Paint Party Friday and Sunday Sketches - Portraits and a new painting for our new room!

Hi guys I missed last week as we were away at a family gathering down the coast but i have been working on more portraits over the last couple of weeks first up is Morgan Freeman (well my interpretation of him).

I've always loved his face, such an interesting one to paint and of course his acting and that voice!!!

Next up was a painting of Noel Fielding from a show called 'The Mighty Boosh', if you haven't seen it it's completely out there but very funny, a quirky British show.

This next painting is one that I've done for our new rumpus room, we've been going through renovations (stage 3 of our big plan) and it's nearly finished, newly painted with lots of bare walls so I decided to paint this tree painting to compliment our colour scheme, i just did it on a whim but had so much fun and I'm really happy with it! :0)

Last but not least here are some experiments I did with some sea rocks that I picked up last weekend, some I painted on and others were perfect the way nature made them so I just varnished them. I'm now looking for a small drill to drill a hole through the top to make into pendants!

If anyone has any tips on how to drill these it would be much appreciated!!! Looking forward to seeing what you've all been up to! x

Sunday Sketches and another portrait!

Hi guys,

Hot on the heels of my last post and couple of portraits I decided to do my next one with a subject very close to home, I found a baby picture of my eldest who is now nearly 9 and painted a picture of him when he was very young.

 As a painting by it's self I quite like it but when you look at the photo I think you can see that it's not quite the same, interestingly enough I think  I managed to paint him looking older than the photo and more like what he looks like now. I enjoyed it though and will put this down as another practice/experience, either way I'm having fun and have broken my artistic block! :0)

Looking forward to catching up with you all at Sunday Sketches!

Paint Party Friday - And now for something completely different!

Well my first week with two kids at school has flown by in a blur!!! The boys went so well especially my youngest who started Kindy this week. Such a big life change for such a little man! He's loving it and I think will have a wonderful time with his new teacher who is fantastic!

As you can imagine this means that my life is now completely changed. I now have from 9am to 3pm to do all those things that I try to do every day with two crazy kids around. It's been a very strange week but I must admit I really enjoy being able to concentrate on some grown up things! About a month ago I joined the gym as I was getting a bit bored with just running so each day I pretty much drop the boys off and head to the gym for an hour. I've been able to set aside the appropriate time for the paper work for our business (we have our own gardening business) and our home office is now looking like a proper office and that much needed paper work is getting seen to on a regular basis. And of course I now have more time to concentrate on my art. I was so excited at the beginning of the week that I couldn't wait to get started and of course I had a terrible artistic block, I finally had the time to really get serious with my art and I couldn't think of a thing to paint!!!! Argggghhhhhh!!!!! So frustrating!

In the end I decided to step outside my comfort zone and try something a little different and quite a challenge for me. I decided to work on some realistic portraits, (something which I must admit really intimidates me). I really love drawing faces and eyes and playing with expressions so I decided to google some photos of interesting faces and these are the two that I was able to paint this week.

This first lady I found I don't really know who she was but I was struck by her eyes which I thought were kind and I thought had the photo been in colour she would have had a real sparkle to them.

Painted in gouache!

Most of you would probably recognise this guy as Mr Katy Perry! (I guess not for much longer though) I really love Russell Brand even though he's crude and totally inappropriate I can't help but laugh at him.

When I looked at his picture I saw him as a definite 'Red' project!!! He reminds me of a vampire!

I'm hoping that now things are in some sort of routine I can possibly blog a bit more and visit you all more. I really appreciate your comments on my work and will make sure that I come round and see you all as I love seeing what you have been doing and your inspiration!! :0)

Paint Part Friday and Sunday Sketches - Fallen Angels

Hi guys!

Well I didn't make any challenges last week, just too caught up in Summer holidays (although if you saw the weather here today you wouldn't think it was anywhere near summer, rainy, cold and yucky!)

We're on the downhill run now with the school holidays, my baby starts kindy on Monday and the other starts year 3 on Tuesday then I'm hoping to get back into some sort of routine, I need to get stuck into the office and do some business paper work and of course some new art directions!! I have enjoyed spending time with the boys but even they are are ready to get back to school.

This week I have been working on some new angel paintings, I decided to combine my angels with my pretty ladies and they have combined to make 'Fallen Angels'.

Very much an experiment:

I think this one was my 'ugly' phase, I kinda liked it but decided to have another crack at it! This was painted on a canvas board with gouache paint!

Now I think I'm quite happy with number two! This one was also painted on a canvas board but this time with acrylics!


This next piece is my entry in Andrea's (Falling Ladies) book for the Creative Sistahs project that I'm involved with. Now this entry is for November and I have to say I found creating a November inspired piece in February a bit tricky just because I couldn't really think of anything in particular that November inspires me with, so I looked back to last November and thought about what I was doing then. Well November last year for me was very chaotic, I was in the throes of making pendants and bookmarks etc for a couple of Christmas markets that were coming up. So I thought well Christmas was coming up and I love painting Angels, I decided to combine my Angels with my 'lovely ladies' and together I felt they reminded me of a 'Fallen Angel'. Which I thought could be my little tribute to Andrea's beautiful and emotion filled 'Falling Ladies'. Phew!! I hope you can see my little thought process there and I hope that Andrea likes what I have created in her beautiful book.
I just need to finish off my written page then this will be winging it's way to Kathy! :0)

Lastly I thought I'd just show you what I had created for last weeks challenges but didn't get the time to post.

 These were both painted on water colour paper with gouache, I'm loving the brightness of gouache without it being too thick!

This little lady was inspired by my sketch of the little girl with attitude that i did a few weeks ago. I'm trying to work on my characters and facial expressions!
Hope you are all having a great week! :0) x