Good Day!

Today was a good day. :) At work, I figured out how to do something that's had me stumped for a little bit, and it's before the deadline for the initial prototype, so that's even better. Then, tonight was the first night back at the art club for fall. :) I decided to start a silk painting design I've had percolating in the back of my head for a while:

(I do the outlines on the computer, where I can fiddle with the curves to my heart's content.) Can you tell what it is? If you can't, do you want me to tell you, or do you want to keep guessing while it progresses?

I hope you had a good day too!

Henna

I got a henna "tattoo" at an anniversary/fundraising party tonight. :)

Office View

I noticed some interesting clouds the other day, so I got up from my desk and took some photos of the view from my office.


(Not great photos, but cool that I have an office with a view!)

When the current co-ops leave, I'll have the option to switch to one of the two offices they're in... apparently the office I'm in can get rather hot in the summer sun, although I haven't had a problem so far.

I noticed a screw in the brick wall behind and above my monitor, and thought that a painting of mine would look nice there. Do you think I can *find* that painting?!? (There's another one the same size that I also can't find... what on earth did I do with them? I really need to work on unpacking...)

Art Show

Raffi came to visit, but has returned home, and Mylo went with him. However, during my "demo", I finished Asia (In A Box):

A proper photo and a gloss coat, and she'll be done. Now I get to enjoy her until the fall show, where she'll actually be for sale! (Assuming no one beats down my door before then, of course.)

Apparently someone was quite disappointed yesterday that Mylo wasn't for sale.

I suspect I might be part cat...

...given how much I *love* the cardboard box in this painting I'm working on:

Asia In A Box

I started a new kitty painting tonight:

Unless I finish her really quickly, this is the painting I'll be working on at the art show on the Sunday afternoon.

It's based on my own photo (of someone else's cat):


Oh, and I photographed my penguins properly, and cropped and cleaned up the image:

I've also got them in a frame now:

Given that I'm probably not going to be printing new cards this time (mom's laser is in the shop being cleaned, and they don't print as well on my inkjet), I may actually be ready for the show! (Or I might make some magnets of the penguins... those print well on my inkjet. Plus I need to make labels. Maybe I'm not ready for the show.)

I feel like I don't want to overprice my penguins, but I also don't really want them to sell... I'd like to enjoy them for a bit first.

Finished

I finished my Adélie penguins tonight:


At first I wasn't happy with the background. Working on it a bit, it got better. Then a bit more, and it got worse. Finally I got it to a point where I am reasonably happy with it.

Now to take a proper photo (in daylight), plus matting and framing. (The framers I buy from have an open house next Monday, so I'll get all the bits then.)

For those who are interested, the art show is coming up in May!

More info. I'll be running credit cards Friday night, and painting for people to watch on Sunday.

Mylo: Almost Done

I thought I might be done last night, and so I signed the front and cleaned up the edges. (Amazingly... usually I only remember that as I'm about to do the varnishing.) However, my luck for remembering didn't hold... when I got home, I remembered that I had intended to add some colour to the centre of the ring on the chain. Whoops.

Oh well... I'll look at it all week, and decide if there's anything else that needs changing too. Since I'm apparently not done, is there anything else that jumps out at you as needing touching up?

Mylo Update

Not done yet, but feeling exceedingly pleased with myself. ;)

Mylo: Inching Along

Last week:


After tonight:


(Photos taken under different lighting conditions, of course.)

Mylo: Inching Along

Tonight I started off by wiping off a bit more of the chalk (almost all gone now) to see how I was coming along:

Then I continued with the fur:

The differences are subtle, but I have made progress. Orange dogs take longer to paint than black dogs.

Mylo Update

Previously:


Tonight:


At one point I thought I might be messing things up, but now I think I'm still doing well.

I was fighting with the paint tonight. The air was so dry, the paint on my palette kept forming skins. I think I've figured out now which colours I need on my palette, and which I can leave in the tube until needed. Maybe. I'm also considering using my wet palette, even though I don't plan to save paint between sessions. (I only paint at most once a week, and a wet palette would go moldy if I used it like that.)

Remember how another artist asked why there was so much blue? Well, as I was cleaning up tonight, he asked if I had been working on a darker German shepherd before. (Nope, same painting, just further along.)

Mylo Update

When last you saw Mylo:

(I actually finished off a bit further along than this, if you remember.)

At the end of tonight:


I started off with the highlights on the chain. Then I added a few more colours to my palette, and re-marked the line between the dark patch and light patch below his nose. A few more colours, and I worked on the dark patches of fur. A few more colours, and I started working on other areas of his fur... except they weren't turning out the way I wanted. I think it's because when I work on something like Mylo's fur, I like to pick out and arrange the colours I'm planning on using on the palette, but this time I had everything all over, and not enough of my yellows, browns, oranges and rusts. So I stopped working on his fur and cleaned my palette. By then it was a little late to put out all the fur colours, so I picked four for the stucco and did that, and then cleaned up a few more separating lines. I may glaze the stucco with blue to push it back a bit, but I'll see after I get Mylo done.

Mylo is more of a challenge to paint than Raffi. I'm still enjoying the process, though, and I'm sure I'll get him looking good in the end. ;) For now, the chain looks awesome, at least, and the stucco looks stucco-ish.

Income and Expense... and Nice Things

Yesterday evening I sold a painting while drinking hot chocolate and eating a raspberry chocolate brownie. Then I snuggled an eight-week-old baby instead of knitting. (Well, a few other people wanted turns with the baby, so I did do a *bit* of knitting.) Then, on my way to the bus home, I petted a puppy. Can an evening get better than that?

There's an art supply store in Winnipeg going out of business (sad!), and so are having a sale on everything (happy!). Since I made $100 on the painting yesterday, I decided to reward myself with some new supplies: some nice paints to replace a few I didn't like, plus get some colours I thought would help with painting Mylo, and some brushes I discovered I needed the other day... and went a bit overboard.

I bought:
10 tubes of paint
1 bottle of satin varnish (I wanted to see how I liked it compared to the gloss)
4 paint brushes
1 mechanical pencil holder
1 sculpting tool (aka really cheap shawl pin)
1 charcoal pencil
2 8" x 10" x 1.5" canvasses

Everything was 40% off (canvasses were 50% off), I didn't pay PST (a benefit of belonging to the art club), the paints actually scanned lower than the price on the shelf (and then were marked down), and the canvasses actually ended up over 75% off, because they had been mispriced and *then* were marked down... and I still paid $120.

Granted, the paints and brushes will last much more than a single painting, but I definitely don't have to worry about declaring any of my sales income at tax time. (You get to subtract the cost of supplies from what you make... and if you keep declaring a loss, they apparently classify it as a hobby. ;) )

Mylo

Mylo and I had fun together at the art club tonight. When you saw Mylo last, he looked like this:

I wanted to improve the eye, so I wiped off the chalk around the eye to get a better idea of how it looked:

Definitely needs work!

This is the last photo I took of Mylo tonight, as I started to clean up:

However, I decided I should get a *bit* more colour on the body before I stopped for the night, and so he actually ended up a bit farther along than this photo shows.

So that I didn't forget what colours I was using on the fur tonight, I put the tubes together and snapped a quick shot:

(No chewing on the painting... that traffic cone orange has cadmium in it.)

I find it hilarious just how much blue I'm using in Mylo, given he's a rather orangish dog!

I also found it amusing when a newer painter asked why there was so much blue in him (referring to the straight blue parts). He thought Mylo was finished! I still have quite a way to go. :)

Scotty Bells

Whoops!

It looks like I got rosin on my bent needle nose pliers at the stained glass workshop! I washed these with soap, water, and a rough green scrubby, and all is well again. :)

Scotty has a bell now too:

Not bad... I'll keep him this way unless I think of something better.

Mylo

Today I started applying paint to the sketch of Mylo from the art show demo:

(I liked the sketch, so even though I don't officially have a commission, I'm finishing him.)

Mylo has some interesting blue tones, so I roughed those in. (It may get covered, we'll see.) I also did the under-layer for the stucco, plus an approximation of the far background. I may warm up the tones after I get Mylo painted... they seemed way too bright at first, and so I toned them down. I also worked on Mylo's eye. (The printout I'm working from didn't have a good eye, so I want to have a look at the original photo on my computer to see if I'm getting it right.)

If you want to see the photo I'm working from, coopersita has it on Flickr.

Christmas Tree

Tonight I decorated Mom and B's tree:


While going through the ornaments, I checked the stained glass ones I made way back when I was a kid:



I'm thinking the reason I couldn't remember if there were two or three is because only two (the bird and the house) were still intact and able to hang. The sailboat needs some repair.

Raffi In Daylight

"Daylight" was pretty dim today (overcast), but I think this photo is a winner:

Now to figure out how to bend Photoshop to my will. (I miss GraphicConverter... but it seems silly to buy a new GraphicConverter licence when I have Photoshop. I may break down and purchase a new GraphicConverter licence one day anyway.)

Raffi

Raffi is basically done now. I need to clean up the sides (I forgot to do that at the club tonight), take some decent (outdoor) photos for cards, and then apply the varnish. I really like how he's turned out.