Black and white lineart of a pug called Cookie waiting for a tasty treat.
This is of course going to be a colourful pug painting, but I found that I absolutely loved the graphic, black and white quality of the lineart. I'd love a picture of this pug on a tote bag. I need to fix the settings on my camera so I can get higher resolution images for printing. They come out looking fine at the moment, but they need to be larger to be accepted on Society 6 and Fine Art America. Duvet covers (or quilt covers) in particular require a very large resolution.
So for now, this image is just a preview of the delightful pugliness to come.
I follow a Buy Swap and Sell page for pets on Facebook, because I like the cute animals that pop up in my news feed. Mostly it's things like rabbits and birds, but occasionally cute puppies come up and I have to draw them. This one was a red heeler, a different colour variation of a blue heeler. It was actually a pretty difficult colour and texture to emulate in paint, but I like it the way it is anyway.
I love the way the colourful hills and bright blue sky came out. I'll have to do backgrounds like this more often. If you want to buy prints of this image, including items such as throw cushions, greeting cards and phone cases, you can check out my account on Fine Art America.
Another entry for Leslie Saeta's 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge. Actually used a little paint on this one, in the brief time I had this morning. I haven't got a finished artwork ready to go for tomorrow. I'm considering cutting back a bit, and challenge myself to creating a bit each day without worrying about whether I have a finished artwork or not. I want to have a portolio of artwork at the end of this month that I can actually be proud of.
On the other hand, maybe I shouldn't focus so hard on what I'm creating during January, but rather the process of building habits and trying things. I've already experimented a little during this challenge, maybe that's a good thing. Even if the experiments didn't result in artwork that I'd be pleased to show off.
I may even go back after the month is finished and work more on the artworks I think aren't quite finished. Teaching myself that it's okay to rework things might be good for me.
I finally got around to trying out my new camera and uploading a video to Youtube. I've been wanting to post a video of my art for a while now. I'm still a little daunted by the process, but it was more simple than I thought it would be. My camera setup and editing skills will get better with time and practice.
The beginning of the video is cut off because the camera went to sleep while I was setting up and pressing the record button just woke it up rather than starting recording. That's something to keep in mind. I've also found out that recording sessions are recorded to about 29 minutes on still cameras, as the sensor heats up more quickly than conventional video cameras. That wasn't an issue on this occasion, but I was a little wary of it because I don't want to burn out my new camera.
For my first video, I painted a french bulldog with my Derwent watercolour pencils and waterbrush. I haven't used watercolour pencils in years, so I need to get back into practice using them. I like the control of coloured pencil combined with the softness of watercolour, but they can leave scratchy pencil marks that don't blend out very easily. The lineart was drawn with my Bic Mark-It in Tuxedo Black, which is the best waterproof pen I've found. It's important to have a waterproof pen when working with wet media or it will bleed everywhere and become a mess. Trust me. I still remember the times before I knew waterproof pens existed.
I've also been looking into the Icarus Drawing Board If you haven't heard of it, it's a heated pad that warms coloured pencil as you work and melts the wax to form a softer, blended image more quickly. At over $200 for the smallest version, it's a little pricey, so I've been looking for a homemade alternative to melting coloured pencil wax. Burnishing with baby oil works really well, but I've left oil stains on work before by accidently using too much. Finding the right art materials and techniques can be a long and complicated process, but I'm slowly getting to where I need to be.
I'll post a picture of the finished artwork later. For now, enjoy my speed painting of Larry the French Bulldog.
This charming little fellow is a whippet I've called Dobby (because of the big, floppy ears, of course). He's the first in a series of small pet portraits I've been working on. I've been wanting to get more into representational painting since I had some success on Austin. I also wanted to see how much water my sketchbook paper can withstand without warping (turns out, very little, but it can be mushed back into shape with a heavy book, so that's nice).
"Dobby the Whippet", Pet Portrait, Acrylic Paint on Paper, 6x6
I intended to have a bit more purple when I started, but I quite like the bright primary colours together. It's a bit Fauvist. At least, I think that's what the Fauvist movement was about. I was never that into art history, personally. A quick Google images search shows me that I can't be too far off.
I have a bunch of sketches of different animals - dogs, cats, cows, ducks, bunnies, llamas, etc - so expect more animal portraits in the near future, hopefully as delightfully brightly coloured and cheery as this one.
More pet portraits coming up today. I've been working on painting a few at once, and this is my favourite from today's batch. The others...possibly need some work. Maybe. But let's not worry about that right now, let's look at the doggie.
"Pete the Corgi", Work in Progress, Pet Portrait, Acrylic Painting on Paper, 6x6
The colours are a bit less bright in this photo than they are in real life. The orange comes out nicely, but the bluey-green shades on the corgi look a bit faded. I'll take a better picture once I've finished with the lineart and shading. Thinking of going a bit more mixed media with this one and adding coloured pencil or crayon too. Will see how the mood takes me. The other animal portraits I worked on today include mallard ducks, a cow, and an american pitbull terrier.
In other news, I'm super excited that I finally found square, black frames with white matboard for sale in my town. There are a bunch of places that sell standard size frames, but square ones are really difficult for some reason. I would have thought Instagram would have made square photo frames more common by now. But at least I have an option for framing my portraits now. After I've finished painting this little guy I can try it out.
One thing I anticipate about starting up a blog and a business selling art is that the beginning will be fairly quiet. The internet is a big place, and content doesn't come up in a search necessarily because it's what you're searching for. What I've learned about Search Engine Optimization so far indicates that there are a lot of little rules to follow if you ever want anyone to find you. Apparently having a free blog rather than a paid website and domain name is a bad start for SEO purposes. Links from other websites (particularly high traffic ones) boost web search ranking. Frequently updating content can apparently help.
But despite the tiny amount of SEO tips I've learned, I figure I'm still going to have to be pretty patient. Every time I see a new page view on my blog or Etsy shop, I get a little bit excited. It means that a person, even a single person, maybe only for a brief moment, has seen what I've created and acknowledged it in some small way. They might not even like it, but that's not the point. At least someone else in the world knows that it exists.
It's weirdly validating for your efforts to be seen. I could draw every day and keep my art in a box in my bedroom if I wanted to. But I want to share it, as scary as that is. It's like sending a tiny, vulnerable piece of yourself out into the world. Hopefully one day soon I can share my art with more people.
This happy corgi design is one of my favourite papers so far. I need to draw more dog papers.
If you want to see more of my papers or purchase this one, head to Sixth Floor Studio on Etsy. Thanks for looking. :)
