Two paintings
ACEO Cherry Blossoms is a title I've used before, but hey, at least you can tell this one because it's on a red background. I finally did an Asian painting on a red background! I love how that looks, it's so classical.
ACEO Wading Bird is a successful if simple swamp painting in monochrome blue! I actually managed it. Maybe it succeeded because I kept it simple instead of trying to do every single detail in it. I'll do more swamp paintings of course, I always loved those.
I had been planning to work on a serious Prismacolor painting today, but once Sascha got up, she came in and was cute and wanted to watch dinosaurs. So we watched dinosaurs, and she colored for a while. Then she wanted to paint, so I decided to paint too, did these two ACEOs and a rather large male lion painting for her room since her favorite DVD is now "Yeenas" or "Simbas." Both refer to Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas.
She would watch that over and over if I let her, without any other videos in between. I don't let her do that because it's a good way for me to get tired of the videos fast. She has to put up with something else in between! So we had dinosaurs, lions & hyenas, and then finished up with Eye of the Leopard while she painted a train sleeping, a train waking up, and a train going to sleep again. The train 'sleeping' looks wide awake but is stunning in its detail, she got the face of Tommy the Train, she got the wheels and the steam coming up in spots pouring out of the top of the locomotive. It's pretty good!
She's also going through those Morocolor pan gouache pans pretty darn fast, and I may have to get her another set in August when I order from Blick again. I put the 12 color palette set on my next-up order, just so that I'd remember it -- her yellow pan is now worn through down to the bottom though there's still a fair amount at the sides, and the red touched bottom too. I guess those pans aren't that deep. But since the set was under $3, I'm not worried about it. What I hope is that there's a good cold or medium red in the 12 color set. It has got the Earth Tone Trio in it, and that's good. If the red is too yellowed to mix for purples, I'll get her the 22 color set the time after this upcoming one. But right now that might be too many colors for her to keep track of.
I'm doing my site for July, but then the month after that is when I'll get most of my Master Sets collection completed. Everything is now in the cart at Blick, all the sets I haven't bought yet that aren't watercolor pencils. I've got it down to where it's possible for me to do that on one order, and that is a very good feeling. The end is in sight for that particular New Years Resolution, and that would seriously rock. Then I can include the reviews for all the brands in the Colored Pencil Realism Workbook and do what I'd planned to -- use a different brand per project in a series of projects that demonstrate the best techniques for those brands. It'll take some testing on my part, but it'll be very cool to do that and have the information ready for anyone who needs it.
I might need to do a series of single or double marbles each in a different colored pencil brand just to test the techniques, now that I'm getting used to doing marbles. I suspect the Lyra Rembrandts will rock for that complementary underpainting technique, and that the Blick Studio Artist ones will do well with it. Once I get the Walnut Hollow oil based ones for use with pyrography, I'll test those on paper too -- I've seen them used on pyrography and apparently those are the very best for drawing on wood to let the grain show!
Ahh, I am going to need to pick up some thin basswood and do some pyrography/colored pencil ACEOs, I can see that... I have a tool now, that's a cool thing.
So, now that the morning's painting session's over, I may go back to working on my Prismacolor one or work on my novel/graphic novel... once I get started on the writing it's going to really flow. I can feel it. I'm just trying to knock out all the near deadlines first so that when I start, I can just plow in and spend days doing nothing but writing, while posting relistings to keep up an eBay presence.