Lucky 13 Words

The theme for this month is words, but I could only think of one word. :)

Olive

Here is my latest art doll. Her name is Olive. She enjoys smiling, plaid, and hanging around...

Lucky 13 Envelope

OK here it is as promised. An example of a lucky 13 envelope and it's contents. The first is "Water Saint" by Kage Harp (who is also the owner of the beautifully decorated envelope). The second is the Birds themed card by Abigail Garner, and the third is "Dreams Give me a Chance to be my Real Self" by Wendy Anderson, the fourth is "Leaders of the Saints and Sinners" by L.K. Christensen and the 5th is "Embrace Chaos" by Stephanie Pointer.

Lucky 13 Botanical

The theme for this month's Luck 13 card the theme is "Botanicals". For this one I pulled out my trusty Montana Wildflowers guide and chose to depict one of my favorite little flowers, the Twinflower. I decided to put my new pastel pencils to the test. To get a flow going with the medium, I also did a funky little version of White flowers, which was useful as a test piece for the fixative spray and certain color blends such as the cream background.

A few hours work

Progress! I finally got a few hours in the studio today and did some satisfying work on the Wine Lover and Old Vine painting.

The Wine lover got a background layer, some darkening and defining in the shawl and dress, an antique wash on the skin and some definition around the eyes and eyebrows. I am wasn't quite ready to tackle the mouth yet, which has been looking a little vampirish...

The Old Vine painting got several layers in all the treed areas, shadowing in the central yellow hills, a green wash to determine where the middle ground vine rows will be, a layout of new vine rows in the far hills, a brown color base for the main vine in the foreground, some sketching in of the trunks that will be just beyond it, and a little bit of color on the distant hills.

I have so many ideas and so little time these days, but in the works are another Big Mountain painting, some children's nursery sets and a few random floral pieces.

Old Vine painting, more progress

These just show more progress on the Old Vine painting. My sweet friend Kim dropped by this morning, (needing to kill an hour in town) and shooed me off to my studio while she played with Jolie, so I've had a very productive morning! Can't beat friends like that :)

Old Vine painting, a work in progress

These are the beginning photos of a commission piece I've been working on. I did several sketches before I started this because I am not working directly from a photo or actual location. It's basically just an idea born from looking at several Napa landscapes and head pruned vine illustrations. In the first photo (from the bottom up) you can see that I laid down a wash of yellow, brown and splotches of french grey and green. The reason for the splotches is because I also laid down a very heavy textured gesso first, but unfortunately it froze in my studio as it was drying so it created several deep cracks. At first I thought I would start over, but the cracks are kindof cool. So I pushed some paint into them and will seal the painting several times over when it's finished to prevent further cracking.

Two posts in one night! Get down K-ren. So, this is just a little experimental piece. I was working on this one the same time as the white flowers I listed below, and was trying to make them companions but they went their own way.

Finally I'm getting around to an update on the Wine Lover. I've put a few layers of greens into her dress and added some of the same tones as warming layers to her skin and hair. Next up will be to put the finishing touches on the dress and then move on to the background, unless I get courageous and dive right into working on the skin...

White Flowers

Another White Orchid Painting! What is it with the white orchids? Perhaps I paint them because I can't seem to keep them alive :) I've been on a roll with these lately and thought I'd post one on Etsy. Lately I'm not sure sure about the Etsy... I think it might be geared toward... well I'm not even sure who it's geared toward... but whoever they are they aren't springin' for the paintings, so I 'm thinking I might need to offer smaller, less expensive items and see if they will catch on. It's such a mystery to me. Wish me luck fellow bloggers cause this mama needs to bring home some bacon!