2015 Paintings

So 2015 turned into quite a mixed bag of work once again, including some very interesting projects I had not previously attempted. I didn’t make a great deal of paintings this year but then my focus was drawn in several directions. Still those I did create are shown below.

Starting off with acrylic paintings I decided I would try my hand at painting boxes and creating some tiny little magnets out of foam. The idea was to stretch the usage of my paint, test out those lovely iridescent colours and generally see if I could paint/create objects as well as my standard canvas and cradle boards.

Acrylic

The above butterfly box was a reconditioned item and has a push lid as opposed to a clasp like the below snail box. I’ll admit I struggled with the surface of the butterfly box and both pieces ended up taking an awful long longer than I anticipated when I started!

The below three foam blocks were much faster to create but very fiddly as they are much smaller than I am used to painting. The foam was an interesting and unusual surface to work into and surprisingly more solid and forgiving than I thought it would be. I also got in a bit of a pickle with the superglue when trying to affix magnets to the reverse, especially on the first one because I had magnetic strip that came in a roll and thus did not want to be laid flat… oh and just glue in general, never let me loose with superglue lol!

Night Sails (left) 1.75 x 2.5" and Moonlight (right) 1.75 x 2.5"

Posy - 2.5 x 1.75"

The only other acrylic project I did this year was part of a neat little show called Inter-generational Art. The idea of this was to bring together the young an old to work on a singular piece between them. Naturally I was interested in collaborating so Petrina offered up one of her charcoal sketches.

Her sketch immediately gave me an idea but I was running a little short on time for the deadline and wasn't used to working on something so large!

So here's a picture of me hard at work: 

I'm pretty sure this was the day before the deadline and as you can see I haven't even started lol!

Still I did start and finish and we mounted the art just in time for acceptance into the show :)

Here's a better picture of Petrina and I with the finished piece:

Next up are the few oil paintings in made in 2015. Allure, Clouds and The Bonfire are all the same size since I got gifted some wooden slats to work on. Of course then as with any arty gift I just had to test them out and see what could be done.

Oil

Allure - 3 x 7" Oil on wooden panel

The above was the most successful of the three in my opinion but then it is also the most detailed and orientates around my favourite subject of tigers.

Clouds - 3 x 7" Oil on wooden panel 

Clouds was an experiment to see if I could work in a different palette, specifically in pastels and paler colours to my beloved dark blacks and vibrant greens. I think by the end I couldn’t decide if the landscape shown were dark clouds or impressionistic mountains but I achieved my goal at least.

The Bonfire - 7 x 3" Oil on wooden panel

This was an experiment in speed and layering. I wanted the dark background to remain fairly thin to show the wood grain and the flames to be quite thick and sticker. It’s a simple piece no doubt but sometimes simple is best.

Up next, well I went back into my love of fantasy and decided to create another dragon eye. This time I went for a blue palette instead of red and some unusual scale shapes around the eye. For a cool toned piece, I think it is quite interesting.

Serous Eye - 6 x 6" Oil on cradle board

This next piece was created and displayed in a show at the local gallery. An unusual entry perhaps both in size, style and subject but I had a clear cut vision for this piece. My aim was to move from cold tones to warm ones as you travel down the painting with the staircase leading your eye downward into the light of the study. I was told it was well-received at the show so hooray! ^_^

The Study 13 x 5.75

(And we won’t mention that yes that’s an elf character at the desk, so yes, this another story-related painting … shhh…!! xD)

Mural

An entirely different painting project that occurred in 2015 was the opportunity to paint a square of the planned local mural. An odd one for me, trying to paint one square of random colours that would eventually make up the whole picture using a type of paint I was unfamiliar with onto a metal sheet.

 This one had me scratching my head quite a bit since I found the given paint and surface very difficult to use. I did complete my square in good time for the final which as you can see from the below photograph was quite a varied piece. So wonderful to know that I was able to join in and be part of a large scale collaboration that now stands proudly in Lake Country :)

Mural - One 12 x 12" square

Photograph of complete mural.

Digital

Last but by no means least I was commissioned to create not one but two digital book covers this year! :D

Always ready for a challenge I worked very hard on these pieces and it took quite a bit of learning new techniques to get them working as the authors wanted. I designed custom brushes and palettes that would be invaluable for future projects that is if my laptop hadn’t decided to have massive hard drive failure at the beginning of October. Argh >.<

The good news is that I didn’t lose any of my work -phew!- Only the settings I had created for my software were pushed back to default since I had to reinstall everything. Glad to say that my laptop was fixed quite quickly and didn’t interfere with any deadlines, unless you count putting up examples of work for Inktober every day – that took a bit of playing catch up!

Obviously both of the below images are missing their written content. Neither of the books have been published yet.

The Year of Us – book cover commission

My first rendition of the leaves in this piece wasn’t very good at all but I quickly learnt that making custom brushes wasn’t difficult and gave a much better effect. Praise be to my Intuous tablet too for having a good amount of pressure sensitivity.

The Lost Server – book cover commission

This cover was the bigger project of the two. While the background came together quite quickly, the characters took a great deal more work. Refining what the characters should look like took a great deal of back and forth questions between the author and myself, eye colour, hair colour, clothing and even attitude of the characters were discussed. Then came the clincher; the floating castle.

This is part of the story I enjoy re-telling as an example of just how much clarity is required when you ask someone to design something for you. Now we had been communicating well and I had carefully taken down all the details for the characters but for whatever reason I didn’t ask enough questions about the ‘floating castle.’ (top left of the painting)

My brain just simply said ‘yep OK I know what that looks like,’ and off I went to sketch it up. I am glad that my first scribble for it was literally a scribble and was based off of a Myazaki style castle (though looked more like a dalek as the client joked – oh dear, lol), so next I thought they wanted an English castle…nope wrong again, we’re talking a Chinese style temple here! 

Finally, I asked for a reference photo of the building, which is what I should have done in the first place. Live and learn on that one, and never be too embarrassed to ask your client to be more specific! Glad to say that they were very patient with me and that it all worked out well in the end ^_^

Also now whenever someone isn't specific or I forget to ask I get to call the situation, 'another dratted floating castle!' xD

2014 ACEOs

Once again I made a LOT of ACEOs in 2014, 71 of them by my count – wow!

So to present them this time, I have tried to group them in a semi-logical order. Yes, this post is going to be quite full so I will try and not swamp you too much!

I got a bit more experimental this year particularly since I had been gifted some very neat acrylics including iridescent paints and my favourite a little tub of phosphorescent acrylic. *squee* Phosphorescent for those that are not familiar with the term is glow-in-the-dark, UV (black light) reactive paint. I am a sucker when it comes to anything that sparkles or glows. 

I was also interested to discover what effects could be created using this medium since in natural light it is almost clear and I liked the idea of having aspects hidden in the art that could only be viewed in total darkness. I don’t feel I achieved the hidden aspect part well but I did have fun and was pleased with the below four pieces that I made. Each is shown with a photograph taken next to my UV/Black light lamp, because yes I already had one just hanging around even before I got the phosphorescent paint!

The top two here were created on paper while the bottom two were painted on ACEO sized woodblocks. The top left is the outlier of the group and thereby by default more interesting because I worked on a Bristol vellum card using watercolour markers, pen and coloured pencils as the base before applying the paint. Top right was all acrylic on a Strathmore illustration board, it’s titled ‘the Ibegon,’ with reference to the green tendrils; this is a fictional, carnivorous plant I created for my narrative so while the visual subject of the art card is the skull the underlying idea was about the plant. And I do love my puns, the name, ‘ibegon,’ is meant to be pronounced ‘eebegone’ as in ‘he be gone,’ which is what happens if you step on one of these, maybe then they should have been ‘you be gone’ -Oh I can hear the *groans* already lol.

 Back to the art, the bottom two woodblocks in this set were slightly different. The skull was painted onto pure wood and the moon had a canvas surface laid over the wood. Interesting to see how the acrylics worked on each of these.

Onwards then and another experiment I tried this year was collage. I was working toward the theme of first anniversary and as soon as I realised that the first wedding anniversary is represented by paper, clocks and string I had my goal. I’m not certain about how successful the two pieces I made for this theme were but it was an interesting thing to try. Also discovered that I make twice the mess with glue than I do with paint and ink xD Oh well.

Back to my regular mediums; below are the other ACEOs that I created using paint in 2014. There are a few oil ones here but again I was mostly testing out the new acrylics and having some fun ^_^

Of course I continued illustrating and made many illustrated cards too. I would say that my art falls into two styles which got coined by the proprietor of the local gallery/coffee house as ‘cute and creepy.’

So, yup, I do cute and creepy and love both realism and fantasy.

 I’ll start with the realism ones. I will say that Hyper-realism is great to witness but I don’t think it’s something I would want to achieve (not sure I even could!). I prefer to work in a way that allows the viewer to know it is art and not a photograph or reproduction. Hyper-realism artists have an awesome talent but I like a little splatter in my own work and the art I buy.

I use photo references for all my ‘realism’ pieces and consider them as good practice to learn more about the subjects I enjoy painting and illustrating.

Fantasy pieces are always fun; I never quite know where they will go. The freedom! Ah and argh, freedom to use all I have learnt from realism and twist it any way I choose is great but then it’s also frustrating. Sometimes too many options work against me! Still I feel more alive when creating fantasy pieces even if they don’t always turn out quite as shiny as the realism ones.

Ah yes, you knew it was coming; something that involves my narrative yet again. You know the one, that one I have still not finished writing after eight years or so lol. Well book in me or not I have had fun drawing the characters from it especially during those times when redrafting and writing got far too tiresome. It is a bonus for me to be able to switch to art when my writing brain falls over.

Below then are ACEOs I made using some of my original characters. They are subjects I love so these tend to come out quite naturally. I found photo references for most of my characters by searching up the face shapes I could ‘see’ in my head and then used those as a base to draw from. Since I created head-shot portraits for my characters I can always look back at those when I want to make a new piece of art based on any one of them. Of course I have my favourites and there are some that work better in visual format than others.

One great bonus this year and a happy note to end on is that I got commissioned by my sister-in-law to create two ACEOs of her daughter named Liv. She gave me several photographs to work from and explained that, at that time, Liv was obsessed with slugs and snails. Liv would bring them in from the garden in her hand like a special present and would sit and watch them. These are Swedish slugs too so a bit more yellow than the ones I grew up with. I thought this was an excellent challenge! She was very happy with the final pieces, as was Liv who was utterly delighted to receive the art in the mail ^_^

On top of all of that another person was very endeared in my little drawings of Liv and her slug. That person was a local author and publisher named Darcy Nybo. Darcy decide that she liked the drawings so much that Liv should be her character named Emma Jean for a short story she had in mind. In 2015 we worked together to create the short story, ‘Emma Jean Finds a Friend.’ Although I guess I should save that for the 2015 post.

Well I hope you enjoyed this rather long entry and look forward to telling all about the short stories Darcy and I worked on in 2015 that made a young girl in Sweden a star without knowing it!

See you next time :)

2013 Digital Paintings

I created three digital paintings this year. On top of everything else I made in 2013 that was quite an accomplishment especially since I had struggled with digital paint for quite some time. The first two I made took over 40hrs each even though the rough sketches I worked from were relatively small Letter sized images.

Childcare 101

This one above was a great learning curve from me. As recommended by a friend of mine who is more seasoned in painting with a Wacom tablet I began with a black and white image to get a better understanding of shading and tone in this medium. I chose to do fictional character work and stuck to the round brush in various sizes for blending. Working in black and white helped me understand how to blend in a digital medium better than I ever had before.

Once I got this principle blending and shading down I decided to try a piece with a few colours.

I Couldn't Care Less

 This one above involved cool tones for the characters I think the odd skin tones worked out well. I didn’t know much about painting hair digitally and chose to try and it strand by strand on the male character– oh wow I won’t be doing that again!! I used a different brush to make the female character’s hair softer. There were a few technical issues with the drawing I learnt from this: heads too large and mouths not shaped as well as they could have been but I think I got the light balance well here. All in all it wasn’t bad but I can see where improvements in technique need to made.

My last piece (below) was a silly ‘just for fun’ quickie. A quickie for me is several hours and not a several minutes ‘paint-it-out’ like other artists. Rest assured I spent a long time on this ‘faster’ image. I wanted to make a Halloween piece using digital paint and this is what I came up with. It’s meant to be creepy and a little rough in design. Yes, it still took me a lot longer than those speed painters you see online. Still I am glad I tried and hope I can try again in future to utilise this medium.

Happy Halloween from Nai

Well here’s to more joyful mishaps and experiences! Until next time.

2013 Oil Paintings

A LOT of paintings for me this year! Quite a nice steady flow of them.

I managed to create fourteen oil paintings in total in 2013 so yes this will be a fairly long entry. Feel free to skip past the text and just look at the pictures if it pleases you :)

The first two I made were created early on in January and March while the rest were completed later in the year.

Sunlit Woods – 8 x 10” Oil on stretched canvas.

First painting made in January this year - the above was created on a gifted canvas that already had yellow and copper streaks painted on it as a background when I received it. Since the background was set I tried to imagine what kind of subject would sit well on top. I rarely paint impressionistic landscapes but decided to let the brush strokes speak for me; bending loose trees, plant dots and dappled shadows seemed fitting.

It turned into an interested piece that has an iridescent sheen in all the right places when the light hits it. Of course it is nigh impossible to scan or capture iridescent reflections in a photograph. Still it was a good experiment that got me out of my comfort zone.

Red Lion Fish - 8 x 10” Oil on cradle board

Call this experiment number two for this year. Not very much iridescent so this one doesn’t shimmer in any light but instead is translucence in places. I created the blue background first using thin layers of oil to allow some of the wood grain to show through and create natural patterning. Painting the fish turned out to be a rather delicate procedure of layering very thin washes. Now I work flat and in thin layers to begin with so trying to make those layers even thinner to make translucency was no easy task! Still I think I achieved my goal in capturing the ghost-like appearance of a see-through fish.

Cherry Blossom -  8 x 10” Oil on stretched canvas.

The above was an unusual and specific commission that took longer than I expected. I walked the buyer through every stage of the painting to ask what they wanted. They sent me several random photographs of blossom and we outsourced what type of bench should be presented. I sent the composition before paint was applied and then kept them up to date until we reached a point we were both happy with. It certainly taught me a few things! I think it turned out rather lovely even though this isn’t an atypical subject for me to paint. The best news is that it was a gift for someone other than my client and the report back was that the new owner loved it :D

Young Snow Leopard – 16 x 18” Oil on stretched canvas

Well the beauty above spent many years as a WIP waiting in the wings. I started this painting in 2011 and by 2013 I pulled the confidence to finish. Yes, that’s quite a long time to leave a piece sitting unfinished, it even travelled all the way from England to Canada in its raw unfinished state! Still it ended up being a great finish. I guess good things are worth waiting for after all.
As always there are many things I want to change but I was so relieved I managed to get it down and that the cool colour balance I planned from the start actually worked!
I put the green plant on last and I recall I was so afraid I might mess up those slender lines and have to try and fix the background my hand was shaking!! Painted those plant lines about three times to try and shade them and phew what a relief I didn’t have to correct any shaky hand errors. ^_^

For comparison below is a blurry photograph of the 2011 version I worked into for those of you who like WIPs (stop giggling at the pun you!!)

Next up in order of creation date we have a piece I titled Courage.

Courage – 12 x 9” Oil on canvas board

The above is one piece of art I love and hate simultaneously. If 2013 taught me anything it is that I really dislike working on canvas boards and that purple is the worst colour to try and mix from your basic set of colours. I painted the rocks here with relative ease but that pretty flower took more than a few re-paintings and I ended up having to borrow a purple from someone else because I just couldn’t get the shade I wanted from mixing.
I have since purchased Dioxazine purple for my paint set and even named a purple-haired character Dioxa in honour of my struggle.

On the plus my persistence paid off since many people seem to really enjoy this image and I was personally pleased with the final too. This painting has also served me well in various print formats so I’d call that a big win :)

Below is another example of me not quite learning my lesson when it comes to canvas boards and flowers.

Valentines in October – 12 x 9” Oil on canvas board.

This was a hugely experimental piece for me and aptly named because I literally painted the dead flowers that my husband gave me in February in October. I seem to have a thing for dead flowers, I really love the way they curl up and preserve. Those interesting shapes were the reason I kept the flowers for so long and why I wanted to try and paint them. Adding my new knowledge of translucency, I thought I could apply it to the glass vase and the faded flowers.

As usual I made the background first and was enamored with the idea of the dripping paint look. Sadly, I forgot to realise than chucking a whole lot of water onto something that is essentially cardboard beneath the canvas might have a negative outcome. So yes the board warped under the amount of water I used to get the stressed drippy background – gah!
Some acid free paper (to protect the art) a heavy book and a wet cloth are required to unwarp it.

I was aiming for delicate again but different and decided to have the vase ‘float’ rather than have a hard surface for it to sit on. I also wanted to aim for a watercolour look.
As read I probably should have known better, last time I tried to paint dead daffodils I ended up with two perspectives in one image – now that is a feat I couldn’t do again if I tried!

Moving onward then, I had several of those canvas boards left that I wanted to put to use.

A glutton for punishment maybe but I had also been working on some ACEOs (small art cards 2.5 x 3.5” for those that don’t know – and yes that will be my next blog post shhh don’t tell) based on a starlight theme. Since I enjoyed doing the smaller set of star-scapes I decided to create larger versions.

Orion – 9 x 12” Oil on canvas board

Orion will always be my favourite go-to choice of constellation. It reminds me of home because in a soft romantic Disney-esq type of storytelling ‘I can always look up and know that my friends and family can see the same constellation, no matter how far apart we might be.’

It’s a very easily recognised constellation that also happened to be the one I could see from my bedroom window as a child.

Well of course I had to attempt this in oils. I used a wet-on-wet technique for the darker foreground and again tried to let my brushes make the marks of the silhouetted trees.

The next two I will put in tandem follow this theme of star-scapes.

 

Northern Starlight – 9 x 12” Oil on canvas board

I love the idea of the aurora and made a pretty good smaller piece based on this.

I don’t personally think the above painting captured what I wanted to show but I’m glad I tried and it also shows my love of reflections. Reflections or mirrors in still water is a theme I am still working on. Speaking of reflections in still water:

Another Starry Night – 12 x 9” Oil on canvas board

The third in this set was just that; a mirror of sky and silhouette.

After such a foray into landscapes and sky I decided I should do a little fantasy.

Serv Eye – 6 x 6” Oil on cradle board

The above piece sold – woo – hoo! It is named ‘Serv Eye’ because this is one breed of dragon in….yeah you guessed it, my story. I based this painting on earlier drawings of one dragon in particular. This wonderful and huge dragon was named Fao. Write his name backwards and be amazed at my literary skills when it comes to names :P

Back again then to more ‘serious’ paintings I give you my second large piece of the year.

First Autumn – 16 x 20” Oil on stretched canvas

This was difficult in terms of pose and colour. It’s much easier to work in one colour theme and much harder trying to make those complimentary shades match. Also pointillism isn’t a technique I was familiar with so it took me a long time to try and ‘pointillism’ the grass backdrop with my brush.

A much smaller piece below that involved ink and paint.

Ivory – 3 x 4” Oil and ink on cradle board

I’d call this one a study. It also involves those reflections I seem to be inclined toward.

I stained the wood block using ink and then added the painted skull and candles. It was interesting to see how the two mediums worked together. Also without sounding too morbid I really enjoy sketching/painting animal skulls.

Last two oils for this year were both animals.

Autumn Wolf – 10 x 8” Oil on stretched canvas

 This was great because I got to throw ‘all the colours’ at the backdrop and then make them muddy. I also very much enjoyed making a different type of grey for those rocks. I should have written down the combination I used to make that one.

Tiger Eye – 8 x 6” Oil on stretched canvas

The above tiger eye is another piece that found itself a new home – hooray!

The best part about this one for me was the unusual cropping. Seems I really do like cutting my pieces in odd ways. I guess if it works then don’t knock it!

Well that's all for this round. Catch you on the next post ^_^

2012 Paintings

Well I pulled my thumb out and got to painting again this year so I have quite a few to showcase! Seven paintings if I am to be accurate but considering how many other pieces of art I made in 2012, seven is a fairly impressive amount to add onto my workload. I guess I can say with certainty that I found my passion again during this year.

Starting then with….

Cat’s Eyes  - 8 x 10” Oil on stretched canvas

Not the first cat eyes or black surface I have worked on but the first fully black canvas I tested out. I called it complete but am still not overly happy with the final piece. I may see if I can rework this at some point or create a newer version with more detail.

The Watcher – 8 x 8” Oil on cradle board

I always enjoy painting on wood more than I do on canvas and I feel like this piece was quite successful. I was happy with the colour balance and amount of intensity I managed to capture in a singular eye.

Snow Leopard - 8 x 10” Oil on canvas board

I always seem to struggle the most with canvas boards, they are a little too slippery for my liking. The challenge here was to create something mostly made of white since I find white/grey tricky. I wasn’t displeased with the outcome though I decided that next time I set myself the challenge of painting in whites I should use a surface I am more comfortable with!

Morning Harvest - 8 x 10” Oil on canvas board

I think I got a touch obsessed with spider webs this year since I made three paintings including their delicate formations. It’s a shame my copies of the images don’t show the iridescent golds I put on the webbing. Interestingly all three spider web paintings sold. It may have taken a few years but they all found new homes – hooray! :D

For the above Morning Harvest I was aiming to create the tingling sensation of a frosty morning. I chose a limited palette of softer browns to evoke a misty dawn look that I thought would highlight the silhouetted corn and golden threads of broken web.

Autumn Glow - 6 x 6” Oil on cradle board

For this one I wanted to try warmer colours and to capture that hazy glowing feel that autumn sunsets create.

Iron Web - 3 x 4” Oil on cradle board

Back to colder tones for this little piece; I was hoping to evoke a frosty morning again and juxtapose the soft webbing against the hard metal spiral.

Supper - 6 x8” Oil on cradle board

I really love this one because the subject challenged me and also allowed me to use some iridescent colours I wanted to test. I love the way that wooden cradle boards absorb my thin layers of paint and allow me the option to keep some of the wood grain patterning on show. Of course I also like working in dark colours and on creepy subjects as much as the cute ones so this was a win for me ^_^

Well that’s all for this blog post, hope you enjoyed it as always and catch you next time :)