Went to another Paint Nite last night! Pretty happy with the outcome of this – it will make a nice father’s day gift 🙂
My next challenge post should be up soon. I’ve been having a super busy month but I haven’t forgotten about you.
Lessons
Drawspace Lesson: Claudette
Here is my rendering of Claudette.
Here is the link to the lesson: Claudette
The cool thing about DrawSpace is that every time I look at the lesson I feel intimidated, but once I start I am always impressed with what I can do. Not that this is perfect but I am able to see so much improvement in my drawing skills.
Drawspace Lesson: Ashley
Paint Nite
So I’ve had a really busy week and haven’t worked on anything new so I will post something not so new. This is a Paint Nite painting I did back in February. For those of you who don’t know, Paint Nite is a social event where an artist leads you step-by-step through a painting while you consume adult beverages. It’s a really cool event for people (like me) who have little or no painting experience.
This event is actually what inspired me to go out and buy my own paint supplies. I ended up staying for an extra half hour after the event ended to add my own personal touch. The cool thing is that now, two months later, I feel confident enough that I could do this painting over and improve it in so many ways.
Love you to the Moon
I made this painting as a gift for my boyfriend for our anniversary. I really wanted to include the people in silhouette in a painting because it’s been sort of a motif in a few gifts I’ve given him. Last week I posted a sketch of these people on a boardwalk, but as I began thinking about turning it into a painting, I thought it would be really cool to paint a moon. Except for the fact that I had no idea where to start or how to paint a somewhat realistic moon.
So of course, I went to my favorite place to learn things – Youtube. I found a preview for a lesson by Ric Nagualero of painting a full moon. Perfect! It was pretty much what I was imagining in my head. I headed over to his website, paid the $15, and started on my journey to paint the moon. He really broke it down step by step. Even though I used slightly different colors than him and a different silhouette design, I was really able to understand his technique and apply it to my painting. I would recommend this lesson to anyone – he has some free lessons available as well so I would definitely check it out.
The other cool thing was that I was able to apply some skills that I had learned in previous painting lessons. In my post Brown Trees, Brown Trees, What do you see? I learned how to use my fan brush to make grass. I realized that when making the grass in this painting, I had a much better grasp of how to use the brush.
It’s cool learning techniques from different artists. I feel like I am starting to become more independent in my work and starting to craft my own style. Definitely am beginning to have a lot of ideas about cool art work I want to do!
Anyway, if you are interested in checking out Ric Nagualero’s you can check him out at the links below:
Paint Nite 2
Here is another painting I did at a Paint Nite event. I like this one a lot more than the first paint nite I did. I feel like my trees came out way better and the reflections of the flowers in the ground is cool.
Introducing the Exotic Emma Emu
I noticed that I have been posting a lot of paintings because I’ve gotten so excited about my new painting supplies, but I think it’s time to share some of my drawings since I’ve been drawing for much longer than I’ve been painting.
This drawing, Emma Emu, is one of my favorites I’ve done in the past few weeks. I used the lesson Emma Emu by Brenda Hoddinott. Her website has been a HUGE resource for me in developing my skills. I’ve been working my way through her lessons. I sometimes doubt my abilities but as I work my way through her detailed step-by-step instructions I am almost always happy with my end result.
Brown Trees, Brown Trees, What do you see?
In an attempt to learn some painting skills, I tried out this lesson by Len Hend. It’s a monochrome painting which means I only used 1 color and white. I didn’t have burnt umber like the video suggested but I ended up using raw umber, which was close enough. I also bought the fan brush used in the lesson and I’m glad I did because I loved the effect it made. His next lesson is on foliage and I will have to try it out sometime!
Experimenting with Color Pencil
Hey friends,
Last post I told everyone that I wanted to use this blog to hold me accountable to practice making art while sharing my work with others and hopefully receiving some feedback. My goal is to post every Monday morning – that way I have the weekend to really work on a project before I write about it. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with it even with 50 hour work weeks.
Anyway, after playing around with paint for a few days, I thought it would be fun to switch to colored pencils. I’d messed around with them a little bit – making a silhouette of a woman in front of a sunset. I wasn’t really happy with the sketch because the hatching lines were going in all different directions and I decided I needed to learn some technique. I didn’t really know where to start so I headed over to Youtube.
I started off with this Drawing an Apple tutorial. I quickly realized colored pencils takes a lot of patience to layer, blend, and repeat. It was totally worth it when my apple started having that waxy consistency and realistic look. I added to the picture by using Drawing a Pear as a guide.
I was really impressed by how the colors in the apple ended up blending – the more layers I added, the more it felt realistic. I feel like I haven’t necessarily reached that point with the pear yet. How do artists know when they are done layering and blending?
P.S. I used Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils for this.
babothy creations 