Sunflowers and Speedwork

Well, summer has come and gone, Now it's time to commemorate the days with another painting. One of my Facebook friends posted a number of absolutely gorgeous pictures of the sunflowers in her area and this motivated me to paint my interpretation of her flowers.  So here you go.

I had a lot of fun playing with modeling paste and gel medium. I really love Golden acrylics. I have found that with my passion for palette knife paintings that I don't have patience for the cheap watery paints anymore.

And speaking of not having patience.. I don't have patience for just simply running 3 days a week and calling it good. I HAVE TO HAVE A GOAL! ugh.  That is just one of my quirks.

So, I am in the heart of training for the Fort Worth Marathon on November 8th. I know. Working full time, raising three daughters, being a pastor's wife and taking 12 hours of graduate class isn't enough for me. I have to train for a marathon. 

Yep.

And so far, I am loving it. 

Okay, check that. Today I am tired.

But Wednesday is my only off day, so by this morning, Tuesday, I was sluggish. And it was SPEEDWORK! oH mY GrAvy! I did a 1 mile warm up, 9x600's and a cool down mile. Last week, no problem hitting my goals. Today, I had to work a little harder at it. But I ran Thursday thru today and that is new for me.

Anyway, I think besides the sluggish part of it, I like making speed work the last workout prior to the morning off. There is just something really cool about hitting my time goals knowing that I ran a ton of miles on Saturday and Sunday! 

I am stronger than I think I am!!

Always.

The start of a new painting series

I painted this today. I've had this big canvas sitting around for months and decided to use it.

I really like how it turned out.

Now I'm thinking about doing a series of girl athlete paintings in this style.  Wouldn't it be fun to have a girl hurdling, a girl playing soccer, a cheerleader, and so on..

Guess I better get to work! :)

A Servant's Heart Painting. Finished. Finally.

I finally finished the painting that I created during church a few weeks ago. It was a hard one. Thankfully my dad came over and did a good critique for me and helped me move past the "i just don't like it" stage to actually fixing it! I don't know what artists do that don't have dad's or mentors to help them!

Let's revisit where I left off during church.. Here I was at 1 hour or so into the painting. It was desperate for help, but I wasn't sure where I even wanted to start!

So I didn't.

I left it sitting on my easel in my "studio" for a couple of weeks.

But then I had a friend that wanted me to paint something for her and I felt like I had to complete this piece before I started something new.

So I started working on it and was bummed. It was bad.

But my dad came along and helped me to look at it the way I look at my student's work. Objectively with a critical artistic eye.

Hallelujah!

So after not too much more work, here is the finished piece.

I made a conscience decision to not revamp the entire piece. I felt like it needed to be a reflection of the church and the service that I painted it in. But I worked on the perspective elements a bit and the proportions of the figures.

Through this process I've decided that I really LOVE oils and I really DON'T like acrylics. I just can't blend enough with the acrylics. I'm already working in a rushed tempo with the palette knife, but you add the drying time of acrylics to it and it's hard!

So thankfully, at least for the summer, I am going back to oil painting! And I can't wait!

Now I just have to get some of my to do list accomplished so that I can relax and paint.

Painting in Church

I was asked to create a painting during church. Start to finish. One hour. Holy Cow!

 

Of course I said yes. You know me, I love a challenge.

 

So, yesterday, during our churches 9am service, I painted a complete painting.

 

Below are some of the pictures that Doug took of me working. Fun to see the process.

 

Notice the empty canvas. I had the sketch on the canvas to start, but that was it.

 As soon as the first song began, I started working. Fast and furious was the name of the game.

 

 

 

 

That had to be the fastest hour of church EVER. At the end of the service, the pastor asked me to tell about the piece... the painting is of my impressionist interpretation of the church and the woman we were honoring that day. (Miss Penny worked with the preschool children in our day school for 40 years!!)

When the service was over, Doug came up and took some closeups of me finishing up.

 

Here is the "completed" piece. It's not really, but close enough for the day. I told Miss Penny that I would finish it this week and get it to her. I want to get a chance to fine tune it and you just can't do that in an hour (plus the extra 30 minutes that I took afterwards while the choir was setting up...).

 

So will I do this again? Absolutely. But not once a month as I was asked too! That would be too much like work.  I also learned that painting buildings within the one hour time frame is too hard! I need to keep it simple! I ended up working in acrylic so that the dry time would work for transport, but I much prefer the blendability of oils. It was harder to work in acrylic as I had to just layer instead of blend. I think I'd like to try to find a way to transport an oil painting!

But was it fun? YES!  And when I really finish, I'll post a picture of the completed painting.

Spatula Painting

Some times you just have to paint with a spatula! Okay, maybe only art teachers say this.. but really, it was a ton of fun.

 

So why did I paint with a kitchen spatula? Well, simple.. art specific tools are expensive. Things purchased at the dollar store are not!

 

I'm teaching a workshop on Saturday to two groups of 35 art students at a state level competition and I need tools that I can get super fast. Ordering palette knives would have taken a couple of weeks and would have been  at least a dollar a piece for plastic.. that means, expensive. .25 cent spatulas are the way to go!

 

So a little back story.. I offered to teach the palette knife painting workshop last Friday when the organizers realized that they were short workshop providers. I figured that since I am living in palette knife world right now, it would be perfect. I knew I'd have to revamp some, using acrylic paint instead of oil, but I didn't think about how difficult it would be to get 70 palette knives! eek. I'm a planner and this last minute stuff has my brain whirling!

 

After I searched a few stores and online for cheap and fast palette knife options, I decided to head to the dollar store. Walking in, I asked God to open my eyes to the options. (Yep, I am becoming one of those people. While I'm not asking God for close parking places, I am asking for eyes to see the provision that He provides!)

 

Here are the three vary different, usable options I found! The handle on combs, baby plastic knives, and spatulas.

Here are the new "palette knives" with the traditional ones!

I also only used the paint that I'll be using on Saturday. Primary colors plus white and black acrylic.

I used the baby knife for mixing the colors and for most of the base coat on the canvas. I loved the smooth way the paint went onto the canvas. This is a new go-to tool for me!

But then I needed something that would provide a little more of the traditional palette knife look. I trimmed the spatula so that it had a point and went to town.

 

Isn't it fantastic!?! :) I mixed all of the colors on wax paper. The biggest difference between the acrylic and the oil is that I had to let the paint "set up" a little bit before I could use it easily. Otherwise it was just too runny!

Me in all my glory. Sad. It looks like it's uber late.. it was for me. Probably 9pm! But I wanted you to see the finished piece.

And here is a close up. I think the students will enjoy the process!

 

Get Your Paint On Week 3

This week for class, we had to choose four colors and paint something. We were to only use those colors. Well, I tried. I really did. In the end, I layered the four colors chosen from my bathroom towels and curtain and did lots of sanding and texturing.

I’m pleased with the results given the assignment. I don’t love the painting, but am happy to have completed the assignment within the timeline.

In the close up below you can see all the layers of paint. I really love the bottom left hand flower. If I could just cut that one out and use it I would.. and I might. :)

So there you have it, another painting!

Acrylic Resist Cards

Wow is all I can say about these cards! I LOVE how they turned out!! As cool as they look in the picture, they are even better in person :)  I can’t wait to give these away!

To make these cards, you need acrylic paint, I used the metallic paint daubers as they are super easy to use and no clean up.  I precut my base cards to the size I wanted and then stamped each base with the background stamp and let the paint dry.

Then I took my brayer and ink and layered on ink and then burnished it in and off the paint with a paper towel.  The green card I used tint instead of ink.

Then I created my cards.  That’s it!  See the pictures for more details about the products.

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Here are the finished cards.

Acrylic Smash Card

Man, if I had planned ahead, I would have saved this for Tuesday and got a Technique Tuesday post in, but I didn’t so it will just have to work for today :)

This technique is simple and doesn’t take a whole lot of planning.. that’s the best kind of technique in my book!

I got the premise and basic information from Splitcoast Stampers, so you can go check out all of the details there, but of course, I adapted it to fit my needs and the fact that I don’t have the cool cutters the original poster had!

To create these cards you need:

• Stazon ink
• Stamps
• Acetate or Transparency paper
• Acrylic Paints
• White paper
• Card bases and other decorative papers and embellishments for cards

Once your papers have dried, cut into desired shapes and create!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a great day and I hope you enjoy making Acrylic Smash cards!!

Emily