The Oldies

I love coming across some old drawings of mine (brings back good memories)...these few here are some I stumbled upon the other day when I was looking through my art portfolio.

Flowery Hair Bow

Old Abandoned Truck

Foxglove

Little Colt

Some of these are pictures I drew just to pass the time, and others I drew for my art classes.

El Corazon de Espana!

It has been quite a while since I have posted last, so I apologize for that, but this next post should be able to redeem me ;) If you all are as into dancers as much as I am, you will fully enjoy these next few pics. But I am not talking about just any regular dancers, not ballerinas, or jazz dancers...something with more soul and passion. A type of dancer that can show such deep emotion through just one simple yet precise hand gesture...this dancer is a Flamenco dancer. And for me, those women are the heart of Spain, El Corazon de Espana!

I have for quite some time now wanted to visit Europe and be able to go and see some wonderful sights; including the well known and loved flamenco dancers. The human body has always intrigued me and has served as a wonderful drawing topic, especially those in motion. I have always thoroughly enjoyed sketching dancers. I think it is just the liveliness and emotion that they convey into a picture...as they say "A picture is worth a thousand words", and this means even more so when that person is a flamenco dancer. There is just something so captivating about them. Captivating is just the word that these special Hispanic women have on me....so I decided to paint one up.  This is an oil on canvas.

This painting let me get a small glimpse into what part of Spain must be like...full of passion! 

OLE!

This is What I Want to be When I Grow Up....

I don't know about you all, but since I was little I have always loved those old black and white movies. Now, everyone knows that in those movies there is always a stunning woman right? I think this is why I have always loved the oldies, the ladies in them were always so beautiful...the ones that were even better where the movies in which there was a......you ready......Fruit Lady!!!! I mean come on...who wouldn't love watching a pretty island lady walk around with fruit piled up on her head? Classic!  So I have always liked that...but what got me pumped one day is when I was visiting another artists blog and saw her little paper cut out of a fruit lady. I was stoked! I loved it...and she inspired me. I then set off to try and copy this cute fruit lady.

One cute Fruit Lady!

So here she is....I love it! this was a really fun project, it took me all day to just measure and cut all those individual pieces of paper out, but it was so much fun!

Now along with the fruit lady there was the Snake Charmer...those are pretty cool as well, so  I decided to go ahead and try and do a replica myself

Snake Charmer

Oh..you know you got charm when you can charm them snakes...she has some serious skills...but it's all in the eyelashes ;)

A Happy Memory

As I was searching through my art portfolio, (tying to organize it!!) I came across an older piece of mine, one I had totally forgotten about. This will happen to me quite often, I will have painted or drawn something when I was much younger,stashed it away and then soon forgotten about it and that it ever even existed. I am always excited to once again find one of these "lost and forgotten" pieces of mine when I come across them, this was exactly how I felt when I stumbled across this watercolor painting of mine.

This painting was a project that I was summoned to do with my dad. My dad (I think) is a great artist, he has always loved doodling and he is rather good at painting and drawing caricatures. Though he doesn't practice his artsiness as much as I do, he is very gifted. I'm not sure what prompted him to do this project, but I'm glad he decided to drag me into it!  It was a very good father daughter bonding time ;)

 He found a photograph of these flowers in a magazine and decided he wanted to paint them....so he called me over and told me that he was going to teach me how to paint watercolor! I was all for it. I had never really painted with watercolor before, so this was all new to me. He was my tutor and I was his little apprentice (or as he called me "young grasshopper"). I remember sitting next to him at the dining room table, I had my paper with the flowers drawn on it, and he had his, we both painted our individual paintings. For each step I would look at what he did and try and replicate it, I remember thinking to myself sometimes "What! what are you doing!?", because he would just go for it and drown his paint brush with water and paint then just SPLAT! blob the paint right on the paper, he knew what he was doing though ;) I just ended up doing what he said, and low and behold! the painting came out alright. I am usually very careful about my paintings, things can't bleed into each other...and this was my dads favorite technique..."just let the colors bleed into each other". Once the painting was finished, I loved the product, It came out very relaxed and chill (very much like my dad). 

Since then (2003) I have been telling my dad that we should do something like that again, I love doing art projects with him, it is always good time spent :)