Would you like an original painting?

Happy Unbirthday to me (Happy Blirthday)! :) Yep, this time last year I started this blog. It was a way to document my art discoveries and connect with like-minded people. I think it has been serving those purposes successfully, in addition to a few more (like promoting my art and keeping me accountable for the time not spent painting! :))

At about the same time, I also joined the Everyday Matters Yahoo group, which is an extremely supportive and positive community of creative people at various stages of their artistic development. They will instill confidence into any self-doubting art blogger :) I have been out of touch for a while now, mostly just because there isn't enough time to keep up with my painting projects and commissions, update all the online places I'm at and look after a very active 1.5 old kid. I sure do miss the camaraderie and the weekly sketching challenges!

So, what do I want from another year of art-making? Several things:

• Even though right now I paint more than I ever did (actually...no...I did have a painting boot camp in my second year of architecture school in Ukraine), well - I want to spend more time painting
• I want to work bigger. Do more full sheet paintings
• Get that watercolor class going...really
• Do more landscapes
• Go to more art fairs and participate in more shows and competitions
• Join an art organization or two
• Take a workshop or two
• This is more of a "need to" - find a gallery that I like and get in there

Quite doable, I think!

And now, since you made it this far, you qualify for the exciting stuff! I was going to do some kind of a givaway to celebrate my "blirthday," maybe do a drawing of names and give somebody a giclee print. Instead, I am giving away an ORIGINAL PAINTING!!!

The way I am going to go about it is this: you send me a photo, I pick one that is the most artistically appealing and interesting to me, make a painting based on this photo, and give the painting to you!

A few guidelines:

1. Submit photos to watercoloredhands@gmail.com between now and February 6. You have a month.
2. You may submit more than one photo.
3. Photos cannot be copyrighted material, i.e. you can't take somebody else's photograph and submit it to me, unless they give you the permission to do so.
4. Subject matter can be anything. Portraits, pets, landscapes, architecture, industrial, cars, bikes, flowers, whatever.
5. Do look for some drama in your photos. Pictures with strong light/shadow contrast, intense emotion, saturated color often make the most interesting paintings. This, of course, doesn't mean that I wouldn't enjoy a photo of a foggy morning, for example.
6. I am looking for high quality photographs. Avoid unfocused, blurred, washed-out shots.
7. I especially do not recommend flash in portrait photos. Try taking those in natural light, either by a window or outside when the sun is low.
8. If you have a story to go with the photo, please do tell it! :)

I think this is it...Can't wait to see what you have!

A Portrait A Day 49 - Emily

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 12x9". Emily...Emily Zych, despite looking like a princess, is actually a crown-maker. She makes "natural" crowns and gorgeous hair accessories for special occasions (read: weddings).

For those of you who don't know, I didn't have a "real" wedding. We got married at a court house and I was wearing a symbolically white t-shirt, knee-length skirt, and flip-flops. There were several reasons for it, one of them being my intense dislike of parties, ceremonies, fuss, and fluffy white dresses. Now, looking at Emily's crowns, I found in me a desire to wear one of them...still no to fuss though :)

A Portrait A Day 48 - Omar

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb. Originally 12x16 but cropped to about 12x13, that's how my signature got cut off :). Omar is another member of Julia Kay's Portrait Party and, incidentally, a watercolor-painting architect...I seem to have a lot of those here on my blog ;)

Virtual Paintout December 2010 - County Clare, Ireland

Ink and watercolor on Ampersand Aquabord, 6x6". Location is the city of Ennis, County Clare, Ireland. My husband was quite surprised that out of all the beautiful meadows and seashores and sheep and cottages that I could have found in Ireland, I somehow picked this street view. Well...I like the meadows and cottages, but my heart just aches for the narrow streets lined with old buildings, each and everyone different from its neighbors, with small shops on the ground floor and huge chimneys sticking out of their roofs...The feel of old Europe. Ireland has been my dream vacation spot for many years now and some day I will go there.

You can view all the other entries in December Virtual Paintout here. To my surprise, there is one pastel painting of the same street looking in the opposite direction!

A Portrait A Day 47 - Jen

This is what happens when I become bored during painting! Watercolor on Strathmore Windpower watercolor CP 140lb paper. Gave Strathmore a second chance and...well...this paper sucks. The reference photo is Jen of Julia Kay's Portrait Party - although this looks nothing like the reference photo..This is the beauty of JKPP: no pressure :)

Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Lots of inspiration and great art to you in 2011!

A Portrait A Day 45 & 46 Clem and Millie - step by step

Watercolor on Kilimanjaro CP 140lb watercolor paper, 11x14." Since I'm behind on portraits-a-day, I'm going to count this as two portraits :).

Looks like I'm on the roll with in-progress photos :). Hopefully, this will be helpful to somebody. This painting was a commission as well, this time for someone I met at a local craft fair. I'm fairly pleased with the outcome, considering the quality of photos I had to work with (none in focus, poor light and/or flash).

clem and millie in progress step 1

Step 1 - establishing the main shapes

clem and millie in progress step 2

Step 2 - defining the features further

clem and millie in progress step 3

Step 3 - working on the left side of the painting

clem and millie in progress step 4

And the finished painting. Kilimanjaro, which is a brand of paper sold by Cheap Joe's, is a 100% cotton rag paper that is half the price of Arches. I decided to give it a try and got a 10-sheet pack for $24.99. Well, I am pretty pleased with it so far! I haven't tried any heavy scrubbing or a lot of layered washes, but it stretched nicely and performed well under my usual painting techniques.

Incidentally, the Richeson Lyptus Lobo easel that I have I also bought from Cheap Joe's. They had the best price and did not charge me oversize shipping (the easel comes unassembled).

To learn how you can order your own custom portrait, go here.

When We Stayed in Lisboa - watercolor on Aquabord, step by step

This is another commission that I got through Etsy.com. It is an 8x10" ink and watercolor on Aquabord painting of a hostel room in Lisboa (Portugal).

Step 1 - Ink drawing

Step 2 - color. I could  have easily stopped at this point and I'm still wondering if I should have.

And step 3 - detail and deeper values. After finishing, I sprayed the surface with clear gloss fixative and brushed on two layers of gloss varnish. While Aquabord is not my favorite surface to work on, it is extremely easy to frame (or display without frame if it's cradled) and, enhanced by gloss varnish, the colors on Aquabord look vivid and rich.

Merry Christmas!

And whatever else you might be celebrating!

A Portrait A Day 44 - Christina - step by step

This painting was a commission I got through Etsy's custom requests section - Alchemy. It is a Christmas present for the person depicted. I do hope she will like it :). Since it was a custom request, I worked a bit bigger than usual (this is an 11x14, which makes her face a lot bigger than life size) and finally found use for my tube of Payne's gray (I never use it otherwise). The client said that the resulting painting was "exactly what she envisioned" - which is nice. But if you are at least a little familiar with my work, you know that working in grayscale must be pure torture for someone who loves color so much! I can't say that it was torture - and I even kind of liked it before adding the red lips - but I promise you, the next post will have COLOR! :)

This is probably not the most interesting painting to show step-by-step photos for, but I made this anyway so that the client could keep track of where I was in the process. Here they go:

christina sketch

Step 1 - the idea sketch. We decided on showing a bit more of her face and neck. I did the grayscale first, then added the bright red lips, and then, wanting more color, I tried adding a bit of pale color. I wasn't sure at this point if I would add the pale color in the big painting or not.

day 44 christina step 1

Step 2 - the drawing...what usually takes the most time. I skip this step in my portraits-a-day but I felt that I need to do a drawing here because the face was so much larger than life size. I used the grid method to establish major points in the drawing.

christina step 3

Step 3 - wet-into-wet. I liked it quite a lot at this point.

Oh yes! Meet my new easel! It's a Richeson Academy Lobo and I love it so far (as does my son, who thinks it's an excellent play gym).

christina step 4

Step 4 - more detail, deeper shadows

christina step 4

Step 5 - the red lips!

christina step 5

Step 6 - the final version, with some areas corrected, deepened and more detailed.

Here it is.. Here are also the holidays, my family, more commissions, and a lot of material to post. Hopefully, I will find the time for a couple more blog posts before the New Year, but if not - Merry Christmas and see you in 2011! :)

A Portrait A Day 43 - Allen - step by step

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lv, 9x12." Allen was actually a portrait study somebody commissioned me to do through ArtFire.com. It means that I might just hang out on ArtFire a little longer and hope for more sales to come. I do love the user-friendliness and all the available options of their shops.

Back to the painting. This one was a struggle...I was captured with the photo - the emotion, the colors, the pose, the tilt of the head - all were interesting to me and I plunged into it. Well, this is one case where I wish I had done a drawing first. My attempt #1 was  failure:

So, at some point I decided I wasn't going to be happy with this painting and it was too late to fix the structure. I had to start over.

Step 1, semi-wet-into-wet. Just trying to get the main shapes in place. I actually went ahead and drew the center line and the eye line of the head with a brush, to make sure I had the angles right. I softened the lines before they were dry.

Step 2 - placing smaller shapes and building up the volumes.

Step 3 - deepening shadows and constantly correcting errors...

step 5

Step 4 - more detail and more color. The point at which I am still not happy but done. The painting doesn't look exactly like the photograph, but that's not really my objective in these quick portraits. The lady who commissioned the painting was thrilled and said that I captured the boy's spirit :) It is what I was hoping for, then!

A Portrait A Day 42 - Elizabeth

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Elizabeth is my neighbor and friend who was very kind to help me at an event last Saturday and won my gift basket during the said event :) She still has not lost hope that i will teach her watercolor painting...

My Newsletter is finally out! Do you have one?

I am thoroughly proud of myself today. After months of promising, I finally manged to get my newsletter together and send it to the people who wanted to keep in contact. Hopefully, I will do it every month from now on :) You can view the newsletter here:

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If you would like to sign up for future updates, click "subscribe to list" at the top of the newsletter window.

If you are an artist and keep a newsletter, I would love to get on your mailing list as well. Please let me know how to do that in comments below.

A Portrait A Day 41 - Nadine

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Reference photo: Nadine of Julia Kay's Portrait Party.

Laundry Day in Rio - Virtual Paintout

Watercolor and ink on Ampersand Aquabord 6x6". A last-minute sketch for the Virtual Paintout. I loved the scene though and maybe will go back to it for a larger piece.

A Portrait A Day 40 - Sijimon

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". No fix-it-all acrylic gesso here, the purists would be proud...Sijimon is a fellow watercolorist from Kerala, India. You can view his beautiful paintings on his blog: http://www.sijimons.blogspot.com/

Color is off...sorry guys, I'll fix it later. Time to sleep!

A Portrait A Day 39 - Reading

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12." Done from life, 15 minutes. Not a portrait strictly speaking but I think I need to go beyond faces once in a while.  The model is my husband :) I'm sure you'll be seeing more of him as long as he is willing to suffer in the name of art. Or love.

A Portrait A Day 38 - Gina

Watercolor on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12. Reference photo - Gina of Julia Kay's Portrait Party. Well...I'll keep my critique to myself (because I am typically my own worst critic). Definitely not my best. Had difficulties getting the features right and I think this is because with a 9x12" sheet, her face is actually larger than life size. So, I kept trying to move farther away from the painting to see the whole thing and there's only so far you can go while being able to paint at the same time. Ah well. This painting actually serves as a reminder to myself of the goals I had when I started the Portrait A Day project - particularly the goal of working fast and not caring too much about the outcome. Recently, I have been slowing down and spending way too much time on each painting. Not that I don't like the results, but I still think that it's important to try and do at least a little every day and get as far as possible with every painting in as little time as possible. And to not grow too attached to one of them :) My precious...

All that being said, I do like some areas in this portrait. I was fascinated by this girls' big eyes and so tried to make her right eye (the one on the left in the picture) the center of interest.

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gina detail

Thank you!

Thanksgiving is one American holiday that I adopted gladly. Not because of all the food (Ukrainians do that every and any holiday) and definitely not because of the after-Thanksgiving shopping madness. I like it because this holiday has a good reason for it. At least once a year, we get to pause and look back, and count our blessings. We get to thank somebody other than ourselves. We realize that we have reasons to be happy.

So, on that note, I would like to thank you who follow this blog, whether you read every post or stop by once in a while. I appreciate your time and your comments mean a lot to me.

I would like to thank my dear husband who, despite popular belief, is not perfect, but has been very supportive of my art ambitions. You're the best :)

And thank you to all those who bought my art or commissioned a painting. You help me believe in what I do.

...And now I get to hold my award and smile for the cameras :))

It is still Black Friday (at least in California), so if you are in the mood for shopping, I am offering a 15% discount on all prints and cards at both my Etsy shop and ArtFire. Enter ART84732 at the checkout to redeem, good through Monday November 29.  If you would like a print of a painting that is not listed in the shops or a different size, just let me know.

A Portrait A Day 37 - Accordion Player WIP

Trying out Arches watercolor board. 16x20, " cold press. It stayed relatively straight while I was working on this first wash but curled up while drying. I'm not sure what the best way to keep it completely flat would be. Gummed tape? But then it kind of defeats the whole purpose of having a board instead of a sheet of paper. Large bulldog clips? Then I can't work all the way to the edge. I'm thinking that watercolor boards might be good for somebody who works fairly dry, but probably not so much if you like to have a decent amount of water on the surface.

The inspiration for this painting was an old accordion player who I enjoy watching (and listening to:)) every time I'm in Sacramento for the Second Saturday art walk. He is with a bluegrassish/countryish band that I can't remember the name of and most likely would not listen to otherwise. Watching live is a different story. Ah...I haven't been to a live concert in centuries...

A Portrait A Day 36 - Louise, sepia in blues and oranges

Watercolor on CP 140lb Arches, 9x12."  Reference photo is another vintage one, coming from the State Library of New South Wales . This is something that I haven't done in a while, a grisaille made only with blue and orange pigments. Blues and oranges, being complementary colors, "cancel" each other out and make shades of gray. I was first introduced to this interesting method of almost monochrome painting in a class I took from Helen Shafer Garcia (here is the painting that I did there). While I'm not very much into black and white (part of the reason why I never quite liked drawing with graphite or charcoal), this is a special kind of black and white. You can see areas that are more orange or more blue, especially if the pigments were mixed on paper, like in this painting. I wanted an overall sepia feeling here, so the oranges are dominating.

You will understand what I mean when you look close at this closeup of my favorite section of the painting:

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louise detail

Ah the wonderful granulating cobalt blue! :) The other paints that I used were ultramarine blue, quinacridone burnt orange and quinacridone sienna (my favorite orange at present time).

You might have noticed that my portraits-a-day are not quite a portrait every day : /. It is not so because of a lack of desire or inspiration, I have plenty of that. It turns out that the older my son gets, the less time I have. And I thought it was supposed to be the other way around...I think I'll be glad if I can finish this project in a year.