Copper Rings

I've been making wire wrapped copper jewelry for the last few months, and I finally feel ready to start showing it off. Usually I get bored and wander off to another hobby after a few weeks, but this one seems to be sticking. I'll be adding these to my Etsy store soon, and coming up with more designs.

 

Storm Clouds 3/11/16

This was the view out my office window a few months ago, one nice and half stormy afternoon. I tried to enhance the sense of depth in the painting, fixing what the photo lost. The photos I took looked flat, and lost how the layers of clouds moved into the distance. Some parts were also messy in the photos, so I moved clouds around and took some out.

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, oil on panel, 6x12 inches, finished.

Here's the progression from sketch to finished painting. This painting was done with no medium in the bottom layers, so the paint would stay wet and be blendable all day. The top layers did need a little Neo Megilp medium added to give transparency to the color, and make very thin glazes possible. For instance the blue sky has a very thin layer of pure blue over it that makes the color more intense.   

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, painting process.

I found a new tool to use for the under drawing this time, watercolor pencils. Regular pencil smudges too much to be used under oil paint, because graphite is non-polar just like oil paint, so they're attracted to each other. But I like a detailed drawing to start from and pencil is a natural fit for that because it can be very precise, and faint enough to not show through the paint, unlike ink or charcoal.

Starting sketch with watercolor pencil.

Water-soluble graphite doesn't interact with oil paint, so the drawing stays put nicely. The drawing can be painted over with water too, and the color gets much darker. I tried that at first, in the top left corner of the painting, but it wasn't really helping so I didn't do it anywhere else.

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, detail.

Here's a little detail from the left side of the painting, showing the smudgy grey clouds in the front, cumulus clouds behind them, and the background layers of clouds.
This painting is currently for sale in my Etsy shop here.

Working on This Weekend- 7/10/16

This is the painting I spent the most time on this weekend, and it's finally cooperating. I had a lot of doubts about whether or not I could make the sand look good, and the first few tries didn't go so well. Sand hasn't been easy for me in other paintings, it has a funny texture and more colors than it should. So to try to trick myself into finishing this painting I decided to do the background first, and save the flowers for last. That seems to have worked, now it's close to done, just needs another layer or two, to detail the sand and make the flowers pop.

White Beach Flowers, oil on panel, 5x7 inches, unfinished.

This painting is coming along smoothly, it's a Celestial flower with a tiny spider. These flowers are fragile and only last for a few hours, and the spider hanging out was a lucky find. Once I got close to the flower to start taking pictures the spider put his legs up like he was trying to scare me off. I'm happy with how deep the background looks, and how the bright grasses stand out. One thing left to fix is that the values of the lights and darks are too far apart on the flower head. That makes the light looks like harsh afternoon sunlight, not the last evening light it actually was. So I'll probably try a faint blue glaze all over it, to even out the values and match the color a little better.

Celestial and Spider, oil on panel, 5x7 inches, unfinished.

Ducks! This is a silly drawing I've been slowly working on for a while. Duckies are surprisingly easy to draw.

Ducks! sketch and White Beach Flowers, both in progress.

My latest little hobby has been making wire wrapped rings. Here's one made with 20 and 26 gauge coated copper wire, and twisted strands of electrical wire in the middle, it's about a size 6. These will be for sale on my Etsy store soon.

Copper wire wrapped ring.

In Progress- Storm Clouds 3/11/16

Clouds are so much fun to paint! These are some storm clouds from an afternoon a few weeks ago. I experimented with doing the under drawing in water color pencil, and that worked really nicely. You can see how the left side is darker, I was trying to draw first and then brush it with water, but it got surprisingly dark and smeared. So on the right side I just used them like regular pencils, and painted right over it with no problems.

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, 6x12 inches, oil on panel, unfinished.

 The first layer was painted without any medium added, so the paint would stay wet and workable all day, and I could save the mixed up colors for next time. It's a great time saver to be able to pull out the old colors instead of having to remix, and it will match for sure. Mixing the same exact color twice can be tricky sometimes. 

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, 6x12 inches, oil on panel, unfinished.

This is the second layer. After the first layer dried, I went back to rework some areas, and add brighter whites. From the photo, it's kind of hard to tell which clouds are in front, so I was trying to make that more clear. Some of the areas needed to have a little stronger color, like the blue parts of the sky, so I added Neo Meguilp medium to the paint and glazed it on. The medium makes the paint more translucent, so it can catch more light and look brighter.

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, reference photo.