Cousin Catherine and Mike Rey get hitched!

I decided to do this painting after a long period of being "uninspired." My 2nd Cuzin Catherine was getting married and she and her fiance Mike had had some beautiful engagement photos done, including their precious pup and Mike's truck. The initial photo that inspired me was this one of the truck. It seemed very structural and fun to paint.

 

So then... I decided it needed some bodily warmth, and more personalization, so I decided to add Miss Abita from this photo. I didn't want to take on doing the humans, because it's not really easy for me. yikes!

So I began of course with an acrylic underpainting which I did not take a photo of, but I used a lot of gold paint in it, hoping it would add to the "antique-ness" of the completed painting. With the flecks of gold shining through later. This next photo is taken after day one of painting. You can see where I sketched out the dog within the paint itself, just for reference. I used a lot of blue for the dark areas to try and avoid black.

As it moved along in progress, I went in and added Abita, I was pretty pleased with how she turned out, given this was the first warm blooded animal I'd ever painted. LOL Catherine said I captured her stance perfectly. :)

After getting the pup out of the way I started adding some more details and editing the colors a bit. By the way, this is a 16 x 20 painting on gallery wrapped canvas.

After painting session #3 I decided it was complete, I did add a little piece of lace underneath the paint in the bottom left corner, just to stick with my usual lace addition. Though you can't really see it, I still know it's there, and adds to the effect as well. ;) This is the only photo I got of it completed because I was camera-less and had to use my dumb phone. So the colors aren't good....

Catheine took this photo below of it hanging in her house, she says the light shines in th window and shows off the gold underpaint. YAY!

Kid Art, we shall call this post "Shwn Shwn" :)

Sooo... as soon as my friends started having babies, I couldn't resist creating some special art for them. Starting with Baby Lucy, I did this trip-dict (sp?) based on Lucy's baby bedding which had a teenie tiny little bouquet of flowers on the comforter, which I decided would be something that she may like as she got older, since the majority of the bedding was bunny themed. I know that my BFF (Lucy's mom) likes a more simplified look so I also brought in the stripe design behind the monogram, which was also part of the bedding design. I love how it turned out. :)

 The next set I made were for my Cousin/Best Friend/Might-as-well-be-2nd-sister, and her baby boy. I knew that this new mama would want something very modern and meaningful as well. So I came up with a design of some animals we had discussed in her nursery plans. I sewed buttons on to the canvas as the eyes, to represent our "treasure buttons" we used to play with as kids, which were a collection of our Grandmother's old button collection that we pretended were treasure. I even was able to get those buttons from my Grandmother, which was awesome! After I came up with the design, my amazing seamstress mother asked if she should make a matching blanket, and the rest was collaboration history. Everything turned out amazing!

 This next trip-dict was inspired by a friend of mine who does awesome wreaths and artwork from shells. She was going to exhibit her work in a local street fair, and asked me if I wanted to include some of my kid-art. So I designed some ocean inspired pieces, wrapped in burlap on the edges, which is sort-of a trademark of hers. I think they turned out so cute, and cannot wait to see who ends up using them for their home or nursery!

I am hoping to be able to continue this artwork trend, because I sure do enjoy it! I get to be playful and simplistic at the same time, and it's really fun! Thanks for following! ... until next time....

Sunset Moth

Blank white canvas' scare me... I mean, give me really bad anxiety, so every time I begin a painting... I slopp... (Slopp = apply aggressively in an un-orderly fashion)... on some random acrylic paint in all sorts of colors, just so it's not as intimidating..

In this underpainting, I've also applied some hot glue designs, branching out from the corners and sides, just for effect, later I rip these off to reveal the colors of the under-painting... it's really fun... my inspiration for this painting was the Doors album CD design..

Of course Mr. B, who is a huge Doors fan was the first to request that this design become a painting. The painting is 24" x 30" btw... here's how it progressed....

You can see that I already peeled up the hot glue pieces... I couldn't contain myself! You can also see the beginnings of the moth shape.

This was the finished product after Day 1 (above) I had added some pieces of lace as well which are hard to see.... but later I decided this was not satisfactory at all when I found this picture (below) online on  "google image"........ I decided the colors were not vibrant enough...

So then It became this (below), and I decided to make the lace stand out a little more too, and bring some of the red-ness into the background as well as changing the colors and making the Sunset moth bigger and badder...

However, after I finished this one... Something about it was bothering me severly... so my very good friend Golda came over and brain-stormed with me for about 30 mins on what it needed... and WE decided the red lace section right underneath the body HAD to go, there was too much focus on it! So I RIPPED it off! I was very invigorating ... haha

"SIGH" of relief, much better! .. My co-worker ending up buying this piece from me 2 days after I hung it in the gift shop for sale. I sure do miss it but at least it is in familiar hands! :)