What's on my easel today
This week I have been working with acrylic paints and seeing what I could do with a limited palette of colors. My inspiration came from a magazine image of a mom walking with her two kids on the beach and it really resonated with me.
The first time I sketched this was when I had an hour to myself in a doctor's waiting room. I used my portable watercolor pencils and aqua brush and really enjoyed the process.
I wasn't too thrilled with how the mom's face turned out, but what I really like about it is the depth in the background, the little boy looking down at his feet in the sand, and the young girl wrapped in an afghan blanket.
For some unknown reason, I was inspired to go ahead and make this into a larger painting using acrylics and the new Liquitex glazing medium and slo-dri-medium I purchased after seeing it used in an artist's YouTube video tutorial online. The glazing medium seemed to answer the "stickiness" problem that I had been having with the acrylics. It added more body and thickness to the paint and made it felt so creamy, as if I was painting with cake frosting.
Pictured below is the palette I was using along with the mediums. I first painted the background and while those colors were still on my palette, I decided to paint their clothing and hair with the same colors. Maybe it was laziness having to mix new colors, but my air-tight palette was already so crowded that I didn't have any space to do so. I was able to use this palette this whole week without the paint drying up on me... yay!! I am still working on the fine details thanks to my daughter, Madolyn, who so graciously picked up a few very fine line paint brushes at Michaels for me.
You can contact me at jennifer@jennuineexpressions.com if you are interested in purchasing this painting or would like to have a fine art giclee print to add to your art collection.
Creating digital art... my newest hobby!
While Madolyn is visiting from New York this week, I have been taking full advantage of her iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. She had the Design App installed. I had tried it out a few times a year or two before, but set it aside as I found it to be very frustrating. This time I seemed to really take to it. I found myself sitting comfortably on the couch inside my family room as well as the couch poolside!
I started out painting a few of my favorite things - flowers! Although I haven't watched any tutorials, I intuitively played around with all the different brush styles, colors, and their opacity. I am particularly fond of the daisies and how realistic they look to me, especially the yellow centers. The one on the right was my attempt at a very dreamy garden path. The one on the left was meh...
The image on the left is of Madolyn sunbathing in her new bikini while laying on our new circular covered bed on our "Serenity" deck, named after fond memories of our time on a Carnival cruise adult deck. I sketched the middle image while sitting on the couch in Steve's office. He had no idea that I was sketching him. He now uses it on his website at beyond introversion.com . Be sure to check it out! The image on the right is again of the mom and kids. I think I am getting much better and quicker with my sketching.
I really like the mom's skirt and the details in the little boy's clothing and hair. I have no idea where this last one came from! I upgraded to the pro version of the Design App for iPad and discovered an orange/green gradient tool. As I was just swirling the colors and textures together, an eye started to appear in the middle. Perhaps it's the eye of the storm. Noah though it looked like a lizard and Madolyn thought it was a dragon. Well, whatever it is, I can tell you that it is quite different than anything else I have ever created! With the eye so large, I was able to get more details and depth and I enjoyed that. I also discovered how I could smudge (or push) colors into one another, creating the shadowing under the eye lid and corners.
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"Golden Coral"
Abstract flow art using metallic acrylic paints
Art Quote of the Week:
“You don’t have to be ‘a creative’ to be creative.”
–Drory Ben-Menachem, designer
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