I completed Claire's portrait a few days ago. Or at least, think I did. I'm still waiting for her to reply to my email to let me know if she likes it. At this point, it is possible to make changes. I have not blended with the stencil brush, and it is fairly easy to lift color with sticky tack.

While I wait for Claire to respond, I have been going through my reference photos for my next project. But there are too many pictures that I want to draw...and I can't decide where to start.

So that is where I am now. The wedding and honeymoon are over, and I promise to more actively post to this blog. So I am hoping to have something to post tomorrow. Until then... :)

Portrait Swap - Fresh Start

I restarted my portrait of Claire, so here is an update. My picture was taken at a bad angle, I should have put it on the easle and took a straighter shot. But it's not the final, so I guess it's not that big a deal.

I find that I am actually afraid to touch it with the stencil brush, because my last attempt at her portrait was not fixable because of the blending. If I don't blend this one, then I can't possibly ruin it. I do see some changes that I want to make to it. And considering I can easily lift color with sticky tack, that shouldn't be a huge problem.

Trying to decide if I want to do the paisley design on her shirt, or just make it solid blue. Also not sure if I want to go lighter on the background or not.

So far, I'm pretty happy with how this one is coming along. I do wish I had more daylight hours to work with. I am going to try to bring it to work with me tomorrow to work on it during lunch. I will try to get a better picture of it for the next update.

Portrait Swap Disaster!

When I started this blog, I said you'd see my failures as well as my successes...so, as promised, here is a portrait that I messed up on.


The photograph actually looks better than the real thing. Here's my excuse for messing it up. If you take a look at my website, you will see that I am used to brightly lit subjects. Shadows are not something I have that much experience with. Shadows are hard to get sometimes, without making the colors look muddy. So what I've succeeded in here, is making my subject look like a battered woman. I'm sorry, Claire!

I had to put Claire on the back burner for a few weeks while I took care of some wedding planning, and holiday stuff. But now I'm back to complete her portrait. I tried to lift the color off of this portrait, and it doesn't seem to want to come up. That's because I blended it pretty good with a stencil brush. I could probably get it all off, if I wanted to make Claire wait a year or two! lol.

Claire went ahead and sent me some new photos of herself, without shadows, incase I wanted to try a new picture when I start over. I'm taking her up on that, ONLY BECAUSE, I'm still so busy with wedding planning, and I don't want to make her wait much longer while I fiddle with a new skill. I'll work on the shadow challenge another time. Maybe re-read Ann Kullberg's Colored Pencil Portraits again before I make a go of it. For now, I will stick with a reference that she sent without shadows, so that I can get it done in a timely manner and ship it to her asap.

In the next couple of days, I will post my start on the second attempt at Claire's portrait. And eventually, probably after my wedding, I will revisit the original reference with shadow and see if I can do better.

In fact, improving my art, and blogging more often are goals for 2010. So off I go, and I wish you all a very happy, creative and productive 2010!

Merry Belated Christmas!

I'm sorry that I have been MIA for so long. I will admit, time has gotten away from me. I screwed up on my drawing for the portrait swap...and then just have not had to the time to fix or restart it. Before I knew it, it was Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas....I feel like all three holidays came in about as many days too. I don't know where all the time went.

I will post my messed up drawing in another post. I will also be fixing or restarting the portrait in the next day or two. I'll post that as well. But for now, I wanted to show you all what I have been busy with. Here are my invitations, made completely from scratch. The design came from this blog. Sensitive information blurred or blacked out for privacy purposes.


I have also been working on a couple of other DIY projects. I am making my own Ringbearer Pillow, Flowergirl Basket, Guest Book, and Garters. Normally, I wouldn't do all of that. But there is a reason. I really wanted to get married in my grandmother's wedding dress. It was a beautiful wedding gown.


Unfortunately, it wasn't properly preserved, so when my grandmother brought it back from New York for me, it was literally shredded and yellowed. All I had was the bodice, and a relatively small piece of the skirt. (I really should have taken a picture of that before I started working with it). But I thought if I can't wear the dress, maybe I can use it for something else...and incorporate it into my wedding somehow. And that thought evolved into the Ringbearer pillow, Flowergirl basket, Guestbook, and Garters! My mom whitened the dress, but for some reason, a piece of cording or elastic that ran all through the lace did not whiten. The lace whitened beautifully, but the the cord or elastic design stayed yellow. So it dawned on me to dye it purple...to match my wedding color. So I did just that. All of the lace parts of the dress dyed beautifully. The rest of it, I ironed slighlty...I still wanted a it to be a little bit wrinkly because I liked the way it looked. And so far, I have completed the Ringbearer Pillow.

The white fabric, the lace (which I dyed purple) and the purple button in the middle (also dyed) are all parts of my grandmother's wedding dress. I showed it to her a couple of days ago and she was thrilled that I was able to do something with her dress, and that I could get as much out of it as I did. She really didn't think it would be good for anything. But I successfully recycled it, and made it into something my family can continue to cherish for years to come.

So now on my "to-do" list, I still have to complete all the other things listed. But there's time for that...so I will be going back to my portrait for the portrait swap and will post that very soon. I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! Oh, by the way, I did rush to get my Christmas Card drawn just in time to mail them out a few days before Christmas!

Portrait Swap & Art Contest

The Portaiture Forum on Wetcanvas is having their 6th Annual Portrait Swap. I have always missed the deadline for signing up because I spend most of my time in the Colored Pencil Forum, and only check in on the Portraiture Forum once in a while. So last year, after missing the deadline yet again, I put a reminder in Google Calendar to email me weekly during the month of October, to remind me to check the forum for the Portrait Swap thread. I FINALLY got to sign up! Yesterday I found out that my parter is Claire Beadon Carnell. While you're checking out her website, check out her blog as well. I am so excited because Claire is a very talented artist, and I know that she will do an awesome job on my portrait.

I can't wait to exchange photos and get started! I had my co-worker take some photos of me yesterday so that I could choose one for the swap. I hope to get some time to look at them tonight and choose one to send to her before I go to the gym.

I've only participated in one portrait swap before. The Colored Pencil Forum had a "Guess Who?" Portrait Exchange in December of 2005. That one was done a little bit differently. We were not paired up together painting our partner's portrait. Instead it was kept secret who got who, and in the end when they were all posted up in the thread by a non-participating artist, we all had to guess who the artist was, and who the subject was. That was a lot of fun, and I was thrilled to find out that the artist who drew my portrait was Nicole Caulfield. Back in February this year, I went to a workshop taught by Nicole. She is one of my favorite colored pencil artists. Here is the portrait that Nicole drew of me.

And here is the portrait that I drew of another artist in the exchange. His name was Ed Gilmore, but I never saw him in the forum again after the exchange. I think I've improved a bit since 2005! lol

After the portrait swap is done, the artists mail their portraits to their respective partners. It's so much fun, and a great way to get to know fellow artists that you follow on the forum. Not to mention, not only do you get a piece of original artwork, but you also spread your artwork out to other states or sometimes even other countries that it may not necessarily go to otherwise.

So look forward to seeing my finished portrait in the coming weeks. I have to check on the dates again to find out what the deadline is.

In other news, I had intended to enter Zebrog into the Artist's Magazine All-Media Art Competition, but the deadline was November 2nd and I missed it. But I just got an email this morning that the deadline was extended to December 1st! So I might just have a chance to enter afterall! I just have to get my butt in gear and finish that drawing!

Halloween!

I love Halloween! When they announced a costume contest at work this year, I jumped right on it. I've had it in my head for the past several months that I wanted to be a dead bride for Halloween this year. Seems only appropriate since I'm getting married in less than 4 months. lol. Wow...how time flies! I looked online for months to find a dress and even looked into the possibility of making my own dress. But I couldn't find anything I liked. I was about ready to just order an adult Corpse Bride costume from Halloween Express online, but I was really feeling like that would not be an appropriate costume for work. When they announced the contest at work, I clocked out for lunch and grabbed a co-worker and dragged her to thrift stores in the area looking for a dress that would work. The third store we stopped at was Goodwill, and there was this beautiful wedding dress on a manniquin right in the front of the store...it was exactly what I was looking for. I tried it on and it fit like a glove. It was $49.99, but how could I turn it down?? When we got to the register, my co-worker asked for a discount, and they gave me the dress for $34!! It was like it was meant to be! So I spent the rest of the week planning the details....I bought fake french manicured nails on sale for $3 at CVS, and I used nail clippers to make them jagged and cracked. I used an old dirty gold and cubic zirconia ring that I had for my engagement ring. I bought a small bouquet of carnations and just let them die, then I wrapped them in pearls for my dead bouquet. A few toy roaches and rats....a little fake blood...and my costume won me first place in the contest!

I don't think I can top that next year. But we'll see. lol.

Now that Halloween is over...it's time to concentrate on Christmas. I will be designing and drawing my annual Christmas card very soon. I will post when that is finished. I also have a few more 5x7 portraits that I want to draw and I do have my paper now...so I'll try to work that in as well. I hope you all had a very Happy Halloween!

Tweeking Complete

I know I haven't been good about keeping up with the blog, but I've just got so much going on lately, I haven't found time to draw anything. I finally got around to tweeking the portrait of my brother. The problem was that I had drawn his eyes tilted, but the rest of his face straight. So I corrected the bottom portion of his face, and he is complete.

I do plan to do some more work on the zebrog soon. There is a contest I want to enter that into and the deadline is November 2. I will probably try to finish it over the weekend that my fiance goes out of town.

I also have a few more pictures selected to do portraits from, just waiting on an order of paper from Dick Blick to arrive and I'll get started on those.