It's been a while since I've posted here on the blog, sadly! But it's for goo reason; I've been working really hard on my art and growing that part of my career, and working on getting the rest of the videos in my Hand Lettering Series ready for you guys! In this post I will start showing you Lower Case Brush Lettering starting with the half of the alphabet that has Ascenders and Descenders. Confused? Well, watch the video to learn all about it...
In this Art Series post I have another one of my oil painting time-lapses for you! This piece is my favourite I've completed to date and in the time-lapse of it's creation I share about how I named it and the feeling/meaning behind it. I also talk about how I create my original compositions, and also about developing my art style and how I feel about having an art style.
When I set out to design this bench I wanted to build something that would obviously fit in our modern farmhouse style decor, that would fit under our picture window in our livingroom for our dog to lounge on--she loves to watch the people and animals outside--and would have a bit of storage incorporated into it. I found many other benches that inspired me, check out my 12 Farmhouse Bench Inspirations post to see those, and I took bits and pieces of those designs to come up with my own. In the end, the storage that I would have been able to implement into the design wouldn't have been worth it with the way I wanted my bench to look, so I nixed that part, and this is the bench design I came up with...
I don't often do vlog style videos, but I was recently inspired by some other YouTubers to share a little more of myself on my channel. I shared a few things here and there, but have felt like perhaps there isn't a lot of place for personal stuff on my blog and youtube channel. I mean, I assume people come for the DIYs... which is probably mostly true, but for my regular subscribers, perhaps they'd like to feel more of a connection with me personally, and feel like they know me a bit better as a person, not just a DIYer. Perhaps my youtube family would grow to have more lovely people if I share more of me. It can be hard to put yourself out there... but today I'm starting out simple and inviting you to follow me along for a day in my life. If you'd like to see what I get up to in terms of my work day, keep reading... and perhaps I'll do more posts like this in the future... even if I think my life isn't exciting (is boring)...
Spring has finally arrived here and I'm very excited, for warm weather of course, but, also, because it means beautiful flowers and hopefully lots of practice painting them! Today, though, I am sharing the last of the small oil studies I did in January, "Hand Study", 5 x 7", Oil on Canvas Board. I shared the final painting over on Facebook and Instagram back when I finished it--follow be on social media to get those first looks at my finished pieces--but, in this post you'll get a closer look at it and the detail and colour of it! I am very pleased with how it turned out! I'll also share the time lapse of it's creation and my art story, so continue on for all that...
I really wish that everyone could see it in person because I feel in photos the texture of the canvas gets in the way of the actual painting. From now on I think I'll add a couple of coats of gesso to my canvases before painting on them to get a smoother surface. I got a few GessoBoard panels for Christmas and I can't wait to paint on those. I think for practice paintings I'm going to get some MDF board and prepare some of those to paint on. It's basically the same idea as GessoBoard, but not quite as lovely. What's your preferred painting surface?
That's it for this Art Series post, friends! Check out some of my other Art Series posts here! See you soon!
It's taken me some time to get this tutorial up for you all; it didn't happen on purpose, it just happened! I apologize, and I am super excited to (finally) have Hand Lettering Series Part #2 for you all today! In this post you'll begin to learn a bit of terminology and a few of the lines that make up the structure for your hand lettering, and you'll learn a very basic version of hand lettered capitals! If you haven't seen my first post in this series, Modern Hand Lettering Part #1 - Basic Drills, I recommend that you head over to that post and practice what I presented in that tutorial first. And if you are brand new to hand lettering or brush lettering, I definitely recommend that you start with my Faux Calligraphy post before tackling this series; that's really the prefect place to begin learning how to do hand lettering! By the end of this series, you'll be in your way to creating your very own hand lettered designs!
Oh. My. GOSH. I am finally finished all the parts that make up this DIY Chevron Coffee Table post! This tutorial and post has taken me wayyy longer than expected to put together! A lot of that has to do with the fact that I had to take a break from editing to do Christmas stuff here on the blog, I took a break from working for the holidays, and then getting back into this project was really hard for me for some reason, and right when things did start to get going after the New Year, I got that terrible flu; worst flu I have ever had! After that I was trying to work on it all the while trying to work on having other posts up for you guys each week, and then finally I just said "This isn't working!"; I was making very little progress on it trying to do things that way, so I just focused my efforts on it and sacrificed having a weekly post in favour of just getting this done! Boy, am I glad I did! I hope you all love this project as much as I am proud of it!
Today I am sharing with you the second of my oil studies, Study of an Eye, before I move on to my first full size oil painting this year. If you'd like to see my first oil study, check out Art Series #14 - Lips Study in Oils. I set up a poll over on YouTube asking my subscribers what they'd like to hear me talk about in this video, and the winner was "my new motivation" with 41% of the votes. If you missed that poll and want to be included in future polls or other things, then subscribe to my YouTube channel to get those notifications over there! So my new motivation is what I talk about while you watch the time-lapse footage of the painting process of this eye...
I have to say that I've been really loving my homemade glass paint palette since I made it over a year ago! Your paint swirls around on it so nicely--which is amazing for colour mixing--and you can easily scoop up every last bit of paint with your brush, leaving behind barely any residue, which means so much less wasting of expensive paints! And it's soooo cheap to make one! Being that I've been painting a lot lately, and have been realizing my appreciation for this amazing painting tool even more, it dawned on me that this would be a great tutorial to show my fellow artist followers/subscribers, so I whipped up this little tutorial for you - I hope you'll be as crazy about it as I am! Let's take a look...
In my previous post, Welcome 2018 - These Are My Goals This Year!, I wrote about my goals (or resolutions) for the year, and therein I spoke about my goals for my art career for 2018. In this video I speak a little bit more about that topic while I show you the time-lapse video footage of the first oil study I did earlier this month.
Happy New Year everyone! I hope that you all passed a fantastic Holiday season and New Year with lots of time spent with family and friends! I'm glad to have you back here on the blog and I think this will be an amazing year! 2017 started out great for me; Vada came into our lives, but I feel like it wasn't a very productive year in terms of my goals and here on the blog, unfortunately, and not a whole lot else happened. I'm determined to make things different this year, and hopefully inspire some of you to do the same!
