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 :)

Symphony of Grays

For quite some time I have just "doodled" little pictures here and there, it has been quite a while since I have actually sat and put a large amount of time into a picture. Every now and then I will get this urge to really use my artistic efforts and draw something that takes me a while to complete.

One of my graduation presents from a good friend was a sketch pad. Yes! I was thrilled to get a new one... an artist can never have to many sketch pads ;) But I didn't want to just draw or doodle a quick unimportant sketch in it's new fresh crisp pages...what sort of way is that to start a new sketch pad?!?! No, no it had to be something special, something interesting that when people look at it they would say "Wow! that is so cool!" That is what my intent was with this new pencil drawing of mine.

Symphony of Grays

I got the idea for this picture from another picture I saw. Although you can't tell what it is, it is pretty fun to look at :)

Here are some close up views

Close up view

Close up view

This picture was really fun to draw, it took me three days to complete. Now I have a decent picture to start up my new sketch pad ;)

Sweeter than Pie!

Through my many years of drawing (that is quite a few!) I have always loved to draw people. Now, that doesn't mean that I am any good at drawing them ;) I have always had the hardest time getting a person that I was drawing to actually look like themselves! It just never worked out for me....something was just always off. It could have very well been that I never carefully sat down and drew out a grid so that every feature was just perfectly in place, or that I just always got far to frustrated to ever finish one...whatever the reason is, I have never been that great at portraits. So I have always just stuck with cartoons, animals and flowers. If you mess those up a little, it's o.k. Not like anyone is going to look at the pencil sketch of my flower and say, "Man....that petal is just a little twisted compared to the real thing" so I have always found drawing still lives and such a safe subject ;) I had decided to accept the reality that I was no good at portraits until my little adorable nephew came along...he just changed everything. 

My beautifus nephew!

The time came for my nephews baptism. I wanted to give his parents (and him) a gift for this special occasion, but what could I give them? I wanted it to be something special that they could all look back on and remember, something that you can't buy at a Hallmark store or buy off of Ebay. I went on thinking of what I could do for them...instantly I thought, "well why not just draw them something?!" A talent I had been given, why not share it with them? This got me very excited, I had decided to draw my sweet little nephew and give his parents his portrait. Instantly I started to get all of my drawing tools out, I had my board, pencils, paper, tortillians and the picture I had chosen of my nephew that I was going to draw. I was all set, and then I remembered that I was no good at drawing real people!!! AH! That didn't stop me though, I was determined, I was going to draw this cute little munchkin no matter what...and he was gonna look real too. To make sure my finished product looked like the babe, I went ahead and actually measured the picture out and made a grid! This is big...I never do that. This picture of my nephew took me two days to complete, he had to look like himself ...it had to look good, so I really took my time with him and was careful that every square had what the real picture had. Finally! I was done. I stepped back and looked at him. I was so pleased! He looked like himself. So after all, all that grid work and careful calculating paid off. I then signed it and placed it in an envelope. The parents loved it, and now have it framed  and hanging in their house. :) I am so glad I was able to do something like that for them! I loved drawing my nephew..best subject ever!

Bored and Inspired

This should be a rather short posting, I only have two pictures this time. And the theme is.....crazy, random abstract ink art! Now one of my favorite things to draw.

Just a few weeks ago I had to do childcare all week long. I soon found myself, most of those days, just sitting at the table watching the one child I was caring for sleep! After about five minutes of just staring at the kid nap, I decided I was bored and went to find some drawing materials. I set off to look for some tools...this proved to be harder than I thought it would be. Who thought that looking for a plain sheet of paper and a pencil would be so difficult? Well, after a bit of searching I stumbled across some paper and found a thin Sharpie ink pen...that would just have to do. So I sat..started at what I had, and was inspired! I decided to go ahead and create a totally random abstract ink picture. I had seen some ink artwork before and loved them. The detail and uniqueness of them has just always caught my attention, so that is what I set off to do. 

Abstract ink art creation # 1

After four hours of just doodling, this is what I finished with. The quality really isn't all that good just cause I only had a Sharpie (which frequently decided to run out of ink!) but I like the outcome of it. 

Abstract ink art creation # 2

This here is another ink art drawing I drew up on another one of my boring childcare days. Once again, four hours work. It kept me entertained! Just hand me a paper and pen, and I will come up with something!