Taking a moment for a bird slideshow

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I am unwontedly proud of myself for figuring out how to do this slideshow myself ^^

Ok, so these are birds that I painted last summer. I would have posted them before but I just never seemed to have the time to photgraph them and all.

However, this week I am delayed in posting what I am actually working on due to general incompetence on my part ;) so I am posting these instead.

What I am actually working on are some colorful studies of some pears and apples. They are testing me to my meager limits in terms of color use and washes, so it is taking me longer than I wanted to finish. But I should still be done with them in plenty of time for my next posting.

Peony - dramatic?

Last week my quest for color carried me to peonies. They are quite dramatic in this season, and I found them pretty absorbing.

On the right are some images showing the process of layering the chinese watercolors. I have to say I like the glow of my home-made colors better. I'm not sure what the difference in

binder is, but I can't argue with the convenience of tube color.

Above and below you can see the end results, some

nice peonies if I do say so myself.

It's all fun and games to me

This is a game I started playing with myself when I was in about the second grade. That was right about the time mice were becoming cheap enough for regular folks to buy and our new computer had paint (or was it paintshop?) on it.

I remember I used to spend quite a bit of time playing with freeform line and plopping colors around.

Now I'm doing some on paper. This is probably why I am so bad at using color realistically. I just can't take the darned stuff seriously ;)

Better late than never

It's a month late and way overdue, but I still want to do a New Year's Resolution. I was totally unplugged the first week of January, so I think I will do it now.

Last year, I resolved to try to double the amount of time I spent painting. I didn't do quite that good - high goal! But I did work longer and harder. I'm pretty confident I can say I did more than 1500 hours working on art last year.

Not too shabby.

So why am I not an even better artist already? Hanging my head just a little I have to admit that I've got a fool for a teacher - me.

I know me: stubborn, thickheaded, slow to figure things out. It's a real nightmare having someone like that pretending she knows what she's doing while teaching you out of her ass ;)

But I have been making progress.

Enough progress that I have a new ambitious Resolution: This year I am going to tackle adding color to my ink paintings. I have never been a colorist. I have always focused on tone. But I have determined that I will find some way to work color into my paintings.

I have already begun by trying to learn the working properties of my colors. I am making them myself and while it may seem a no brainer to just mix them up and used them, it's not quite that simple.

First of all you need to figure out which colors mix well and which turn into a muddy, nasty mess.

Second, this paint needs to find a happy medium where it will hold onto the paper without bleeding when re-wetted but not so water resistant that it turns to flakes.

On the right you can see I have been working on some color charts. I fear there could be many more of those. Some of them came out quite beautiful, actually. In addition, I am also reformulating my paint. I am trying a couple different formulas that will hopefully cure enough to be useful by summer. I hope I can strike that balance between adhesion, water resistance, and beautiful color.

Once I work out the details the real work of making color a more natural part of my style begins. Look forward to that @@

Winter activity for this artist consists of...

So early in December I headed off to sunny San Diego, CA to catch up with an artist friend of mine who had been living in Chicago and recently graduated. It was a fabulous idea - escape the cold, take in some new scenery, and hang out drinking coffee with someone who doesn't mind my midly obsessive focus on art.

Unfortunately, I tend to have spates of bad luck when I get vacations - probably why I rarely take them. This time I got a nasty, persistent cold that made me fairly bummed the most of the trip, and my Grandmother had a diabetes crisis just before I was due to leave. They say problems come threes, so I'm glad I was spared anything else going wrong.

OK, so I was probably not the funnest person to be around on my trip, but it was still a nice change of pace, and I'm really glad I got to go.

Once I got back from San Diego, I went to stay with my grandmother as she recovered from her hospital visit. Don't worry - I'm not going to bore you with the details. However, I did not want to take a vacation from artwork for that long, so I brought a travel kit and a roll of paper to practice on. I spent a fair bit of time looking through pictures to find myself some suitable models for figure studies and found some very nice ones (I really need to look them up again so I can get the names of what I was working from.) The results are as you see above and to the right.

I also did a small series of frogs and toads for fun and to stretch my range a bit. You can see them on my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/etsynozephi/?saved=1

So, why all the bathers? Well, people are more interesting to paint when they're not covered with cloth, and a hot steamy bath is always on my mind when it is this freakin cold outsied. Have you ever taken a really hot soak then stepped out into the freezing cold? It's awesome ^^ I promise to do some men, too! Don't think I'm being one-sided.

I also wanted to do something about my New Year's Resolution, but I'll wait 'til next week because I expect to have some picture by then. Betcha can't wait ;)

New Camera - Weeee

So over Christmas I organized a camera swap with my sister. I needed something that could take decent pictures of my artwork and she needed something that could do decent video. Solution? I bought her a camera and she sent me hers.

The above picture is one of my first snaps with it. It shows a figure study I was working on and finished around New Year's time.

I know this isn't the king of cameras, but it has more power and functionality than any camera I've ever had (excepting when I was doing a film camera class and we had access to a photolab.)

So far I'm pretty pleased with it, but I still need to learn more about how to work it. Even more, I need to rig up some lighting - if you happen to know anything about that, don't be shy about giving me advice!

Next week: a report on my winter activities and a New Year's Resolution if I am very ambitious.

Zoiks! Totally missed New Year's ><

With everything that's been going on with my Grandma getting sick and visiting CA, I totally missed doing a New Year's blogpost.

But don't worry, I totally intend to remedy the situtaion - there will be a Resolution and some useless info about my trip, recent artwork, and all kindsa stuff.

Look forward to it! In the meantime, enjoy this lovely picture.