It has been a long time since my last post....who am I kidding,  I had given up.  I am not a writer and it makes me very uncomfortable to sit at a computer and write what is on my mind.  But it was always nagging at me...I could not push it completely out of my head.  I should be writing posts, even just to practice something I obviously have difficulties with.  So today I finally sat down with the determination to stay in my chair, not make excuses and work on this until it is finished.
So here it goes, work in progress shots of a portrait that I have just finished and sent off.

                       This is after 6 hours of work

                                                     This is after 12 hours of work.

                                                     This is after 23 hours of work

This after 35 hours of work!!!  


Phew!!!  I guess that wasn't so difficult after all.  Then again, I did not say too much either.  Maybe next time.

Summer is Over

Summer has been a very busy time for me this year.  I have been working hard on my pencil portraits and my art business.... but I have also been playing hard as well.  Knowing that starting in October, I will be working around 80 hours a week at the mall,  my plan was to play and have as much fun as possible this summer.  We did a lot of wild camping, boating and my favorite, swimming in the lakes of Ontario.  We had great bonfires and delicious food.  Nothing is better than food cooked over an open fire, with little bits of ash and parts of your food undercooked...parts of it burnt....call me crazy but I think it just tastes so much better.  Maybe I am just hungry after the effort it takes to cook food over an open fire.  This summer I spent  hours scouring the forest for fallen logs and sticks,  dragging  many decomposing trees to our wood pile next to the bonfire. I camped in summer rain storms and when the bugs were so bad you that couldn't escape...and of course when the sun shone down on me and turned my skin brown.   I was on guard for bears, wolves, coyotes, and even moose but I only saw one black bear this summer and it was running across the road in front of our car.  The lakes were cold but weren't too bad after I held my breath and just jumped in....the fastest and easiest way to swim in Canada.   I jumped from the cliffs into the lake..I wasn't brave enough to jump off the high rocks, only the "kiddie rocks" but it was good enough for me.  My BlackLab/Collie learned  how to swim this summer....believe it or not I have a Lab that doesn't like the water,  but by the end of the summer he was in the lake swimming with the rest of us.  Good times and great laughs with lots of friends.   The warm sweet summer is over until next year...  I can feel the cold air settling in at night and know that beautiful autumn is right around the corner.

There was  a regular stream of pencil portrait customers this summer.   Some of them were valued repeat customers and some of them were new.   Unfortunately, I didn't  get photos of all of them.  Here are some of the graphite portraits that I worked on this summer.

16"x20" Graphite Pencil Portrait

12"x16" Graphite Pencil Portrait

8.5"x11" Graphite Pencil Portrait

8.5"x11" Graphite Pencil Portrait

12"x16" Acrylic

8.5"x11" Graphite Pencil Portrait

8.5"x11" Graphite Pencil Portrait

 

 

 

 

 

The Dragon Keeper

It has been almost 2 months since my last post...I really need to try to get the hang of this!!
I have been busy with life and find it difficult to sit down and write in my blog.  So instead, I will post some progress photos of a painting that I just finished.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take of photo of the line drawing in the beginning....so I will start with this one:

Here is the first layer of watercolour paint.

A bit more colour....

A bit of graphite....
 

A bit more graphite....

A bit more pencil and coloured pencil ......

All finished...I added some more graphite pencil, a bit of coloured pencil, charcol for the darks and conte for the lights
This painting is called "The Dragon Keeper".  It measures 11" x 14"  and is mixed media (watercolour paint, coloured pencil, graphite pencil, conte, charcol)

She is a witch...performing black magic for all who ask, she is a seductress....enticing men for all her needs, she is a dragon keeper....caring and raising the orphaned dragons from across the kingdom.

The trouble with blogging....

I am so horrible at this blogging thing...I don't know what to write about... I am not that great at photo taking or recording my life and have never been fond of journal writing.  I remember getting diaries when I was young and I would write in it for two, maybe  3 days.....then it was just forgotten about.  That little book would just sit there with its perfect, crisp white pages waiting for me to write down my deepest thoughts and my greatest adventures.  It is too bad that I didn't write those things down then because as I get older I find my memories are getting fuzzier...my life is just disappearing.  So I try to document my artwork here but I end up forgetting to take photos of the paintings or I can't seem to find the time to write anything....sigh.

Here is my best effort at keeping a record of some of my artwork.  I suppose it will become easier as time goes by.

Rapunzel Drawing

Painting

More Painting....

Rapunzel finished

Lady with Pet Dragon drawing

Lady with Pet Dragon finished

Snow White and Rose Red drawing

Snow White and Rose Red painting

Snow White and Rose Red finished

All these paintings measure 8" x10" and are done in mixed media ( watercolour, coloured pencil, graphite pencil and conte)

Winterlude...Wintery Fun in Canada

My husband and I decided to take advantage of some really balmy temperatures (-4 degree Celsius)  and head down to the Rideau Canal for some Winterlude fun before the city closes the canal for the season.   Winterlude is an annual winter festival where there are all sorts of activities to participate in as well as ice sculptures, music,  fireworks and a playground made of snow.  It also boasts the longest skating rink in the world at 7.8 kilometers.  I have never skated the whole thing...and this year was no exception.  It has been awhile since I skated so I was surprised and disappointed when I had a skate malfunction and had to use tape to keep my skates on.  There was no way I was going to make it the whole way with tape holding my skates together. Plus the ice conditions were not great because of the warm weather.  But we did manage to skate for about an hour or so.

  Winterlude is just not complete without a beavertail and a hot chocolate. It is a delicious little pastry, in the shape of a beaver tail, that has different types of toppings on it.

This one is the chocolate...mmmm.  And my favorite is the cinnamon sugar.

With this nice weather and continuous snow storms that we are still getting, the conditions are perfect for tobogganing, which I did last week end with my nephews, and perhaps some skiing this week end.  Might as well have some fun while we have it.  It will be summer in no time and all this snow will be a happy memory.

My Back Yard

My bikes in my backyard

Down the street

I have been working hard on a portrait that is a little bit larger than I usually do.  It measures approximately  20"x 28".   I love drawing these larger ones as it is so easy to get lost in a sort of creative zone.  I don't know why. Maybe because I am not focusing on the features but rather the different shapes and tones of the face.  This is the third large portrait I have done for this client.  I have added a few photos of the portrait in progress.  Stay tuned...I will post the finished version soon.
I have also started on a series of illustrations called ....well, I'm not sure exactly what it is called yet....maybe Animal Spirits  or perhaps Spirits Of Animals...I think I might have to put a bit more thought into what I am calling it.    I am trying to show what I think the spirit of animals are , but portrayed in human form or with the animals interacting with humans.   We  need a healthy environment and animals to survive...although I think they would do just fine without us.     Song birds, to me,  are delicate, feminine, and fragile yet comfortable out in the deep, dark woods.  I tried to create an illustration of a young girl exhibiting those characteristics.  I've only got the four started but am anxious to have much more with spirits of all kinds of animals.

I will be painting these ones soon...probably before I start on any new ones.  That will give me plenty of time to think it out and come up with some ideas that I am happy with.

Finished Portraits and Illustrations

 Here are some of the portraits that I have been working on lately...I didn't do the step by step this time with the portraits as  I had too much to do and was short on time.  The first one has been picked up all ready, it was a huge success.  My client was very pleased with it.  His wife had been enjoying another portrait I did for a friend of theirs a few years back so he decided to surprise her for her birthday with a portrait of their own.  One thing that I notice quite a bit from people who pick up their portraits is that they take it out to their car, open it up and have another good look at it.  It is quiet and they are alone with their thoughts... It is a very intimate moment.  There is always a quiet, sweet smile on their face.  I wonder if they know that I am watching them.  I get my pleasure from their reaction to the thing that I created for them.