Scabiosa

Oh ho ho ho..... It's been too long! I said I was gonna start postin after vacation and just never did.  Here is a scabiosa flower! I'm pretty sure they're not so red in color, but the warm color helped focus the picture. More to come in the future!

Ghost Cat and His Mother

This is my last post until I get back from vacation.  After that I will hopefully have gotten to paint some legit Bahama scenery!  

My friend Sindy wanted me to paint her with a cat and a bow tie.  I had super fun with this one!  It was a challenge to balance out the values and intensity... I REALLY wanted to give her turquoise hair, but I would've had a hard time finding the right value of turquoise that I needed, so I just went with classy black.  AND... I was like, "I'm using the Golden Mean to place my object of interest (her eyes) - so I can't have my completely black cat be completely black; or HE will take over the picture.  Hey!  What if I made him a ghost cat?!"  So I just injected French Ultramarine into a wet-wash of his outline and TADA!  Creepy cat who doesn't steal the show.  Word.  Even I am trying to figure out the meaning of this picture... how would you interpret it?

Blown Away

A wave of creativity hit me tonight.  I actually wasn't planning on posting anything today. This afternoon I did the outline of my next project (maybe that one will be up tomorrow).  But this evening's picture just wanted to come out.  I rolled my eyes when I took the picture and realized the horizon looks like it's tipping over... Maybe it's Alice about to go to Wonderland...

Don't look at me like that!

Sorry I haven't posted in 3 days.  I have been doing VBS and hanging out with friends and going to a waterfall and having sleepovers and stuff.... AND it's also more important to get in the Word than to make sure I accomplish my trivial goals... SO DON'T GIMME THAT LOOK.  :D

Horsies!!!!

I got to go horseback riding with my wonderful friend, Megan, today.  I'm not used to handling horses and got a few scratches when Snickers decided to take off through a tree.  But what's a horsey adventure if you don't get some flesh wounds to talk about?  It was good for me; I needed to make him know who the real boss was.  At one point I told him, "If we go somewhere, we don't decide it, I will.  So when I say we I mean me."  Yeah, take that horsey... No, he was actually wonderful to ride.  

I also went and bought a tube of brown madder today!  So I practiced color value with this sketch.

This is outrageus!!!!

I mean ludicrous... no no... I mean Ludacris.  I did it with a limited palette of french ultramarine, winsor yellow, and alizarin crimson.  I don't idolize the guy, but I love his fro and face.  This was very fun to paint!

Padfoot

Here's my kitty Padfoot.  He's got a brother named Prongs.  Name that reference!

Leaves and Birds

Hey, everybody!  I did one more gray painting today and a picture of bird.  Tada!

3 shades of gray

Camping!!!

I didn't paint anything yesterday because I was "roughing it" with one of my good friends.  We've both never built fires OR hammock camped, so we went to a state park that had little camping lots and a bathhouse (yay for toilets!) and trails that were easy to follow and had many-a-time been trod.  We coined it the 'kindergarten class' of camping.  Which, for camping for the first time by ourselves, I think it was pretty successful!  Praise God we had FANTASTIC weather and no one died or had even the slightest flesh wound.

"Gray day, everything is gray.  I watch, but nothing moves today" - Dr. Seuss' My Many Colored Days

Color intensity is the richness of color: how blue is a blue, how green is a green; but color value is the lightness or darkness of a color.  Today I studied how to use value to create dimension and depth... the rules were to create 3 shades of gray and only use those 3 values to make the object come to life.  It is difficult!  My eye doesn't automatically want to look at the big picture.  I'm excited to practice it more this summer. 

"Art is 10% inspiration, 10% perspiration, and 80% education." 

          - Penny Soto, The Watercolorist's Answer Book

Round Three!

Topic 1: FRANDS are kewl!

My friend Krista let me paint her and beautiful belly today!  Yay for friends... while I painted, her and her boo played the new Lord of the Rings video game.  I am so excited about this summer, because I can hang out with dear friends and not have to be worried about work the next day.

Topic 2: Why I am doing this blog

I don't think I've mentioned this, but the reason I am doing this blog isn't just for kicks 'n giggles, it's for accountability.  Let me explain:  this past Sunday after church I plopped myself on the couch and thought, "What the heck do I do now?"  I didn't have to prepare food for next week for lunch or dinner, because I didn't have work; I didn't have to make my workout bag; I didn't have to set out my clothes for the next day; I didn't have to start getting ready for bed at 8:00; I didn't have to go to church that evening; and I didn't want to watch TV because I didn't really have any shows I WANTED to get hooked on.  I was in a good place to say, "What in the world am I going to do with my time this summer?!"  So I made a ton of goals in hopes to have a productive summer.  I think of 'goals' as ideas that give me inspiration - not as solid expectations.  That way I don't cry if I don't meet them. :)

I know I am wooed by God through art and music, so I am pretty much having this blog to keep me accountable to my goals.  So I may post a video of me playing my ukelele or guitar, as well!

I just want everyone to know that God gets the glory out of this blog, not me.

Second Picture

Second picture!  Read whichever of these topics interests you most:

Topic 1: The Old Man and the Sea... and some Jesus... and bad grammar (sorry, I feel like I have tons of tenses everywhere)

I have recently just finished my first Hemingway text, The Old Man and the Sea.  As a gal who just started working in the real world, this book compelled me.  The old man: spending days alone, waiting and waiting for something that may or may not happen - yet he is bound and determined to live in the present throughout the entire book.  My take on it: I have expectations for my future that I want God to fulfill and I'm waiting on Him, but I want to live abundantly in the here and now and let God conform me into the image of Christ.

Topic 2: The more I watercolor, the less I know about watercolor.  

I did this one based off of The Watercolorist's Answer Book.  This technique was 'Mastering the Gradated Wash'.  They asked for two colors I have never heard of before: brown madder and new gamboge... didn't have either one of those, so I discovered a site called wetcanvas.com  that had people who knew all of these amazing things about paints and the chemical makeup of different colors and their values... and I was able to substitute brown madder by mixing burnt umber with alizarin crimson; and the gamboge... I really don't remember the name of the colors I mixed... um.... bright yellow and dark yellow to get a bold opaque yellow... yeah.... :)

Here's the first one I took in the shade:

And this one I took with the sunset shining on it.  

Which one do you like better?

My for real first one!

Today's post is not the most elaborate piece I've done... probably closer to the opposite.  I honestly started two other projects before this one and each time said, "Hm. Nope. Not enough time today."  It's a challenge to paint a picture in one day and make it meaningful and unique when I have many other goals in mind for the day.  My excuse for this painting is that I don't need to give all of my secrets away at the get-go, am I right?!  And the other excuse is because I love poppies.

And Prongs decided to help me type this blog.  Thanks, Prongs, for all of your 'input' that you contributed to the 'cause' - and by 'input' I mean hair and by 'cause' I mean the crevices of my computer... he shed some light on the subject. BAD PUN SORRY!

I shouted this song on the way home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RmZFaruXhs

My First One

I've got a goal to post a new painting everyday this summer, no matter how good or bad it is.   I'll start tomorrow.  That's when it'll get really real and fresh, like, still-kinda-wet fresh.  Yeah.  To kick it off, here's a picture of a bunny that I painted back in April.

"The grass withers,
    the flower fades,
But the word of our 
    God stands forever."

Isaiah 40:8