Sketches of the Month

I made a new resolution.



I wanted to create more art. But time is hard to find around here. So I bought myself a small sketchbook and a travel pack of drawing pencil. So now when I'm sitting on the couch watching tv I can multitask.

And so far it seems to be working.

Baby M passed out on my chest

 

A toy marble

 

Baby M in her toy glasses

This last one if my favorite <3 It took me a bit longer than planned. (But people are hard to draw!) But I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out.

Three drawings in the last three weeks ain't bad. Although funny story... I first titled this post "Sketches of the Week" before realizing my mistake. Ha ha ha...

My true goal would be to get back to painting more. So if someone knows how to make oil painting more portable, please share!

 

Silhouettes

Oh hey there. I'm a month shy of it being a year since my last post. Yikes! I don't care what anyone says... life gets super busy after having a kid. Projects are far and few between but I do manage to work on some things occasionally.

And I managed to do a painting! That will be the next post.

For now, my silhouettes of the kids...

I actually finished these a few months ago but hadn't gotten them printed. My initial plan was to do the whole family. But... well... 2 out of 4 isn't bad. I think I'll just keep them as the kids. Nobody cares about the parents anymore anyways!

The exciting part about these is that I actually had them printed on art paper which is something new for me. Obviously you can't tell this through the screen. I uploaded my images to fineartamerica.com and ordered prints through the website. They turned out pretty good actually. I'll have to keep them in mind in the future.

Possibly My Greatest Accomplishment Ever...

....my wedding favors. Yes, that's right. This is going to look crazy for a second, but this is everyone who came to our wedding:




These photos were taken in haste the day before our wedding. As were individual portraits of each.

Like this.

 

And this.

And this.

Actually, THESE portraits have been cropped. So there is no carpet background or occasional limb of mine.

This is me taking 120+  pictures in haste.

I really disliked wedding planning. But these personalized wedding favors were something I knew I wanted to do from early on. And so starting sometime in January (for our August wedding), I tracked down pictures of all of our guests and got to work. The generic male/female bodies made things a bit easier. What I worried about most was offending someone with their portrait. Of course, there were also a few people who I had never met in person. I totally relied on their photo being an accurate representation of themselves.

So I'm on a mission now to crop all of the individual pictures and make some sort of "cool" collage. (Better than what was slapped together above.) One of those photo collages that look like a picture of something from far away would be awesome. Not that I know how to do that.

For the Kids

Completed 2005

16"x20"

Acrylic

During the year I lived at home, between college and the real world, my nephew V. and I spent a lot of time together. Specifically, we spent a lot of time watching Shrek and/or Monsters, Inc. So for his 3rd birthday I painted him this picture of him and Sully. Stopping by their house this weekend, I was pretty happy to see it still prominently displayed in V.'s room. (He's older now, and I'm pretty sure he has moved on from Monsters.)

As I was leaving his room, this caught my eye...



Seems we have a budding artist. Win.

Since I was already poking around the kid's rooms I stopped into N.'s. Mostly I just wanted to snap some pictures of her wall. (I also delivered her picture this weekend. Not sure if she liked it or not because she gave me a look that said, "You're a weirdo.") 

 

 
Ignore the creepy doll

As you can probably infer from the pictures, mostly everything in her room is pink. So we lucked out when we chose the paint color! The flower-mural-thing was my baby gift to her.

I'm reminiscing as I write this post... and feeling really old.

By the way. When I asked V. what his favorite subject is in school he told me math. Double win.

A Mischievous Little Girl

Completed 2011

11"x14"

Oil

Does she have an evil smile in real life? Yes. In a good way!

Dave Matthews

Completed in 2003
16"x22"

Oil

I was a big Dave Matthews fan. Can you tell? Not to brag, but this might be some of the best arm hair I've ever painted.

The original picture is from a Rolling Stone magazine. It's kind of funny putting the two pictures side by side. The more I look at them, the more different they look. Maybe I should just call my picture "Man in a Top Hat".

Courtesy of Rolling Stone