Yesterday I painted a congratulatory scallop "card" for a friend who defended her thesis today using watercolor mixed with white gouache. I'll be going to a party to celebrate Dr. Warsha tonight. Her thesis was about scallops, so I went with it. I'm really happy with how it turned out and I think I'll be painting more shells in the future.
Opah!
Today I learned of the recent discovery that the Opah fish is the first fish known to be warm-blooded! Upon doing a search for images of this fish, I was blown away by its enormous size, bright coloration, and polka-dotted pattern. It looks as though Wes Anderson invented it! So, in the spirit of excitement at this recent discovery I decided to paint one. Mine is one twenty-sixth the size that these deep-water fish can grow to be, which is 2 meters long!
After a quick initial pencil sketch I painted with gouache. Here is how Opah turned out, and some pictures of the process below. :)
I wish everyone a great Friday evening and a wonderful weekend! Opah!
April Project: Day 27
I gave myself one hour at the end of the day to paint. I didn't have a plan, but I decided I would do a portrait, and as soon as I started I thought of Frida Kahlo. This is based off of a very colorful photo of her. If you google image search for Frida Kahlo, you will certainly see it. I hurried a lot to paint this quickly, and I wanted to spend more time, but I stuck to my hour of time and I think it is okay. I might have to dedicate a little more time for Frida Kahlo in the future! She is so beautiful and colorful and amazing!
I'll be back tomorrow with something new, so check back soon! :) Thanks for looking!
April Project: Day 26
Hello! Happy Sunday! And happy birthday to my wonderful husband and bestest friend, Chris. Today I've been baking and cooking for Chris, but I put aside a little time to make a little painting. Here it is. I got a little frustrated part way through, but now I think it looks better. I'm realizing just now that there are some things I will want to change and adjust at another time, but for now, here is what I did today.
I'll keep working on my summer piece and I'll share it and the process when it is finished. :)
April Project: Day 22
Today I painted a dala horse with gouache. It was really fun! First I painted the red horse, and then I decorated it, so it was the same process as with a real dala horse, only flat. :)
I hope you like my little red dala horse. I'll be back tomorrow with something new for the first day of summer (or what they celebrate as the first day of summer in Iceland). Yup, it is a holiday tomorrow. The first day of summer. And there is snow in the forecast. :) Summer in Iceland!
April Project: Day 21
Hello and Happy Tuesday to you! Today I wasn't sure what to paint. I had several ideas, but I just started and let the painting inform me. What can I say? I have potted plants on the brain!
Hope you have a great day! And I'll be back tomorrow with something new to share with you. :)
April Project: Day 20
Happy Monday! Today was a windy day, so I stayed in and worked from home. I created a repeating pattern from the florals I painted on Day 8. Here is how it turned out. I'm pretty pleased with it. :)
This is what the process looks like before I define the pattern. I have to make sure the edges all line up properly so the pattern has a nice repeat.
I'll be back tomorrow with something new to share. Have a great rest of your day! :)
April Project: Day 19
Today I had a lovely chat with my dearest friend, Hillary, in MN. Part of the time while we chatted I painted in shades of coral and pink gouache. This is what it became.
I hope you had a wonderful weekend! I'll be back tomorrow to share something new with you! :)
April Project: Day 17
Hello to everyone and anyone stopping by! Happy Friday! Today I played with the gouache cups and drew on more of them to create a larger collection. Here they are!
Hope you like them. I still want to make some plants, so perhaps I'll get around to that tomorrow. :)
April Project: Day 16
Hello, and Happy Thursday! Today I played with gouache and painted some teacups and coffee cups and mugs and so on. Basically, containers with a single handle. Then I added some linework digitally. I want to make a teacup garden, so I'm thinking that I'll work next on adding little plants growing out of the cups... Yes, I think that would be very fun, indeed!
I'll be back tomorrow with some more fun, so have a great Friday and check back tomorrow! :)
April Project: Day 15
Happy Wednesday! Today I played with green gouache and metallic gold ink. I made a pattern, which I think is very lovely and would be great as a paper, or as a surface design for products if it could be foiled with gold foil or printed with metallic ink. I'll be back tomorrow to play more. Have a great rest of your day!
April Project: Day 14
Hi, friends! Happy Tuesday! Today I painted with gouache onto a swatch of indigo watercolor I'd painted a while ago. The way the watercolor dried made me think of a winter scene, so I started to paint a winter scene. I know that the arctic fox would be more appropriate for iceland, but the red fox looked so much better against the snow. :)
I hope you have a great day! I'll be making something new tomorrow, so feel free to visit again! :)
April Project: Day 13
Hello, friends! Today I gave myself half an hour to play with my art materials. No planning, no sketching... just spontaneous sloth making! I used watercolor, then gouache, then watercolor crayons I had forgotten I even had, and then pencil. Super fun, super fast, and very playful!
Hope you have a great rest of your Monday! I'll be back tomorrow with something new to share!
April Project: Day 12
Howdy, folks! Today I worked a bit more on my chair with cats, or cats with chair. I still don't think it is finished, but I'm liking it more and more. Let me know what you think. I'm still thinking of adding a pattern to the chair upholstery. For some reason I love pink in combination with pea green. I'm not sure why I love it so, but I do.
Here is what my gouache looked like as I was working. I thought it was pretty, so I took a picture.
I'll do something new tomorrow, so check back to see what it is. :)
April Project: Day 11
Hello, friends! Today, in between working on illustrations that are due early next week and watching a Norwegian relative of mine win silver in a karate competition, I decided to draw a chair and some cats. It is Caturday, after all. I had a scrap of rough watercolor paper to use, so I drew with a pencil and painted the pink background in gouache. This is a work-in-progress, so I think I will play some more with it tomorrow. I am unsure about how much I want to paint and how much of the graphite I want to leave showing. So far, I like the graphite on the chair and I'm considering drawing a pattern on the upholstery. I'll decide tomorrow, I guess. :)
Have a great day! And check back tomorrow to see what more I end up doing with this piece. :)
April Project: Day 10
Happy Friday, friends! Today was a windy and chilly day in Reykjavik. I got to spend a few hours with some of my Norwegian relatives who flew in today for a karate competition happening in town tomorrow. It was so fun to see them, speak some Norwegian, and show them around a bit. Later today I took down my work that was on display for a month at Mokka Kaffi. It was fun to have my paintings and drawings up for so long, and I look forward to perhaps someday having my own show somewhere in town.
I didn't give myself as much time to play today as yesterday, but I still managed to doodle and make some patterns. I had a couple scraps in my studio of my favorite paper (300 lb. Fabriano Hot Press Watercolor Paper in Bright White) that I had painted yellow and blue, so I painted one with gouache and drew on the yellow piece with shiny white ink and graphite. I haven't used graphite in combination with white ink like this before, but I liked the result. It was a fun way to make the shiny ink pop from the background, adding a little more dimension to it.
I'm looking forward to putting on pajamas and curling up in a blanket for the rest of the evening, listening to the weather get worse and worse. It is already lightly snowing and the wind is howling outside, but it is supposed to get worse later on. Inside is the place to be. Perhaps I'll bake some delicious cookies, too. That sounds good to me!
I'll be back tomorrow with something playful and new. Have a great weekend, everyone! :)
April Project: Day 9
Hello, friends! Today I had some more fun with gouache. I decided to paint a little scene that would incorporate a lot of things I love, like hedgehogs, birds, mushrooms, inchworms, moss, berries, greenery and flowers. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I used a pretty small brush, but not my smallest brush, and I was able to get quite a bit of detail into it. The painting is just a wee bit over two inches in diameter, which somehow makes it seem even more precious to me.
Because my scanner is not working very well at the moment, and my nice camera is en route to Iceland after being fixed abroad, my phone's photos will have to suffice. :)
Tomorrow I will have something new to share, though I don't yet know what it will be, so check back soon. Thanks for stopping by! :)
April Project: Day 8
Well, today is the eighth day of my April Project. I thought I'd get back to basics, abandon my computer for a bit, and pull out some gouache paints. I kept it simple and painted some floral designs, which I think I'll turn into a pattern later. Turn in tomorrow for another playful something! :)
April Project: Day 7
I worked for a while on making the green vessels into a wall-worthy piece, completing any of the vases that went off the edge of the scrap of paper I was painting on. I turned it into a repeating pattern, which I really like. The print is now available in my Society 6 shop, and there is free shipping right now on some items, including prints, so feel free to check it out. I'll make more color options available in time.
To finish off these vases, I added a few to fill in the gaps. I drew a mermaid on a vase, and I fell in love with her.
I decided to make her into her own piece. I didn't have much time to devote to her, but this is where she's at. I'd love to play with surrounding her with coral and fish...
Thanks for tuning in! I'll have something new to share tomorrow. :)
April Project: Day 5
After yesterdays painted portrait, I decided to loosen up and start painting without a plan. The result? This.
I must really love vases and vessels and teapots and footed bowls because those were the shapes I started to paint. I nested them into the negative spaces between the others, and the resulting painting looks like it wants to be a pattern.
I scanned the painting and added rough white linework digitally. This is how it turned out.
This Easter I painted and decorated vessels, not eggs. It was really fun to play and create without a plan. :) I hope you have a great day and I'll be back tomorrow to play and share more art with you. Perhaps I'll even branch out into different color palettes?
