Still Life With Some Life

 Every once and awhile I feel the need to paint some still life. It's good practice for form and shading and it's always nice to switch things up a bit. Lately my Dad and I have discussed at length how difficult flowers are to paint. They look easy but when you are going cross eyed trying to find the specific petal you are working on you suddenly realize there is a 'real' art to painting flowers. It's been a little while since I fought with some flowers so I dove in with these two studies for some extra practice.

In both cases when the painting was finished it felt empty to me. Just some flowers. I wanted more life in the images so I added some life! Butterflies have been fluttering through some of my art lately and the little mouse in the second painting is the vole from my cabin. When I had added life to the still life studies they finally felt fully complete. 
Both of these paintings are for sale in my Etsy shop.

Sketchbook Addiction

 Sketchbook addiction seems to be a real thing. I love buying a new sketchbook, filled with blank pages of possibility; it is always a fresh new start. At first I enthusiastically plan and fill the first few pages with work that will set the tone of the rest of the book and then somewhere along the line the sketchbook and it's blank pages get forgotten and piles up with the rest of my partially filled books. Sigh. 

The thing is, I really like this sketchbook! It is a small Strathmore watercolour sketchbook filled with luscious thick watercolour paper. The landscape layout is a new thing for me so I am trying to pick themes and designs that travel across the spread of both pages. My goal is to have this book completed by next summer. Assuming that this one does not fall into the sketchbook abyss my goal should be attainable! 

64 Faces - September update

Last August I started a sketchbook dedicated to portraits. My idea was that I would get a couple portraits drawn a week and complete the sketchbook in a timely fashion. What actually happened was that I worked in it on and off and then it got lost under the clutter of other sketchbooks and temporarily forgotten until this past month. After a year I have only completed 19 of 64 faces.
These portraits are all of random people (although Sebastian volunteered a photo of himself in a wig) and I try to connect the opposing pages through colour or background designs as much as possible. This sketchbook is all about practice and colour experimentation.  




My new goal is to have this sketchbook completed by the summer of 2016 which means I have 9 months to paint 45 portraits. It's possible, assuming I stay focused and on task!

Life Force

Take root in the Earth and feel it's pulse.We are all connected through it's energy; it's life force surges through our veins. Do not take this Earth's kindness for granted as its power is unimaginable and our dependence is complete. 

This painting started a long time ago. The original drawing is in my old sketchbook that I completed last Christmas. Sebastian dreamed up the concept for this painting and I used a photo of his hand as the reference. It took me a long time to paint all the details in this painting and I could only work on it when I had my camera, lights and tripod set up which dragged it out over the last 6 months. It is probably my favorite painting this year....so far!
Life Force is now available in my Etsy shop!

Dancing In The City

Despite the fact that I danced everyday last week I found some extra energy to do some dancing outside on Sunday afternoon. I danced down the street, up some stairs, across a ledge, up a hill and then all the way back down. I improvised everything and wasn't dancing to any music although I had an instrumental piece stuck in my head from a morning rehearsal.
I only got a few weird looks from people although one guy almost crashed his bicycle into a fence when I was warming up for the pointe section. lol 
Sebastian (aka The Vinylist) created this song specifically for this dance project and we have been waiting for the perfect day to film. This was the first real test of our recently purchased flycam and camera dolly. 
We had a lot of fun making this little video and plan to make more in the future.
While making this video I learned that dancing up-hill is a real struggle but despite the fact that concrete is not an ideal surface to dance on I must say I enjoyed the moment....and ripped up my shoes a little! ;)

Midnight Vole

At my cabin there is a little Vole who lives in a stump. He ventures out late at night and eats all the seeds left behind by Squeeker, the chipmunks and birds. Essentially he is the clean up crew! He stuffs his cheeks with as much as they will hold and then scampers away to hide it all. 






I made two little paintings of this darling creature. The first is watercolour and ink (5" by 4") and the second one is acrylic on canvas board (6" by 8".) I used the same reference photo for both paintings so it is interesting to see how different they turned out.
They are both for sale in my Etsy shop!

 

Batty

 

A few weekends ago at the cabin we saved a tired bat. He fell out of the sky around 7pm and seemed to be in distress. He couldn't seem to fly and when he tried he would fly erratically and then end up on the ground again. Using a stick we transferred him to a box and offered him sugar water and a few crickets. He drank some of the water and then sat happily crunching his crickets. He slowly crawled out of the box and was just sitting on the tree stump. We kept thinking he had died ( at least he had a fantastic last meal) but then he would twitch and move again. We gave him a little tree bark tent and left him to figure his life out. A few hours later he had flown away...hopefully fully recovered to live out the rest of his life....happily ever after?! 

I decided to make a little painting of Batty to accompany the video. It is 4" by 5" watercolour and ink and is listed in my Etsy shop for just $20.