks. I am not thrilled with all of them but content with them I think. I will try to get decent shots of them before I take them tomorrow. For now here is the entire series.
Faithfulness, Peace, Patience, Love
Self Control, Kindness, Gentleness, Goodness
Half of Love, Joy, Self Control, and half of Kindness
And there you have it. We will see if I manage to enter the whole series in the art show–it is my intention and thus far, despite many setbacks, God has blessed it.
Goodness
March 2, 2009 – 6:26 pm
I finished what I believe to be the next painting in the Fruit of the Spirit series last night. Loosley based on one of myfavorite photos of Esther (very loosely).
Joy
February 25, 2009 – 2:54 am
This is the potential beginning of a painting series I am planning based on the fruits of the spirit. Considering that this is a 12″ by 16″ painting we will see how far I get.
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