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A new concrete planter head for the garden Instructions

It has a long month away from doing anything creative. I lost my grandpa :( , my baby boy turned 3,  went in for my first surgery, kids started soccer and gardening season has started :D  Well after getting all of that sorted out and my gardens off and planted I was looking out at the Moai statue I did last year, I figured he needed someone to hang out with after the lights go out at night.  So I whipped this guy up. Now off to the garden center while this guy dries. :D Hope you enjoy First grab your supplies Wrap with Chicken wire Attach armature Start slathering on the concrete, keep adding until it has covered all wire and plugged all bare spots Ta Da!!! Now let him cure for the reccommended time, Pull out your paints and go a little crazy. Plant it up with what ever you want. Add water and sunshine and see what happens. :)

Little Boy Watercolor Portrait demo

One of my students have asked me to post the demo that I did for a workshop on portraits from last week. This is a 2 hour painting (including dry time) using a limited pallette of quin gold, aliz crimson, Ultramarine blue, Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber.  Stage 1: Mask out any highlights or if you are really confident you can paint around them. Due to the small size of this little man I masked. Stage 2 Sunshine : Wet your paper into the hairline, background, even the whites of the eyes. Wait until the sheen is gone from the paper and start dropping in your mid mix of quin gold. I love this color for 2 reasons. 1 it lifts easy, which comes in handy when laying down your road map  and 2 it adds your sunshine.   DRY Stage 3 I added a little BS and BU just to place a few darks in the eyes and hair. DRY Then mix up a light mix of aliz crimson. This is a high power, staining color and should be used with care. It is way easier to add color then to take it away. Wet his little face again a

The power of observation - Learning to Paint

So I was asked to teach a workshop this week, I knew that these students had been taking classes for the past 6 months in drawing and acrylics, so I was under the assumption that some of the basics would have been covered. You know... composition, value, brush work, even maybe a color wheel or color chart? Well now I know why they have been frusterated. Ok lets stop and think about this, I wish I would have years ago whe I first started painting. LOL Going from point A to point Z is not going to happen over night, but building a good foundation will only lead to monumental things. - wow that was deep - lol. The most valuable tool in my arsenol is a 2 inch square, or in my case just ripped off the corner of a piece of binder paper, piece of cheap paper with a whole punched out of it. Why you ask? K take that tiny piece of paper and place it anywhere on your reference.. Now ask yourself, Is this tomatoe really red, how do the many tones relate to eachother, what color are the shadows r

Mushroom Christmas Ornaments Inspired by Twine Balls

Inspired by some twine ornaments that I made up last week. 6 of these in 3 differant sizes for under $3 Gotta love that :) So I thought I would carry that rustic whimsy tree theme we have going this year and make up some wee-folk inspired mushroom ornaments. These are so very simple to make. What you need: styrofoam balls twigs or dowels cut to 1.5 inch long twine beads - any color small scrap of ribbon glue gun Step 1: Cut aprox 1/3 off the bottom of the ball Step 2: Fold ribbon in 1/2 and insert into a small hole in the top for hanging, glue the twig into the bottom. Step 3: Starting at the top, glue a starting point with your twine. and start wrapping glueing as you go. Keep wrapping all the way under the cap. Once you get to the bottom just cut, tuck and glue. Step 4: Add your embellishments. I simply glued some med sized beads for a little color, But you could go in with some acrylic paint and also add color that way. I found these cute ladybug thumbtacks and thought

Girl in White - Watercolor Portrait Mini Demo

Hope everyone is having a good week. I just got this one completed this morning and couldnt wait to share it. ATC 2.5 * 3.5 inch Watercolor on 140lb CP Arches Hope you enjoy SOLD

Chimpanzee in pencil - mini demo

Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. I put together this mini demo on how I work in pencil to achieve the different textures on this monkey drawing. 5 * 7 inch chimpanzee in graphite on copy paper aprox 4 hours. I wish I would have done him on better paper, but i have stuck him in a frame and he hangs proudly on my wall. :) Start with a basic line drawing blocking on major shapes and patterns. Work around your subject comparing one area against the next, varying your pencil strokes to represent the changes in textures you are drawing. The hair would be done in long, wispy strokes and the face would be done in more of a confined circular stroke, avoiding harsh lines but varying value. Final touches are then added and or subtracted from your subject.

Hibiscus- Floral triad watercolor study using only 3 colors

I really haven't been in the mood for anything this past week. And it has really been hard to get anything started let alone get anything completed. So when I saw this weeks WDE (weekly drawing event) and the challenge that went with it, I thought this would be just the escape that I needed. This is a small painting of an emerging hibiscus using only a 3 secondary color triad. For this painting, I chose Magenta, Brilliant orange and Cobalt turquoise. These are colors I seldom use so I thought I would try it out. Pretty flowers always make me feel better. :) Hope you enjoy 4.25 * 4.75 in watercolor on 140lb CP

Mardi Gras Mask in Earths

16 * 20 acrylic on stretched canvas Please PM for purchase information This item is sold unframed Just a quick stop by to show the finished mask that I have been working on. Im pretty happy with it, my DH loves it but would love to hear your thoughts.. :) Happy Painting!

Pour Wren

Well i thought I would try something new with this watercolor pour of a wren sitting on a fence. Inspired by my favorite site - wet canvas - they were hosting pour challenges for the past few months and I have finally gotten around to trying this technique. Not going to win any prizes but i think this may be something i try again.

landscape note cards

I've been using up the scraps of watercolor paper that has been laying around my studio.. with Christmas coming up you never know what Santa is going to bring me. ;)They are all about 5 * 7 in size Hope you enjoy

Landscape painting using a toned ground

I have been experimenting lately with toned grounds. A toned background is a background that has been painted in a flat wash of color. This is done for 2 reasons, it seems to take away the intimidation of starting with a blank white canvas and it adds continuity to the painting as the undercoat will show through in spots. Some colors work better than others as a toned background. For this painting I use I started off by toning this little 2.5 * 2.5 inch canvas with cad. red and then applied my color dashes of color. For something so tiny it sure hold a lot of impact. The red under painting that is showing through seems to highlight the greens of the trees and the fields.

Halloween Creations

My favorite time of the year. Halloween is probably more busy around here then Christmas. 8 bins of Halloween vs. 3 of Christmas. ;) Decorating starts the first weekend in Oct and really doesnt stop. I keep telling my husband that it is a good thing I am not allowed to touch anything electrical or our yard would be animated all year long. HAHAHAHA This year we have moved to a much bigger space so that involves "mom" getting a little more creative. :) These are a few grave markers that i made up a few years ago and the life sized "snot rag" mache devil that I am in the process of finishing up. My husband and neighbout have been busy building my mini fences and everyone has been involved in decorating. Still have to put up the lighting, set up the sound effects, web and spiderize, finish the devils arms, carve the pumpkins .. oh my!!!! Id better get on it. LOL In addition I laso managed to fit in teaching an acrylic one stroke class last weekend. My first one i

Succulent textures- Watercolor Cactus painting step by step

Hi everyone, Its been a bit since I posted last. Been kinda down dealing with all the snow we have been getting. From 25 to -2 and blizzard conditions in 24 hours. EEk. But my garden survived and is thriving.. now i just want the sun to peek out again. Anyways, here is a small painting I did for the WDE over at wetcanvas. I was drawn to this photo for the twisting winding shapes and the textures on the yellow bulbous masses. Now to try and capture that. After I drew out the general shapes and masked out the yellow bulbs I started an under painting with some gambouge for the sunshine and turquoise for the shadows with a little rose madder thrown in for good measure. ;) Next I came back with glazes of sap green for overall continuity. And some more glazes of turquoise and gamouge.. making sure the layers are dry. After the masking was remove I came back in and stippled in some lemon yellow, gambouge, lt red and orange. ** special note, take care not to cover the entire white space

"Lad" Border Collie in the Country Garden - Pencil Demo

Hi everyone. Well summer is quickly moving in in this neck of the woods so I have been busy digging my garden beds and planting some vedgies. I already have onions, radishes, spinach, carrots and beets coming up. :) As well I have been busy with getting 3 back to back commission pieces - in pencil. Kinda funny since I usually work in watercolors. hmmm. Thinking maybe I should rethink my focus. LOL Anyways this is my latest. It is a picture of "Lad" a border collie with a wonderful story behind him. In the reference picture one of Lad's eyes was closed - so I opened it up and added a stick in the foreground - I guess he is a fetcher. :) Working with black fur is not easy. Even though it looks black there are 3-4 values within those darks. Good morning. :) So in this installment the fur is starting to "fluff" up and you can start to see the many shadows involved in the underside of the puppy. Also the woodwork is starting to get some texture in it. I am also go

Back to Basics - Caucasian color mixes

  This is one of my most helpful tips - create color cards. I have about 100 of these tiny 5*7 reference cards that show different color mixes under different circumstances. Some for people, landscapes, floral etc. This one represents some caucasian skin tone color mixes. There are alot of people out there that use Cadmium red in their mixes but i find that it doesnt lend it self to glazing well and it is a pretty strong color. If I use it it is usually right at the end for detailing.

Back to Basics - Finding pattern

This is what happens when a painting paints itself. I started this little piece by wetting my paper and just dropping in some color. reserving some lights - as the darks I can always paint in later. Let it dry. Now it is just rotating your picture until you see pattern you like and start "carving" the image out. This painting started out as a 6*6 and ended up beign an art card size. I will probaby use the extra in either a scrap booking page or a collage.

Stalking - adding the details

Just doodling and this what I came up with- I thought it was done after the first shot but it needed atmosphere to go along with mood. So i added some bushes in the front, and yet it was still missing something- so i went back in added the fence and deepened the shadows a little. Im thinking the shadow behind him is a little off it should be taller abd skinnier and sitting more off to the right a little - but oh well. One of the joys of watercolor is it is very hard to correct mistakes. These little paintings start out with a few simple Random brush strokes on a comination of wet/dry paper, I let them dry and them find pattern with in what was and work with it. That way your brain has the chance to switch over to the left and paint "what you see.. not what you think you see" Thank you Betty Edwards ;) These are my versions thumbnails.