Mad! Anything

We visited the zoo this week...twice!

The snow leopard cub is getting big.  We stared at each other for a while after his mom woke him up from his nap in the sunshine at the top of the hill.  (Actually, I think he was staring at Matthew sitting in the stroller, lol.)

This is the mama before she went to check on him.  I used watercolor markers.

And to my surprise, there was a baby zebra!  He was born late this year, though it looked like he won't be alone for the winter as one of the other zebra looked quite well along herself. These are sketches of the daddy zebra and (I'm pretty sure) pregnant mama.  The herd did look pretty sparse last time I was there; I suppose it had something to do with these developments.

(I did sketch the foal the next day...will post that another time.)

Mad! Fluffy

I really wanted to get color on this, but for the life of me I cannot fight out what is bugging me about this drawing yet. It's something subtle that I'm somehow not catching.  Going to let it sit and will come back to it.  I think the curlers are really throwing me for a loop.  (Haha!)

This is another sketch for the dressers.  :D

Sennelier oil pastel color chart

Here is a color chart of all of my Sennelier oil pastels!

The ones marked are among my favorites, especially for portraiture.

The right side of each color has been blended with white and I scrubbed the lower left a bit with a color shaper, to show a bit of opacity.

My oil pastels

Yesterday Nancy said she got some Sennelier oil pastels.  I was a little tired and thus not mentally charged for much painting, so I decided to do a little color chart of my Senns.  I needed to get my pastels organized, anyway, they've been a mess especially since they fell on the floor months ago.

This is what my box looked like after I took out all of my Senns.

This is all of my (small) Senns.  I have a couple of large sticks that live elsewhere.  It is pretty incredible that I only have this many...

And here is what they look like, newly organized!

And because I had it to show Jessica, here is a box of Mungyo oil pastels that I can't stand to use because they smell so bad, which is a real shame.  But the kids use them, so they are still loved.

Mad! Late

This was supposed to be posed last night...I promise I didn't post it late on purpose! lol

Anyway, Jessica had a brilliant theme this week.  It really got me rolling.

This is a sketch of a pony I'm going to be painting on my girls' new dressers, once I can get around to painting the dressers themselves.  I was excited to be motivated to start these sketches, as there are a lot of dresser drawers!

Pumpkin pie!

There are pie pumpkins in the store!!!!!

Baby Ajax WIP

The Amazing Miss Jessica taught me of the wonders of clear gesso under conte crayon!

This is Ajax as a puppy, circa 5 years ago.

Conte crayon on Mi-Teintes board, 12x16

Face

This is Face.  This is Face at 4 am.

Face has missed his mom.  (Tiger has been in my room but I needed a Big Thing to block the corner.)

(Bonus: Baby Face)

Mad! Value

Somehow, both Jessica and I spaced it on our mad themes for a bit...but here we are again!

She made me pick...*I knew she would*.

I've been working feverishly with fabric lately...though I've none of that to show at the moment.  I was, however, thinking how with fabric it's often much more about the color (hue) than it is about the value of the color, while with painting and drawing, value is so very key and drilled into the consciousness.  The value of anything visual, though, makes a huge difference in the end product.

I went back to the trusty ol' ACEO this week...using a Mystery Paint that I am very excited about it which needs its own post, so you'll have to learn about it later.  As has been the case of most everything I use, it worked great on my Canson Mixed Media XL paper.

(there are *sparklies* in this painting!)

Decent photos!

I'm finally getting some decent photos of some of my previous paintings!

 "Mama, Mama, Can I Please??"
30x40, oil on canvas

 Kitty's Noble Steed
16x20, oil on canvas

 "Dreamer"
16x20, conte crayon on Mi-Tientes

 "Firelily"
16x20, ink and watercolor

 "Down the Stretch"
30x40, oil on canvas

 "Indy"
12x16, oil on board

"The First Performance"
18x24, oil pastel on Colorfix

"Sleepy G" (unfinished)
20x30, oil pastel on Colorfix

Color Winding

I needed to wind up some embroidery thread that I'm using at the moment and finally get it organized instead of being a tangled mess.  Miss Toria is a very good winder.  She can even focus on doing it when watching Star Trek.

You can have bonus points for recognizing the episode.  :p

No, there really *isn't* anywhere else I can sit, actually...

Baby Cheeks

So thinking about how those wonky eyes I drew were bugging me so much, I thought I'd better do more portrait sketching and so then I had to do one of Scarlett.  This is just really quick, trying to see if I can do something more or less unwonky.

These two might be about the same age in the refs, not sure.  Scarlett might be a bit younger, come to think of it.

Baby cheeks are so hard to get right!

Unfixed and More Fixed

This is Miss Toria from a ref a few years ago.  (I love this picture because it shows her determined little personality.)

The girls have three (!) pictures of tiny Scarlett hanging in their room and not a single one of Miss Toria, so I've gotta get busy.

Still the ugly stage

This is what I was working on; I hadn't used the Torrit gray on it before, but I thought it would be good at these early stages.  I sat there a few minutes debating whether or not I wanted to get out more paint to continue working tonight, and I decided not to because I'm wanting to paint and thus I'm hopeful the motivation will remain to continue.  Which is a silly reason to have stopped.  Okay, the real reason is, I need to consider my color approach as I was going to start work on the background.

(edit: the medium combo was just tacked up 24 hours later, but it was touch-dry at about 36 hours.)

Can this be what I think it is?! (smelling salts may be necessary for some viewers)

Is that...could it be...oil paint??

I guess I sort of maybe kinda know what to do with it.

That is Torrit gray and white with some Gamblin solvent-free gel medium.  I changed my mind on the consistency I wanted, so I thought I'd go all out and get experimental.

So I busted out my Cold Wax medium.  I've no idea how long it's been since I've opened this.  It's quite old and has clearly dried out a bit, but it's still usable, mostly.  Seemed to go pretty well with the gel medium; I wonder how it will dry now.

M*A*S*H

I kind of wish I still had a VCR...

Mad! Tornado

Theme this week!  With Jessica.

I haven't been in a landscapey mood, so as I steeped with this week's theme, I kept coming back to this reference I've wanted to do something with for a long time now.

If this girl's not a tornado, I don't know what is, lol.  (Ahem, Nebraska??!)

I would like to have better fixed the wonky eyes (and drawing in general) before posting, but it is what it is at this point.

Van's Warped Tour, life sketches

Today I went to Van's Warped Tour and I had a bit of time in between bands I wanted to see, so I did some sketching.  It started out as just gesture sketching, but turned out a bit more involved.  Not too bad, I thought, for being so rusty sketching people.

These were done in my small watercolor Moleskine with ink and watercolor.

*Now* it's a school room.

*How* could I have ever called this a school room before I had this poster??

  (Thank you, Annie's mom!!)

Mad! Super Color

There were hints that Jessica got out her pan pastels this week.  I wish I'd managed to get mine out, but I've been otherwise occupied.

Still got an Ultra Secret project going on, but here are some enticing close ups!

Also have been working on some flowers.  :)

My art supply basket is now Kitty's new empire

"Yes, so what's your point?"

It has found its true purpose.

Don't melt my crayons, Kitty.

Mad! Mist

I think maybe Jessica and I are a bit behind on our themes, and I'm going to blame summer.

Anyway, our theme this week is mist, and I wanted to use my sumi ink...and then Jessica sent me some amazing pearlescent Japanese watercolors!!  Perfect for playing with mist.

I used rice paper and painted on both sides of the paper.  The ink was on the "right" side, the normal Japanese watercolors I used on the back, and the pearlescents I used on the front (and a little on the back in the top right corner of this image to see if it would show through.)

Here is the front:

Here is the back, where you can see the pearlescence did not show through where the ink and paint were at all thick, but in that upper right corner in the above picture where the paint was really thin, it did show up!  Pretty cool subtle effect.

You can't see the awesome in-person effect of the pearlescent watercolors, as usual, but they are wonderfully fun.  Thank you, Jessica!