Under Lavender Skies

  As many of you might know, this semester I started taking classes at TCC (Tulsa community college), as an art major. So far it hasn't been too eventful, I am only in the basic drawing foundations class. Even yet I think I've learned bunches, a lot about proportions, shading, art elements, composition, and what generally makes a piece well done. Today I am going to be sharing something that sounds small but makes a large difference. And that is value (as you've probably gathered from the title) but also the contrast of and using a wide range of values. It's the final step of a "simple sketch" that can make it more than that. Even when drawing a still life...you can lie (essentially), though it's not called that, it's called taking artistic liberties. Here is an example using a drawing of my cat, sweet Mr. Edison. It's simple but I am using it because the idea of this post came from this drawing. I drew it in one sitting (I was really jus...

Recently I have been *attempting* to delve more into self portrait drawings of the quick sketch kind and I think I've figured something out.  That is that drawing myself makes me feel more beautiful.   For a bit it takes my mindset out of critical thoughts, to an artists mindset, relating to myself.   I have this idea that every human on this earth is really quite beautiful.  It's an idea that has often excluded myself.  Everyone is beautiful because everyone is art.  It sounds the tiniest bit silly and impossible writing it here but I guess you're just going to have to trust me.  Often times when I see a person or a place I think of it as a painting or art piece.  Most people - to societal's crap standards - are very imperfect but very beautiful I say.  Someone's bowlegged stance is a rough sketch, barely there, a scar from nose to lip indicating a past cleft lip is a thick brushed ink portrait, and a crooked smile so big the eyes ...

 Hmmn... maybe I should think up titles for my sketch book pages like this one, and the one I posted last week, so it's not possibly titled: "Some *more* *more* art to share" next week.  If you have any ideas, what would you name this one?  :D I had fun with this piece but also have some issues with it.  I wanted to try something new so I only used a pen and then very minimal colored pencils and while I don't think it looks terrible it's not a style I'm planning to adopt.   The quote I used on this page is:  "You lost what you had but now you have what is worth it."   Now part of me thinks I just made it up because that's what I know but another part of me thinks I heard it (or something similar) somewhere and I can't for the life of me remember where.  It's also too vague and quotable for it not to have been said before.   Thanks for reading! Leave your thoughts in the comments below!  ✰✰✰  

   I finished up this piece with the color in the background along with inking in the quote.  As I wrote it all I knew was that I wanted there to be an element of "movement," though the poses, the flow of the letters, and the content of the words.  I think I captured that.    Combining art and writing is one of my favorite things.  I know in terms of writing here there isn't much but I think the words, along with the color, are what takes this a notch past a simple sketch.       Thoughts?  Thanks for reading!

Honestly I hate how the phrase "you might have noticed that I missed and didn't post last week," is becoming more and more frequent but it is. I want to like what I post and sometimes I'm busy and don't have the drive to create for this space along with everything thing else. Saying that, I'm making and have ideas for some pretty cool things right now.  Please enjoy this short comic illustrating some of my recent thoughts.  Here are the words just incase it's too small to read on the page:  Chasing sunsets.. like chasing beauty in life. Living moment to moment waiting for the next thing to live for, the next thing that's really worth it. But what happens in the moments in-between? What happens when the fire dies when the coffees cold, after the sun set but before the stars come out.  How do we learn that it all has value? that there really is a point to it all the mundane in-betweens, that is not just waiting for the next good thing?    How...

Hey everybody!  I didn't want to miss another week, I've been a bit busy recently, so here are some sketches I made awhile ago.  I think they turned out pretty good and I hope ya like them!  Have you seen the hobbit? Do you have a favorite dwarf?  

How do you add an interesting twist to an otherwise normal sketch?  A colorful background. Give it a try. 

Hey everyone!  I painted this a while ago for my mom for mother's day and never shared it here. Through this painting I discovered white flowers are very difficult to paint... Still I had a fun time figuring it out and adding more color and texture to the flowers!   Pictures and close ups below, I hope ya like it!  ☆☆☆

The Poem Recently. . .  The world has feelt heavy recently and that feeling seems so come much easier then... the obvious lighteness  of the spring wind  through the overgrown grass in our backyard.  I read some advice recently, about how bad times and thoughts will come and go, and how you should let it pass though, you'll have to live life anyways,  people smile all the time even if they don't feel it one bit,  so you might as well set down as much  of the weight of the world as you can.  As a friend once said,  imagine the sky to be your life, the sky will be blue, cloudy, and stormy.  Storm clouds will come but they are not the end though they might stay for awhile,  Let them pass and don't attach yourself to those feelings.  Well, I will continue to write my little poems and stories, and paint and draw, and to learn, The best I can. Though I really have no idea what I'm doing.  It w...

 I made these landscapes pretty recently, recently as in this year sometime but I'm really not sure the exact dates.  I love how simple these are, I purposely decided to make them so by not adding any trees or anything in the foreground.  Still, I don't think they are plain and empty, there are colors and textures that make them interesting.   I love how simple these are, and I did that purposely. I don't think everything has to be so complicated with trees and people and busyness in the fore ground. That's one thing that has been on my mind a lot recently, that life doesn't have to be so full and complicated to be wonderful, it's something that matches up with these to pieces as well. Still, there's colors and textures to see if you look for it, kinda like life. :-)  The first one I painted with oil and the second is colored pencils!  ✰✰✰

In this past year I believe I've grown a bit with my art, still, I don't have much to show for it.  Mostly because I didn't really start working consistently on it until the middle of the summer and on, and also because I worked more on long-term paintings (mostly oil paintings) that take longer to finish.  You might have seen most or all of these before but I hope you still enjoy them.  In no particular order at all, here are some of my favorites.  :)  I think it's been a good year.   Thank you for being here.   ✰✰✰

I am really proud of how this one turned out!  It's a self portrait from a photo that my sister took of me about a year ago. Scroll to see the reference photo.  It took me three weeks, working on it 2-4 times a week (I need to start keeping track of hours spent on each project). Scroll to see a couple stages though I didn't didn't take a photo after every time I finished painting.  I hope you like it! 

I am an oil painter now...  It's not that I didn't consider myself an oil painter before. If you paint, you're a painter, if you write you're a writer. I don't believe that you have to sell a painting or a book to consider yourself those things.  But this painting (pictured below) changed it for me and really made me realize that oil painting is the paint that I like best.  I originally began this painting with acrylic paints. I thought it would work better since many sections needed to dry before I could add more. It ended up going in the opposite direction.  Acrylic paints dry really fast, they were drying on the palette before I was able to mix colors. I've gotten to the point in practicing oils that using acrylics was actually much harder.  The fact that oils take longer to dry is something that beginner oil painters assume will be more difficult, at least I did a while ago, but it is actually an asset.  With practice, I have gotten to the point that oi...