New Traveling Art Journal page

Not having much time for art these last couple weeks. Needed to get this out, I hope Christi likes it. Christi provided some cool paper to journal on. I loved the gridded text and decided to let it show through.

He listens to color

I just saw this video and found it fascinating. I hope you will too.




I wonder what my face sounds like. Pleasant I hope.

St. Clare

We started something new this week, my “husband” bought the dvd’s for the Insanity workout for the both of us. I’ll have you know there is a reason they call it the “Insanity” workout; it’s because you have to be insane to do this workout if:

1. you are over 25 and
2. you are not in shape to begin with.

I’ll bet you can guess that I have hardly been able to move. Notice who I blamed (said “husband”) because I can hardly move my arms to paint….no, it’s not my fault I’m so out of shape. :)

Well after a week I have finally moved out of the “so sore I can hardly move” stage and was able to complete the painting of St Clare. And you’ll notice that I took some liberties with the color. The original painting by Simone Martini (1284-1344) is below my rendition.

The lesson for this weeks Diary of faces class was hands, but I feel that the position of the mouth and nose and the head cloth was more difficult than the hands in this painting. 

Overall I’m happy with how it turned out.

Here is the original:

If you’d like to know more about St. Clare, visit this Link: St Clare 

I’m linking to Paint Party Friday, please the other participants. There always lots of wonderful art to see.

Faces of Angels and Saints

What I have for this week’s Paint Party Friday entry are a couple of works in progress.

The first is an angel using one of my 29 faces sketches from May that I painted as a male last week but a female this week. (What a difference thin eyebrows make.)  It’s still a work in progress as I need to do something to the background and the wings.

This next work in progress is for the Diary of faces class. I chose to work on a rendition of a portion of Simone Martini (1284-1344)- painting of Saint-Clare.  I’ll show the full painting when I complete the painting.   This week the focus was supposed to be hands but I’m having more problems with the shadows on the head cloth than the hands. Hopefully it will look better when it’s painted.

Any constructive criticism on the sketch is welcome. I’ve been looking at it so long I can’t tell if it’s all pointed in the right direction. :)

Thanks for stopping by. Please be sure to visit the other Paint Party Friday participants. 

Diary of Faces wk 2

Here is my rendition of Nicolae Grigorescu’s painting named Gypsy's Head. Nicolae Grigorescu was a Romanian Painter, 1838-1907 and was one of the founders of modern Romanian painting.  You can see more of his art by clicking here.

Here is my initial sketch

This is my painting, and it seems that somewhere in the middle of the painting she decided to look elsewhere than straight ahead. I mean, in my initial sketch and the original painting the eyes are looking straight ahead and now they are looking to the left.   But over all I’m pleased with the results. At least she isn’t googly eyed right?

and below is the original work by the artist:

I’m linking to Paint Party Friday. Please go visit this blog and all the wonderful art by the participants.

 

One last note: And I have to say welcome back to my precious Little G who spent a confusing week away from his mama, papa and nana. My cautionary note for the week: If you’re thinking of taking a child away from his only source of security, please think of the child and not your own petty reasons for taking him. It took him quite a while to feel secure again that we weren’t going to leave him.  I’m sure no one reading this blog would do that to a child but I had to say it.  That’s all.

I don’t know how it happened….

I don’t know how it happened !!! Whaaa?? ….Ok that’s a bit overly dramatic… I’ll back up 20 paces…Last night I pulled out one of my 29 faces sketches. I remember that the entire time I was drawing it, I was drawing a female … or so I thought.  So I began by tearing away the excess paper and gluing the just head and neck to a 6” x 12” board.  Then after it dried, I started painting this girl:

 

and right in front of my eyes, “she” turned into a surfer dude.  I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was the thicker eyebrows or the widening of the space between the eyes. The jaw looks a bit more “square” but that must have been surfer dude wanting to get out because I didn’t do that intentionally.

I think it’s OK though, because I kinda like him. He makes me want to visit the beach.

But I will have to try painting “her“ again later.

Diary of Faces week 1 painting

I’m back to faces, and I’ve been taking the Diary of Faces online class with Sharon Tomlinson of http://allnorahsart.blogspot.com/  In this class we are recreating faces painted by foreign artists. I found a self-portrait by Zinaida Serebriakova done in 1930 that I really liked and cropped it leaving just the head and shoulders. The full painting can be seen by clicking the artist’s name.

 

This is my rendition. It doesn’t look the same and no one is going to mistake it for the original but I am very happy with the result.

Spiritual

I’m not a very spiritual person but for some time now I have been fascinated by images of saints and angels. I’ve been to cemeteries to take photographs of the statues of angels and have even used one of them in my journal pages. You can see it here at the bottom of the long post.

When I was drawing this girl last month I had an urge to finish her as a saint but for some reason resisted. I finally decided to go for it:

The quote is:

Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

by Mother Teresa.

Thanks for stopping by. I’d love to read your thoughts, so please leave a comment. :)

What a busy week.

I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to paint or post this week. It’s been a busy week. We had two birthdays this week. My G’s have a birthday only 1 day apart.  Little G is 2, and Big G is his Papa. We had a lovely birthday birthday dinner for Big G on Monday and although Little G’s birthday was on Tuesday, we’re having a birthday party for him on Saturday complete with 10 or 11 other little ones.Yikes! And we still have gifts to assemble.  Oh my! 

Here are my two birthday boys, Little G loves his grandpa, and wants to go everywhere with him.

This is what I worked on this week:

Linking to Paint Party Friday!

For you it is a Rose

Back to my colored pencils.

The sweetest flower that blows,
I give you as we part.
For you it is a Rose,
For me it is my heart.
- Quote by Frederick Peterson

And from Janis Joplin “I need a man to love”

The quote and the video have related themes of unrequited love.

I’ve always loved Janis. She passed the year I graduated high school. (boy does that date me.)  It was a sad day for rock n roll.

Linking to Paint Party Friday. Thanks to Eva and Kristin for hosting and for giving me a reason to finish my journal page. :)  Be sure to click the link and visit all the participants.