Typically, July is my month off from work.  My forced vacation.  Every July I promise myself that I will be more productive – I’ll paint more, I’ll work on more clay creatures.  Well, this July I actually have been more productive, if not as much as I wanted.  July may be over, but I have one week left of my vacation and I will be making the most of it.  Today, I painted this:

She reminds me of a character from the Last Unicorn named Lady Amalthea, mostly in color scheme.  I very much enjoyed painting her, even if it seems like I tend to rehash a lot of the same schemes and themes.  This was in ACEO format, which is 2.5″ x 3.5″ and was done in watercolor and white ink.

Earlier in the week I painted a couple more pictures of females.  I think my work on face proportions is starting to get better, mostly because I have swallowed my pride and actually actively look at sources while drawing out the sketch and trying to figure out where  my shadows should be.  I seem to be the most comfortable working small, so ACEO sizes are used almost exclusively.

And for the rest of the week, my goal is a simple 1 painting or clay creature per day.  The painting seems to come to me easier, but I am holding out hope that I will actually bother to get out my clay again and see where I can go with that.

Time will tell.

It’s been (almost) a year since I last posted on this page.  I’ve worked on commissions, painted some, my cat went through surgery, my boyfriend and I went on many day drives, I took lots of pretty pictures.

I am frustrated with myself that I haven’t been keeping up this page as much as I wanted to – as much as I told myself I would when I first made it.  I have such great aspirations to do things with my art and I can’t ever seem to hold myself to them.  But I am posting now, and that is something.

It is my month off from work and I have been painting quite a bit.  Today, I went back to one of the first paintings I did in watercolor, and still one of my favorites.  The original, which you can see in the right side panel under “About the Artist”, is only about an inch and a half square.  The one I painted today is a little over 8  inches square.  There are things I like better about it, and things I prefer more about the original, but I love them both.

I am also involved in an ACEO swap which has been helping the creative juices flow, and I have painted more than my allotted share of those so I figured I will show them here.  Most of these will not be in the swap – maybe none of them will be in the swap.  I haven’t decided which ones I’ll be keeping and which I’ll be sending out, and I still have more ideas that I want to paint so I am not done making them either!  Each of these paintings is 2.5″x3.5″.

For my sister’s birthday in June, I painted her a picture of Humpback Whales, which predates the smaller version that I tried in the ACEO above.

All of these paintings were done in the last few weeks, and I am hoping that I can keep up the pace until the end of my time off from work.  The ACEO swap has certainly had me motivated, and has helped me get back into the groove again.
Finally, these two images were painted a few months back.  I was working on making my skin tone more realistic, though after painting them I realize I also direly need to work on my proportions.  Still, I like the colors and the style of the backgrounds.

And here’s hoping that I stay motivated, and it’s not another yearlong lapse between posts!