Finally my commissioned painting is finished!

Hi everyone, I'm so excited to finally be able to show you my finished commissioned piece. I was asked to include the 3 children and was told that the girls would get such a kick out of being mermaids so I decided to go with 3 separate canvas' that can either be hung together or in their seperate bedrooms. With the little boy I decided that rather than make the poor thing a merman I thought a bit of humour might work well. So I decided to have him playing with/getting a hug from an octopus heheheh. I really enjoyed working on this one, it was very time consuming in that I wanted their faces to be perfect and I wanted to work in lots of detail, that it was very different from my other work that I've been doing lately. It was a nice balance I think.

The group shot was hard to take as it had a gloss varnish over it and so was hard to take a photo in the sunlight but I just wanted to show how it would look hung together, the individual shots show the colours much better. I used iridescant paint over the girls clothes and tails to give them some extra sparkle and I also used texture paste here and there.

I'm very happy with how they turned out and was very pleased when my client picked them up today, she was going straight home to hang them :0)

'Midnight Temptation' and Illustration Friday 'Beneath'

I think this piece that I worked on this week fits the Illustration Friday theme of Beneath! The two figures beneath this tree are being tempted but which one do you think will succumb?

I used some texture paste on the tree to make it stand out and the paint is acrylic. I really enjoy this style as I just run with my idea and see where it takes me, the name of the piece just comes to me as I work on it. I start with a sketch with no paticular colour or design in mind and I find it takes on it's own personality as I work on it.

It's really good for me to work on these paintings in between this big commission that I've been working on as the commission is the total opposite, detailed, and very well planned. I'm about to start on my last piece of the 3 paintings and can't wait to show you when it's finished.

I've had a couple of exciting days on the jewellery front too, 6 sales in 24 hours!!! So exciting! I love selling 'my babies' as it's so good to know that they are going to be worn and enjoyed and it gives me good reason to make some new pieces.

This painting will be varnished with two layers of gloss varnish as that seems to really make the colours pop! Then it's going in my shop!!!

Tomorrow I'm off to town to spend some of my art vouchers that I got for my birthday in my fave art shop!!! Yipee!!!!!!

New Canvas- (Mixed Media Monday 'blues and greens'

( I thought I would also enter this piece for this week's Mixed Media Monday theme which is 'blues and greens'. I really liked her sparkly blue eyes and her sparkly green dress.)

Well this is my first picture using my new paints. I really feel like my background is much more interesting with those paints on top. I worked quite differently with this one, I painted the back ground with acrylic paint, then when that was dry I used different iridescent paints over the top, when that was dry I painted the lady on top of that then used some textured paper on top and painted that with the sparkly paint. I might have over done the sparkliness a bit but I was having fun.

I also used a canvas board for a change which was probably some where in between A4 and A5 size.

I'm in love!!!!

With these new paints I found today. I went to the art store in search of inspiration and found these great paints. I'm sure everyone else has heard of them except for me but I'm glad I found them today.They are iridescent paints.

I also bought some canvas boards to have a play with and I'm working on a painting right now using a combination of my acrylics and the iridesccent paints. I love the sparkly colours. I've been feeling like my paintings are lacking something lately and perhaps this will give them the pick me up that I need. I shall post my new painting as soon as it's finished in the mean time this is a little painting/doodle that I did on my black paper. I thought they would come up lovely on black and I like the result.

Illustration Friday - Modify

'Riley thought that if he modified his bike he might finally be able to fly. It never quite worked of course but he had lots of fun trying.'

This was inspired by my nearly 3 year old Riley. He's a right little 'Mr Fix it' and loves to play with his tools and 'works' on his little bike for hours. I can picture the plans that might pop into his head as to what he might be able to do to improve it.

Looking to the future....

After a long strange and stressful past month, I felt like painting something positive to put me into a new frame of mind. This started out like a bit of a doodle on canvas but I'm quite pleased with it. I tried mixing some oil pastels in there too with the acrylics and it was quite enjoyable.

Anyway here it is.......

'Brotherly Love'

This is a piece that I worked on a fair bit this week. I started off with what I thought would be a simple idea and it then turned into something a lot more involved. The initial idea came from the prompt for next week's Mixed Media Monday. The prompt is 'layers'. So I came up with an idea that saw me use different techniques and some collage. I sketched a simple out line from a photograph of my two boys. Then I shaded it and coloured it with coloured pencil. I cut it out and stuck it onto watercolour paper. Then painted the back ground in arcylic paint. I also painted the leaves then cut them out and stuck them on. When I finished I realised that the pencil was just too faint against the paint so I took a chance and painted over the drawing with acrylic so it really is quite a mixture of materials. I quite like the end result considering it's my first real attempt at painting portraits in acrylic and also using mixed media in this way. I have put a photo up of the painting before I painted over the drawing and after so that you can see the difference. I'm looking forward to submitting this to Mixed Media Monday next week, it's not often I'm this organised!

Baboon and the balloon

This is just something that I have been working on and is my first draft/attempt at illustrating a poem. I really love the idea of a baboon as a character as they are so colourful and interesting creatures.

'Ned'

This is Ned, he's a character that I came up with this week. He's a bit of a mixture between my son and his friends. Ned is going to have lots of adventures which I'm looking forward to creating. I just drew a couple of different pictures of Ned doing some actions just to get the feel of how he'll look and to get into practice of drawing him doing all sorts of things. I'm still working on my story board but now I have a bit more direction.

Cave man and cave woman.....

Well today I thought I would post these two characters that I came up with a little while ago. This was done with acrylic on acrylic paper. I just love how bright they came up and when I added all that hair they really popped out!!!

This week I plan on finishing a story board of mine and working on a new character. It's going to be a little boy and I have someone from real life that I want to base him on as he's so full of character himself. I also want to do some sketching of the boys playing. I've tried doing that from real life but they both move so fast I can barely get any lines down. So I thought I'd take my two year old out this morning for a play in the back yard and take some action shots and do some sketches from that!!!!

He should stay still enough for a photo, I hope!!!

Autumn

I'm really looking forward to Autumn. It's my most favourite time of the year. I love the change in the colours in the trees.

Here is a doodle that I did in anticipation of Autumn.

I started in just pencil and ink then painted it in watercolour. I was trying to get some movement and energy into this picture.....

Acrylic on canvas

For my final painting I used acrylic paint on canvas and added in a different back ground, I'm very pleased with myself as this is the first painting on canvas that I've completed in a very very very long time.

I don't have a decent scanner at the moment but I was very keen to add to my blog today so I had to take pictures of these 3 pieces so unfortunetly they loose a little in the photograph they are much brighter in real life, but you get the idea.

Water colour

My next attempt I used the same pose but changed the colours and used water colours with an outline to finish.