I have finished my second project for Avant Garde Painted Ladies (run by the lovely Mika at Motley Soul Mixed Media)

This lady had such a journey. The layers of colour around the eyes were very interesting - and a big learning curve! Learning how to cover things up with gesso that is! But I am so happy with how she has turned out.

My avant garde lady is nearly finished :)

So, I have over-committed myself, as per usual. It is my Dad's birthday on Sunday, and my son and I are making him a pirate ship cake. Then next Saturday is my daughter's third birthday, then three weeks later is my son's fifth birthday. So food and birthday cakes on the brain at the moment. But still finding time to paint and draw, and am working on one thing at a time(hahaha- not really...). So my first project for Motley Soul Avant Garde Painted Ladies is in the works, this is where she is up to so far:

And I've also done a journal page, but for some reason blogger wants it to be sideways :-/

I have been busy working on some sketches, my latest one:

I really need to work on my hair issues... I just can't do it....

I am really looking forward to starting Painted Ladies with Mika at Motley Soul in the next few days :)

Fabulous Faces/Face2Face, three quarter profile

It has taken me such a long time to get to these Paint Your Story backgrounds - I started doing faces on them last week, and am now getting shading and features on them. But I am loving how they are coming together :) This one I really love - she had swirls in the background, I'm not sure what they are, but they are now part of her do!

Another WIP "while changes are underfoot"

 And another WIP - "love is always the answer"

And this girl "and how I look at flowers" - I hated this one to start with! I had to totally repaint her face, and now I am loving her, she still looks fairly pensive though hehe :) Interesting how they look so different on the computer screen...

I have been doing some more work on my Paint Your Story backgrounds, and actually worked up the courage to put a girl on one!
This is where the background started out:

Then I added my girl:

A bit more tweaking:

And a bit more, then voila! This is where I am up to now:

It seems that the further into the painting I get, the more stuck I feel :/ I think I am more attached to it as I have spent more time and effort getting it to this point, so feel funny about doing crazy stuff to it - but I need to take a deep breath and do a bit more crazy as I am not happy with the green and pink around her head, it just looks a bit boring, or else I need to carry the green and pink out further...hmmm....

I signed up for Mindy lacefield's Paint Your Story course a while back, and have just gotten to it, and boy is it fun! I am getting some backgrounds done, this is the initial stage, I will go back to them and change them a bit once they are dry :)

 I have two girls in progress at the moment, inspired by Juliette Crane's How to Paint A Girl course. This one (above) I am really not liking the background of and she has been stuck at this point for a week or so now.

This girl was started last night on a background I really like, and I am loving how she is coming along. Still more work to do on her, but I have some ideas for what I want to do :)

 A face sketch I did for Motley soul's Face 2 Face course. This was one of the first ones I did.

and another one for F2F, I am liking how my shading is coming along, but didn't notice that the eye on the right was lower than the left one until I had done a fair bit of shading :/

I'm working on another graphite portrait - and having some teething troubles! Just not happy with the lips so they will have to be re-done.
Also having teething troubles with my latest girl, who is on one of my favourite backgrounds. I have just had to completely paint over her head as she was looking too comic-booky for my liking. So am re-working her at the moment to try and get her looking the way I want. Zen breathing Mel, zen breathing. It is so frustrating when I am fitting in my art stuff in the tiny little snippets of time I have to myself, and then I stuff something up and have to start over. But I remind myself that it's all part of the journey, there's no point carrying on just for the sake of it, if I'm not happy with it, as it will just always annoy me...Much more growth for me to be able to take a few deep breaths, step back, and think, hmmm, how can I change this, what can I do to this that will make me happy :)

It was funny, something that I found a little annoying, was actually a good insight for me - I showed a good friend of mine a couple of my paintings and drawings, and she said, "Oh, you should be an illustrator, do childrens books!". And that was so flattering, but I also thought, no, that would be too easy for me. My biggest problem is getting caught up in tiny details, and that is what I am trying to work through with a lot of my art. If I was to do illustrations, I could just focus on little details, but I want to break out of my old patterns, and stop always looking at the details, and just be with something, let it grow organically, then re-assess...that is where my journey lies....

OK. So here it is. My first blog post.

I am working on a few projects at the moment. In between being a full time single mama to a 4 y.o. boy, R and 2 y.o. girl, A. I have been creatively inactive for basically my whole life, I have always worried too much about whether I could make some perfect and beautiful, which is, of course, a lot to live up to! I have bitten the bullet, and decided to just get to creating, and if I like what I see, well, then that is great, if not, well it's still fun, and the flow-on effects of being creative are just too great to ignore :D
I have done no drawing before, so please be kind :)
And sorry this post is fairly heavy on pics, there's a bit to catch up on!
Here is what I have been up to lately:
Willowing's Art Heart and Healing course,

Willowing's Fabulous Faces graphite portrait, I was really happy with how this one turned out - was a pleasant surprise!

 Fabulous Faces, Front facing portrait. I really love this face, although the eyes are uneven and I don't like the hair , I am happy with her shading - as that was the most challenging thing for me to get my head around, the details I can work on!

 A random pic from the 21 secrets course :)

 I am also doing Juliette Crane's How To Paint A Girl, here is one of my backgrounds:

 And another background:

 and another....

 
And my first girl. I think she looks very sweet, I have named her Primrose, might have to add some more flowers and *stuff* to the background...

Oh and I made my own journal, loosely based on a couple of youtube vids, I hand printed the paper I put on the cover, and filled it with lovely 300gsm watercolour paper :)

So that's where I am at so far, I am currently practising a few more girls to put on the backgrounds I have done. And my other homework is practising sketching faces from photos, but, yes, haven't got to that yet...
Love and art to all xx