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Gratuitous Picture Post Hobbies

Portrait of Riley

This is the portrait of my nephew that I mentioned yesterday:

Portrait of Riley
Portrait of Riley, charcoal and acrylic (Xmas present for Nan and Todd)

It was not done free-hand, of course–I suck at drawing. Instead, I took an existing photo of Riley and used Photoshop to simplify the lines and brighten up the colors and contrast. After printing it out, I charcoaled the back of the paper, then traced the image onto the canvas. After that, it was just a matter of coloring it in–a challenge in itself, of course. I couldn’t get the perfect strawberry-blond color of his hair, and the shadows under his arm and chin refused to conform to my will. But I think it’s still pretty damned good for my first portrait ever.

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Hobbies Whining

My failure to paint

I wanted to paint this weekend, but I couldn’t settle on a subject, which is what I’m finding to be the hardest part of this new hobby of mine. That, and the fact that my last two paintings (the Japanese Maple and a portrait of my nephew) came out so good that I’m now afraid of future failures.

I have a Pinterest board where I save photos of things I might want to paint someday. When I’m feeling this urge to paint, I troll the board for hours, trying to pick one thing to commit to canvas, but I have undone myself, ’cause I want to paint them all. The ones that came closest to reality this weekend were a cat on a bicycle in the snow and a cat climbing up someone’s leg. I guess I was in a cat mood.

Sadly, neither became a painting this weekend. Instead I read more of Two Graves, and watched a lot of football. Maybe next weekend.

Categories
Gratuitous Picture Post

Japanese maple tree

It’s January 10th, and I’m already out of ideas for post topics. Ack! So, here’s a picture of one of my favorite paintings–of the ones painted by me, that is. It’s a Japanese maple tree, and I painted it based on a photograph that I saw on Pinterest.

Japanese maple tree
Japanese maple tree, October 2012. Acrylic.

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Hobbies Links

Wine and Canvas FTW!

I’m a huge fan of Wine and Canvas. It’s a three hour class where you can order food and drink while an artist walks you through a really cool painting from start to finish. They provide the paints, brushes and canvas, you just bring an open mind and a sense of fun. I’ve been to four of their classes since, I dunno, June? And I’ve loved it so much that I’ve been painting my own stuff at my kitchen table. Seriously, it’s a great way to spend an evening, and at $35 a class, it’s a bargain, but today Living Social has class coupons available for only $17! I’ve already bought two for myself. Check it out and take a chance on a great new hobby! (Here’s the calendar for January in Los Angeles, see if there’s anything you’d like to paint.)

Results from three of my four classes: