Acrylics

Yesterday, I was waiting for an appointment and I was suddenly inspired by the art in the reception area, there were 4 different paintings approx. 18"x18" done with acrylics and I loved the technique of wide, bold brushstrokes with the colors marking the overall design, so I decided to play with this a bit today. I ended up with 7 cards I owe from 2 trades over at ATCs for All and I had quite an interesting morning. I ended up adding some black outlines to some of the cards (hearts are a personal favorite of mine), but the ones I did following the original inspiration -the eye and the calla lily- are definitely my favorites.
I know by now you are just green with envy over my most luxurious and elegant palette, but to tell you the truth I find that's practically impossible for me to keep a palette for acrylics or oils in good condition. I just don't have enough patience to spend my time rubbing old painting away and have lost a couple of actually good palettes in the process, so I have resorted to keeping a stash of plastic plates ( I usually rescue a couple of cake plates from family reunions, wash them and stash them).
You can get a closer look to the ATCs in my Flickr, but beware...they did not scan well at all :(

Gerbera Daisy

After sunflowers gerbera daisies are my most favorite flowers ever. There's something so nice and cheerful when it comes to their colors. Unfortunately our daisies have been a bit under the weather with all the constant temperature changes and this one was the one that looked the most "cheerful" part when I went hunting into the garden this afternoon with my camera, but it will do just fine to wish you a fun Vanletine's day :)
Moving into the art part now... I worked today in these small watercolor paintings of gerberas, they are 2"x2" (twinchies!) and they took a loooonnnnngggg time to get ready, it's so difficult to get details into such a tiny canvas. I have one of this for sale on my Etsy, I'm thinking I want to hold on to the other one for a while; I used Ranger's memory glass and frames to make the pendants and I quite like how they turned out. I still have more frames and glass so I'm hoping to make others soon, any requests??
































PS. I cannot write this post without thanking Lisa at yourATCstore.com, I bought the frames over at her store and I received extraordinary service and a fair price-particularly considering I'm international and all other stores had really ridiculous shipping costs for these tiny frames, not to mention the great freebies she sent along.

OWOH WINNER

I'm just surprised at the incredible response from the One World One Heart event, over 900 bloggers from all around the world joined this year and the comments received were just extraordinary. So...coming to the winner now:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

168

Timestamp: 2009-02-12 06:21:41 UTC

And the comment matches Shelly Rae Wood:

ShellyRaeWood said... 168

Oh these poppies bring back memories. When I was growing up there was the sweetest older man, Lively. He always had a smile and a piece of candy in his pockets for the kids. He also grew the prettiest poppies. My Dad still has some of Lively's stock of poppies growing at his house!! :::smiles::: Thanks so much for the memory!! Your watercolor is gorgeous!! Shelly OWOH # 825
www.shellyraewood.blogspot.com

February 2, 2009 11:11 PM

I hope you also lucked out and got a little surprise coming your way!

PS. The pic has nothing to do with the post...but I don't want to have a post without some eye candy ;)

Classes, classes, classes!!!

I started giving lessons again today (I work as an English teacher) and it's the one thing I love as much as creating. I get such a thrill of helping someone learn English and the great satisfaction they have when they learn a new language. To top the day off I took my first art lesson of the year in the afternoon, this year is all about drawing the human figure and faces; and as you can see from my poor ATC above I need BIG help when it comes to this. The ATC above is supposed to be my rendition of Luna Lovegood- I used watercolors, acryllic metallic paints, black ink, and white ink. This one is for Melanie over at AFA, she is one AWESOME artist, you can visit her blog here.
Back to my art classes, I have them scheduled for Mondays 2-6 and it was a total surprise when I showed up today because it turns out we get to work with a live model. I have never tried human figure drawing before, not to mention with a live model! but it was a really nice experience. The first part of the class was spent by doing a series of exercises where she changed poses every 5 or 7 minutes...for the first ones I was freaking out a bit because of the time limit, but it turns out that when you are just trying to get the basic body shapes where they belong 5 minutes is a long time.
Here are the first poses, my personal favorite is the one where she is lying on her side -although she looks way chubby, I think I kind of over did the curves a bit.This one has a sketch of my teacher on the right - he was showing me the whole 8 heads of proportion rule.

This one is the last one of the session, she held the pose for 30 minutes, she was sort of slumped over a chair with her legs stretched out towards me -which was a whole load of trouble I might add- Oh, and let's not get into the whole hand/feet issue; it was my first class after all ; )
I'd love to hear some feedback from you, I'm WAY out of my comfort zone with this topic but I'm really interested in learning from this.

Now, for some awesome classes YOU can take on line! A group of extraordinary artists -Annie Melione, Dana Driscoll, Tracie Rozario and Sal Scheibe- are just getting ready to launch a Whimsy Art Workshop:
"The workshop is designed to help artists who are seeking to improve their artistic skills or working to develop a unique style. The workshop is designed for the novice, so it’s not necessary that you know anything about drawing, color, or composition. We will cover all of the basics and some advanced techniques and then help you to find your own, unique style of whimsical art. Our approach to learning about drawing is light-hearted and fun and filled with exercises and inspiration to help you grow as an artist." Read more about it here.