Ballerina Watercolor

This is the latest painting I've finished on Saturday classes, it is a 11"x15" watercolor.
I started the drawing last weekend, worked on the first layer of paint during the week, and finished it during class yesterday morning.

There are still some things that are a bit wonky and I need to fix on the basic shape:
*the arms should have had more of a curve in them.
*the back is too wide, she was a really skinny girl in real life.
*the forehead should be larger, I drew the hairline too low in that part.

All things considered, I'm pretty satisfied with this one, especially with the way the colors turned out. Since the other students in the class are working with oils, we'll keep working the same pose for the next two classes; I'll have to choose a different position to create a different piece.

Alice...

One of the first cards I received when I started trading ATCs was with an Alice in Wonderland theme, and it is one of my favorite themes so far. This one is for Amerasu over at iATCs for the July partner swap.

I'm thinking I should take a pic of my Alice collection and show it off, there are really amazing things in it :)

Home and Heart

Ok, last piece for the Mixed Media PAT over at iATCs - well at least until I get done with Mermaid #2- This one is for Shelly, and her theme was "Home is where the Heart is". I went with a whimsical style for this one, trying to make it fun and colorful.

*I started with a piece of fabric, the light blue with color circles on top, I read somewhere that you can add some sealer over the fabric to make it stiff and to avoid fraying. I had it already prepared and it saved me time.

*I sketched the shape of the house on top and added a couple of hands of gesso.

*I used my acrylics to paint the walls with bright yellow and the roof with a combination of red/orange/yellow.

*I outlined the house, roof and the shape of the heart with black ink.

*I added bronze dimensional paint inside the heart...I dropped the card face down on the floor when I was cleaning up, picked it up again and waited for it to dry before I can fix the boo boo.

*I added some white acrylic around the color circles in the background.

I'm still considering on adding a border with the same dimensional paint around the card...not quite sure yet.

Mermaid Fiasco

Yesterday I told you about how sometimes when I play with collage and mixed media I'm in for a bit of a gamble...sometimes it pays off, and sometimes you get this:


Meet the Mermaid Fiasco... This poor card started its life as a paper cut, which I was quite happy to try. I searched high and low for a piece of black paper and couldn't find any in my whole stash, quite brilliantly -yeah, right...- I decided to use a piece of blue paper.

I then started to work on cutting the design, which turned out to be quite time consuming and difficult at times.

I finally finished and started on the background, scrunged up white paper over cardstock and covered with blue metallic paint. I added the paper cut and it got completely lost over the background, I thought that I could outline it a bit and started adding white and black ink until I got to a point where I just had to step away and admit that this time I was way over my head... I'll have to start from scratch for this little beauty...ugh...

Portrait of a Fairy

Ok, so this is what I picture the portrait of a fairy looks like ;)
This one is for Deb.

*I started with a vintage playing card that had a character from one of Jane Austen's books -I cannot remember which character though-.

*I gessoed over the image, added light peach and purple squares of tissue paper all over the rest of the card, and finally rubbed a bit of metallic blue paint over it.

*I painted over the original image with my acrylics and added two butterfly wings from a rub-on I had lying around (I think I need to seal them though, so I can make sure it doesn't peel off)

*I ended it with acrylic blue squares and rectangles outlined with black and white ink and some pieces of metallic paper on top.

I like to play with collage and mixed media a lot, granted it does not always comes out as I had earlier planned...check in tomorrow to see what I mean.

Mixed Media Butterflies

One of these is going to Anita in iATCs, for the Summer PAT. She is in my Mixed Media group and she asked for butterflies, so I started working on one and ended up with two :)

Here's a short walk through of how I made these:
*I used some watercolor paper as my base, and did a quick wash with yellow and red watercolors.
*I altered the images from a greeting card, it was a blue butterfly with the 2 yellow smaller butterflies on the corners. The image was too large so instead of wasting half the image I did 2 ATCs from it.
*I first added a watered down gesso coat over the images- I just wanted to give some tooth to the paper so I could add color on top.
*Next was a very translucent coat of metallic paint -blue and yellow- over the entire butterflies' bodies.
*I added the inside details with acrylics, white ink, and black ink.
*I finished it up with a transparency -text on one and music sheet on the other.

I worked on more ATCs during the weekend, and a larger project from my figure drawing class. I'll post them later on during the week.

Queens!

These are my latest ATCs for the Flower Queens/Fairies Swap at iATCs. I had to work fast on these ones because they are due on August 3rd, I need to get them out of here by Monday to make sure they'll arrive on time.
These are done in watercolor paper, I applied a first layer of marker, went over it with my Prismacolor colored pencils and finished with white drawing ink.

A New Addiction

After a couple of weeks of constant rain the sun finally decided to make an appearance, we have had two wonderful days of sunshine and they have been greatly appreciated. I finally had a chance of taking pics of the latest blooms in my Mom's garden and they are just fantastic. Our pomegranate tree is full of fruit which soon will be ripe enough to eat and all the rose bushes are blooming.
Take a look at my new addiction ;)

I have always had this attraction to knitting and sewing, but for the life of me I cannot knit nor sew a button.
A couple of weeks ago comes my Mom with a new hobby she is going to try, using a knitting board. I instantly jumped on the idea but had to wait for her to complete her project first, a salmon scarf which she finished but then work got in the way and my project was pushed in the back burner.
I finally decided I wanted to give it a try so I looked online for instructions on how to use a knitting board and started trying it out with the yarn I had recycled from an old sweater. It is not the most beautiful scarf ever; to be true I'm not sure I'll ever wear it, but it let me get a feeling for the knitting board. After finishing that one, I got this brown yarn and started working on a complete piece which I finished last weekend.

My favorite part is getting different effects by using different stitches, this one is a ribbing stitch and it made the scarf quite warm and full. It was quite a fun and fast project to work on and I can see more scarves and different stitches coming during the following months.

P.S. The latest issue of Art Trader Magazine is out and is full of great stuff, click on the cover and enjoy all the cool articles and art in this edition.

Markers

Ok, this one was a bit of a challenge, for this swap over at iATCs I could only use markers. I hadn't joined but I was doodling on some blank pieces of card while waiting for some webpages to upload -my internet has been ssssslllllooooooowwwwww lately- and I came up with a couple of ladies.

I decided to try my hand at markers and started coloring the details, the hair, the backgrounds....and then I realized that in my big box of El Cheapo markers there weren't any markers suitable enough for coloring the skin, I wasn't going to let this stop me for joining this swap so I used a trick I picked up from another fabulous blogger (who I have lost in cyber space...cannot find her anywhere), I colored over an empty plastic bag trying to get a nice puddle of ink and then I used a brush and some water to pick up the color like watercolors and applied it to the card.

A couple of things to think about:

* Make sure that your previous colored areas don't get wet because the water might leave a mark on it.

* My paper was not fit for watercolors...so I had a hard time telling the right amount of water to use -the paper soaked too much water and looked darker before it dried completely. I highly suggest using watercolor paper.

* This will obviously not work with permanent markers -so put those Sharpies away! they need to be water based for the technique to work.

Sparkling Butterflies

Here are a couple of ATCs I made during the weekend for two artists. The top one is for a trade over at Atcs for All and the bottom one is for Anita over at iATCs -who by the way does extremely lovely jewelry, go drool over some of her beauties in her blog.
I'm getting some awesome heart ATCs in exchange for these :)

I used watercolors on both of these and added some sparkle using my metallic acrylic paints. The top one was outlined with silver metallic paint and the bottom one was outlined with black ink.
I just love butterflies and how easy it is to make them look whimsical and fanciful.

13 Minutes

There is this very cool swap over at iATCs called the 13 minute swap. You need to create your cards in 13 minutes or less, that 13 minute part is the one that really freaked me out...but I still decided to give it a shot.
All my cards were done with watercolors and finished with black ink for the details and I quite like the results. It was difficult to stop fidgeting with the cards, I wanted to keep adding more and more details! The really positive of this swap is the fact that I did not stress over it; I decided to give it a try, work on my cards and sign up when they were done.
I chose landscapes because it's an easy enough theme to put in paper, I just drew some very basic reference lines and did the rest with the watercolors. Try it out, you might surprise yourself with the results you get!

Love Hate

I realized last week that I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed with stuff lately and that this has been draining my energy to create art. I decided I needed to change that, so now I try to have positive thoughts and just focus on having fun with my art.

I worked on these CDs during the weekend, they are old CDs where I added canvas paper on top and used my acrylics there...

Acrylics and I have a love/hate relationship, whenever I start painting with acrylics I start doubting myself and feeling like throwing everything away because I don't like how things are looking; it's always difficult to switch from media to media and change the techniques I need to use to apply with each project...that's the hate part. The love part comes when I finally remember how to work and things start shaping the way I want them to :)

To finish these ones I added a couple of magnets in the back and they'll be around my fridge until I'm ready to send them.

Boxes

One of my best friends has this obsession with boxes; she owns a lot of them in different colors, styles, and materials and has a very hard time saying no to a box when she sees one. I worked on 2 boxes last weekend with different techniques and materials and they will be hard to let go when I post them on their way.

This one is a wooden box measuring 8"x6" and done with acrylics and inks. There is a very nice blue metallic shine in the sky, but of course the camera couldn't pick that up. The inside has 3 compartments and the bottom of them were covered with some oriental fabric I got in a trade.
This box is metal and I worked on pastel paper and soft pastels to create this scene of the entrance of Antigua Guatemala. I sealed it with spray, but since I know the lid will be constantly manipulated I added 2 layers of clear varnish on top...I was SCARED to death while doing this, because I thought the colors would smudge, but luckily they held up and the lid has a lovely shine to it.

I spent all day yesterday working with old CDs to create fridge magnets. I managed to finish 3, I'll have to complete the last one later today and then I'll post the pics.

Graphite Kick

It seems I got stuck in a graphite loop the last couple of days. Here are 4 ATCs I made for a Pick-a-Theme swap over at iATCs. I absolutely love PAT swaps because I get to do different cards and I get my choice of cards in return; this time I ended up with a group that had requested animal theme cards and I'm getting butterflies in return. It was a nice change to go back to graphite for a while, but at the end I was pretty tired of the grayscale... I did work in 3 different projects yesterday afternoon, but they are part of a trade and I cannot post them until my partners get them so the surprise isn't spoiled :)

Strong Women, Strong Ideas

I got hit by a ton of stuff the last couple of days which drained my energy a big way...

It all started a week ago when I COULD NOT get any sleep because of the toothache from hell...really, I took 3 different pills and they did not do a darn thing, I managed to fall asleep at 4 am and I had to get up and go to work just 2 hours later.

The next night I was obviously dead tired and went to sleep pretty early just to be awaken by my bed shaking at 2 am; at first I thought it was my dog jumping into my bed, but then I realized that this wasn't that simple...it turned out to be the effects of the Honduras earthquake which made the earth shake for more than 40 seconds. Try to get some sleep after that...

I got a return visit from the toothache on Friday morning and as much as I dislike visiting the dentist I finally accepted that this was not going away and spent my Friday afternoon, Saturday afternoon, and Tuesday afternoon going through a root canal procedure...on top of that, there's the added bonust that I had no extra cash lying around for this...

Ok, I'll stop the complaints now... Here are 2 cards I made when I felt the need of some relaxing. They have some text in the background, different acrylics textures and a magazine transparency done with some clear tape, and ink.