Secret Santa Gift

My latest painting is a gift for my friend Stef, who I got for Secret Santa

In October she went on a trek across Jordan to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, so I took one of her photos from the trip off Facebook to paint.

This is her shocked face.

I think she liked it - I made her cry!

I got her a few other things including a mug with photos of us from last year's Annual Gift Exchange, ordered from Photobox, along with tea and biscuits.

She treats those teabags like gold!

I was given Laguna Beach season 2 on dvd and a whole lots of Bueno!

I love Christmas!

New Painting - Getting Thrifty

A new cheap shop opened up near me called B&M and a few weeks ago me and my Mum went to check it. We love all those shops; Poundland, Home Bargains, Family Bargains.

#thrifty

We ended up spending almost 2 hours in B&M.

Totally the best time.

One of the things I bought was this printed canvas for £2.99.

It's 35x90cm!

It would be perfect for me to do a really decent painting on.

Except for that one issue of there already being something on it.

Which took me to another great place. The Scrap Store, of course, where I picked up this can of emulsion paint that still had a couple of inches of paint in, which was all I needed.

Using a roller to get the smoothest texture I painted over the graphic on the canvas.

It took about 4/5 coats but then it was good to go.

And here's what I've done with it.

I used one of my own photos but switched out the figure for some Google image people.

All of my own photos feature people my age so for some variety I had to look elsewhere.

Another Beach Painting

My latest painting is another that comes from the beach trip I took with my friends at the end of August.

It's also becoming a tradition to create a painting on a narrow canvas of myself at the beach. See here.

I like less traditionally shaped canvases as they allow my to play around with cropping and create a different composition to the original photo.

This is another photo from that trip which I think would make a great painting, but I don't think it would sell as well...

Beach Painting

In between working I've managed to finish this painting I showed you the start of.

It's my friend Lizzi at the beach.

The painting is based on a photo I took when we took a trip to the beach at the end of August.

Lizzi's always a good sport and doesn't mind me taking lots of photos.

So there might be a few more paintings from this occasion to be made.

New Painting

  

I finally finished my latest painting.

 

I say finally because for months it was left looking like this.

I just couldn't think what to paint at the bottom.

The photo of the sky was taken out of my bedroom window but I didn't want to paint what was actually there at the bottom because since a great big house has been built there the view isn't very appealing.

I thought about painting the sea, but I wanted something to contrast with all that colour, rather than just reflect it.

 

Then inspiration struck when I was making the dvd cover for my camping videos.

The photo I'd used had the same sort of sky so I based the bottom of the painting of the trees and field at the bottom of the photo.

Past Paintings

When my family were preparing for our garage sale a couple of weeks ago I spent a lot of time in the loft sorting through things. I re-discovered a lot of my old art work. Here's a selection:

These paintings were made as an extra piece for my portfolio for my university interview.

I remember being inspired by the work of Vija Celmins who would draw pieces of paper and the image on them.

This piece was made after a trip to New York with college during my art foundation year. Usually we would have been expected to make some kind of art while we were there but all our bags got lost so we didn't have  any materials. What a shame.

This is one of the many nudes I have from years of life drawing.

I think this is my best one. Drawing in charcoal was kind of my jam.

This one was from a session at college when half way through the model grabbed her robe and left the room because she thought she was going to be sick.

It was pretty warm in the room.

This painting was part of my A level work in response to a set theme that I can't remember. Something that I interpreted as time passing. Probably something like 'transition'.

It's of my Grandma and looking at the face I don't think I could paint it any better now.

The same can't be said for those grapes... 

This was my GCSE exam piece which was also on a theme that could have been 'transition'.

Oy, those trees!

I definitely improved when it comes to painting trees. I hope.

This was a support drawing for the project that culminated in the previous painting.

Clearly I didn't remember this drawing when it came to painting those trees.

This is another piece that I don't think I could do any better now.

And this is a painting from GCSE of jars of jam.

Cos why not!

New Painting: Big ol' sky

This is the latest painting I've been working on.

It's oil paint on a 50x40cm canvas.

I decided to make it after re-discovering the paintings below.

I made these paintings in my first year of uni.

I painted the first one working from a photo, and then the second one was painted from the memory of painting the second one.

It's nice to see that my painting skills have improved over the years, or it could just be that trees are easier to paint on a large scale, as the first paintings are roughly A4 size.

White Rose Painting

To maintain my painting skills I produced this little paintings the other day.

It's from a photo that I've had on my computer for 3 years.

I think it was of a rose that I took away from a Letchworth Arts Centre event.

I like these little canvases - 7x11" - because the paintings don't take to long to complete. Depending on the level of detail of course.

I've got a few other paintings this size for sale on my Etsy shop. Check them out.

New painting

The idea for this latest painting came from seeing a photo when looking through old camp photos for this post about my last painting.

The photo had a really Turner/Constable-esque sky so I thought it should be painted.

It's oil on canvas and measures 12 x 9".

Here are some of the other photos from the same time.

They were taken in 1992 by my Dad.

I wasn't there because I didn't start going to Quaker camp until I was three, the next year, but that's my sister in the bottom left photo.

My Dad helpfully labelled some of the photos so we know that it was 1992 in Swanage.

A pretty good year for camping by the looks of it.

New painting, not a self-portrait

This is my latest painting.

It's from a photo I took whilst camping in 2008 when Rebecca, the girl in the picture, was five.

What I like about the photo is how much she looks like me when I was that age.

In fact my sister thought I was painting myself.

Here's the original photo, and below is the closest example I could find of me looking similar, in 1993.

Yup, they call me 'two biscuits Lisa'.

(No one has ever called me that)

New painting - Beach feet

Here's my latest painting. It's a big'un.

I knew all that detailed sea would be a challenge so I decided to draw out the image using the grid method (which you can kinda see in this photo).

When I was doing art at school lots of people did this with their paintings, but I preferred to free hand it.

The grid was useful for drawing out the picture, but when it came to painting I didn't really use it.

At least I know not to bother next time.

The painting is a cropped version of this photos of my friend Natalie being pushed into the sea. Nice.

New painting : The Lizzi show

This is my latest painting. It's my friend Lizzi.

She's my most depicted friend in my art work.

I think this is partly because she lives the closest to me, so I can quickly pop round to get a photo or draw her, and partly because of the hair.

Here's some of my previous Lizzi art.

This was a drawing I did for my A-level art work.

Lizzi sat for me and I think we put a The OC dvd on to keep her occupied.

This was another A level piece.

We had a lot of fun taking photos for this piece.

Every so often we talk about doing an updated version now that her shoe collection is way bigger.

This was a piece I did for fun to experiment with adding textures on the painting.

See what I mean about the hair?

This painting was done during my first year at university.

This is the only painting Lizzi's actually asked me to do, a portrait of her and her boyfriend for his birthday.

I think I should start painting my other friends or I might start getting accused of favouritism.

Christmas present commission

In December my cousin asked me if I would paint a picture of her and her boyfriend for his Christmas present.

This is that painting.

When she first sent me the photo she wanted painting I was like, 'you realise that doesn't count as a photo of the two of you. But if that's how the young kids roll these days, living your life on computers, then so be it.'

Her boyfriend loved it.

Another satisfied customer.

Painting Bugs

I was looking through my photos to find something to paint and came across this image of a bee in lavender, taken on this visit to a local lavender field.

That photo reminded me of one I took in Nashville of this butterfly, so I painted that too.

I was surprised I got such a good shot of it.

Both are oil paintings on small canvas panels, smaller than A5.

New York painting

This new painting is based on a photograph that I took in New York during a night bus tour which took us from Manhattan to Brooklyn and back. So good.

Since I was in a moving vehicle the photo was a bit fuzzy, but that's why I thought it would be interesting to paint it.

I thought I was done with it but now looking at this photo of the painting, I'm not sure about that shadow man in the middle. I might fix that. I guess I could just call it abstract.

It is oil on canvas and measures 40x50 inches.

Painting baubles

I've been continuing to increase my stocks ready for some up coming craft fairs, which includes painting some more baubles.

I started doing this one year at uni and sold a few at that time.

I even had some on sale at my local hair salon, and did a set of commissioned baubles.

Last January I bought a tube of silver baubles, which were on sale of course, ready to be painted this season. 

This time around I did a lot of snow covered fir trees.

The trees are really easy to paint using a small flat paintbrush.

I hope people like them and buy them!