Positively Charming Things

Today the painting was delivered to its recipient, my husband's grandmother, so I can safely reveal what I was working on now. First is a shot of the entire picture.  Keep in mind it is still a little curved, even after laying all night underneath something heavy in an attempt to flatten it, so if anything seems a bit skewed, that is likely why.  The squarish splotch on the upper right is a shadow. I can tell how my skills progressed with each figure with both the drawings and the…

I just finished a painting of three girls, but it is a gift so the reveal will have to wait until after it has been given to its recipient, since that person happens to be a fan of my FB page. 😊  All that is left is to wait for it to flatten and dry, then sign it and get it framed. Lessons learned from this project: Drawing faces is hard, even if I did use tracing paper to trace the photo and then use that as a guide while drawing.  No, I did not trace onto the painting this time.  I…

As promised, a photo of the angel painting I completed earlier this year, hand-drawn and all from my imagination:I'll have to get better photos of this later when the sun is out.  The kitchen lights leave a yellow tone to my pictures so I tried to color correct a little.  These might be a bit "richer" than the actual colors. Then, as posted on my personal Facebook page earlier today, the horse painting, completed.  I opted to do a monochrome style for this one: I still see a few things I'm…

So, if you've been a reader here long enough to have read this post, then I have some news for you - I finally finished that painting!  Since my posts don't seem to have the YEAR in them, that post was from probably August 2010.  Yes, over three years ago.  The last picture in that post is how the painting sat.  And sat.  And sat. And then one day, the local art store, which I subscribed to their mailing list when I bought my papers and paints mentioned in that post, sent out a newsletter…

My daughter is just about to lose her third tooth.  It's just loose enough to give me the heebie-jeebies when she shows it to me, but not quite enough to come out yet. For her first two teeth, the tooth fairy had to sneak into her room and swap the tooth for money from under her pillow. This time, there will be a pillow hanging from her doorknob, for easy access without risk of waking the sleeping girl.  I found this pattern and decided I'd give it a shot. It took me most of the afternoon to…

I have an old painting that I started in my senior year of high school, which my then-teacher effectively ruined by painting upon it with her firm idea of what she thought I should be doing with it. Here is a picture:     I used a photograph from some book for the fuschia flowers in the background; the butterfly in the foreground was something I added to fill in the picture.  My intent was for the butterfly to be sort of transparent.  My teacher was not fond of this idea and…

I am not happy about this. Polyform - makers of Premo and Sculpey are changing their clay colors.  They are adding several that, to be honest, look interesting.  However, they are also doing something I think is incredibly stupid and idiotic - they are eliminating some of their primary colors!! The following colors are discontinued: Red Pearl, Green Pearl, Cobalt Blue, Sea Green, Copper, Zinc Yellow, Frost, Fluorescent Green, Fluorescent Yellow, Fluorescent Red and Glow-In-The-Dark – We’ll…

I posted about this the other day, but I didn’t provide a snapshot of some of the prizes that you can win. And you can get more details, as well as other ways to enter to win one of the prizes, at our guild’s blog. There’s some really neat items to win, so you won’t want to miss this!  Plus who knows what cool item you may come across in the scavenger hunt that you just HAVE to buy!

Ok, not so much "exploring" as jumping right in.  In July I talked about receiving a new book by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, which sparked my interest in picking up the watercolor brushes again.  I noted that this time, I wanted to use artist quality paper and paints. And so I went out and bought some. Artist papers and paints are not cheap, so I got two full sheets of Arches 140lb cold-press paper, a plastic board to staple it to after I wet it down, and a handful of Daniel Smith watercolors. …

It seems I have crafting ADD - there are so many things I want to work on or try, that I work for so long on something, lose focus, and move on to something else. I've moved from polymer clay, to making hairbows, to picking up some new watercolor paper blocks and even some nice tubes of artist paints so that I can revisit painting with watercolors, all in the last two months.  I blame the latest on receiving my new how-to book in the Dreamscapes series, Myth and Magic: Every time I look at her…