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Saturday, December 31, 2011

My New Art Blog!

It's finally up, so go check it out, and buy to your heart's desire!

KParishart.blogspot.com

I'll put be working on a new painting, also, so look forward to seeing it up here soon, with all of the in between photos!

Art for sell!

I now have my new blog set up, and will be posting several works up there.  Tabs for pen and ink, acrylic and sketchbook will be included.  I will continue to update the originals tab of this blog, so that everyone can view all of my paintings in one place.

Now, to show you a charcoal sketch I did from a photo.  I know, I know...great art supposedly doesn't come from photographs, or so they say, but I like to practice that way.  Most of my landscape and still life paintings from now on will be on sight, combined with a few reference photos, so I can finish up at my studio....which doubles as my room, at the moment, hehe.

The charcoal piece below is from a while back, but I wanted to post it anyway, so that when I put something new up, my progress can be made more apparent, though I do like this one!




This is something I did a few months ago, so I can't post the process, or steps.  If you would like to request something, I would be happy to demonstrate a technique step by step for you guys:).  This painting took me a while to complete, even though it isn't too large.


Morning Owl
Acrylic on canvas board
9"x12"

Comment as much as you like! As soon as I have my other blog fully completed(hopefully within a few hours) I will make an updated post on here!

See ya soon:)

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The holidays and the new year!

Well, Christmas is over, and the new year is upon us.  I have been super busy with family, presents, baking, and a whole bunch of other things, but it's time to get this blog running again.  I have to say that I am absolutely ecstatic about adding PayPal to my blog.  I told all of you that I would be making a new blog for just my art, and I am almost ready to post it:)  There will hopefully be tabs for paintings, ink art, and various things from my sketchbooks, plus some inspiration for new art.  Later today I will put up a photo of a gift I gave my mom, which was a painting I did for her of things she really likes.

I hope all of my readers had an amazing Christmas, and will be having a good new year.  Tell me all about your New Year's resolutions in the comments!  This should be entertaining, to say the least.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Acrylic on Hardboard

I went into Lowe's the other day and picked up one 4'x8' piece of hardboard, although that's not exactly what it was called (finberboard, pressed board??).  I had them cut it at the store into 4 pieces, and brought it home, only cost about $9.  I gessoed the one board, two coats, and it didn't take much because of how smooth the surface already is.  I then used my sanding block to smooth out the edges.  

Painting on this size board can be somewhat tricky until you get the hang of it.  I used a spray bottle to keep the surface wet where I was blending, and I also do a very solid underpainting first, with all of the colors, because I find the need to make the color blending perfect, and that, for me, requires two layers of paint.

So this painting came out really well, and I'll show you some of the process.






This is after I had finished up the basic part of the tentacles.  The little plate is what I use to mix my paint on.  The main jellyfish (the round white part) was painted white first, to ensure that the colors maintained their brightness.  Below is the final painting:)


"Compass Jellyfish"
Acrylic on Canvas
2'x4'


Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Landscape painting

I worked on a dog painting recently, but decided to wait a bit before working on it anymore, and will show you guys the process of it once I finish:) Today I both started and finished a new piece that I am actually very pleased with.  I hope to hear what anyone thinks, and would like some solid critiques.

This first picture was taken after I had completed a simple outline of what I was painting.  I wanted to make sure not to paint blue beneath the trees, because I wanted them to retain all of their color.



This is the painting order that I used, as you can see that most of the background was in place BEFORE painting the trees.  Unfortunately, I completely forgot to put in the darkest part of the background, and stopped mid-tree to finish it.  



Here is the final product, plus a closeup of the tree on the right.  The snow texture on the branches was made with a painting spatula.

"Fresh Snow"
Acrylic on Canvas
16"x20"



Now, for some exciting news.  I will be setting up a secondary blog for selling my art only.  Hopefully, it will be up before the new year.  You should be able to find all of my works that are for sell, and purchase them there.  

Monday, December 19, 2011

Fur for thought:)

In my last post I mentioned that I would be writing about  painting fur and my experiences with it.  First, I think the smoother the surface, the better.  So, it is best to gesso the canvas, sanding between layers to even it out.  I also said that I would be showing my processes as well, so here goes.

I start off by making a very simple, and LIGHT pencil sketch of the subject I will be painting.  My personal preference is to also mark out some color variances.  This is right after I sketched in the bulldog figure, and had been playing around with a few coat colors.



Next thing I did was to put in the basic coat colors, a little bit darker than the true color. I didn't worry about making the fur texture at this stage.



Ok, so here is the finished product.  Details were added here; the eyes, fur texture, nose, highlights.

"Green Bulldog"
Acrylic on canvas
small?

Sorry, not sure on the size of this one, because it's not nearby at the moment.  It is smaller than the 9"x11".  Ok now to talk about the fur, which got it's texture in the final stage.  It's important to note that fur typically moves from top to bottom, and from the center out.  So, to paint fur, because it overlaps, I started from the bottom, worked my way up, and from the outer edges in.  I used a frayed filbert brush to achieve the effect shown.  I kept the strokes very light, and lifted the brush at the end to make the pointed ends seen in reality.  

Thanks for reading:)

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Acrylic cows....again and more please

So now that I have a found a more decent way to take photos of my work, I would like to share how I achieved the results I did (photographing).  Here are a few pointers: First off, I find that natural light is the best, and will achieve the truest colors possible.  I opened my blinds and have the paintings leaning against something, facing the window.  You definitely don't want it in direct sunlight!  Now, I also noticed that if you get the camera too close, and use the flash, you're going to get a terrible glare right in the middle.  The key thing is to get the photo as close to the original colors as possible which might mean changing the brightness, contrast, or saturation just a bit afterwards.


The following 2 paintings were completed within a few days of each other, and on both I used just one brush.  I had found a very interesting article that contained tips from professional painters that said it could be a good idea to use one brush in order to get to know exactly what can and can't be done with it.  It's also easy to start developing different styles when you're limited in the tools you're using.




"A Red Cow Gathering"
Acrylic on canvas
11"x14"

 "A Red Cow Gathering" was completed using a dabbing effect throughout.  I changed the ground about 5 times because I couldn't seem to get the perspective right; to make it look like it was one, continuing under the fence, or two, receding into the background.  Eventually I worked it out:)

"A Cool Sip"
Acrylic on canvas
11"x14"

Later today I'm going to talk about my experience with painting fur, and show you one of the first dogs I've ever painted!  I'll also show some of my painting processes, like the early stages of the painting:)

See you soon!




Cow and other things.

Hi, everyone.

As I make new discoveries in painting I will be showing them to you, but at the moment I have a month's worth of paintings to show you guys.  Sometimes I find it difficult to decide what to paint, and this requires me to spend a bit of time finding inspiration.  Last month (november) I got lured into painting a few cows.  I have to say I wasn't so keen on the idea at first, but then I found some brahma pics, and I ended up loving the elegant face shape and hanging ears they have.

So here is what came of this.

"Red field, White cow"
Acrylic on canvas board
9"x12"

On a side note, I found a very amazing art blog, that some of you may or may not be familiar with.
http://williamwray.blogspot.com/ << This guy's art is wonderfully colorful, and has a unique quality.  Go check it out, I'm sure you'll find it quite amazing:)

Tomorrow morning, err later this morning, I will be posting two MORE cow paintings.  Bye for now...

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Acrylic Adventure

While I catch up on showing you my newest paintings, I've been trying to improve on my color mixing skills.  A painting can be completely abstract or even downright ugly, but if the colors work together, and they are captured correctly, it will catch your eye.  I used to be so focused on the technical aspect of painting, like brush strokes, and glazing, but I could never capture a scene or photo the way I wanted.  Turns out that I needed to learn how to truly understand color.  I had been missing the big picture, no pun intended, on how colors work together in a composition, from reflections, and lighting, to knowing that shadows are definitely not just black.

This acrylic painting is of a brightly colored little street, that seems to have seen quite a bit, completed about a month ago.

"Yellow City"
Acrylic on Canvas
11"x14"

Friday, December 16, 2011

Starting a few days ago?

I've decided to start this blog to show my progress as a painter, and also as an artist in general.  I hope to put up some new art every day, get better at this blogging business, and show some of my travels along the way.  I'd love to get some feedback and meet some like minded, or not so like, artists.


This is the first painting I completed upon deciding to paint full time.  It's painted directly from a photo, as are many of my initial paintings, for learning purposes.  I'm mostly a charcoal/ pencil, and ink artist, and somehow find painting, other than some easy stuff, to be quite alien.  This took me about an hour.



"Beached"
Acrylic on canvas
9"x12"