Starving artist holiday sale! (literally.)

Everyone tells you to follow your dreams but nobody tells you what to do when those dreams die...
That's why for the rest of 2011 you can buy any art work on this blog for 50% off! If you see a painting you like on my blog and it's still available I'll quote you the discounted price via e-mail message!
But wait, there's more!
Act within the next THREE DAYS and I'll include a small hand-drawn dinosaur for you free of charge! (Everyone loves them, guaranteed to brighten up your day! Unless you want a sad dinosaur? Do you hate somebody and want them to feel depressed constantly? I can draw sad dinosaurs! Almost made my co-worker tear up just looking at it!)
You'll get a one of a kind piece of fine art and I'll be cheered up (I should have drawn the sad dinosaur with my eyes closed, it's too effective...)! It's a win-win situation.

Puttin' on my big girl artist pants

Oh, hey there, did I mention I received my first commission? Well, I did. And I'm super excited about it. It's looking good, I'm very proud! Sometime after Christmas I shall reveal all, but for now (even though the chance that this blog will be discovered by the people that the painting is intended for is very very VERY minuscule) I shall keep it secret!
It's adorable, so be prepared!

Theme is Decided upon!

New work to begin soon! I haven't been working lately because
A) I have some sort of pattern in my head that says it's not spring semester yet, therefore I can't possibly start art projects.
and
B) I have nothing to escape from because I'm only working part time currently and have no need to paint (however I do look at everything and think about how I would paint it, so plenty of mental exercise going on there...)
But now, I have decided upon a theme. I want to do a small and simple series and I have found it! (perhaps if I like it I can try to get on Orr Street's waiting list and exhibit it? hmm...it would be so nice to have my own show here in Columbia :D [I'm not counting my permanent display at Bubblecup])
It may or may not be on traditional painting surfaces. (because I'm poor/ it would be interesting/people like upcycling things into art/<-- could mean sales and $$$ I hope)
We shall see.
Are you intrigued?
Stay tuned.

I am alive!

Oh, gosh. It's been about 3.5 months since I've posted anything. I'm sorry to say that I really haven't produced anything that I can post on here... A few quick sketches, but overall I haven't been working.
We can blame that on Mr. Gouda, a 2 year old Golden Retriever that I babysat all summer so his mommy and daddy could go back home to China for the summer. While it was fun, it was time consuming. And also made me not do a lot of work past June...
I have, however ,been reading a lot. And dreaming up ideas for book covers and story illustrations. I just haven't done any of them yet.
And I found a new computer program (new to me, anyway), like Illustrator, but free and open source. As most of us know, however, I don't get along with computers or technology in general, all that well... so it's going pretty slow. I think it would be a lot better to produce some of my ideas on the computer so it will be a while before I actually post any of those things...
So, this post is pretty much to inform you that
A) I am not dead.. I am very much alive
and
B) I am still working (if only in my head at the moment,) ((but you know what, Michelangelo did the same thing, so it's cool))
Since I feel bad for not posting anything new, here is a link for some interesting porcelain skulls to get you in the mood for Halloween!

Enjoy!

Here is another ink wash with watercolor mini work of art for you to look at. I would write more but my brain is tired. I will tell you, though, that the pearls were not the easiest thing in the world to do with watercolor... 

Hey.. I forgot....

Here's a small ink wash with water color overlay of my wooden Buddha and some spare change...

And here he is with the plastic dinosaur I found buried outside of my house...

I just thought they were interesting pieces... but if you want to be all scholarly about it I suppose you could address the irony of the Buddha with money... and then the common factor between Buddha and Godzilla.... Okay, okay... so one is Japanese and the other actually originated in India... but this Buddha looks more like a Chinese Buddha so we can just slap an Asian theme tag on the last one...

Seriously though, I enjoyed doing these... You wouldn't think that there would be so many different colors on a tiny red wooden man... but just set him near a window and wipe the dust off and you'd be amazed... it was really fun trying to figure out what colors to put where on him since it's watercolor and we all know how unforgiving watercolor is. Maybe some of you don't so I'll just tell you that it's a really unforgiving and mean medium which made Buddha all the more challenging and fun :)

If you're in Columbia sometime this summer, these bad boys will be up on the Bubblecup gallery wall starting in July, hooray!

New Watercolor

One of the first watercolor and ink pieces I did (there will be more posted later). Of course this one has the acrylic ink underneath the watercolor, so it bled through to the top. It couldn't just sit there quietly like the new ink I purchased...

New Sketch!!!

Anna from the Thursday morning session last week

A 2 hour drawing

More to come, I just don't feel like putting everything on right now

AND

They will be in COLOR!!!!

:)

News and No pictures

I have just submitted two pieces to the Larry Show. Cross your fingers everybody!
Also news in the painting selling department. It isn't official yet but I'm pretty sure the sunflower will be sold soon. Hooray!

watercolor, totally safe for work

I felt the title was necessary just because the past few posts were dealing with nudes. This is a refreshing change of pace. Of course, tomorrow is another drawing session, and since I don't feel like falling down and dying anymore I shall go and you shall have more pictures to look at! 

More NSFW toned pieces...

Model leaning over support railing

Model laying down

Reading and coffee

Relaxing

NSFW toned paper drawings from a Saturday session at MU

The first drawing from a few weeks ago. This was before I realized Saturdays weren't 3 hour long poses, only 25 minutes each.

More toned pieces + a Larry Show entry!

A drawing of one of my favorite customers from work. For the first half she had no idea I was drawing her.

Another one of my favorite customers. Actually looks nothing like her.  She did happen to know, however. 

This is the piece I"m entering into The Larry Show. It's a juried show and I hope it makes it in! I'm sure it will. It looks so neat in person, in it's little matted frame. I'm very proud of it. 

The gallery continues!

I'm on my way to a drawing session this morning. But, as I a m sitting down to a lovely breakfast of strawberries and oats I suppose I have time to post a few more drawings...

This is one of the first pieces that I used Robert's Loganberry and Lichen drawing pencils on. They're really just this deep violet and mossy green color. Also I used a red colored pencil in there too. 

The model laying down.

I finished with the previous pose a little early so relocated. Then the pose was over so this one isn't as detailed. It's still a lovely line drawing, I think.

So there is your batch of drawings  for today. Perhaps soon you shall get to see the piece I am entering into the Larry contest! More information to follow.

Toned paper gallery

Okay. I have JUST finished scanning in the toned pieces. Literally right now. There is quite a few of them so I shall just put a few up at a time. Once again, there are nudes. So, probably not safe for work.

This one is just a copy from a Rubens. I would try to track down a possible title and year BUT my book, and what a lovely book it is..., is across my room. 

This is Neil. He's a well known male model in Columbia and is amazing to work with. This is one of the first toned paper pieces from life that turned out. 

It may be difficult to tell, but I only used a few colors to make this drawing. Blue was not one of them. Yellow ochre, brown, black and white. In some of the pictures I will post later I did branch out and use a purple or a green drawing pencil borrowed from Robert and in a few others I totally cheated and used my colored pencils. 

I have plenty to keep posting for a while so keep checking!

Toned paper pieces!

Howdy there. Long time, no see...

This isn't an actual posting. There will be no pictures here. But I will tell you this: I have many accomplished works that I'd like to slowly post for you. The only problem right now is that they are about 3 feet away from me and the scanner is in the other room. I have recently been stricken with extreme hunger and am now waiting for my cure: Gumby's.
I should mention though, that half of these works are totally NSFW given that they are of female nudes and parts can be seen... shield your eyes, folks!
Also, a local exhibit at the George Caleb Bingham gallery on Mizzou campus called the Larry Show features pieces done by several artists of the local model, Larry Bauer (which can be viewed here). It is a study of how different artists approach portraiture. What I'm getting at is that I'm going to be submitting some pieces. It's a juried show, so hopefully I get at least one in. I'll try to keep you all up to date.
Wish me luck on my Spring Break! (It's supposed to snow :/ )

Deluge!

I am finally keeping my promise! But I will soon neglect you again, so to make up for that  I am flooding you with many pictures. Two of them are paintings I have done in class, the other ink drawings are things I did (actually almost all of them were done on the 24th this month. I was on a roll.) at home. Enjoy!

Here is the first self portrait I did. Keep in mind it is only ink. That means I didn't lay anything in with pencil beforehand. At first I wanted to use hatching to indicate shadow, then decided to do a wash anyway. Not too bad, eh?

Then I did this one, after I had completed the two still life  you will see below and had looked at an ink wash portrait of Isabelle Bishop. I didn't want to do any hatching, just a few lines then all wash. I like her much better.

Here is the first still life. The darker washes that add the lovely contrast came after I had completed the second still life. Perhaps later I will go back into the second one and make the oregano pot darker.

Oops, this one cut in front of the second still life. It is a slice of my bedroom as viewed from an arbitrarily placed mirror. You can see Oscar the plant in there on the left!

Here is the second still life. I like it much better because it seems more airy and free. I might, as I've said before, go back and add a darker all over wash to the oregano pot. This is actually more true to life since I've already drawn it once, I could correctly place the items in the image, and you get to see the tiny oregano sprouts!

A tiny 6 x 6 " painting on masonite board in oil paint. I might go back in and make the front of the brown cloth less transparent.

Same size, same medium as before.  This was my break painting from the one up top while I waited for the background to dry. It is also my first successful attempt at painting a glass object. 

I had recently bought many art books from Thriftbooks.com  and had been flooded with so much inspiration from so many different artists. Originally it was super van Gogh-y with how I laid in the brush strokes, still kind of is with the sunflower. 

So, this is it. I will probably have more for you later. I do have more for you, but they are no where ready to be seen by people. So embarrassing. 

Well, hello there stranger!

So, as some of you know, I've been working full time running my darling little tea shop AND going full time at school these past 5 weeks or so. I haven't had any time to upload pictures of what I've been up to, but hopefully soon that will change! (I HAVE been working on stuff, you see, just taking the time to bring everything over to my scanner... )
What I can tell you is that I've been a very, very bad girl (meaning I've gone over my monthly book budget...) and made yet another purchase. But you will forgive me. Want to know why? Because I've found a smashing good copy of an Isabel Bishop book for only 11 dollars including shipping. I've been using my newfound superpower (finding nice books on the cheap) for nothing but good (my bank account still doesn't consider that so good...).
Perhaps in the near future I will be a very good girl and upload EVERYTHING so that I have plenty of material to last me a good while.
I can tell you right now, however, that I have quite a good many drawings, a few miniature paintings and one semi-large painting in the works. In a few months I have an exciting project (meaning a giant 3 x 4 ft panel) coming up. I have no idea what will take place on that but it will be good, so stay tuned.

Adding to the library

I have 7 new books on the way! No, make that 8! Nobody loves finding awesome and super cheap art books more than I!
New paintings/drawings will be posted eventually....
I need an intern to do all of this for me... anybody want the position? You don't get paid and I make you update my inventory lists and model... sound good? Anyone?