Acrylic Floral Study 3

Tis the Season for great sales and overly busy stores. As much as I dislike the commercialism of this particular season I couldn't help but make a stop at Michaels on Tuesday to pick up a few 70% off canvases! I bought a small stack of 5" by 7" canvases and intend on painting some random studies on them. Because they are so small they will be a nice affordable addition to my Etsy shop. 
Getting back to acrylics this year (I've spent the last two years playing with mostly watercolours and ink) has been a lot of fun but I want to use these small canvases to help brush up my skills for larger acrylic paintings. 

I started and completed this rose painting on Wednesday. Although I'm always tempted to add more detail I tried to keep this one nice and simple and as classic as possible. My Dad and I have discussed at length how difficult flowers can be so I thought this was a good opportunity to practice!
Acrylic floral study 3 is 5" by 7" acrylic on canvas. I painted the edges black so it doesn't need a frame, which makes this a cheap and easy way to decorate your wall! It is now available in my Etsy shop!
 

Big Blue Whale

It's been a long time since I started and completed a painting all in the same day. I got excited about this whale late Saturday afternoon and completed it some time after 1am. I was in the zone and it felt great!
I watched an interesting documentary about blue whales a few months ago and decided that if I were to paint a whale it would have to be a blue one. Did you know that blue whales are the largest animal to have ever lived? Which means they are bigger than the biggest dinosaurs were, which is crazy!

Big Blue Whale is 10" by 20" acrylic on canvas. I now have it listed in my Etsy shop!

Censored Nudity

This photo of the painting was deemed to be inappropriate 

Last week when I posted my new painting something strange happened. I posted it to my facebook page as usual and set up a couple of dollars worth of ads so the post would reach more than a handful of people. But then, for the first time ever, facebook did not approve my advertisement on the basis of implied nudity. Which is crazy since they have run so many other ads with much more graphic nudity than this one! 

The Facebook approved image

SO I made another post using a different image of the painting to see what would happen.... almost immediately my image and post was approved for advertisements. How can the same painting be denied and approved in the same day?
Nudity and censorship has been a big topic on the internet. People have varying ideas of how much and what types of nudity are appropriate for social media sites. Nudity in fine art is normally treated differently than nudity in photographs and sites like facebook have differentiated between them. However the language they use to moderate these ads is so loose and up to interpretation that it seems to depend on who is approving the post. 
The first message they sent me said that my image was not approved because it contains "excessive amounts of skin or suggestive content. Facebook does not allow images that depict people in explicit or suggestive positions, or images that show nudity or cleavage." Which is not quite accurate since nudity in art like the statue of David is considered to be appropriate. Since this is a painting I would argue that there are not excessive amounts of skin and her pose is not sexual. 

I sent a message back inquiring about it because I seriously thought it was a mistake and they would approve the post in a few days. The second message I received said that it would not be approved because "the image being used in the ad implies nudity." By the time I received this message my ads on the other uncensored photo had just finished running and had reached over 500 people.
Personally I have no issue with non sexual nudity. Under our clothes everyone is naked. It is our natural state and I find it strange that we are so afraid of it. 

This image was also rejected even though it has run as an ad in the past!

I will be posting this blog to facebook using one of my older nude paintings just to see if it is approved. Facebook has unknowingly turned this into a game for me and I am interested to see how it goes. I will update this post with any new developments!


My first attempt at running advertisements with this image failed so I chose a partially clothed image to test the nudity line. A bra and a skirt seems to be enough!
I will be getting creative with censoring my posts in the near future! 

Hibernate

As the days get shorter and cooler I find myself dreaming of hot summer days spent lying in the sun. The changing of the seasons gives me some anxiety as I find winter to be long, dark and often sad. While I don't mind autumn as a season (except for the rain) I find myself anxious of the inevitable grey months of winter. To help myself deal with this seasonal stress I have decided to embrace the seasonal colours in my artwork. Fall colours are probably my favorite and possibly the most cohesive when put together. 
This piece started out in my sketchbook, and after throwing some paint on it I knew I had to do a real painting of it! 

Hibernate is 9" by 12" watercolour and pen on watercolour board mounted on a black cradled board. 
It is for sale in my Etsy shop! 

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!