Menagerie of Creativity » Nature

On the easel: Unfolding White Flower

Alicia — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:54:16 +0000

This is the first painting I’ve done in 2010 that is larger than 5×7. This one is 12×16 oil on canvas. I am mostly done, but I do have one more session planned for the kind of tweaking that can’t be achieved wet on wet.

I am happy to be getting faster these days. I used to spend a lot longer working out details. Partly I think the figure drawing class I took helped, and partly just experience.

The inspiration flower came from my back yard. Not sure what it is so if you recognize it let me know. I enjoy over saturating and adjusting colors in my paintings as you can see. It’s fun.

I feel kind of cliche painting so many flowers…but they are fun and more importantly they are easy models to find, especially this time of year. Plus, flowers are pretty.

Orange with spring blossoms oil painting

Alicia — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:15:05 +0000

I’ve been feeling inspired by all the flowering trees and the bright Spring colors lately. On Saturday I picked some blossoms from the trees and grabbed a sunny orange for this 5×7 still life.

I normally try to post a photo of my subject, but by the end of the painting, the flowers had all wilted. While I do still have the orange, it’s just not the same without the blossoms so I decided not to. To give you an idea of why my yard is so lovely right now, here is a photo from one of the bushes I picked flowers from.

I am grateful to be able to live in such a beautiful place.

Duke Garden’s Duck Painting

Alicia — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 01:48:47 +0000

When I visited the Duke Garden’s last week on a spring flowers photo expedition I ended up snapping a few of some ducks too. There are always a lot of friendly ducks at the gardens, they get fed a lot.

I’m not sure if I’m done with it or not. I might add in a few highlights or something at a later date…and will probably finish the reflection in the water.

Update April 5th 2010: I did improve the reflection in the water. The first version was too flat, but I had to stop at that point and wait for another day to improve it because the colors were threatening to get muddy. Here is the before and after:

And here is the new finished version. This one’s color is actually more true to life. It depends on what time of day I take the picture. Daylight is better than artificial light.

This is the photo that inspired the painting. It’s not the best photos that inspire the best paintings…it’s the ones you connect to. I certainly had much better photos from that trip, but I really liked this guy. He looks peaceful.

Late March in the Duke Gardens

Alicia — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:45:18 +0000

The following are some photos from my trip yesterday to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. Lots of flowers plus some of the dog and some of Robert. I love Spring in North Carolina. Actually, I love Spring everywhere…

Figure drawing session three and four, plus some daffodils

Alicia — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:40:45 +0000

I am now half way through the winter figure drawing session at the Durham Arts Center so I thought I would post some of the sketches from the last two sessions. Still very much enjoying myself. I acquired some new pencils with some birthday gift money I received and I had fun working with those. I am also finding that I enjoy working with two types of charcoal: willow and compressed. It’s an easy way to get different values as you might notice in the session four sketches.

Before I move on to the sketches, here are some daffodils from my back yard the other day. They seem to come up around my birthday every year, which is a nice treat. However they always seem to get a cold shock and whither quickly. I like the focus in this photo on just one flower thanks to my amazing 50mm prime lens I got for xmas.

Now on to the figure drawing sketches. Sorry about the really heavy shadows. That’s what you get for taking photos in the evening while standing on a chair. I couldn’t be bothered to re-do them though.

Session three

15mn with a focus on the knee

30mn with a focus on the midsection

Session four

15mn cropped to focus

30mn focus on shadows

February Eno River Park Photos, Buckquarter Creek Trail

Alicia — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:26:40 +0000

I brought my camera on the Buckquarter Creek Trail last week. My intention was to find the two trees my mom and I saw in October that she wanted a photo of. I could not find them. All I have to say is: you try going into the woods and finding the same trees twice!

It was fun all the same and I got a few other neat photos.

In case you are wondering, the answer is yes, the saturation and color has been boosted on this lot. It added some neat blues to the tree bark among other things : )

Cardinal painting for my birthday.

Alicia — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:35:58 +0000

Yesterday was my birthday. I took the day off from work to read Discover magazine and paint. It’s funny that I’ve never painted a cardinal before considering how much I like them. This guy is peeking into the picture to say “hi”. This will not be my last cardinal I’m sure.

I’m not completely done with it. This was my first painting on my new linen boards. I am really liking them. I am considering buying some 3m sticky spray and sticking them to cardboard while I’m working on them. I would get the adjustable stuff.

Also, this figure drawing class is encouraging me to do some more sketching in my spare time. I couldn’t sleep a few days ago, so I did the following little sketch at about 3am.

I have my figure drawing class again tonight. I am looking forward to it despite feeling like I might have a cold coming on.

Orchids in Ink

Alicia — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:57:31 +0000

In April of 2009 I visited Washington DC and luckily bumped into a great orchid exhibit (although I can’t remember which museum we were in). I wanted to do a few art pieces for xmas gifts and waited too long to let the oil paint dry so I decided to do some ink drawings of some of the orchid photos I have on hand.

Each received a light watercolor wash for color and the ink was applied on top. I have also included the photos that served as inspiration.

The Art

The Inspiration

I was also lucky to have the opportunity to see my aunt who traveled all the way from England over the holidays. She has asked me for an ink drawing inspired by her stories about her chickens. That should be interesting.

Below is a photo of my aunt and I, albeit a bit of a fuzzy one. The rough part of being the only one who can operate the digital SLR camera is that when other people touch it, they don’t understand quite how to get it in focus.

Because sometimes you just have to stop…

Alicia — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:02:23 +0000

I am finally done with the frog. Earlier versions are documented in this earlier post. It still doesn’t have a name though. This is one of those paintings that I just need to declare finished so I don’t work on it until the end of time. I added some spots, and then I got rid of them. I added a glaze in the background, and then I rubbed it out. The main difference is some added highlights and shadows…plus the tree that the frog is sitting on: that’s improved.

Lastly, here is a close up of the frog. I love my Nikon DSLR, you can even see my subtle brush strokes of gesso on the paper beneath in this close up below. Obviously the oil on this painting is quite thin for that to show through so clearly.

Holiday Card Flower Illustration

Alicia — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 03:50:16 +0000

This holiday season some lucky people will be getting a holiday card from Robert and I with a hand illustrated North Carolina flower on it. I really needed to decompress today. I feel like I am constantly working and it makes me agitated and irritated. So I decided to do some drawing because I don’t always feel like cleaning up paint. I drew the below flower freehand in pen and ink. When I am sketching before I paint, I tend to spend time on proportions with a ruler and light pencil, but I just didn’t have the patience today.

I liked the flower so much that I scanned it into the computer, did a live trace in Illustrator and added holiday colors to it for a card. The printed version will sport a lighter, brighter green so the pen lines don’t get lost. If you want to make sure you are getting the card this year, please email me your mailing address. I lost them all when my computer crashed nine months ago.