"Daddy's Girl"

Today marks a transition to a new way of blogging for a year. I'm starting a year-long class and will be creating approximately one painting per week. For a while now I've been posting the stages of my paintings and I've absolutely loved doing that, but this year I'll just be sharing my completed pieces. This means I'll be posting about once a week. Rest assured that I'll still be painting every single day.

I've already started in on my first lesson with this class and hope to share my finished painting in the next few days.


So...here is the last painting with all its stages that I'll be posting for a while. I was commissioned to paint this sweet picture of a father and daughter whom I adore. What an absolute honor it was. Here's the finished piece and a number of stages below.

"Daddy's Girl"

 

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Together - Part 4

I'm celebrating a first today. At least a first as far as my life recollection goes. Today I bought myself my first ever galoshes! And I'm way more excited than the event warrants, but deep down I've always, always wanted some. And even better, there's a chance of rain on Monday! So...goodbye soggy socks and shoes, hello fabulous black and white awesomely printed galoshes!!!

I just know you share my excitement.


And I finished these two commissioned pieces. I absolutely love that I reworked almost every single element of these paintings...some parts several times. That is so much fun for me! Here are the two originals and below are a few of the last stages. I also think I like the title "Together" so I'm sticking with it.

"Together 1"

"Together 2"

I sketched the boy.

I began filling in the details on the boy.
I also totally redid the background.
Did ya notice? :-)

I began adding details to their outfits.

Click here to view my gallery.  Most of my paintings are for sale and I welcome commissions.

I'd love for you to share my art and blog with the links below.  Thanks!

Together (working title) - Part 3

My big guy stopped by today after work.


Big guy: "Can I have a bandaid?"

Me: "Sure, where do you need it?"


He held out his hand, palm up, and showed me a big blister.


Me: "You've been doing the monkey bars! I haven't seen a monkey bar blister on you since elementary school!"


He smiled.



I love that! My twenty year old kid has a monkey bar blister. What fun!



And I continued working on these paintings. Working, struggling, and taking care of business. I so love this process!!! Tomorrow will be finishing day, I'm positive.

I added shadows and darkened some areas in the water
and on the sand.

I added clouds and waves.

I sketched out more definition on the kiddos.

I changed the little girl to be looking more toward the
water as her brother is. I also filled in the parts I'd sketched.
I wasn't happy with the boy's left arm so I painted over it.

And...oh, yes, I did...I got rid of the boy altogether.
I just couldn't make him work and decided I needed
a do-over. I cannot tell you how good it feels
to just "get rid" of something that's not working.
But don't worry, he'll be back. :-) And
he'll be even closer to his sister. They are "together" after all.

Click here to view my gallery.  Most of my paintings are for sale and I welcome commissions.

I'd love for you to share my art and blog with the links below.  Thanks!

Together (working title) - Part 2

This is homecoming week for my little guy's high school. While I avoided all school sports themed things when I was in high school, my kid fully embraces them. Course he is a football player. So far this week there's been a mad rush to the thrift store to get tropical clothing and professional soccer player duds (that's what he's got on today), but for yesterday's outfit he was able to raid my clothes. Yes, it was animal print day and my guy wore my leopard print leggings to school. I thought surely he'd wear shorts over them to minimize the feline look, but, no, he wore my leggings, a t-shirt, and sneakers.

And he looked great!

Two hours after he'd gotten home (after a call begging us to pick him up so he didn't have to ride his bike home in public wearing said leggings...we said, "no") he was still wearing them.


Me: "They're comfortable, aren't they."

Little guy: "They are!"


While I seriously doubt he'll be a leggings convert and start sporting them on a regular basis, I'm quite sure it will never occur to him to give me any flack for the high percentage of the time I wear leggings myself. He'll totally get it.


I continued working on this painting. The more I paint the more fearless I've become when it comes to feeling fine about painting over something I've taken the time to work on. It's a blissful kind of freedom!

I painted over the watered down black with a thin layer of white.
My little guy and I loved this stage. We thought it looked like
ghosts on the beach or people that were made of water.
I was almost sad to paint over them...almost.

I roughed in the basic colors of the children.

I painted over the background. I pretty much knew from
the start that I'd do this at one point. For some reason
it was important to me to do a very light and detailed
background at the start. I like listening to what my
paintings want me to do. They're always right.

Click here to view my gallery.  Most of my paintings are for sale and I welcome commissions.

I'd love for you to share my art and blog with the links below.  Thanks!

Together (working title) - Part 1

We held an election in our house last night. You see, ever since my big guy moved out, I've been making him and his girlfriend a casserole or some such thing pretty much every week. Last night I was trying to decide what to make. So...we held the great enchilada vote of 2015.


Me: "I have enough cheese to make only one kind of enchiladas for you guys. Do you want chicken enchiladas with green sauce or beef enchiladas with red sauce?"

Dave: "Make both."

Me: "Seriously, we have a cheese shortage issue."

Dave: "Beef!"

Little guy: "Chicken!"


So I texted my big guy and his girlfriend.


Big guy: "Chicken!"

Big guy's girlfriend: "Chicken!"

Dave: "My vote counts more than theirs!"


And so this morning I made two batches of chicken enchiladas with green sauce. I also made a couple of cheese enchiladas just for me...because yum!



I started working on a couple of commissioned pieces today. I'm actually creating two of the same image. I've done this a couple of times before and it's really fun. I don't get all wrapped up in having them exactly the same. I figure they're more like if you were to have taken a couple of photos of something happening...while the photos would contain all of the same elements, they'd definitely be different. As there are two it does take me almost twice as long, so this post will definitely span more than three or four days.

I lay down the basic beach/ocean.

I added waves and some clouds.

I added a darker part of the beach
and sketched the kiddos.

I taped the paper on a big piece of cardboard so I could
work using my easel.

I used watered down black to fill in the kiddos.

Click here to view my gallery.  Most of my paintings are for sale and I welcome commissions.

I'd love for you to share my art and blog with the links below.  Thanks!

Summertime Dreams

I'm taking a brief pause from my tree paintings to visit the beach. I love the beach. It's not all the fun in the sun that I adore. It's the smells, the wind, the humidity, the myriad of creatures that make their lives there, and the people who call beach towns their home. All of them rugged and delicate in their own beautiful ways.

So if I were at the beach right now, this would be my view from my spot on a blanket, sitting under a big umbrella, with a tall glass of iced herbal tree, and my watercolors at play.

Summertime dreams...

Click here to view my gallery.  Most of my paintings are for sale.

I'd love for you to share my art and blog with the links below.  Thanks!

Seashore Dreams

Every day I get home from work and have to clean the sand from between my toes.  It's one of the many perks of teaching young, delightful kiddos who love their sandbox.  This past summer is the first summer in forever that we didn't go to the beach or some sort of lake house or something like that,  and I must be feeling it because I actually delay my toe cleaning just a wee bit while I close my eyes and pretend I'm just getting back to my room after a day of fun in the sun.

Seashore dreamy bliss....

Click here to view my gallery.  Most of my paintings are for sale.

 

I'd love for you to share my art and blog with the links below.  Thanks!

Coming Soon

I came to a stop at an intersection the other night.  There was a fella there hoping to get some spare change.  Only he didn't have the cardboard sign I've become accustomed to.  And, gosh, writing that I'm "accustomed" to it makes me a little sad that it absolutely, positively doesn't strike me as odd or unusual to see yet another homeless person around.

Anyway, this fella was wearing a big, red oversize T-shirt that read "SIX PACK COMING SOON".  My first thought was, "Wow, is he just being honest?"  And then I thought, why on earth would this guy have spent his hard-earned money on that shirt.  OK, I suppose it was possible, but then I began to wonder if someone had given him that shirt...you know, as a joke.  And then I saw his smile.  His big, wonderfully goofy smile, and then I didn't care any more about how he'd gotten the shirt.  I just knew that this guy was able to find the silver lining, the happy, the whimsical in the package he was presenting.

And then I wished I'd had a dollar to give him.

Click here to purchase this painting.

Behind the Slang Curve

Driving around with the kid...sometimes I wonder just what percentage of my life has been spent doing just that.  Lucky for me, he's rather a delight and we have a pretty good time when we're together...even if he's convinced I'm a dork.


Little guy:  Puts on some music so he can play his "challenge mom with a song" game. 

Me:  "That's Gorillaz!"  I was super excited.  I knew the answer!

Little guy:  "Yup."

Me:  "Knowing that gives me some serious street cred, right?"

Little guy:  "Don't ever say that again, mom."

Me:  "What?  That's what all you guys are saying these days."

Little guy:  "Not for a really long time...you sound like a dork, mom."


Apparently slang is just like fashion for me...I run at least a year behind.  Dependent on what shows up in the thrift stores and all.  Perhaps I need to start getting my slang at retail prices.

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Style Points

So the big guy had an assignment in one of his college classes.  Something to do with where you stand politically and why.  Part of the assignment was to take an online questionnaire test thingie.  So Dave and I took it.  And the results were freakishly twinnish.

"We're twinkies!" I declared.

OK, so Dave and I are apparently perfectly aligned politically (certainly makes the election season a peaceful place at our house)...but, as I discovered tonight, with Costco shopping styles, twinkies we are not.

Dave?  He's a go-up-and-down-every-(FREAKIN'!)-aisle kind of guy.  Even that whole section on the left with all the electronics, appliances, beds and stuff.

Me?  I'm a follow-the-shopping-list-and-only-go-down-particular-aisles-intentionally kind of girl.

Tonight, as we were on a Costco date, I went with his style because I'm all go with the flow and all and he was trying to be romantic as he showed me the power generators and all.  And you know what?  Thanks to my sweet husband's style we have toothpaste, something that had not made my list.

Style points for style, Dave!

Click here to purchase this painting.

Thanks for "liking" my blog posts!!