Pointe Shoes 3 and 4

This past weekend I decided that it was time to do a few more ballet themed paintings for my etsy shop. I took progress photos along the way to document my process. 
I primed my 5" by 7" canvases with Golden brand Molding paste tinted with my chosen undercoat colour. I worked the paste/paint mix into the canvas with a stiff brush until there was a thin even coat. Tinting the the paste helps you see the thickness of the mixture across the canvas. When that dried I did one more coat of molding paste to get a smoother surface to paint on. 
 

After the molding paste dried I painted my background colours and started blocking in the shoes and ribbons. This is when I work out the composition and placement of the shoe. 

In the next step I start playing with different colours, slowly adding in more and more detail. I also make a point of outlining my shadows and finding some highlights which also helps clean up my lines. 







This is my favorite step. I literally threw some white and gold paint onto the background (and on me.) After my Pollock moment I spent some time adding more colour and cleaning up unfortunate splatters until the paintings were complete. 

I'm happy with my colour pallet on these two paintings. They look really cute together!
 You can find them for sale in my Etsy shop!

April Showers

I started this painting in hope that it would cure me of my seasonal art funk. It was mostly unsuccessful and I am thoroughly disappointed with how this painting turned out. Regardless of my personal feelings I have put it in my Etsy shop and am happily moving on to other projects!
Some days I can sit down and paint something really cool with very little effort and then other days it seems to be an uphill battle. No matter how hard you try some paintings just don't work out the way you thought they would; and this is definitely one of them! I try not to let these emotional ups and down effect my productivity but the art I create while "in a funk" is generally not my best. I'm hoping that this little creative blip is almost over so I can tackle my larger paintings!

This painting can be located in my Etsy shop!