Song for Spring: Canary Painting Complete!

Song for Spring: Canary, acrylic on canvas 46 x 38 cm

Yay! She is complete! My lovely Canary bird girl has now been varnish and photographed, sealing the deal on this lovely portrait. Over the last few days Ive had to complete her hands, her hair, and the canary. All of which was really fun (except some moments with that damn yellow bird :P) and I am so excited to have her hang on my wall ^^

Here a few of the last WIP photos:

i painted her hair like a i would digitally, starting off with medium colors thickly

then using various sizes of brushes and progressively darker paint it started to take shape

 I was so inspired by this portrait - it gathers up all the fragility and delicateness of a woman and counters it against the same characteristics of a bird. I felt like this could be a whole line of paintings, inpsired by beautiful woman I know and painting them with birds I feel "match" them.
I already have my next sketch lined up so watch this space!! ^_^

Hope everyones having a wonderful weekend!

Skin, Hands, Nails, and Lashes

I have been working a bit in the evenings on my new painting.
I am admittedly rusty when it comes to blending, and it can be quite a challenge with so much skin O_O
But if you stand far away back it looks smooth imo :P

full view, more or less

close up enough to see the glitches and blotches, notice the huge streak of pink from me dropping the paint brush in surprise when richard started screaming at his computer -_-

mowgli, the cat, checking out the work area

Otherwise Ciwi wrangled me on facebook today about an art compilation to fight off art block. I swear art block is going around like the flu lately! I blame this horrible cold *nod*
I am sure itll be a super fun project though and keep my hand still a bit warm with digital art :P
Till then!

Sketchfest #20!

Okay so I only did 2 small sketches this month as I got really inspired to do my canvas painting but i thought id share them with you here ^^

 prompt was "The Roaring Twenties", and lol shes no going crazy doing the charleston , but this simple sketch was a great precursor to the painting i started after it.

 the prompt for this one was "Elf Hunter", and it looks too much like a blood elf from wow but oh well:P it was good fun just doing some pen work and feeling like it helped inspired me into art again

thanks sketchfest! i really do look forward to decembers and all the christmas prompts that will surely be going on ! :D hehe

Shes doing what? Painting?!

Wow well, its been awhile since ive started a real acrylic project.
I got so hooked and intent on trying to learn digital i put off going back to my roots, but today, with a mix of inspiration here and there i finally got down to business.

I thought of the concept some time ago - sometime around the falling out girl and such. But i havent been the best at getting my concepts onto paper. However! Today was sketchfest, and after doing a few sketches, and talking about painting in the car on the way home from lunch i decided to bite the bullet and do it!!
First thing was...to take a reference picture. Once again i was the only female of appropriate age so i had to use my face. I didnt feel like searching for hours for just the right face, and I knew mine wasnt really correct for my vision but. I modified it quite a bit :P

Okay, so my face is all wrong. My nose is crooked so it appears much shorter when you shoot it from the left, and alot longer from the right, my lips are way too thin, and my face itself is very thin/boney.
So, when making a digital sketch i altered myself into something I thought would suit so much more:

Fatter face, much bigger lips, nicer eyebrows. Yay for art and making a simple day photo of yourself into something much better :P So the concept was a bird girl, with a nest of hair, and a yellow canary.
Next step! The canvas!

action shot!

i put it all onto transfer paper so i could easily put my sketch on the canvas, while moving the hand a bit to make it more at an angle

very very basic, but it gives you someting to work around

my work space! a bit of wine, alot of paint, and some basic colors put onto the picture. always an ugly time :P

the skin was pretty hard, still is might i add!

This is around abouts where it is now - looks a bit odd as the shoulders look too small, when really its because one is bent *see reference pics!*
but so far so good! the skin will without a doubt take me ages to sort out, but i know the hair will be lots of fun ^^
who knows if it goes well, id love to make a serious of bird girl pictures! :D

Oh and Ill be posting all of my sketchfest pictures tomorrow :) see you then!

Sketches of a Looney Lady

the other i spent most of my evening doing something i dont do enough: free sketching. however long i want, about whatever i want, without much thought of anyone else but me and my emotions involved.
okay so they arent really pretty or stylish
but i thought i would post all the nonsense on here to inspire! a burst of odd ball sketching out of everyone else, because you know what? it feels good :P

 This was my last sketch, done on paper with pen. It holds some ugly, some unseen and one cool tree :P I as always wanted to put more into it but it was time for me to crash at this point :P

This was my first sketch of the night, fall out girl, because swedish words were meant to be tumbling out of her hair but i forgot i didnt have photoshop on my computer anymore and my own handwriting is a bit...messy especially digitally :P which you can see below. But yes, the point of the picture is about how ive been feelng since ive stopped swedish school and words just instantly start falling out of your head...

The most sparse and slightly wonky of them all. Cross hatching is not my thing digitally! But as you can tell I write down lyrics I am listening to, or just pieces of thought that need to be scribbled somewhere. This sketch, has alot of frustration in it actually. If you read behind the smiles, youll know what I mean.

Its been quite a short weekend that just flew by without much thought. I hope to do more sketch projects like these over the next week in the evening to help me get back into artwork again and get inspired through it :)
Hope you all had a nice weekend!