Christmas card made.

I had to make a new drawing for my Christmas card,

because I couldn't come to an agreement with myself. I wasn't pleased on how it turned out, and I found it difficult to find a suitable background for it. Well, that was the first try, now I've made a new one and made it difficult for myself to choose which edition to use.
In addition to my original painting, I did manupilate a couple of extras, and now I can't choose.
My painting is somewhat darker than the pic. below. I imagined the background to be a dark sky, and used a bit different colors. It does look good in person. My intention is to copy as many as I need and glue the copies to cardstock, then I'll add some twinks to the painting to make it look more real. It's still my work, but an easier way to make many of them.

Below is the first one I made using picasa to manipulate. I find it exciting and a bit different from what usually will be used. I like how the colors is muted in a way, it all look so soft and I find it suitable for the design.

The last one is my favorite, but I probably can't use it. It's too dark and I think too difficult to see what it actually is. I did try to lighten it, but out of my printer it's still too dark. Well, I might use it for my facebook friends.

Which one would be your choice?

Testing faces.

Is it possible to gain a decent result using twinks as medium?

I like doing faces, but have never done any using twinks only. Is it possible for me to do it, and how would the result be? The face I've been testing is a tiny one, it measures 8 by 5.5 cms. I know it's much harder to make a larger one, but for my test I did this small one.

Now, my first pic. shows the face in daylight only. One can't see any signs of the twinks, at least no shimmering spots. Let me just add, it's not done to be a beautiful face, just a 15 minutes from start to end test. The colors I've used are: Oyster, Sunburst, Chiffon Pink, Ocean Wave and Chestnut Brown. In addition I used a watercolor pencil to outline the face. White and black pens too, of course. All the pictures shown are the same face, it does differ a bit because of the angle when photographed. In fact, with some small adjustments, this could become a pretty good face, if I might say so myself.

Next pic. shows the face with an extra lightsource coming from bottom right. Now the twinks shows off, and notice her right eye. Isn't that really something, her eyes acting like normal eyes. Reflecting light in a super way. Remember it's the same face, so without extra lighting it appears as a normal painting.

Last pic. shows the face with light coming from top left. Now, notice the left eye and compare with the others. Isn't it amazing? This last one is a bit wonky because of the angle, but it's not important. The twinks are going to create much fun in the future, and I just have to try a large face to see if I can do that too.

My question was, is it possible to gain a decent result using twinks as medium, the answer is YES it is! This test was so much fun to do, and I'm so pleased to discover how to mix a great face color using my twinks.

A little testing.

I was doing a little testing the other day.

The fact is, I'm not good at painting without a good drawing first. I always need to draw an image before I can paint it. I guess it's all about controlling, and I wanted to try without any drawing at all.  I did a very simple sunflower and foliage. Now, I never meant to make this a masterpiece, I just wanted to see if I could achieve any result at all. At this stage it looks like........... well, nothing to put more work into. But, that was the entire point, what result could I gain from a simple painting like this.

I won't claim the result is anything to keep either, but I did learn it's possible to make something without drawing it first, and much can be done to a piece that doesn't look good from the beginning. In fact I've often seen my work change into something not planned and better than I expected. Normally a piece will reach a stage of uglyness before it turns into its final form and I think one has to be aware of that. As you see my final piece isn't much to keep, but it became something far more than what could be expected from a bad start.

I could even put some more work in, to improve it, but I'd seen what I was looking for. It is fun to make these little tests, and useful as well. I did use my twinks on top of this, and the result is a shimmering test piece.

A little sketching.

I meant to make a post showing my Christmas card for this year,

but I'm not happy with how it turned out so I'll have to work some more on it. Instead I did a little sketching today, I'm planning on making another bouquet with birds in it this time. So to improve my drawing I did draw some birds today, and I see I'll need to practice some more before doing a serious try.

I'm planning on using two or three different birds in my piece, but the one abowe is one of them. Except for the sketching I haven't done much today, just resting and searching the internett. I did sign up for the second class though, and I look forward for it to begin late February 2014.
Coming week I'll have to visit an art shop to fill up with some supplies, my black pens are no good any more, and I want to see what can be bought of different papers too.

Final project in class.

I've done my final project in class

except for a couple of bonus projects. In this final one we were meant to let loose and make a garden scene. I didn't feel for a garden scene but a Spring bouquet which will remind me of the beautiful season to follow winter. I honestly had no idea I could do anything like this. It isn't excactly "to let loose" but I found it more reasonable to paint real flowers. In my head randomly drawn flowers should be that, randomly drawn and nothing else. It's just me and my head.

Below is how it looked like from the start, at this stage I didn't notice how wrong the pot looked. I was planning to add at least a couple of birds to it too.

Below one can see I've added a leafe to hide the wrong pot, not perfect but I can live with that. I also added a tip of a leafe down right to suggest something were happening at the back as well. And finally I add another tulip below the daffodil. I tried to add the birds, but couldn't find them good spaces to be, so I left them out. I will do another try though, and paint wide open tulips with more colors in them, and then I'll add the birds too. I always have trouble to do the background, and I really wanted to leave it as is here, but I didn't.

Below is how it turned out. I'm pleased with my result, but the next one will have a better design. I do see how to do it and will give it a try. Why is it I always see it after finishing a piece?
I'll probably have to pay more attention while drawing.

That's all, it's about time to start preparations for Christmas.

Done.

I finished my cat the other day,

but I'm not sure it's a cat any more. It does look as a mix of a cat, tiger and teddybear. It was fun painting this and I thought of making an empty fish bowl behind him, but I had no space for that. When I first showed you this cat I had made his eyes wrong, so I had to change place of the black and greenish. That went better than I had believed, even though the greene now is a bit too dark.

What I see now is that the collar should be bending down at the back, not standing up as it does.

I'm in the last week of my online class, and now I'm drawing leaves, curled ones. It's not easy to find a single leaf this time of year, so I'll have to search the net. Otherwise I just imagine how they looks. I'm convinced that anything is possible to draw and paint, it's just about taking the time and be patient. Later on today I'm going to help a friend to mount her curtains, there was something about the rods she didn't understand. Otherwise, we have a beautiful sunny day, not too cold either.
Enjoy yours!

Fun in class

It's fun doing this class,

and if you should ever concider taking a class I truly recommend this one. Dion is such a generous teacher, sharing her knowledge and teckniques and she is our main source for inspiration. Mastering Twinks 1. has been nothing but enjoyable for me.

Many students share their works and thereby feed the rest of us with inspiration. I'm so glad I did this, and tomorrow we get the last lesson. One more week to go. One of my latest work is the one below, we should make a piece using three or four colors only. I used four and they were, a bright yellow, a ruby red, a medium violet and a medium green. I'm happy with the result except from the one hat not being centered to the trunk/stem.

Today I started a new painting. Some years ago I saw this image made as an embroidered pillow, and I now want to paint it. I have no cat so I'm not sure how to do it, but I'll probably find some reference on the internet. I'm planing to make him orangy red with some black/grey touches as well.

That's it, now it's dinnertime here.

Experimenting on my own.

Since I'm learning how to master the Twinks right now,

I'm doing a lot of experimenting on my own. I had this idea of making a painting to look like a glasspainting or Church window if you like. I drew some flowers, and when I had done them as I would like them to be, I just traced them, mirrored them and put them in a way that I liked. At the end I made the stems and leaves. I used a plastic embroidery canvas as template for my circle. The background spaces were made randomly, as I thought it would fit.

I'm especially happy on how the flowers came out, and equally unhappy with the background. It's far too busy, more like a total mess.

My next try was interesting, I changed the color of the flowers and made them a tiny bit different, in the center that is. Well, I copied them, I saw no reason to do all the drawing over again. After all this is all about the colors. Still I'm pleased with the flowers, but this time the background color turned out far to sweet, so I went for experimenting with this piece. First I made all the tiny dots on the blue background, then I stenciled the edge. When the stenciling was done there were stains of color not meant to be there, and to cover it I made randomly "larger" dots of black and went back in making tiny small black dots. That was a great way to hide these small accidents.

I had to do a final one, trying to keep my thoughts strong and focus on what I was doing. Again I changed the color of the flowers, which I now regret, but the background became what I had imagined. Flowers and background do work well together, it's just that I feel the flowers looks a bit too cold.

This was an exciting experiment to do, and I also learnt a lot on using the Twinks. I do like to figure out experiments of my own and this one were useful too.

My very first hand carved stamp.

When I was in the US this summer

I bought tools for stamp carving. They have been sitting on my desk, and I have found no inspiration to try carving. Yesterday changed that.

In the online class I'm doing we're experimenting with watercolors (twinks) and stamping. Best stamps to use are those with larger spaces on, not fine lines. The only stamps I have in my stash are fine lined, so I had to make one myself. I'm not much of a stamper but this experiment opened my eyes, and I think it's really fun trying. The ones below are made from fine line stamps. What I have been looking at as mess only, really is part of the beauty of it all. Look at the ones far right, outlined with shade behind. I think they're beautiful.

But, I wanted to try a stamp with larger spaces too, and made my own. I have a lot of beautiful flowered curtains, and found one I liked. It took awhile to draw the image, and I drew it in a much larger scale than the stamp shows. My copy mashine did the downsizing job for me. It's not an easy task to carve out such amount of curved lines on a small stamp, but I did it and I'm very pleased with the result. It was fun trying it, and finding it worked well. I'm sure I'm going to make more stamps, now I'm chasing the perfect images to carve.

I drew and painted the image as well, but I'll tell you more about that later on.

So much fun in class.

Thare are so much fun work with this class I'm taking,

I almost can't find time bloging or anything else. I have never learnt anything about the use of watercolors, I've just been using them as we did as children, but with a bit more conscious mixing of the colors. In this class we learn a lot about mixing and painting teckniques. There are several chapters in each lesson and very varied exercices following each chapter. It's so much fun, and I've found a "spot" within me that I never knew excisted. One exercice I did was the one below, we were meant to use colors but I got this idea of pears lying on a table with the moon shining on them.

They were a challenge to do, but very fun too. The only thing I would like to be different is the golden glow of the moonshine. As I see it the moonlight is much colder. I tried but that silverish color wouldn't show off.

Another exercice I did was to make a prismatic painting. I was free to make any design, and I woke up one morning with this idea in mind. This sort of painting is so me, I simply love doing them.

The face is drawn using a magazine cut out as reference, I wouldn't spend a lot of time doing one of my own. For me it's more about the lines and color use. There is another one waiting for me at the end of this lesson, and I'm so looking forward to do it. So this is what I'm up to, doing my "homework" and enjoying it.

It's a fantastic journey.........