The Blue Monarch

Turns out, I've been on a bit of an insect kick. Perhaps it was the summer season. Or maybe it's just that we live in the country and are constantly surrounded by bugs.

Let me veer off on a tangent for a moment and just share this right here:



That, my friends, is a caterpillar. He has shaggy fur-hair that reminds me of pipe cleaners. I found him eating our milkweed late in the summer. After much research I learned that he is (very appropriately named) a milkweed caterpillar.

But back to my latest painting.

8"x8"
Oil on board

This, along with the praying mantis I just finished, have been fun little paintings. I don't normally work on these smaller sizes but somehow I've accumulated quite a few of these small canvases. They are perfect for painting little insects like this butterfly :)

I also did some experimenting here with the board. I've had issues using store-bought boards in the past where they seem to absorb the paint inconsistently. So before starting, I coated the board with gesso... which I've never used before. I'm amazed by how smooth the surface was! Almost too slick. But I do like the effect it has and I can see preferring the appearance over canvas for certain projects.

So why did I choose blue? No good reason except that, as I stared at my paint options, blue seemed more fun than orange.

Mantis

I almost forgot to post this little guy:

5"x7"
Oil on Canvas

This is sort of an end of summer painting. This praying mantis was hanging out on our deck one day. I can remember being a kid and thinking it was such a special thing to see one. But now we see them all. the. time. They're still neat little bugs though.

Prints are available here: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/praying-mantis-caroline-serafinas.html?viewall=true

Painting the Purple

16"x20"
Oil on canvas

I finished up another one.... probably my last painting of the year. I started this painting earlier in the year... like March/April... and never finished. 

So, obviously there's a Raven's theme going on here... the raven... the football... the purple.

But I actually painted this with something else in mind. For the past couple of years I've walked in the PurpleStride to raise money for pancreatic cancer. The walk in DC is usually around the June time frame. Purple is their color. My original intent was to sell or raffle off the original painting or do something to raise money. But then I had a conflict and couldn't do the walk this year. So then the painting never got finished. Until just a few weeks ago.

I'd still like to keep my plan. Even if it's a year later. So once I get my act together and figure out what I want to do, I'll post about that. Stay tuned.

A Portrait of Toy Cars

I finally finished up M's painting!

Completed 2015
24"x48"
Oil on Canvas

I had no shame hanging it unfinished in his room, but it is nice to finally finish. All that's been lingering was the window for the bus. I first posted about his painting back in September. I think ultimately it took me about three months. For some reason I initially thought things would go much faster. But let's be honest... they never do. I can remember making fun of my mother for projects that would seemingly last her forever. Now I completely understand :)

I guess next up I'll owe a painting to the baby girl. But I figure I have at least two years before I need to worry about that :)

I'm on a bit of a streak here finishing up projects, and even have another painting that I've finally finished and signed. (That will be three for the year!) Pictures of that one will be coming sometime soon.

Prints!

A few (many) months ago I embarked on an effort to start getting my paintings professionally scanned. They were starting to accumulate so I decided that I needed to do something with them. I found a semi-local place that does an excellent job scanning and color correcting.

Its an ongoing process. I've only gotten four scanned so far. But I'm a slow mover. It's pretty fun to see copies though!

After this little project I started reading about printing options. One thing led to another and I decided to upload some of my work onto a print on demand website because, why not? And because who wouldn't want a picture of Meatball on a throw pillow? :)

So I'm happy to announce that I now have prints available through Fine Art America. Here's the link to my profile page: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/caroline-serafinas.html

For those who enjoy my random paintings, prints are available in various sizes but pretty much limited to no bigger than the original. 

Fun, right? 

I've also added a "Shop" page to my blog main page. 

If you haven't heard of Fine Art America before, there is a TON of art available on the site. So at least enjoy the window shopping :)

New Painting for the Kid

Back before M was born I had false expectations of how much free time I'd have after he was born. When I was working on his nursery I left a blank wall for a future painting. Silly me. That wall is still bare two years later.

Luckily things have calmed down a bit since the newborn stage and even since he turned one. And I'm managing to do some painting again. I'm finally working on a painting for M. I'm actually kind of happy that I waited. Instead of painting him something that I thought he might like, I'm painting something that I know he likes: cars. Or as he calls them, "trucks."



This is a portrait of four of his toy cars. They are all different sizes in real life but I've scaled them so they are roughly the same size in the painting.

Here are a few more progress shots:



Things aren't feeling quite as daunting now that I've made some headway on the police car. I may actually finish this year :) Of course this will probably never hang in M's actual nursery. We'll be switching him to a new "big boy" room in the next couple of months.



If you're interested in more frequent updates, I've been posting them to my new Instagram account.

Mushroom Trio

I've been trying to get back into painting. The last painting I had done was the pair of golden retrievers back in 2012. More than two years ago! This was all prior to M being born. After he turned one I think I started getting the hang of things and adapting to life with a child. Yes, it took a year. Actually, who am I kidding, I'm still adapting.

But around March I decided I really needed to get back to doing some of my hobbies. So I resolved to 1) start running again and 2) start painting again. I'm happy to report I've been pretty successful at both! Since March I've been pretty good at setting aside some time in the evenings for painting. Not every night. And not very much time. Usually I just work for about an hour. But hey, its something! I'm actually working on my third painting of the year. (More pictures to come.) Not bad considering I've always been a pretty slow painter to begin with.

Around April was when I finished my first one. This little group of mushrooms:

Completed 2015
14"x18"
Oil on Canvas

If I'm being honest, this painting came about because I, on a whim, decided to pull out my painting supplies and need a quick subject. So I raided the fridge, and found mushrooms :) I always have produce on hand.

And that's how it began. Hoping to keep this up.

*** UPDATE: prints available here ***

Starting the Nursery

Our kitchen renovation continues. I knew it would take awhile but I've been getting antsy. Not having a working kitchen sink will drive a person batty. So because I needed to see measurable progress somewhere, I decided to start the nursery.

Prepare yourself for lots of pictures of argyle. I don't necessarily want a theme for the nursery, but I thought argyle would add a nice touch to the room. My inspiration came from Pinterest. See here. So cute, right?

 

First a quick "before"picture. When we moved in to the house this room was super colorful. Very rainbow-like. We ultimately painted it a light khaki color, ripped out the carpet and installed hardwood floors. It was a huge improvement!

 

Fast forward back to today. We picked a neutral khaki color for the walls figuring that this room would one day be a nursery and khaki is gender neutral. Now that a boy is expected to occupy this space it was time to choose some accent colors. We decided on some safe blue and green, plus a small touch of orange.

 

The first step was to paint an accent wall. I gave in to gender stereotypes and picked the blue.

 

Next up was starting the argyle pattern. I decided to add the design to two of the walls. A lot of this design was really just an exercise in math and geometry. I pulled out a level, tape measure and pencil and started sketching out the design. Since our ceilings are 9' tall I went with a design of four diamonds, each two feet tall.

 

After taping the outline of the diamonds it was time to add color. Things went pretty smoothly up to this point. And actually quite quickly too! Thank you Frog Tape.

 

Then things got a little more tricky. It was time to paint the stitch pattern that overlaps the diamonds. I considered free-handing it but decided that it would look much cleaner if I taped it out. Talk about tedious. So more measuring and more taping. I used a lot Frog Tape for this step. A shameful amount actually.

 

Thankfully, things got easy again once the taping was done. Just a few swipes of white paint. And as annoying as it was to tape everything out, I'm pretty sure this was the easiest way to do it. My semi-steady hand would not have produced such clean results without the tape.

The white stitch definitely brought the whole design together. When it was just colored diamonds on the wall I was a little nervous. It was reminding me too much of a clown or circus theme. But argyle is so much more classy haha.

I finished up the design on the second wall the next day. (I needed to regain my patience for the taping.)

 

So now at least the painting portion of the nursery is done. Hooray for progress! There are still some things I want to do in the room, but this was a good start. And now back to the kitchen...

Golden Retriever Duo

Four. Looks like that's the number of paintings I finished in 2012. This is also the third dog painting to add to my collection. And second (here's the first) golden retriever painting!

Completed 2012
16"x20"
Oil

This last painting was a commission for two golden retriever dogs, Max and Jake. I never set out to be a pet painter but people do love their pets. I'm guilty of this myself. Lets not forget that I have a giant painting of Meatball hanging in our office. What a cutie.

These two dogs totally make me want to get another bulldog so that Meatball has someone to cuddle with. His name would be Slugsworth.

Hunkering Down

If you've watched any of the Hurricane Sandy coverage you know that the number one thing you should have been doing to prepare for the storm was hunker down. And, indeed, that is what I did.

Sandy resulted in two days off of work for me. While I spent a majority of my time watching storm coverage, watching the lights flicker, checking the basement for leaks, and just, overall, being on edge, I found lots of time to catch up on stuff around the house. Aside from the hurricane going on outside, it was actually quite pleasant.

In addition to washing all of our dirty laundry, I worked through some art projects that I've accumulated. Eventually I'll share the finished result of each. But both are for other people, so I want to make sure each reaches their respective person first. :)

I also came to the realization mid-day yesterday that my hobbies are so... shall we say, "traditional"... that I could actually do them without electricity. And without other people. I'm not sure what this says about me.

We never did lose power. I'll have to pull the plug on my bathtub full of water. But I'm okay with that!

Doors for Charity

I was asked to paint some doors for a local charity gala. I wish I could say that my contribution for this  event would directly be raising money. But it's not. This is more of an aesthetic donation... a sitting-in-the-background-and-being-pretty donation. Decorations are important too :)

The doors I was working with were these old closet doors. Their purpose is to hide some unsightly items.

I was asked to paint them in a Japanese theme. Things that come to mind are: bamboo, cherry trees, and other nature-like things. Like this:

Source

Source

  

Selfishly, I didn't want to spend more than a few hours on this project, so I went with a simple cherry tree theme. Here's the little sketch I drafted up. Yes, there are all sorts of copyrighted images. I get it. But this is for charity. It's cool.

First step was to paint the doors black. Luckily we had plenty of black paint left over from the garage project. And it was glossy. It was pretty much made for this project.

Before starting I debated with myself if it would be easier to start with a black canvas, or sketch out my image and then paint around it in black. The black canvas won. However, I knew I was going to be in for a couple layers of the white paint. Luckily they make paint for that purpose. It's called primer. And we have lots of that too!

And so i started painting away. It's actually quite fun to paint on such a large canvas. I need to do this more often. After one coat, my painting was looking as expected: streaky.

But a few coats later: success.

Step two was to add a bit of color. I rummaged through my paint box and found some paints to do the job.

Oh, wait. Backup. I did go back and prime out some flowers. This helped the red color pop more than it was doing directly on the black. And here we have it. All done.

Blowing in the Wind...

Hey, look who's back. I can't believe it has almost been a month since I last posted something. Honestly, I have not had much time to paint. Or do crafty projects. Currently my craft room is the cleanest it has ever been.

I have, however, jumped onto the Instagram bandwagon. Actually, I was on it for a brief time. Then hopped off. And now I am officially back on. I find it fulfills my need to take and share pointless pictures. I am just getting started. Naturally, Meatball is my most popular photo subject.

Back to the topic of this post. Remember my windmill? First seen here.

Completed 2012
12"x12"
Oil on Panel

I finally finished it up. This was really more of an experiment to try out painting on a panel. I thought I was going to like it, but I'm having mixed feelings. The black dried with blotchy spots and I'm not sure if it was a result of the black paint, or the panel. I'm debating trying it again, but we'll see.

Something else I learned: black paint is really hard to photograph. All around, this was one big learning experience.

Hoarders

I've discovered that I possibly do more shopping than painting when I'm in an artsy mood. I did a quick inventory check and discovered that I'm well stocked.

In my defense, I like to have options. Also, because I'm not a hardcore artist, I don't make my own canvases. (Shame.) Thus, I need to stock up when I either see things on sale, or I happen to wander into a store with a 40% off coupon.

Today I am resolving to do less shopping, more doing. Plus, my craft room/art studio is starting to get cluttered.

Yes, the ruler IS necessary