Thanksgiving Week Art Work

Happy Saturday after Thanksgiving, everyone! I have had the entire week off with no school at all, so I have been able to sneak my own art projects into my schedule just a little bit. I did a little bit of work on my portrait of a wolf and the dreamcatcher.

Thanksgiving week has been great so far. I spent Thanksgiving with my husband's family here in Idaho. The only 'fly in the anointment' was the 24-hour flu bug I caught Friday. So instead of Black Friday, I had a Flu Friday. And it cancelled out my 'to do' list for the day because I spent most of it in bed. Thank God it only lasted for 24 hours and I feel great today!

This week I finally got started on the portrait commission order that my college teacher placed with me about two months ago. I was so backlogged with school work, work, and teaching that I haven't been able to get to it. When it is done it will be a lovely portrait of two adorable kids eating watermelon. I will post it when it is finished. So far it is turning out great and I'm having fun with it. It is going to be so cute that I think I will make a print or two for myself.

Newest Animal Portrait--"Micah"

"Micah With Quilt"

About 40 blog posts ago, I posted this portrait of my mother-in-law's dog, Micah, without any background. (Micah is a Sheltie.) Well I finally finished the background part. The background is one of my mother-in-law's quilts. I have never done a quilt in my colored pencil & Turpenoid style medium. I wasn't sure it would turn out looking like a quilt, but it did. I thought it was about time I add some dogs into my animal art world and give the cat theme a break.

Oils versus Colored Pencil

I have made some interesting discoveries about oil painting. I find that I still have a tendency to work oil paint like I work my colored pencils and Turpenoid. And they don't work the same way. One of the first things I learned was not to try and draw lines with oil paint! You have to think patches of color, semi-blended out. Another thing I learned is that you can put on a really black, dark color or white paint, and if you work it too much, it becomes another color--usually gray. It is hard to get darks really dark and white really white. I have also learned that when I have worked on a painting for at least four hours, applying color becomes a whole different ball game because the canvas is so saturated with wet paint. It is easier for instance to apply a very light color onto a dark area when the painting has been set aside for a day or two to dry a little bit.

But when you are use to one or two types of media, it is hard to erase what you have learned before and learn something else. With colored pencil, there is an advantage in doing lots and lots of blending. But this isn't necessarily true with oil painting. Some blending it required, but not nearly to the level that colored pencil requires. This is a hard habit for me to break. I am learning to be a little bit more loose, using broken patches of color, but this is still hard for me. When I do paint something in a very loose way, it is usually a small part of the painting and I can't seem to carry it throughout the entire painting. I can see how oil painting lends itself to the impressionistic style of art much better than colored pencil does.

I have also learned that I am uncomfortable doing paintings that are larger than 16 X 20. And sometimes that is too big for me. The larger the painting, the more you have to understand that the painting has to look a certain way when you stand 1o feet or more away from it. I tend to be very 'tight' in my painting, so that it looks great close up, but when you stand far away, something gets lost in the translation. I find this a hard skill to acquire. Some of this applies to my colored pencil paintings, but not to the level that it applies to oil painting.

What I do like about oil painting is the brush strokes & different techniques you can use and how you can work with patches of unblended color to give it an impressionistic look. You can paint over something you don't like without ruining the painting. What I don't like about oils is you can't do line work. Fine detail doesn't work as well in oils as it does in colored pencil. You have to create texture without painting lines. It is messy, takes a longer time to clean up, and is more environmentally unsafe, and takes forever to dry.

I'll take my colored pencil, Turpenoid and mixed media any day over oils. I don't care if oil paintings are considered more "ritzy" and bring in a higher selling price, I don't like this media enough to make a switch from colored pencils.

Vine Arts Gala "Creating Culture"

Last Saturday, I got all dressed up and went to the Vine Arts Gala. There were about eight artists with their art exhibits and I was one of them. This Gala was called "Creating Culture." The purpose was to promote awareness of the arts within the community and in the church. And also to raise a little money for the Vine Arts program at the Vineyard church. Not only was this a lot of fun to participate in, but it promoted me as an artist and I got to sell some of my art to the public. I actually made some cash on the side and I didn't do too bad for an exhibit that was only three hours long.

There was music, food, poetry readings, and a couple of guest speakers. The speakers were J. Scott Elroy, an artist and author; and Irene Deeley, who is the owner of local art gallery called Women of Steel. Irene sponsors a traveling art show. I got to talk to her and gave her my card, and she will contact me when the next traveling show comes up, so I can be a part of it. Another cool opportunity!

This event was so much fun! I knew many of the people who came to the gala, and it was fun to connect with fellow artists and chat with everyone. My only struggle that evening was with my high heels. They looked really great, but after about an hour of walking around, my feet were saying 'ouch' and I had to sit down a lot. High heels were a lot easier to wear 25 years ago.

Self Portrait

There's nothing like staying up until 1:00 a.m. working on an assignment for 0il painting class, as the rest of the family sleeps. My latest project for oil painting class is a self-portrait and we can put in any type of background we want. I changed this thing about five times and I think I FINALLY am on the right track. It actually does look like me too! This portrait has gone through a series of changes. When I first started it, it looked like a scary ghostlike zombie. That was probably because I started it on Halloween night. Then I kept changing the background. I would paint something on there and then paint over it because I didn't like it. I finally got it to look less like a ghost or zombie, but instead it looked like a lifeless manequin. And it didn't look like me at all. Tonight I stayed up until 1:00 a.m. determined to win the battle and cross over into the land of good oil portraits. My efforts paid off because I am really liking it. I can't post a photo of it on my blog because the paint is still wet and it is too big.

Plein Aire Painting With Oils

Tuesday I had my first experience doing Plein Aire Painting in oils. I've done this with other media, but not with oils. It happened to be a rather nice afternoon on the BSU campus, so our teacher decided it was the perfect time to go outside and paint the scenery. The trees on campus are beautiful right now because the leaves have turned various shades of yellow, orange, and red, so that is what I decided to paint. Just for fun I put in a tiny little squirrel on top of a trash can just to give a narrative to the painting. Everyone else packed up and left around 4:00 p.m., but I stayed until 6:00 p.m. By then I was getting too cold anyway, so I took my little 6 X 9 size painting home and finished it there. I can not crank out a finished painting in just two hours.

I would post the finished piece here, but it is still wet and I can't put it on my scanner right now. Very messy. Oils take forever to dry. You'll just have to take my word for it that it came out very nice. I was pleased with the results.