Christmas Clown

 Here's my merry Christmas to you - a Christmas clown!  It would be merrier if I could figure out how to turn this thing horizontally - it WAS on my computer!  If anyone knows something I don't about this, let me know!

 

  I began my clown journey at our gallery Christmas party.  One of the artists is a clown, and she said she'd pose for us - yay!  Here's my sketch.













And again...
















The next day, I worked the underpainting up with cool colors as I knew she was going to have a lot of reds, so you can now see what's underneath the finished piece!

 These two pics show the beginnings of a project I'm currently working on.  I've got a lot of nice wood pieces that I'm going to have my students use for this very same project, which means I have to do mine first!
Step 1 - drew in my design with a marker
Step 2 - layer on some colored crepe paper with a nice acrylic medium

In case you can't tell from this little cutaways, it's a tree.  I'll show you the entire tree manana.

Here's a really nice example of graffiti art that Melody and I found downtown this afternoon.  I love the colors and the depth created, and especially the dimension added by the unusual background.  Nice!

Hawaiian Masks

This summer we took our entire family to Hawaii.  Aside from the gaping, eight inch in diameter coral injury that took me to the travel disease specialist (who knew?) it was an unforgettably wonderful trip.

One of the things my oldest son really liked was the Hawaiian warrior masks.  They were all so different and entertaining, I had to like them as well.

When we came back, I pulled out a couple photographs I'd taken and got out the paint.  I'm really satisfied with these colors as they're reminiscent of Hawaii, especially the greens and turquoises.  Sshhhh!  This one's a secret!  It's for my son for Christmas.

I did this one in a similar fashion as the angel I just finished; painting the background with warms.  After that, it was mostly painting negative space to do the masks, with some bright red to make it pop.  Much of the greens and blues I painted in with my fingers, leaving my fingerprints, a part of myself, there for him to see.  Much of the cool colors are applied quite thinly so you can see the primary layers.  I like it.  I'm taking a poll to see if I should make prints out of this one.

Stitches and Bolts (Frankenstein)

Well, I don't know if it's art, but I did the hair and makeup for our short black and white film 'Frankenstein.'  Yep.  Definitely art. :)

Just finished this one.  I painted the background in warm colors, and then the angel in cool colors.  My desire was to add some mystery by allowing the viewer to be able to see the streaky colors through the angel.  Once again, one of my paintings turned out pretty bright.  No surprise there!

These are purse-sized sketchpads I have filled over the past few years.  I never go anywhere without a pad.  Some of these are dedicated to particular trips; usually when we go on a trip I fill the entire pad with pictures and memories.  Precious.