Yoga Series #2 Done!!

Finished my second painting in my Yoga series.  This one is called "Strength" and the pose is the Reverse Warrior.  I didn't mention in my post that my previous Yoga painting, with the orange, yellow, and purple has been named "Tranquility" and a print is now available in my Etsy Shop.

My "Strength" Yoga Painting is a compilation of blues, yellows, and greens in many shades and tones.  I worked on the background first with energy and a combination of strokes.  Then I sketched out a rough drawing of the figure in light blue and added lights and darks in blue and green until the shape took a little more form.  I really like the combination of thin and thick lines helping the figure to take up space in the painting.  I'm posting three pictures in this pose, two are of "Strength" one a progress picture after I first started it (it is a little saturated because it's from my cell phone camera), and the other (top) the finished product.  Last, I'm also listing a picture of "Tranquility" taken in indirect sunlight which shows the vibrancy of color in it.  Enjoy!!!

First Sale on Etsy!!

I made my first sale on Etsy on Friday and dropped the painting off at the post office yesterday!  I am so excited to share my painting with its new owner.  The painting that was sold is my "writer's block" piece. I was experiencing a slump at the time and was unsure of what to paint or how to start it.  I was speaking with another artist that mentioned when he is having the same problem, he'll tape a playing card on his board and paint it life size.  He said he enjoyed the exercise because it's a 2D object and simple in color and components.  So I took a black and white pen and taped it to the wall and painted.  This was a fun little exercise and helped me get back into the swing of things.  I am so happy to sell my first painting and to share my work with someone else.

Yoga Series

Well, I am very excited to share the first finished piece of my yoga series!  As you saw from my last post, I layered on oranges, yellows and reds at first, then outlined the figure in a beautiful burgundy.  This elegant pose called for a swirl of energy where I added purple first, complimenting all of the orange.  Deciding to fill the figure more than just outlining it, I added pink, purple, burgundy, yellow, gold, violet, and more oranges.  I am super happy with how it came out and love the flow of enerby through the piece.  It is 9x12 and Nupastel on Colourfix paper.  I'm also sharing with you the second yoga pose in my series called "reverse warrior".  For this I'm layering blues, greens, and yellows.  I just began working on the figure and will keep you posted :)

Yoga Abstract Figure WIP

Working on a series of abstract figures in various yoga poses.  This is the first of about 8 and I definitely like where it's going.  I'm thinking about adding some lights and darks into the background but not sure if I should change anything about the figure.  Comments and suggestions would be much appreciated!  I will post more as I work on it!  The first picture is how it looked originally and the second is after adding some lilac purple into the background.  I love the oranges, reds, and yellows in the picture and have added the lilac, a dark purple, and dark burgundy to try and balance all of the hot colors.
Of course this is on a 9x12 piece of Colourfix paper and is made with NuPastels.

Antigua Sunset Painting

Hey! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  I did a lot of good eating myself and have plenty of leftovers.  While I was trying to find time the past couple days to finish my most recent sunset painting.  I decided to focus on spending time with family and friends.  Today I spent some time to work on it and am really pleased with the result! I don't think there is too much more I want to do on this one but as always let me know what you think! This is NuPastel on 9x12 Colourfix paper.  I'll also be offering this on my Etsy Shop as a print soon so keep posted.  I'm also offering a special to anyone who'd like to order from my Etsy shop, a refer-a-friend discount on any purchase after someone orders and mentions they were referred providing name and email address.  This is a great way to save on holiday gifts!

I really enjoyed layering this one.  In my previous post, you can see that I started the clouds with burgundy and bright pink. The water has blue, purple, burgundy, grey and black in it.  The sky was the most fun because in order to get the fading of greyish blue from the outside borders, I had to put in purple, orange, blue, grey and gold-yellow.  I'm so happy with how it came out, and that I was able to get the textured effect in the hills that I was aiming for. :)

It's Official: I'm on Etsy!!!

Well I have decided to open up an Etsy shop and attempt to share my work with a wider range of people. Hopefully something comed out of it.  I hope that you check it out and over the next couple months, I hope to get to work making more pieces to sell.  While the Etsy experience is fabulous, I had a lot of questions that weren't addressed as clearly as I would have liked on the FAQ sheet.  For example, I've never had a paypal or learned how it worked on the buyer end.  So now I had no clue as a seller if I needed to accept paypal by having one or how to hook it up.  Or, if I have a paypal that is connected to a credit card, would the money go to that? What if I wanted to use a credit card for purchases with paypal but wanted the money from selling art to go to my bank? So confusing... But I've figured out enough to get started and posted a few pieces.  What I'm looking into now is to have affordable prints of my work to sell, so that I have original work for any exhibitions that may pop up.  And that is a whole can-o-worms in itself.  Anyone who has any experience with any of this, please help.  In the meantime take a look at my Etsy Shop and let me know what you think or what you'd like to see!

I did start working on a new sunset piece yesterday and wanted to post my progress.  It is based on a picture I took in Antigua on vacation in 2009.  The sunset was beautiful, but painting it was surprisingly hard because of all the darkness.  I need to make the clouds a little darker and put some texture in the hills and water.  But this is what I have so far.

 This is the end piece, which I wanted to put first so that it was the picture for the post and so that you could see what I got before looking at all of the under layers.  This is on 9x12 Colourfix paper, which I really enjoy working on.  You can see the color is like this beige/grey that I thought would work well with the clouds and foreground.  Let me know what you think and any suggestions!!

Slow Month :(

I apologize that this month has been slow in terms of production. With midterms and my friends wedding, I feel like I've been running around nonstop.  My motivation for painting has been low and the time to do it has been low.  The good news is that the semester is over in about a month and with Thanksgiving coming up, I have a couple days off of work that I can use for me time and painting.

In the meantime, I'd like to share a fellow artist with you, who I absolutely adore!  Her work is extremely inspirational and vibrant.  I've bought 3 of her prints (from her citrus series) and hung them in my living room.  Her experience and style is impossible to miss when viewing her work.

Please check out her blog at this link.  She also has an Etsy Shop with beautiful original artwork and affordable prints.  She a wonderful artist and I'm sure you'll enjoy her work as much as I do!!!

Because I hate having posts with no artwork, I'd like to post something old :) Enjoy!