On Monday, I had asked Dan to send me a nice picture of himself because I wanted to paint a portrait of him using my new oil paints. He, of course, decided to be funny and sent me a silly picture of himself ...and in my opinion...looking as if he were trying to let out a big fart. HAHA. So, I decided to draw a caricature of him like that in my sketchbook.

I used prismacolor sketch pencils, prismacolor fine line markers, a markette pen for the tip of his hair, white out for the shine, and prismacolor colored pencils & art stix. This whole thing took about two hours. One thing I'm upset about is that I didn't make him fat enough, but I still am pretty happy with the outcome. Click on the pictures to enlarge.

One of my all time favorite beaches I love to go to by myself, or with friends, is Moonlight Beach. This special place is where I love to take walks, swim in the waves, lye out while blasting hard rock music or reggae through my headphones, whatever have you. For quite some time now I've always wanted to paint this beach, and finally I got the opportunity to today.



I did this painting off a picture I took on one of my walks. I used, of course, oils. One of my favorite things about oil paints is that when you mess up, you have plenty of time to fix it. The hard part is, it's a piece of work to get your paint brushes cleaned up. Well worth it, in the end. This painting took about 3 and hours to complete. I'm pretty satisfied with the outcome, although I'd like to learn more on how to make sand look more presentable and real so my next beach painting can turn out even better.



Here's a look at the picture I took as my reference. Thanks for reading. :)

Today has been a wonderful Labor Day. I woke up at 4am being thankfully interrupted by thunder and rain. I was instantly happy and soothed. I fell back asleep and woke up again at 8 smelling the after affects of rain from the asphalt and the mud, all being carried by the wind and into my room. Today I had to paint. I lit two candles that both smelled of bamboo mist/coconut, and I just went for it.



I am the worst at being a perfectionist when it comes to hanging things up on the wall. ;) Moving on, these three paintings I did were quick, fun and easy little warm ups. I haven't been the best at keeping up with making art in a long, long while, so messing around with my oil paints was a great warming up experience.



The first painting I did this morning is an abstract mess with colors, and in the middle is of a girl holding tightly to her man during the storm. Every individual has their moment where they can be at their lowest, but having that one person they can lean on and love always makes a difference.



The next piece I quickly slapped on blues, greens, reds and yellows to create a fast wave. Not a favorite, but still had fun painting this. I wanted to add texture to this painting.



Lastly, I've wanted to practice quickly painting the human body in an abstract, somewhat shadowing yet beautiful form. This, I'd have to say is my favorite out of the three just because I was most happy with the way it turned out, especially in such a fast pace. My goal in my next paintings is to get more detailed and concentrated with my work, but I'm pretty happy with what I've done today. Happy Labor Day!

I had an great opportunity to go to Aaron Brother's for their major Labor Day weekend sale, and bought a mountain top of art supplies: New paints, brushes, canvases, prismacolor pencils, sketchbook, and prismacolor sketch pencils. With all that, I had a little fun.


This is a painting of a raven I did for my best friend, Shane. Three years ago, I painted a fast warmup painting of a raven (shown below) that I used for an art show I participated in at the Kava Lounge, and Shane really wanted something like that, except he wanted the background to be black and blued as opposed to the red. I originally was going to pretty much paint a duplicate of that, but instead I came up with wanting to add a tree, the moonlight and the bird flying. He was very pleased with the results. The choice of paints I used for the blue raven are oils, and the bottom raven I used acrylics. 

I suppose I was on a bird kick today because the following piece is what I did of a bald eagle. Oh man, these birds are INSANELY bad arse. I mean, I never KNEW they could prey on DEER. Check it out HERE. Yeah, crazy ridiculous, right? Awesome. Well, getting back to the point, I decide to draw this magnificent creature using my new prismacolor pencils on one of Dan's mat boards. Sorry, Dan... I had taken three about a month ago. But you have a GINORMOUS everlasting stack, so, I think you'll be okay. ;) Any how, it didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to, well, at all more like... but I still enjoyed drawing and coloring this piece and was just having fun.



And last, but certainly not least, I HAD to use my freshly new sketchbook. Dan was on my mind, so I decided to draw him. I had searched his Facebook photos to find my "picture victim" and alas, he had a good one in his carving pumpkins album.



It has been a fun day. More projects to come. Thanks for stopping by. Ciao!