cabin with a view painting

I was standing on my roof to get an unobscured view of the storm clouds moving in.  I took this picture and decided I wanted to attempt to paint it.  Painting is something I have been working on since moving here.  I feel like I've made a lot of progress in the last 3 months or so.  

I drew basic outlines of what I wanted and painted in the sky.  I wasn't too concerned with the sky since most would be covered.  I just wanted it lighter at the bottom then at the top.

 

Next, I added the shape of the clouds.

 

                                                Then I added some shading in the clouds.
 

              And I continued to add shading to the clouds in different shades until I was happy with it.

Finally, I got to start working on the mountains.  I did the brown first and then added the green.  Then I did the background mountains.

Then it was time to add in some highlights on the mountain green and add in a little detail on the foreground.

                                   Finish up the detail on the foreground and it's done!

The painting and the landscape that inspired it.  The painting took me 2 1/2 weeks from start to finish.  I am VERY happy with how it turned out!

Christmas drawing

There was no money for Christmas this year so I wanted to draw a portrait.  I scoured my files and found this one.  But it's from when he was still wearing glasses so I decided to leave them off in the drawing.  I printed it off in black and white to make it easier to see the shadows and highlights.   

It was the quickest portrait I've ever done.  I worked on it on three separate days, that's it!  I finished roughing in both faces and the hands before calling it a night.

 The next day, I had jury duty so I took it with me and worked on smoothing out the shading and started filling in the black of the shirts.

I finished it the day before Christmas Eve which was the last chance I would have had to work on it.  Whew!  I bought the frame at Goodwill some months back.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but I loved it and it went to good use.  

I messed up on Adam's right eye.  I tried to fix it several times but it just wasn't having any of it.  Seems I always mess up an eye on these portraits.  He said he couldn't see it, even after I pointed it out.  But the rest of the face, I like.

And for me, I think it turned out well too.  But for some reason, I put this dark shadow under my hin, on my neck.  I have no idea why I put it there. :o\

 I am pretty proud of the hands.  I find hands even harder than faces.  I still need work on eyes and hair to make it look more professional.. Perhaps that will come with time.    Anyway, for now, I am happy with this one. :o)

cat drawing

I have a friend who I only know online.  She has been very generous to me.  I found out recently that her favorite and oldest cat is sick.  So sick that it didn't look like he would live much longer.  As an animal lover I know that not many people understand the deep attachment that we can have to our animals, just as much as you love a child.  As my dogs are getting older, it is not far off that I will be in the same position. Already , sings of age are creeping in and it makes me teary eyes when I think about it.  SO when I heard about her cat, I felt horrible for her and her cat and wanted to do something but drawing a picture was the only thing I could think to do.

It was on a break at work when I started to sketch the basic idea so I used a scrap piece of paper.  But it turned out well enough that I ended up using it and really regretted my decision to not just wait until I was at home with good paper and pencils.  

I worked on it again on my lunch break and on my second break.  I finished with the pencil work on that second break.  Drawings tend to be difficult for me to be happy with.  And while I do not feel this picture is perfect by any means, I felt pretty happy with it.  This was it at the end of the day.  

But I knew there were 2 thins I wanted to do to finish it off.  I wanted to add whiskers and I wanted to color the eye.  The eye was done with 6 different prisma pencils and the whiskers were done with white acrylic paint.  The color is off in the picture below because the light was awful.  The above pic has the right colors.   Anyway, this is a cropped version of the finished drawing.  

fun with crayons

I got this idea from Pinterest. I love that place! So many ideas!! This was supposed to be my youngest nephew's Christmas present. Well, he's not my youngest nephew now, but at the time he was at Christmas time. Anyway, I didn't have enoug time to get everything done before Christmas and still spend time with visiting family so I let this one fall to the wayside since he's only a few months old and wouldn't know he wasn't getting his present anyway.

Originally, his mom wanted me to make a very colorful quilt, so colorful that there was nothing it wouldn't match. I decided that I didn't want to make a quilt to hang on a wall for a couple of years then be put in a box, forgotten forever. It's too much work for that. So, this was my next idea...it's colorful, much more colorful than I probably could have made a quilt.

I had to organize the crayons by color. That part probably took about 20-30 minutes. Then I hot glued them into place on a canvas. That part took the longest. At this point, I quit working on it for about a week or two.


But I finally decided to tackle it and get it out of my house and off my to-do list. I thought this part was going to take the longest but it went pretty quickly. I was warned about flying wax so I put up a painter's cloth and got to work. I didn't grab my camera at first. I thought it would take a while to heat up the crayons enough to start dripping but it started within a couple minutes so I had to jump up and grab my camera.










It was actually fun watching it drip and spill.

This is my favorite section. Some wax flew...but that was about the extent of it.




Merry Christmas, Samerus!

Pride in his art

Adam's siblings are all very artistic. Their parents have a wall in their house where they display their children's art. Adam is artistic in his own way...not with pen and paper but with power tools. He creates some wonderful things...just not art. He has always felt bad that he was the only child not represented on the wall. Even his sister-in-law has a painting or two on the wall.

Last year, I had a brilliant idea. I had found some pictures Adam drew while in elementary (5th grade). I picked the one I liked the best and asked his mom if she would be willing to hang it. She thought it was a great idea. His dad made the frame and they hung it and even covered it with a white tea towel. He had no idea what was up and we had an unveiling party. His mom made a speech about how Adam had many talents that they just weren't able to put on the wall, and that finally, they had something they could hang. When the towel was removed, he was beaming like a little kid. It was so cute!! He was so happy to be included on the wall. He still points it out to everyone that comes to dinner at their house. In case you were having trouble guessing which is his, it's the very colorful hand on the top row. I just love that he is so happy about it. :o)



His mom has gone through the attic and gotten rid of all her kid's things...giving them to who they belong to. In that bunch of stuff, there were a couple of pottery pieces he made (in elementary again).

This one sits in our bedroom usually. It's our coin jar.


I haven't found a home for this one yet but it matches the kitchen cabinets almost exactly so it will be hung in the kitchen somewhere. It is a vase for small flowers. But I am thinking it won't hold water so it will hold a small amount of dried or silk flowers.


My pottery never turned out very well...which, I assume, is why I have none of what I've made.

Inspiration

I learned something cool this week....actually, 2 somethings. 2 of my pictures have inspired 2 different people to paint. One is doing a painting based on one of the rainy pictures I took recently and the other is doing a mural from a picture I took while on my backpacking trip...which reminds me, I never did a post on that so I need to cause it was pretty. Later on that.

Here's my pic that inspired the mural:


Here's the mural:


It feels kind of like winning a contest...even though I don't win anything. lol

This weekend I worked on a major project which isn't finished...not sure when it wil be, or if it ever will be. But I will talk about it soon. And I finished another project I'd been working on for a few weeks so I can finally blog about that too. The pictures are in different folders though since it took such a span of time so that one will probably not be up for a few days, we'll see. All I can say is, Pinterest is so cool!

A drawing: from beginning to end

I really like to see the proccess of how a drawing gets to its end point. Even if I'm the one drawing it. I find the proccess is more fun to see after it's over...not so much while it's going on since there is a lot of frustration when I can't get something right. I am just not skilled enough to know how to fix a problem even if I can see what the problem is...and I can't always see the problem, I just know it's not right. So, here's the latest drawing I did, as I went along. I hope you enjoy the proccess too.

First, I got the basic shapes and shading areas put down on paper.

Then I started doing very loose shading.

After the loose shading, I started on my dad first with more detailed shading lines.

Here, I've smoothed out the initial shade lines and put in more detail. I then started on my mom's shading and detail. At this point, everything had gone smoothly. I was instantly happy with how my dad turned out. I could definitely recognize him. But I messed up on the inital sketch in of my mom and something wasn't right and I knew it, I just couldn't tell what. I continued on with it though, hoping I could figure it out and fix it as I worked.

In this pic, I could see one of my problems, her right eye was drooping and it doesn't do that in real life...also, one eye was bigger than the other. I did multiple eye surgeries on her...trying to fix it... Still no hair or clothes worked on yet.


Close up of my dad's face. Yep, that's him all right!

They have hair and clothes, finally. But my mom was in the middle of one of her eye surgeries. Originally they were wearing flowers but I took them out when I filled in the clothes. Hair is tough for me but I felt I did ok...once again, messed up my mom's hair more than my dad's.

I thought I was finished here. But still had a couple eye surgeries left to do and some minor shading issues.

My parents with their present. See, no droopy eye problems in real life. ;o)

I started it in May as a mother's/father's day gift but didn't finish until about an hour before my flight to go see them in September, still not completely happy with how my mom turned out but happy enough that I could give it to them without it bothering me too much. So it took me a few months. Some of that time spent taking a break from it because I was so frustrated.

A wonderful trip home (pic overload)

It took me so long to get back into a normal schedule aagain after I got home. The first week I was not feeling very well at all and didn't do much besides work and come home to veg on the couch until far too late. But eventually, it all worked itself out and I'm feeling better now.

It was so fun getting to go back home and visit family. Thanks so much, everyone, for taking time out of your busy schedules to spend time with me.

The flight in was productive, working on a secret project that I hope to actually finish within the next year. I had a layover in Denver and that's my favorite flight pattern ever because once they fly over Springville, they bank left and the whole valley comes into view. Then they fly straight down Utah Valley and Salt Lake valley. I love the view! My first glimpse of home.



You all know who you are so I will skip captions unless I need/want to explain something.

Mom and Dad took me on a drive through the canyon to see the fall colors. I showed them a scenic pull out they never knew existed.

Mom remembered how to knit so she could show me how to do it. Thanks, Mom! :o)

The Mendozas took me bowling and thn to eat dinner in the very chilly canyon. I had a great time.

Then I got to spend the night at the little Andes' house where I saw my first Itai smile and got to hear him talk...but not to me.

Poor Avi was limping around on his bad leg. He wanted to just run though.

I went for a walk while the boys were getting their baths. I saw horses and some gardens. These onions caught my eye.

Between the 1st and 2nd sessions of general conference, Debbie took me to see the Draper Temple since I had never seen it. It's so pretty but the view is even better.

The gate was locked but Itai wanted to go in so he tried unlocking the gates. He actually got a key to fit the lock.

I spent a couple days at Heather's. We went for walks, played and watched Mickey Mouse.

This is a pic taken while spinning Aileah.

I was disappointed that this pic is not very crisp. I think it's a very cute pic of Princess Izzy.

I drew a pic of Mom and Dad for Mother's Day/Father's Day. It was only 4 months late...I am getting better. So sad.

Mom and Sheri took me to a quilt exhibit at BYU. We were thinking they would be exhibit quality but they were meant to look like folk art. Kind of odd to have on display but it was fun to see anyway. See how wonky some of them were?

This one was my favorite.

Jared and the boys came down to visit one evening for a few hours and I tried to get a spinning picture of Itai.

Avi was getting spun as well and it was funny because he would really just let himself go limp and enjoy the ride. He couldn't get enough of it.

The Manns took me ice skating for Aileah's first time. She startedout with a walker, then graduated to skating with both hands being held, and made it to one handed skating. Her two favorite things were spinning with me and falling on purpose. What a cutie! Thanks for the good time. :o)

On my next to last morning, I woke up early and went for a walk, hoping to catch a nice sunrise but it was a very mild sunrise. Still, the fresh, crisp morning air was nice. I found this really old truck with bones on the back...I think someone was a hunter. These were all old, cracked and sun bleached.

The house that Heather and I both like on Main street had it's autumn decorations out.

The last night, we pulled out the ping pong table and pool table. Mom and I played ping pong and Sheri and I played pool.

I had a great time. Thanks again, everyone. I miss you all and can't wait to see you again.