#PaintSeptember's Final Contribution

September has come to a close.  I only painted one more for the month - a water color painting from a photograph of a flower (I think it's a dahlia), growing in a neighbor's garden. The piece started out using water color pencils, but I was unhappy with the way it was progressing, so switched to actual water color paints about two thirds the way through.

That just made the piece saturated with water paint and didn't necessarily make me any happier about it lol. I was going to post some work in progress photos, but decided to just post the finished painting because it ended up changing so much from how it started.

There is a reason I usually work with acrylic or oil paint, because I tend to try for too much detail using the paint instead of allowing the water to help create the final image.  Perhaps I can learn how to chill about it - keeping the 'less is more' attitude for the next water color painting I attempt, or maybe staying with acrylics and oils is a better match for me and the style I'm most accustomed to.

There are a couple more hash tag groups starting this month - #thedailysketch and #DRAWtoberfest - both of which are a great way to keep moving forward producing new artwork, while also continuing to meet and support other artists which has been so inspirational and fun.

Regular color pencil drawings and water color pencil drawings/paintings would both fall into those hash tag categories, so this might be a good opportunity to keep practicing with them more - or maybe getting out the graphite pencil and keeping the artwork dry for awhile is a better idea.

Thank you to anyone who may read this :)

Inspiration and Motivation are back!

Well, here we are again, it's been ages since I've posted anything. It's time to catch up with this creative journey I've been on and for anyone who reads this, thank you for visiting my very sporadically updated blog.

Since my last post, much has changed in my life - at least in the material sense. I am no longer working at the job I previously mentioned, unfortunately the company downsized the division and laid off staff - me included.  Since then, I've been looking for employment and recently found new inspiration to be an artist once again - on Twitter of all places - lol.

Since activating my account in the twittersphere recently, I am finding myself embracing the social network platform in ways I never knew were possible. I've met so many talented artists and inspiration absolutely abounds there.

There was a fantastic happening among a group of artists called #drawingaugust last month, where artists were drawing every day and posting their new art or works in progress daily.  Better late than never, I discovered it just in time to contribute this eye, drawn specifically for it on the 31st.

Since then, a new happening called #paintseptember has been taking place. It is the same idea except for painting and so far I've completed three new works. The first one isn't really to my liking in it's entirety (you can see it on my twitter page), it was painted using water color pencils and I'll post a detail of it here.

Cropped from a photo taken on my phone:

The next two are both water color paintings and were scanned:

So, there you have it - on the social media site I used to resist getting involved with, thinking it was only a self promoting bombardment of narcissistic tweets, inspiration and motivation have both been found - along with a real sense of community.

I'm lovin' it in the twittersphere and if you do too (or like it a lot), give me a follow - I follow back (unless you seem to be crazy, obnoxious or rude - then I probably won't).

Find me here: https://twitter.com/OnlineBy_Design :-)

A Golf Ball and Tee Drawing For Dad

My father just celebrated his 80+? birthday (any time I ask, the answer is always 29 - which I know is impossible, but I let him think I believe - lol).  Golf is one of his favorite activities and he still plays often so I decided to draw this golf ball and tee for him.

I discovered drawing a golf ball is a lot harder than I originally thought - those little craters are very specific and about half way through I began to regret not mapping the ball out more accurately first instead of just eyeballing it.  Oh well, lesson learned for the next one and I'm happy enough with the way this turned out regardless :)

I glass framed the original drawing adding a dark green matte which cropped the sky and grass down to frame the ball and tee nicely and signed it for the occasion, but forgot to photograph it - doh!.  Here it is after scanning and maybe I will add a photo of the framed image to this post later.  

One of the groups on Red Bubble is hosting a Father's Day card challenge so I added lettering in Photoshop and entered it.  I don't know how well it will do in the challenge, but I do know that golf has been synonymous with my father in my mind for as long as I can remember. I love you dad! xo

Second Color Pencil Drawing - Dahlia

To continue my practice drawing with color pencils I thought I'd tackle a Dahlia flower.  I took pics as I went along to show the progression.  This time I didn't draw it out first with lead pencil, but went directly to using a medium shade of purple to draw all the outlines and shapes, then defined the shadows more thoroughly with the same pencil.  (Sorry the purple is so faint, I tried to adjust the contrast in PS but that didn't help much)

Here yellow has been added to the heart of the flower and I layered over some of the original purple with a redder shade to add some depth to the shadows: 

Next a darker purple was layered over to give more definition to the shadows and the petals:

For the darkest shadows I began to add brown and began shaping the petals more with varying shades of pink and purple:

Continuing with the purple, more pink and white was added for the petals' highlights:

This is the completed drawing before cropping:

And this is the cropped copy slightly color adjusted in PS. The original drawing is quite purple, but most of  the photos and even the scan kept bringing out the blue.  It was hard for me to decide which one I liked best, so I tried to keep it as true in color to the original as possible:

I still find myself layering a lot and many of the drawings I see in this medium that I admire are not so heavy handed. I guess it might just be my pencil style, more like painting in a way, but I also think it is my inexperience that I need to do so much layering before getting the look I want.

This was another fun exercise to do and I'm already looking through my photos to find the next one.  Over the past couple of summers I've taken many photos of flowers growing in my garden, mostly macro shots and I have plenty of source pics to choose from.  It is good practice and flowers are fun to draw because they are so pretty - lol!

Thanks for visiting! :)

Another Site to Showcase and Sell Prints

I've just joined The Untapped Source  (http://www.theuntappedsource.com/janicedunbar), which is a site designed to be strictly a gallery to showcase and sell art prints.

The other three inspire a lot of involvement in the social aspect of the communities which is fun and rewarding, but also very time consuming.  Activity on Fine Art America has been picking up since submitting my art to more groups and I do like the look and feel of FAA.  Even as a free member I can see much potential in it and will likely upgrade my account as my productivity increases.

'Boats in Sun Light' has been featured in three FAA groups now and was featured for the first time on Red Bubble today :) (Links to all my profiles if you want to check them out are in the side bar)

Setting prices for artwork on all four sites is done differently, so I guess depending where buyers live, the shipping costs and what type of print is being ordered, the best deals will be determined on an individual basis. I've posted links to each artwork's retail page under their image on the pages in this blog and on my website.

There are still other retailer sites that could be joined, I will investigate them as time permits, but for now I think setting up these four will have to be enough, I still need to scan some of my older artwork to include and I really want to get down to the business of creating!

Cheers! :)

Second feature for 'Bono' and 'Silhouette Glow' chosen to be a group's avatar!

My drawing of Bono has been featured again in another group on Red Bubble called Photo Realistic Artwork and Silhouette Glow has been chosen to be this week's avatar for a group called Beautiful BC!

:)

Welcome to my Artist Blog!

After some time away from drawing and painting, distracted by technology and other pursuits, this past Christmas I painted a portrait of my sister's dog 'Tillie' as a gift for her and her husband.

 
It was such a good feeling to paint again, I had forgotten how much I enjoy it and it awoke in me the desire to get back to the basics of art with a pencil and a paint brush again. 

I began researching online artist communities and considering which ones I might want to join to see if I could sell 'prints on demand' and original artwork, when I realized I needed to get a little more organized and start at the beginning. So I've spent the past few weeks scanning older photos of my artwork, preparing them for the web and designing my online portfolio http://www.onlinebydesign.ca as the first step in this process and the second step has been setting up this blog.

I'm sure it will go through a lot of changes over the next few weeks and months as I decide upon the look and feel I want for it.  Now that both my site and blog are online however, I will begin signing up for the various artist community sites and places to sell art online that have caught my attention and will post links to those when they are ready to share.

My goal in starting this blog is to encourage new inspiration and motivation to continue to grow in me as an artist and to keep learning and doing!