Self Portrait with layers

I was trying to portray that I am a bright and interesting person. I did this by including the ornate top of the mirror and making the whitest area be the area around my head and body. I also wanted to portray that the eye sees light. When we look at things they are divided into sections and planes of color and light of differing intensitys. I put the lightest section, the mirror with my face, off to the side to make the picture more interesting. I also included the mirror and the drawers behind it to keep your eye focused on the picture. the dimmer section in the large mirror is just to emphasise the intensities of lights and darks in other areas. It is focused on my face and I can see the light on a stool in my mirror. This is placed there to give a sense of place. I created form by carving light out of the dark charcoal. I took a risk by showing a 3/4 view of my face. I couldn't even start the portrait till I had done some preliminary drawings of my face.

Welcome to Musicland

This was what I did for my homework a week or so ago. I made these for a friend's birthday, they have a musically magical theme(in my friend's words) with stresses on purple, blue, and colors that off-set each other. I bought the shoes, drew on them with prisma colors, and sprayed them with fixative to make them water proof. I'm pretty happy with them.

Mini Series- Take 3

My third and final painting in the mini series. I wanted to put the sea glass in a totally different place, which is why I flipped it over and put it in the bottom corner of the canvas. I was interested in how the wire would look on top of the crystal. I also really wanted to create an ocean type of feeling. So made the shadow lighter than the paper to make it seem like waves were coming off of the sea glass.
I think on a whole my mini series was a learning experience. I hated working on it but I got new idea on how to perceive objects. This was pretty successful for my first mini series, in my opinion.

Mini Series- Take 2

This was the second painting in my mini series and my personal favorite. I wanted to show how light looked when it passed through the sea glass. I really wanted the light to show how translucently colorful the crystal could be. Th intense blue colors definitely brought the sea glass out. The leather cord could probably be a bit smaller though. And my shadow isn't as well defined but the sea glass is the real star so I wanted to accent the beauty of it.

Mini Series- Take 1

This was the first painting I completed in my mini series. It is my necklace, a piece of sea glass wrapped in some metal. I was looking for an interesting way to show how the metal wrapped around the sea glass would effect the shadow. The places where the metal is wrapped are darkest and make a cool Cris-Cross pattern. Te background color was a bit challenging to pinpoint though.

An Art Site I Might Like, and Did Thoroughly Enjoy

The site that I looked at was not actually on the regular blog but I found it under the "A Painting a Day" project. The site is http://rosemarylucycosentino.blogspot.com/

She is fascinated with food and other household objects, like marbles.

I love how whimsical all of her paintings are. The just have a happy and fun feel to them. I also love to paint foo so seeing her style was interesting. I love the way that she painted the toast and peanut butter. It just makes me happy to see all of the lights and darks she could get out of a smooth spread of peanut butter. The cupcake is so fun and life-like that It looks like you could grab it and eat it.

Paintings from last year

So here are the paintings that I did last year. I liked to show all the patches of color and I experimented with a few ideas. Some of them were failures so they are not posted (i.e. paint knife painting, and mosaic painting).

Charcoal Drawings from last year

These are a few of my charcoal drawings that I did last year. These are the best ones I found. Enjoy! The first is an oil pastel. I couldn't get the computer to turn them right side up so just bear with it!