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. 

Two Koi

This is my second time painting koi, and once again I loved painting the abstract-ish background.  I'm still experimenting with the Lascaux Studio acrylics, I definitely love their opacity. 

Two Koi - Acrylic on 6x6 hardboard panel

Flamingo

I was trying to stay loose and paint it on thick with this one. Often I don't mix enough of the colors I need and it makes me be stingy with the paint when I don't want to be.  I was also experimenting with a different paint from my normal here, it's the Lascaux Studio line. The colors are all very opaque which I love, but also more runny than my normal Golden or Lascaux Artists acrylics. The runniness will take some getting used to. It's also hard to mix darker colors with them because they have white bases (which is what makes them nice and opaque). But I will be experimenting more with them for sure.

I have the itch to do some still life paintings next.  My drawing-from-life skills need work, but they won't get better unless I practice!  I rely pretty heavily on gridding when I draw from photos.

Flamingo - 6x8 on archival card stock

Bunny warm-up

Feeling rusty so I warmed up with a fast-and-loose little bunny. In the reference photo, the bunny was in sharp focus and the background was blurred - I tried to recreate that but without success. It's not the first time I've tried and failed at the "blurred background" but I'll keep trying. It seems it might be easier to do if I painted in oils, but I have seen acrylic painters successfully do it so I know it's possible!

I am pushing through a plateau right now, and it's so helpful to follow other painters' blogs and on Instagram for reassurance that many go through this, and you just have to keep painting to get to the other side (until the next plateau, that is!). 

Bunny warm-up - Acrylic on 5x7 in. archival cardboard

Julia’s Cats

These are my friend Julia's cats.  I looked back to the first time I painted a grey tabby which was about 3 years ago, and was excited to see some improvement!  I was drawn to try painting this reference photo because usually I paint from pretty well-lit photos where the eyes really sparkle and can become a center focal point in the painting, but in this photo the lighting was more dimmed and the eyes were pretty dark. I really liked the mood of the photo.

I'm not so sure about the background color - it may be a bit too bright/saturated?

Julia's Cats - Acrylic on 10x10 in. gessobord

So happy with her stick

This is Gypsy, who is so happy with her little stick! It was such a different mode painting a dog after painting a long string of cats. Also this is a lot bigger than I usually paint. I bought some really large canvases at Michael's for 70% off on a whim recently, I want to try doing a few larger pieces. This feels like a good step in that direction.

So happy with her stick - Acrylic on 12x12 in. gessobord