Nicknames

 

These are the nicknames of my niece and nephews. The goal was to do them in the same style as the monkey. The cricket resembles the monkey the closest but the other subject matter was already to simple, so I improvised and came up with this.

California Sand

My sister is a photographer and took this pic of her kids at the beach. I knew right away that I wanted to paint it. I loved the composition and the bright colors and the fact that it had figures in it but I didn't have to worry too much about the faces. So I painted it. I had no idea how hard it would be. Painting sand is not an easy task. I had never painted sand before so I tried to find out how others had done it but none of them painted the kind of sand I was painting. After practicing on several smaller pieces I finally decided I would just do my best and even if it didn't look like the sand in her pic I would be happy if it just looked reminiscent of sand. I think it does. I was way stressed about painting this .... which usually improves the results and I am happy with the finished product. I see a billion mistakes in this but I feel like I improved during the process and I am just way happy that I am doing some serious art again. Here's to watercolor!

a happy sight

Here is what my kitchen table looks like right now! Squeal!!! Yes!

So Wednesdays are my art nights from now on. Don't bother me, I am very happily busy. Ha. I have been wanting to paint a monkey for the little monkey's nursery but the one I painted last week apparently looked like it was possessed. So, I decided to simplify things and got some inspiration from Picasso's animals. I am pretty happy with it. (BTW the watercolor is black and the paper is white. Not that green color it looks like in the pic.)

I drew up who knows how many sketches of this before I came to this one that I thought was just as good as any Picasso could come up with :). Reminder to self: the more sketches/ thumbnails you create before you solidify an idea, the better it will be.