paint

I took a class in watercolor back in college. Our teacher had us paint very large (for watercolor), which was strange for me, as I was used to working very small and tightly. I used a photograph of a local landmark as the subject matter for my painting.

I enjoyed the effects I got in the rocks, and feel I learned a lot about using the medium, though it's been years since I put the techniques to use. Sometimes I miss watercolors, though 22x30 is pretty huge for me to work with them.

Later in college I took a printmaking class, and decided to revisit the image with linoleum. Looking back I could have used more contrast and lighter areas, and I'd like to try carving foliage again sometime soon.

When I took up oils a few years ago, I wanted to try my hand at a landscape, and figured I may as well revisit the stone circle again. The image was one that my best friend had always been a fan of, so I jumped on the "excuse" to paint it again and gift her the new one.

I thought a lot about happy little trees while painting this, and tried many different new techniques on this one to see what I could do, since the medium was new for me.

In the master copies I have lined up, I'm trying to pick ones both with the types of figurative work I enjoy, as well as background landscapes I would like to be able to emulate.

I finally got around to scanning in a good copy of my wedding invitation. I'd known for a long time that I wanted to do a linoleum print on it, and used some photos of Steven and I at a friend's wedding as reference. I should do some more art nouveau style stuff in linoleum.

The wedding invitations all ended up printing slightly differently. I liked the individual mottled effects I got out of letting the block not ink 100% smoothly (and took a vote from a couple of people who agreed - it looked more interesting, and made it more obvious they were handmade). I printed up this copy much later to frame and should reprint another mottled one as comparison.

I also wanted to do something personalized for our thank-you cards, so I used a few photos from our wedding to do a small portrait of us in watercolors. The background and the figures are two separate paintings I put together and printed out on watercolor-paper cards.

One more thing I should get a picture of is the text for the cards (eventually I'll put this info all together under my crafts section). I had done carved text for another wedding invitation for friends, but decided that was a really difficult thing to try and do again. Luckily I had access to a laser cutter, and got to try it out to cut a block of text.

I did another portrait as a wedding gift for some friends. One is a comic artist, and the other enjoys herpetology, so I thought this would be cute. (It's kind of creepy, but still cute)

Ssh, if you know who they are. I'm intending not to have Google pick this up for keywords.

I'll admit I'm not thrilled with my ability to capture his likeness as well as I'd hoped. I'm blaming it on poor photo references -- as it was meant to be a surprise, I wasn't going to stop by his place and demand to take some well lit photos of him on short notice (and he keeps a low internet profile imagewise). Luckily I found some helpful ones for her, and think I did a reasonable job. I'm really pleased with how it turned out overall.

Once my friends start catching on that this might happen when they get married, I won't feel like I'm spoiling the surprise to ask for some photos ahead of time. Having a good reference really helps a lot.

I started another self portrait from a photo-shoot my friend Carolyn took of me in Boston in my dress. I'm mainly doing it to work on simplifying backgrounds, and speed up my portrait process. The background failed, so I took an extra step towards simplification. Somehow I was imagining that blurring out the church in the background would count as simplification, as I tend to get caught up on distracting details, but I need to just put less in the background altogether. Still have more hours to put into this one.

I also wanted to work on my tones, so I'm doing a black and white piece revisiting my stuffed dragon imagery. I have a number of scenarios plotted out for a series of which this is one. I may or may not choose to attempt glazing colors over my underpainting when I'm done, I haven't decided yet. This one's also not done, but I'm off to a great start.

I also wanted to see if I could put together an animated gif of my process. It turned out kinda fun.

My roomates got married last Saturday, and I wanted to give them something as a wedding gift. I had been to a wedding a few years ago at which someone had given the bride and groom a portrait, and realized that this was a good idea to pursue myself. I spent most of Monday last week painting, with a bit of touchup Tuesday and Wednesday nights. I'm fairly pleased with the turnout. Their proportions feel slightly off, and my likeness of DM is a bit lacking from not having enough photo references available on short planning. I had a lot of fun doing it, and hope to do more in the future. I think it's okay that it kind of looks like a cheesy romance novel cover. Somehow it works for them, and they didn't seem to mind.