She Sells Seashells....

I finished the painting for James's mom, Teresa.  I didn't really like how the scallop was going when I first started but I think it turned out ok.  Although I had imagined it completely different.  I'm posting the whole painting and then a closeup of the three shells.

Um so the pictures didn't turn out so great because you can see my hands but the lighting was better this time.  

Whole thing was done with watercolor and some colored pencil was used on the scallop.

sneak preview

So James's mom's birthday was on the 12th.  We are going to see her this weekend and I wanted to paint her something for her gift.  She loves beach stuff and the ocean because she grew up in Florida around the Keys.  Anyway I decided I wanted to do seashells because I thought that they would look beautiful in watercolor.   I'm not finished but here is what I have so far:

I like how it has turned out so far but I'm scared to even touch the scallop.  I'm worried I won't get the colors and texture right (you know to make it look like it actually has ridges).  I know it's not done but I was super anxious to post it!  This picture doesn't do it justice by the way, my camera couldn't get the lighting quite right but the colors are actually a lot brighter.

rainbow cake

Ok soo....I made that rainbow cake which I posted a link about in the last post.  I made it last weekend but my laptop wasn't letting me upload pictures so I'm going to try again.  Anyway it worked out really well and was a lot of fun.  Here are pictures of the process before baking:

Pretty colors!  Aaand here is after baking:

Pretty right?  I really only did it to see if I could...there wasn't any occasion really....and I definitely pretty much ate the whole thing over the course of the last week.  It was good!

Poppies will put them to sleep

So my mom asked me to do a few paintings for my parents' bedroom and bathroom which they recently redecorated.  She gave me a couple of ideas and I'm pretty sure the word "poppies" came up at some point from my mom.   The colors of their bedroom and bathroom are dark brown and red so I thought poppies would actually be perfect.   Here is what turned out:

I think it turned out pretty good but I'm sure it'll look even better once it is framed.   I will post a picture when I have it framed.  

Oh yeah and stay tuned because I am going to try to make this rainbow cake this weekend because it is freakin sweet

http://omnomicon.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-make-rainbow-cake.html

I'd love to hear comments and feedback on the poppies!

fish fish and more fish

I broke out the ink set tonight and it wound up really liking it. To paint with this set you actually have to grind the ink yourself from an ink stick to produce the liquid.  It's actually quite fun and I had a picture of me grinding the ink but accidentally deleted the picture....Anyway the first lesson was to paint  a fish and below is what I produced.  It turns out using this ink is a lot harder to use than watercolor (although it seems they would be similar).  It's much harder to control the concentration of ink and water on the brush.  

This was my best fish (above) but I had to practice a lot of strokes with the ink before I got something I liked.  You can see my multiple attempts below:

I really liked doing the fish so much that I thought I'd try to paint a Koi fish which is also popular in Japanese art.  I first used the ink to make the body and I added color with my watercolors.  The ink actually dries sort of light so I went back over the ink just a little with black colored pencil.  I tried not to use the pencil too heavy though because I still wanted the "ink" effect.  

Isn't it cute!!

Japanese Ink Painting

Last year my aunt got me this beautiful ink set and a guide to learn how to paint Japanese style paintings.  The art is called Sumi-e.   Here is the book that I will be using to teach myself:

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Ink-Painting-Art-Sumi-e/dp/0806908335/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231626244&sr=8-1

Here are pictures of the ink set:

I'm almost afraid to mess with it because it is so pretty!  Anyway I'm excited about learning a new technique of painting and I will be posting my progress.

sunflower

So I decided I needed something new for my artblog and I also needed to break out the watercolors again so I painted this last night

It's pretty good I guess, it was mostly just for practice since I haven't painted in over a year.  (It also made me realize I need new watercolors!)