‘Peaceful Mountain River - The Oil and Oval Edition!’
Oils on Canvas - 16″ x 20″

Much as I’d love to have written about my first, it’s destruction was mentioned in the last post! After the loss of my first painting immediately after painting it and before I had a picture (I was going to take one when it was in it’s drying location), I wasn’t going to worry about painting anymore tonight. However, lying on the couch watching TV, it began to nag at me that I had promised myself that I’d have an oil painting to show at the end of the weekend and I still didn’t have one! So I got set up again and was going to repaint the original but decided I didn’t want to do that again since I had spent plenty of time earlier doing it. Instead, I decided to revisit my current favorite view: the peaceful mountain river. I thought it would be a good exercise to see how well I could do in oils what I had already done in acrylics. I am very pleased with the results.

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Today was supposed to feature a review of another Etsy seller. Unfortunately, while in the midst of transferring an oil painting today from my easel to the appropriate drying spot on the wall, I tripped over my cat, the painting fell out of my hands and you can guess what happened next. I have spent my day cleaning up the results and just have not had a chance to type of the review yet. As such, I’m going to skip the review for today and will post it instead on Tuesday, the next one after that on Thursday and then will be caught up next weekend!

As for the painting, it’s toast, which is really sad as it was my first oil painting but I’m going to work on another this week! I don’t give up that easily. Right now, though, I’m going to relax and try not to think about how much I spent cleaning my cream-colored carpet today. Thank goodness I have throw rugs everywhere!

‘Peaceful Mountain River Two’
Acrylic on Canvas Board - 8″ x 10″

Another take on the Peaceful Mountain River, this time using bolder colors. I painted this on a canvas board as I wasn’t expecting to like it but I actually like it more than the first version I painted so now I regret not going larger! I also prefer my reflection of the colors in the sky into the water.

I submited this painting to DeviantArt and Zazzle today as a postcard and it won a ‘Today’s Best Award,’ making it my second ‘Today’s Best Award’ in two weeks! I certainly won’t complain about that!

The question is: do I sell this on Etsy or not? Since it’s an 8″ x10″ on canvas board as opposed to stretched canvas, i would imagine the interest would be even less. I also think it would have to be framed and I don’t have the money at the moment to frame it before I would try to sell it. What are the thoughts of my readers? Let me know!

‘Peaceful Mountain River’
Acrylic on Canvas - 22″ x 28″

I had a productive day of painting yesterday. I’ve been working on refining my technique to include more color and to get away from my standard oval pond shapes. LOL! Part of doing so has been to work with Canvas Gel by DecoArt or FolkArt Blending Gel so that I can blend colors better.  This is also my largest painting to date and while I was hesitant to use it for an experiment, I had a good feeling it would turn out well so I forged ahead. I must say that I am happy with the results!

This afternoon I am going to work on taking the appropriate photographs to list this on Etsy, so I hope that I get the same great natural light that I had while I was painting it.  As this is my largest and most intricate painting yet, I’m planning on setting the price at $200. I’d be honored to hear some feedback from my readers!

Well, I have hit am impasse that is starting to wear on me a bit. Despite lots of people liking my art and craft items, so far I have not made a sale. My painting supplies are running low and I’m a bit torn on what to sew next as I really want to make clothes, but not just for kids and I don’t know what sizes I should make for sale to non-family members. Thus I started rummaging my brain for art that I could work on that I can easily afford. The first, and most obvious choice, is drawing! However, it’s been years since I worked on drawing, and I dropped out of my two art school classes years ago because I was frustrated by my lack of talent.  But I’ve been thinking that maybe I stopped prematurely and should work on my drawing technique again.

To that end, I pulled out my old art school portfolio and found a couple of examples I could stand to look at for motivation (above). I still had my sketch pads and pencils in the portfolio, so I am good to go. I did use a 40% off coupon to go to the bookstore and pick up a copy of ‘Drawing for the Absolute Beginner’ and am going to work through that. After a couple of rough wireframes using a ‘Deleter Doll’ (poseable doll for artists) that I had, I feel pretty good about getting back into it, even if I never do anything that I’d want to try and sell.

Well, thanks to some great sunlight (finally), I felt energized to finish my first painting aimed at kids. As you can see, I made some additions from my last post and covered my larger, fancy star with a big sun! Here’s the description I am using on Etsy and DeviantArt:

The creator has gotten tired and decided to start anew… or the universe is building up to the next big bang… or maybe some cosmic entity is draining the universal pool. Whatever your take, this bright and colorful painting is perfect for a child’s room or in anyplace a little whimsy is desired!

Painted using glow-in-the-dark additives, it takes on a soft glow when the lights go out!

We’ll see if it catches anyone’s interest but I definitely had fun painting it!

A sneak peek at a work in progress! This is a space painting that I am working on for kids. It uses glow-in-the-dark paint and lighter colors that hopefully will go with most kids color schemes! I’ll post another photo later this week as the painting progresses so that everyone can see my progress!

I have completed my latest painting and I am very happy with it! I’ve been working on my birds by painting them onto practice pages and have been determined to have them match the rest of the impressionistic view of flowers that I like to  paint. I feel I have succeeded in doing so and that they make a perfect complement to the pretty cherry blossoms in this painting.

I have crackled the background to give it a more ‘rustic’ feel that I think suits it well. It’s also my largest painting to date at 20″ x 24″ and I’m slowly building towards the 36″ x 48″ painting I have planned for next week!

I’d love to hear your feedback on what you like about this painting, what could be improved and what other paintings you would like to see me tackle. I’ll pick on idea of those submitted and make it a post of photo progressions so that you can see how I build up the layers of my paintings!