Inspiration Makes me Sleepy!!

  I. Need. Coffee. I was looking around on the internet for local artists last night and found some that I absolutely LOVE. So naturally I HAD to paint. Normally this would give me energy...Which it did. The only problem was that it was quarter till midnight!! Auugh. So, I did what any rational artist would have. I grabbed up all my paints as fast as I could, slapped a new panel on my easel and went at it as fast as I could! Which was actually great because I was trying to paint in a looser style and capture the image with as little strokes as possible. Here is the result. It took maybe a little less than an hour to paint.

I think I'm going to do this more often =D  I'm an instant results kind of person, so this was great fun hahaha.

Also, on a side note, I've learned to save my drafts here every few SECONDS since Liam (my 16 month old) likes to sit on my lap and just can't resist the keyboard! I don't know how, but even if he only pushes one button, its always the one that deletes everything!

Slow and steady gets pretty

    I finally had a chance to paint this afternoon and went right to work on Parker, the longer-haired cat of the two in this painting. I've begun to add the darks and move details here and there where they look incorrect. I just love how they seem to grow right out of the panel and become 3D! I'll be able to work on Rocky (the short-haired) while Parker is drying.

  I also worked on Thunder's portrait last night, but I'm not going to post a picture until she's all finished because the changes really won't be that obvious.

  Here is Parker so far

Parker from the two cats in oils

   Today I was able to chunk in all the major colors of the two cats, their shadows, and the background. That's a lot for me to do in one day! Thank goodness for my son's long nap! The background is a bit brighter than I want it (the colors didn't show up as vibrant in the photograph as they really are - there are a lot of rich oranges and reds.), so in later sittings I'll be knocking it back so it doesn't take so much focus away from the kitties. Since the paint is so thick this time around it will take several days for it to dry enough to work on. That means I'll be working on Thunder's portrait again so I'll have a new picture to show you of her soon.

Two cats in oils - Rocky and Parker.

Raw Umber Bones

   When I start a painting I make a very rough sketch in raw umber (a dark brown) which is more like a map of lights and darks than any kind of pretty picture. Things will still be moved a bit here and there farther along in the painting. I learned this technique when I was in summer school at the Schuler School of Fine Arts in downtown Baltimore. Many other painters that I've met will go into an extreme detail in their underpaintings to make sure that everything is in the right place, but from my experience that's unnecessary and kills the spontaneity of the painting. Also, being a left-brained person I will get stuck in a 1 inch square of detail if left to my own devices so this approach helps me to paint really wide and look at the whole picture.

   When this is dry I will go back with a very limited palette and chunk in the lights and darks in color. That has to be my absolute favorite step because I don't have to be careful! I can just slather the paint on, it's pure bliss!!

Two cats in Oils

Here we are so far

    Just a quick update tonight. I haven't been able to paint as much as I'd wanted this past week so I need to be at the easel instead of at the computer!!

   I had a busy weekend. Spent half of it sick and the other half out of town at a dog grooming convention! The latter was a nice pick-me-up after throwing up and everything though!

  Thunder is finally dry enough to take a picture before I start painting again (I actually forgot last time and just went on with painting again so I had to wait all over again hahaha)

    Her head is about 80 or 90% finished, as you can tell I've added a lot of highlighting and detail there, especially in the nose and eyes. I'm going to be blending the red blanket a lot more to fuzz it out a little bit and help make Thunder pop. I've got a lot more highlighting to add to her chest and paw, but I won't be going into as much detail on her hind end, just a few brighter highlights on her tail. Right before I'm done I'm going to go over almost the entire painting with a very very soft and full brush to slightly darken and soften areas that I don't want in focus as much.

 Painting of Thunder in oils.

A Look Back in Time

   I've been busy working on Thunder's portrait but I don't have a new picture to show because it's still pretty wet. I'll try to get one in the next few days.

  In the mean time I thought it would be fun to show you some of my pet portraits going back a few years. I've weeded through piles of old sketchbooks and canvases just so you could see where it all began, you lucky thing you!


  
  These are the two earliest pet portraits I found in my house (I'm sure there are even earlier ones in storage at my parents house)

Springer Spaniel in pastel from 2004

This is the very first pet that I painted! I'm not positive

 what the date was, but I'm going to guess 2005.

This is a close-up of a Chinese Crested I painted around 2007.

My teacher at the time encouraged me to start painting

commissioned pet portraits after I finished this one.

I was so happy with this and had so much fun painting it

that I really started considering selling them!

This is Bobbin the Havanese. He was my first commissioned pet portrait.

I finished him right around Christmas in 2007.

This is a sketch of my friend's miniature poodle I drew in 2008.

I started a painting based on this but unfortunately it was never finished.

This is one of the first watercolor pet portraits I painted in February 2011

   

   And that brings us back to today! I hope you enjoyed these!

   Also, there's still time to get your pets painted before Christmas, but hurry because I will need their photos before the end of this month!!

Painting what you see...and what you don't!

   I started drawing by copying pictures out of my favorite books when I was little and that was all I drew for many years to come. I always put myself down when I was in high school saying that I wasn't a 'real' artist because I didn't draw from my mind. In my head I was just a glorified photocopier. 
   Mostly because of all that I stuck rigidly to realism (after all, if it wasn't in front of me I couldn't paint it!!). Now imagine my surprise when a few weeks ago my art teacher told me nonchalantly after my fake grapes and been knocked out of place that I wasn't going to paint them like that anyway. I was pretty scared to tell you the truth! But here they are (not one done exactly from life) and lookin' pretty good!!

   Tonight while I was working on my portrait of Thunder I realized I had made things up on her too! Her owner only had two photographs for me to work from because Thunder had already passed away and in both of them her eyes were flashed out.

This is the picture of Thunder I'm working from.

And here are her made-up eyes!

   It's funny how I thought I'd escaped improvisation. The more I thought about it though the more it makes sense. Painting from life is not merely taking a snapshot of whatever's in front of you, that's what makes every artist's work different. When you're using your eyes and your brain it's however you perceive what you're looking at so it can be interpreted millions of ways!