Verity

(Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs)

                                                                   (Dora the Explorer)

                                                                        (A Bug's Life)

 (Tinkerbell)

(Bolt)

(Bolt, again and Madagascar 2)

(Shrek the third)

Well, I'm starting an ambitious little project this week.  Little because it's only 12x12, ambitious because I'm painting a wiggly four year old from life.  I'm posting after each session and including the movie she's watching.  I had to change the lighting around, while I really liked the back lighting, every time she wiggled  or made a face (which she does a lot of) the shadows kept shifting making it even more difficult. I'll keep posting pictures as it progresses. Wish us luck!

Sketches

I'm doing more quick sketches lately inspired by my seven year old who draws incessantly, so I thought I should post more as well.  The top is the stump of a tree that I took out of my backyard last week.  I'd been waiting for two years to see if it was worth saving, but year after year, fewer leaves came out and more branches were dead all the way through.  It was a Harry Lauder Walking Stick, which is an awesome small tree because of it's curly branches so I was disappointed that it didn't root well.  But after I took it out, it looked interesting sitting on my grass in the fading light, and so I decided to draw it. So the upside is that I got a neat sketch and I put in a small pond where the tree was. Under it is a sketch of my daughter, taking a much needed and unfortunately exceedingly rare nap.

Gathering Flowers

24x36 Maybe this one should be titled "check out how much I've improved".  I repainted a painting I did in the fall of 2010.  I was never really happy with it so I decided to fix it, and so much was wrong that fixing it turned into completely repainting it.  It's a portrait of my cousin picking flowers on my Grandmother's farm.  The bottom photo is what I painted earlier, the likeness wasn't very good, the proportions were off, the background was boring and I didn't finish it very well.  Now I have a much better likeness, the pose is still a little stiff, but I couldn't do much about that, so I changed the background to give it some rhythm.  I also fixed the proportions, made her taller and gave her a smaller head, I also changed the position of the hands.  Basically the only thing I kept was the bush in the bottom left.

Drawing Becky

Becky: charcoal pencil and white chalk, 9x12ish about 2 hours a piece. I'm trying to close the field and get a smooth finish without having the toned paper show through like I'm used to.