3...2..1...

Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new year. It also marks the start of my January challenge to draw. Tonight I will be at a friend's house to celebrate New Year's. In preparation for the first week of the challenge, which will be the study of hands, I am bringing my camera to the festivities, in hopes of getting reference.

Desktop Image

Adam had me make his bird into a background image for his desktop. What a supportive husband! He even picked out what color he wanted behind the bird.

Angry Bird?

The other day when Adam came home from work, I showed him the birds I was working on. He got kind of excited and started searching for more bird pictures online. Then he said that if I was going to have bird paintings taped all over our wall, he got to pick the next one I did. So this is the one he "commissioned" me to do. He was pretty thrilled today when he came home and saw that I had done it after all.

Reshoot

Reshot these in the morning. Much better I think.

Two Cardinals Today

I got a little more particular today. And I've realized that I need to take pictures in the morning when the natural light is coming in. The pictures don't come out quite so yellow that way, like they do when I'm using lamps at night. I will probably reshoot the second cardinal, the "Merry Christmas..." one, tomorrow. I really want a nice scanner someday, though, so I don't have to keep taking photos. Color is so much harder to adjust than black & white. I did manage to update the last bluejay picture. The color is a little better now.

Also, the for the second cardinal I began with a yellow wash for a base. The first one, I noticed, wasn't popping as much as I wanted it to be, so for the second one I thought the yellow would help.

Another Day With Jay

I am definitely having an off day today. I hope it's only a day anyway. Not terribly trilled with this one, but I am posting it nonetheless, as a record of progress.

I hate working when I'm cold!

Line & Color in December

I've been trying to keep busy this month. With my commission finally finished and handed in, and the Night of Joy concert over, it's time to give myself some sort of goals for the rest of December. I know I'll be having monthly challenges lined up for every month of the new year, but I can't just sit around doodling until it comes. So, since I've been doing birds the last few days, I've decided to make a little project out of them.

I found my bristol board tonight and set out on the first stage of my little idea. I cut one big sheet into four smaller ones, which I will be working on for now. If all goes well with the first one, I'll stick with bristol. I want to stick to some kind of consistency, like surface and size, so that I can keep them all together in a series. The way I've been working is mostly experimental. Less about subject and more about line and color.

As far as line goes, I've been enjoying the results of using a brush. The thick and thin is more obvious, I think. As for color, I have been exploring the way I put it down. Loose, yet deliberate. And I am still trying to be aware of the colors within a single color, like the reds in the blue of a bluejay. For this aspect of my studies, I may have to revert back to watercolor. I do enjoy acrylics, but I could not get the warm blue I wanted for the bluejay today. Of course, I was working on a very absorbent piece of mat board. Not a good idea. Anyway, I like watercolor and acrylic about equally. I just use acrylic more. Wouldn't mind getting back to my other favorite though. I'll see how it goes.

Bluejay Sketch

I'm sensing a theme here.

More Cardinal Sketches

Experimenting a bit with line and color. The second sketch got really muddy when I tried to paint over an ink pen. I went over it with white to try and fix it. Now I know not to use the pen like that. And really I should be doing this stuff on bristol board or something. Anyway, I'm having fun with the birds. I'll probably do more. Oh, and I need to invest in a white light of some kind so I stop getting the yellowed pictures. Alas! The woes of the artist.

Poor Kitty

This was totally random. It started out as a little doodle of birds and ended up like this. It's from the other day but I forgot about it. I know. The trunk is way too big for that tree.

A Month of...

I came up with a set of goals last night, after all my doodling. It's something I've thought of before, but I'd never really fleshed it out until last night. This is what it looks like:

A Month of Studies
1. A Week of Hands
2. A Week of Ears
3. A Week of Faces
4. A Week of Feet

I came up with topics for another 3 months, but I will wait to reveal those until their assigned months draw closer. I am hoping that this weekly list of goals will not only get me to draw everyday, but also challenge me artistically. I plan to start this challenge in January, as sort of a New Year's goal. It will start at the first full week of every month.

Art Show and Night Doodles

I decided to sketch in bed last night. I hadn't had time to draw all day, because I was helping set up the art show for the Christmas concert at my church. There was a lot more artwork entered than I had expected, so I ended up staying late to help finish hang everything.

There are some very nice pieces in the show. Even the kids have their own little corner of artwork. There's one chalk drawing of a Dalmatian that looks like a photograph from far away. It was done by a 10 year old girl. And there's one woman who does beautiful pastel work. I think it'll be a good show. There are paintings, drawings, photography, mixed media... all kinds of stuff.

While hanging the show, I met a man from the church who is a professional illustrator. He was very knowledgeable when he spoke, yet quite humble about the way he talked about his own work. I'm looking forward to meeting more artists at the church. After seeing all the artwork entered for the concert, I feel like there is a whole community of artists that no one really knows about, except on the occasions there is a special event at which artwork is displayed. That is one of the reasons I want to start an art ministry.

What the heck...

Tree Abstracts

Photos I took with a telephoto lens and put into photoshop. The first two I thought had their own abstract quality. I simply adjusted the levels. The last one is obviously more manipulated. I'm thinking one of these would be a fun painting.

Cardinal Sketch

I felt like painting with the left over red on my palette. So I looked up a photo of a cardinal.

Elvis Commission Finished

Reference and sketches...






I really never imagined I'd be commissioned to do a portrait of Elvis Presley. Or any celebrity for that matter. It's not typically my thing. The only time I did a celebrity portrait was for a class assignment in college. Elvis proved to be a challenge. I looked at a lot of pictures, trying to figure out what made Elvis... Elvis. The most challenging thing about this was trying to get the look the client wanted. In this case, Elvis in his jumpsuit, standing next to the client's boyfriend. It was the face that was most difficult though. I had to reference multiple images and sketches to try to get the right look. I'm not sure how I feel about the final outcome, but this was definitely a learning experience. I wouldn't be surprised if this project subconsciously inspired me to practice more famous faces.

Commission

My current commission. Still have a ways to go. This is a picture of my work space, taken yesterday. Gonna try to finish tonight and tomorrow. Adam's bringing home a coffee coolatta for me. Mmmm... What a guy.

I found the camera!

The other day I was frantically searching the apartment for my ruler, or some other such nonsense. It seemed pretty hopeless since all I had to go on was the fact that it was SOMEWHERE in the giant pile in the room. While I didn't find what I was looking for, I DID find what I wasn't looking for. Our camera! I can't get quite the same quality with some things as I can with a scanner, but it's better than nothing. Of course, I can't take pictures of the stuff that is also lost in the pile. But I did scrounge up a couple little things.

Car ride doodles and ears.

Brought my little sketch book in with me when I went to go see Where the Wild Things Are. These are my doodles before the movie started.

A silverpoint portrait I'm working on in my spare time. I'm using a little bit of graphite for this one, just to see what kind of results I can get.

Going On's

Life as a Lewis...

So Adam and I have been married a month now. Married life is great. We're living in an apartment in Wethersfield, CT. Right now things are kind of frustrating for the both of us, though. All our stuff is piled into the middle of the living room at the moment, and must remain there until November 11th. I won't get into the details, but basically everyone in the building has to do this. And so here we are.

We've been trying to stay optimistic about the situation, but there comes a point where you just want to be able to find what you're looking for and have room to breathe. We had just moved in and begun to unpack when we were all told we'd have to be packing it up again.

The biggest issue for me is that I have a commission I need to work on. I don't have access to any of my books, I don't have much room to work, and I have no way of scanning or printing anything. I do have some reference material to work with, which is a good start though. I'm just hoping I can make the best of this situation, and get my work done despite the inconvenience. I have to get back into the habit of making a schedule, too, so that I can make deadlines for myself. My goal is to have the piece done by the end of November, or early December at the very latest.

I also want to start drawing everyday. I've had periods of time when I am successful at this, but as of late, I haven't had much time and/or motivation to do so. With possible commissions in sight, it is especially important that I do this. Today, I started working on a little silverpoint piece to start my day. Unfortunately, I've been sick so I didn't get far before a had to crash. But it did feel good to switch out that graphite for a piece of silver wire.

Can't wait until home and health are back to normal. I want to start posting sketches and the like again, too.

Frustrated

I am very excited to have a Mac now. The main reason for having one is so that I can use Adobe programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. But right now I'm trying to figure out how to do everything else that would normally be easy for me to do, were I working on a Windows machine. I'm so used to Windows! Just a moment ago I tried scanning something so I could post it here, but the computer won't recognize my printer/scanner. I could take a picture, but without my card reader -which I expect is back in Wolcott at my dad's house- I can't even put pictures onto the computer.

Given, Mac does make some things a lot easier, and it is a very "quick thinking" machine, I just can't help but miss the simple pleasures of having Windows. Like being able to use the right click on the mouse, or just being able to print a selected text instead of the whole page. And I really miss the delete key that let's you erase letters in front of the cursor.

Anyways... I'm just frustrated because I can't do things as easily as I could before. I know I'll figure it out eventually. I just want to figure it out soon...