The Gnome is Coming!!

FINI!  And I love him!! Here’s a tiny peek of part of the piece.  I’ll post the entire painting soon and I’m popping this adorable gnome on my website tonight! He’s 11x14 on canvas and looking to bring some good cheer to YOU! $200.00 to the first one that gets to him.

An Artist’s Sketchbook

This week I’m going through my sketchbooks to find examples for my art students for classes next week. I’m teaching them to paint in a non-intimidating way by painting backgrounds only, upon which we will start drawing next week. 

You can see I obviously painted this background first, likely intending it to be a floral.  I think I drew this pretty lady from a magazine while flying from somewhere to somewhere, but... I really have no idea.  Anyway, here she is.  I thought she was as pretty as a flower, so it fit.

I make a practice of preparing my sketchbookpages with backgrounds of color because I usually just travel with pens.  With the background done, my work is also half done.

Art Lesson on Pencils

School is in session! I’m going to give you Pencil 101.  Did you know art must be learned block by block just like math or science? We always start with pencils!

For great art you need different kinds of lines, darks, lights, etc. and for that you need a range of pencils. They’re numbered like this:

9H 8H 7H 6H 5H 4H 3H 2H HB 2B 3B 4B ..... to 9B.

All the pencils in your house are either 2H, HB or 2B, grouped under the name ‘#2 pencils.’

H stands for hard, and these are light pencils, 9H being nearly invisible. The super hard pencils can also be sharpened to a deadly point and used as a lethal weapon.

B stands for black, and the get continually darker out to 9B, the blackest and most dastardly of all.*  These pencils will break when you drop them because the graphite is so soft, to make dark marks.  So, drop your H pencils.  

If you look at the points as in the second photo, the fattest graphite is the darkest pencil, the skinniest would be the lightest.  So, you don’t even need the pencil name to know what you want! 🙂. Any questions? 🙂 

*art people, I’m simplifying.  I know what you’re thinking.

‘Working Title’ Series

All my life I’ve been a girl that likes sparkly, shiny things and these tiny paintings are really fitting the bill for me. I have a new series coming in about a week.  Right now it’s ‘Working Title Series,’ but I’m thinking about maybe ‘Pathways.’ I want the title to give a feeling of hope.  If you have any good ideas, let me know!  

Every painting will have a rocky, cobblestone path.  Anyway, help me think of a name if you can, aaaandddd, happy Labor Day!

Oh goodness, I love these! These have both holographic and colorshifting paint.  Hard to photograph and much more beautiful in person.