Tag Archives: art

A Painting for My Husband…

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I painted this beach scene for my Husband for Christmas.  BeachSceneSmallLogo

I finished it on Christmas Eve, just in time to pop it into a frame I had in the studio.  He has always loved the “Woody” car with a surf board on the top.  We have a lot of fun spotting them when we are hanging out at the beach.

I think this is the first time I have ever drawn and painted a car.  I finally put the hanging hardware on the back of it this weekend so he can hang it up in his office.

Here are a couple pictures of the progress of the painting.

Beginningofpainting

I am just beginning to get the palm trees sketched and painted in..

WithPalmsin

This is the painting of the beach, I just need to add the car.

carsketchedin

With the car sketched in…  I did a pretty detailed drawing in pencil on paper and then did the old-fashioned transfer of scribbling on the back of the paper with charcoal and tracing over my sketch to transfer the line drawing into my painting.  It works great, I also sometimes use white charcoal or soft pastel if I am transferring onto a darker painted surface.  If you mess up you can just brush it off with a paper towel.  Also, if you don’t want charcoal all over the back of your sketch, you can take a photo copy of your sketch and use the copy for your transfer.  I use this process a lot when I want to “Ink” one of my Manga drawings, too.

Wish you a wonderful creative day, Janell

Garden Cottage Painting

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Happy New Year!  Here is a painting I made titled “Garden Cottage.”

CottageFinalL

I think I would like to escape to this little cottage and spend the day painting. 🙂  I am really enjoying acrylic painting again, I  just started again three months ago after about a 20 year break.  This is the second painting I did this past Fall.  I have done other mixed media work and I am still experimenting with the style and brushwork I like best.  But I think my style is emerging…

I didn’t get much painting done in December, although I did make a painting for my husband for Christmas.  Of course, I finished it the day before and popped it into a frame I had out in the studio just in time to tuck it under the tree.  I have switched to working in acrylics instead of oils and I like the faster drying time.  I have always painted fast a furious!  So working in acrylics goes along with my style and much easier cleanup.  I am really liking the full body acrylics, especially the ones by Golden.  And all the textures and mediums…

I also love to take pictures and have a huge library of images on my computer to choose from.  So I have no loss of subject matter, now… just need to make more time to paint in 2013!

I have been looking over art books and studying different techniques and brushwork applications as I work on developing my style.  I just love research, actually sometimes I think I get so wrapped up in research that I can’t seem to get time at my easel.  Below is the painting on my easel at about 2/3 of the way finished so you can see a bit of my process.  I did a lot of toning down of areas to bring the focal attention to the little cottage.  I also added some yellow and warmed up the tone of the painting.  The finished painting is on a panel with 3″ deep sides and is 11″ x 14″.

Cottage preliminaryL

Wishing you a wonder fun-filled creative year!    Janell

Halloween Manga – Zombies

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This last weekend I taught a Manga Zombie workshop at the Library Teen Center.  I had a group of fun and talented teens!  Here are a few demo’s I sketched for the class.

I had a lot of fun with this class, it was pretty funny listening to my gruesome drawing instructions.  A big change from my usual Manga subject matter of sweet fairies and tree ladies.   Hmm… not sure if I am up to inking them.  We had a lot of laughs throughout the workshop. 🙂  Happy Halloween!  Janell