Copper Pitcher

I adore the reflections on metals in Teddi Parker’s paintings, and after many an hour spent studying her works, I decided to give it a go.

Copper Pitcher - Acrylic on 5x7 in. gessobord

Duck Duck Grey Duck

It IS “duck duck grey duck”, ya know! We Minnesotans have it right ;) This is from another reference photo on Paint My Photo.com., I was really drawn to that orange foot! I’m really happy with how the background turned out. I sometimes rush through that part, but I tried to slow down and be more thoughtful about it this time.

Orange Foot - acrylic on 6x6" hardboard

Across the Pond

This was painted from a lovely reference photo off Paint My Photo.com. I haven't painted a landscape in ages and it was so fun! The scene is in Austria (Schlosspark, Eisenstadt according to the photographer's notes).  I tried and failed miserably at painting a hippo just before this one, so it was a relief that this one turned out.

Across the Pond - 8x8 in. acrylic on gessobord

Yellow Vase

I picked something quite out of my comfort zone here when I’m already feeling rusty (textured glass! flowers!), but I wanted to paint something I was excited about. I have a couple commissions I’m really looking forward to but I need to get some of the rust off before I tackle those.

I originally painted the background white, and that didn’t work. I probably should have re-gessoed black over it before trying the blue, because painting the blue over the white made it lose bits of the black peeking through. I guess I still could- but I probably won’t. :)

Yellow Vase - 6x8 acrylic on archival paper

DPW Background challenge

I painted this for the “Background challenge” on Daily Paintworks. It's a good reminder to take time and put more thought into the backgrounds, it's easy to rush through them once I'm finished with the focal point of paintings. Not sure I'd consider this a background success but it's got me thinking about them more anyway.

Little Guy - Acryic on 6 x 8 in. Guerilla paper 

Rusty!

It's been a super busy month, with a trip to Chicago and house guests and a project of moving my painting set-up from the basement up into our home office. I hadn't picked up a paint brush for weeks and am feeling so rusty! To start things rolling again, of course I had to paint a Callie. :) Still feeling rusty but at least the first one is out of the way.

Callie - Acrylic on 6x6 in. hardboard panel

Koppi, finally! - and details of my process

My poor cat Koppi never gets painted. It's not for lack of trying, but she's so difficult to paint being pure white. I thought this one turned out ok though.

Koppi - Acrylic on 8x8 in. gessobord

This is the process I use to sketch out my pet portraits before painting them. First, select a photo:

Then crop it proportional to shape of your canvas. It's pretty easy with squares, just crop it into a square. With rectangular canvases, you need to take the size of the canvas into account - for example, if you will be painting it on a 9x12 or 6x8 canvas, crop it as a 3:4 ratio. If you'll be using a 16x20 canvas, crop it as a 4:5 ratio...  

I need grids to draw out the pet portraits. I use an app called GridPainter to add grids to my photos. You tell it your canvas size, and how big you want the grids to be. I am using an 8" canvas, and I told it to make 2" grids.

Then I grid it a second time, with twice as many grids. So this time I told it to make 1" grids.

When I do my initial sketching, I use the larger grids. It's easier to know which "box" you're in with the larger grids, and it also forces me to practice my drawing more than using the smaller grids.

But after the initial sketching, I'll add smaller grids to the important areas if I feel my initial sketch is off, and will use those to finish up the sketch. I've been trying to use the smaller grids less and less...

Once the paper sketch is finished, I use transfer paper to transfer it to my canvas. The reason I don't grid and sketch directly onto the canvas is two-fold: First, I often need to start over once when I'm painting. If I've sketched it on paper, I don't have to completely re-draw the image - I can use the same paper and transfer it again to a new canvas. Second, I think it frees me up a little when painting not to have the grid on my canvas, so instead of potentially focusing too much on one little box to paint, I have to look at the photo as a whole.