Oil Paintings

My senior show in college included these large oil paintings. They really are large too, the length is at least four feet on each one. These three are a series of symbolic self portraits, for which I used a photo of myself as a child, as a college age student, and a photo of my grandmother for the final piece. I'll let you decide what they mean.
One skill I never quite perfected was the art of taking slides of my work. These are all from photos converted from slides, and they don't show detail well. (Plus, some of them aren't very straight.)


This first one had some purple mist swirling around the girl's legs, which doesn't show up here.




This next piece was the first one completed, and definitely the best in the group...probably because I spent the most time on it. The black on the left side isn't part of the painting, I just didn't have the painting perfectly aligned with the camera so the shot included some of the frame behind it.



The photo of this painting is slightly blurry, unlike the painting itself.

Four siblings: #2

This is the oldest of the four siblings I am currently drawing. The freckles really made the portrait! The scan is a little light, but shows detail well enough.

coloring with photoshop

Both of these drawings were sketched with a ballpoint pen in my spare time. Later, I scanned them into my computer and colored them with photoshop. These have both been used as banners for my other blog, and I love how they turned out! I will definitely be using this technique again. Although in this first one, that camera flare does look suspiciously like a will-o-the-wisp.

Four siblings: #1

This is the youngest of a family of four kids that I am currently working on. Isn't she cute?

Watercolor

I have always wanted to take a class in watercolor, but unfortunately it always conflicted with other classes in college and high school. I've tried the odd painting, but want to learn more! A few years ago I made a postcard for a friend, and liked it so much that I painted another for myself:

Still Life

This is a still life of some chairs set up for a party by my room mates, before I was married. The camera didn't completely capture the color and texture of the chairs, but I love how they turned out. If I were to redo this drawing, I would change the background wall so that it wasn't so distracting from the nice chairs. I started this in 2003, then forgot about it and finished it later in 2005.

Self Portrait

Throughout high school and college art classes, the self portrait is the ubiquitous assignment, I must own at least a dozen. So far, this is by far my favorite. Unfortunately, I have yet to get a good copy of it. It is in prismacolor on 11x14 paper, completed in 2003. The original is much more subtle in color, and the paper texture isn't as obvious as in this copy, but you get the idea.

Just for fun

These are just some fun sketches; most were completed in high school (12-15 years ago), some in college, and a few just after. Most of these in this post have a fall theme: don't you love Autumn?
I don't do these very often anymore, but I love looking at them for ideas. I"ll try to put them in a general chronological order... if you're interested, you should be able to find a year on each of them when you view the bigger version. Sorry some of these aren't scanned that great.

(I love trees, especially those in the previous drawing!)

Pencil Portraits

These are some portraits I did from my high school yearbook. They were drawn in a 11x14 sketchbook, and I loved how they turned out at the time. These were completed around 1997-1998.

This final drawing was actually drawn in 1995...but its interesting to see the improvement in just a few years time! In 1995, I was a Junior in school.

Cute Husband

Awe, isn't he cute? Of course, his teeth turned out a little large in this drawing. And maybe his nose is a little small. Oh well. This was completed in 2006.

Sketches of My Daughter

Cousin Portraits

This was a series of 13 kids that were all cousins! I was rusty when I started this group, but by the end they looked great.

(one of my favorites!)

(All of the following drawings were scanned on a different scanner, which captured less detail and color.)

Sisters x 4

These four portraits are sisters. The first two were completed several years ago (2004), the last two were done this last Christmas (2008). The first two were obviously on much more textured paper, which the scanner had a hard time reading.



The smooth paper works much better, don't you think?

Sketchbook: Portrait Sketches

These are some portrait sketches of a few teachers I had in college; most were done around eight years ago, except the last which was just finished last year. They were all done from photos.