Marbles - Work in progress

Adding layers with colour, but I'm still using the underpainting. Haven't added the real colours yet.

Now I'm starting to layer on the finishing colours. I have 3 different "reds on the red marbles. Likewise with the green. The shadowing is harder than I realized.

I cheated and painted the white reflections. Seemed like the easiest way to go about it. The hardest part was keeping the stupid things round!!!! Almost impossible if you ask me. Is a marble really perfectly round anyway? Did all the burnishing and buffing I'm going to do today. I'll see tomorrow if I want to do more on this. I probably should, but I have a feeling I will call it finished.

Colored Pencil - Marbles - Work in Progress

Some time ago a fellow artist Robert Sloan
recommended that if you were interested in Colored Pencil drawings, a good book to learn from was "Masterful Color" by Arlene Steinberg. Achieving wonderful vibrant color layer by layer. I chose this marble photo to use as a reference from the WetCanvas reference library.

I've done a small aceo (2.5" x 3.5") two marble drawing before, but wanted to learn the technique better so this time I'm doing an 8" x 10" drawing. You can barely see the drawing on the paper, but you have to have a light hand or the pencil shows through on your piece. I have a heavy hand so spent some time erasing areas that I had pressed to hard.

I started with the red? marbles. In her book she shows how to start with an underpainting of complementary colours and gradually building layer upon layer. So the green marbles should be red in the end. The final painting should have lots of depth with rich colour and brilliant light.

This is my first layer. You can see that it doesn't look anything like the reference photo other than the placement of the marbles. I have found the choice of complementary colours very confusing, but am muddling through the instructions and colour wheel in the book. I have confidence (I hope) that this will turn out because I have done the two marbles (as I mentioned) and a tomato using this method. I think I had the tomato on here some time ago. It started out green and ended up a wonderfully bright red.

I'm ready to finish the 2nd and 3rd layers today.

Sushi art? Edible art?

What started out as a sushi roll session for Sunday Dinner turned into an art session? I decided that while I was making them I might as well get a couple of reference photos for paintings at a later date

The end result........Sushi on my antique platter...

Sushi rolls with what else......a fish!

The end result.....little ones for the kids...man size for the guys :) And photos for me and anyone else who wants to use them........enjoy!

Foggy morning - Kinoonkimaw

It went down to 4degrees C last night (38F) so there was lots of fog this morning when the sun came up. It didn't take long to start to burn off.

Look how the fog is hanging stubbornly over the lake. Way to early for it to be getting so cool at night. Hoping for a few more frost free weeks for the tomatoes.

Wordless Wednesday

August on the prairies

WIP - Work in Progress complete - Autumn reflection

Painting complete! I decided on a swan because I thought that would make the best reflection. I toyed with the idea of painting a moose in the water but I think that was because we had moose tracks in our yard yesterday. All in all I pretty satisfied with the colours and I like the plastic wrap technique in the background.

This OSWOA (trademarked acronym for Original Small Work of Art always 4" x 6") can be found listed on Ebay here

I've decided shipping costs are on me this time :)

WIP - work in progress - Autumn Reflection

This is the start of an OSWOA size (6" x 4") fall painting. I wanted to experiment with the colours for a bigger one that I am going to paint (3' x 4') I managed to get all the colours in that I wanted. All the background colour is done by dipping rolled up plastic wrap into various paint colour and blotting on to the paper.

Then I started adding details with brush and knife. I want to add some birds at some point but am not sure what type of birds I want. Either ducks, loons or swans. I think it will depend on how the bird turns out finished. I may call it an ostrich or "big bird"! I've set it aside for a day or two to ponder on where to go next on this.

Wordless Wednesday - late - Kinookimaw

Wordless Wednesday turned into more like Tardy Thursday........

Storms rolling in from the West

The last of the sun tonight.

Painting - Quilting.......Quilting is harder!!!!!

Ok, I got (stole?) the idea from a fellow artist Deb (she's so talented) (Artschticks Corner) to print some of my art on fabric. Well actually I think she got it from Char (Amarillo-choctaw)

Char is into quilting/art in a big way. (shameless plugs of their art blogs :)) Anyway, today I decided I would make an accent pillow for our spare bedroom. Easy enough to do I thought. Not..........! First you have to be a whizz at math...I'm not. Then you actually have to have mastered sewing. I haven't! I know the basics, but... I discovered I'm good at seam ripping. I made this pillow out of scraps and a 4" x 6" print of of my Goldfinches. (That's Lucy sleeping beside the pillow - she refused to move for the photo)

So I have the prototype done (3 hours later) and I know what I won't do next time (of which there are many many things)

Your art is in the mail...er "on" the mail

Whenever I mail to fellow artists, friends and sometimes clients I try to add some form of original art on the envelope. I started doing this when I first got involved in "mail art". I loved receiving mail with original art on the "outside" of the envelope. In fact I have quite a collection of envelopes from fellow artists that I treasure deeply. I have some envelopes that almost every square inch is covered in some sort of doodle or message. Some artist's envelopes are highly collectable these days.

I've put a sample of one of mine on here. I usually do something with the water because of my name "Southshoreartist".

Just google "mail art" and you will find 100's if not 1000's of sites dedicated to the movement. Although I'm not active in the movement anymore I still like to do my part and "share" original art through the mail.

Storm Paintings........(or what I do on rainy days)

Ok, maybe it didn't rain today, but it was overcast and gloomy all day. It hasn't been very warm all summer. So what better to paint then dark stormy skies. I had great hope that August would be better weather wise than July. So far.....no such luck. I guess we can always hope for Indian summer in the fall :)

These are aceos (2.5" x 3.5") painted with acrylics. You can find them listed on Ebay here

Kinookimaw - Days are getting shorter

The sun was setting at 9:30 p.m. The days are getting shorter and shorter already.

Looking across the lake at Sunset Cove. It was 10:00 p.m. and already dark. By the end of August it will be dark by 8 or so I'm sure.