Mild Mediums?

This was my very first attempt with oil paints.
I'd always been very intimidated by oils. In my head they were what "real artists" used, not a schlub like me.

Oddly, it was getting comfortable with digital painting that gave me the courage to try oils. Of course the reality was quite different! For one, I learned the hard way not to keep my coffee cup right next to the turpentine. In case you were wondering, no, coffee doesn't rinse oil paint off the brush. Doh!

The other thing I learned was how forgiving oils really are, because they dry slow and you can fix small booboos while it's still wet. Of course, the other side of that particular coin is having to have a side project going. They dry reeeeeeally slow especially living on the edge of a temperate rain forest, as I do.

This was my second oil, when I'd finally given myself permission to enjoy what I was doing, and I think it shows in this one.

I can see all the mistakes, but somehow I still like looking at it. Plus, he's so happy with his lily!

It's actually fairly rare that I can enjoy my older pieces. After a while I start to see ONLY the mistakes and none of what I liked about it originally. Anyone else have that problem?

Anyways, new links over to the side there! Check out some amazing medium mixers whose work is ANYthing but mild. I've discovered that simmering coal of creativity in myself once more after enjoying their sites and their art.

Thanks AI! :-D

More Weekend Photos

I took these into Photoshop and tweaked the curves a bit, but that's about it.
I can't really say why I was so fascinated by the new pine needles. I just liked how they looked when the sun hit the new growth. :)

We spent part of the weekend with our "extended family" playing, oddly enough, Rock Band and taking turns adoring the dog.

Photographic Evidence

Last Friday I inherited a very nice camera, completely out of the blue. It has multiple lenses, many memory disks, and a steep learning curve. So I'll post a few of the okay shots from the dozens and dozens of blurry or dark or somehow skewed ones.
I'll try and chronicle my learning process with this lovely instrument.

I was playing over the weekend with fast sketches in Painter. I just picked a couple of colours at random and went with whatever came out the end of my pen.

Sometimes my subconscious worries me a little...

... but mostly it just keeps me entertained.

I really like having an obvious story to my drawings, but keeping the story itself completely open to the viewer's interpretation.

Normally in Painter I use the round camelhair brush with oils, but for all three of these I ended up trying some of the coloured pencil brushes. Pretty fun, actually!

On this piece in particular I did the red figure, the green sketchy side and the red sketchy side, but cheated in Photoshop with the green guy; he's really the red guy + Ctrl I and some fun with Free Transform.

I think I'm going to have to re-visit Jerome here at some point. I'm quite curious as to what his story is.

Time

This is the very first piece of digital art I ever made. It was all done in Photoshop 2 or 3, I can't remember which at this point, and pre-dates my Wacom Tablet.
At that time, I was using a mouse and boyhowdy was it ever time consuming! It's embarrassing to me now, but my husband still loves it and refuses to let me delete it from the website. *shrugs* So I figure my only option is to try and re-do the painting with 10 years more experience under my belt.
I guess this post is mainly a reminder/kick-in-the-butt for myself because I've been meaning to do this for a couple of years now.
Now I just need to find a model to sit for me.

First Post

Inspired by someone I met recently, I've started up this blog in hopes of inspiring myself to enjoy being creative again.
I'll start by posting the latest piece I've worked on, "Starmonkey".
This started as a penciled doodle in my sketchbook, as most of my quick'n'easy pieces do. I liked the shapes created by his feet, the star and the line of his tail, so I scanned it in, cleaned the lines up a bit in Photoshop, then took it to Painter and just played for a couple of hours. The clouds in behind were so fun to paint; as usual they were my favourite part of the whole process.
By now I'm half afraid to paint clouds, just because it seems like a cop-out when they're just fun and no longer a challenge. Unlike perspective, which I should really practice more of since I suck at it so much. Even when I start a piece with great intentions to work on my grasp of inanimate objects and architectural detail, it will often get scrapped in favour of some floating island without a scrap of reality to it.
Ah well. Maybe blogging to remind myself of this shortcoming will help! One never knows.