Hi All! I have been recently going back to pastels to give portraits out as gifts to those in my family. This is my sister-in-law’s dog, Pepper. We watched her for a weekend and I took pictures, and they recently came in handy for this purpose.
I love the way the fur looks so real on the velour paper. Needless to say my sister-in-law loved it. Hope you do too.
Here are four new acrylic paintings I have been working on. It was fun to try these new ideas and just practice the blending techniques and brushstrokes. It’s all so new to me, but now I just want to try all types of pictures. I can’t wait. Hope you like these.
I think sometimes it pays to look back on your artwork and really look at it. If you’re not happy with a piece after it’s all completed, sometimes it’s good to set it down and wait awhile and really look at it and see if it could be improved in some way. Maybe make the colors more saturated, try another media to see if it works a little better with the picture itself. Whatever.
Well, that’s what happened here. I love pastels, but I tried rendering an old watercolor picture of Santa singing with his reindeer (originally designed for my husband’s Christmas birthday) with pastels. I never really was happy with it. Pastels work lovely on portraits, but when I have a lot of detail work in a picture, it just doesn’t cut it. I can’t work in the tiny details, and it looks like there is no “punch” factor….it just sort of sits there, almost like a bad copy of a picture.
See for yourself here as I have attached the original pastel and the new watercolor. I think I will take the watercolor. It’s so vibrant and I can see all the detail work. This is also what the art licensing companies look for, vibrancy. So that’s what I am doing now. Taking my portfolio and re doing all the old pics that just “sort of sit there”. Hope you like this new one! Enjoy!
Here are two more scarecrows to continue the Friendly Scarecrow series. I really like the one where he is jumping in the leaves!
I had sent my online art portfolio to Porterfield’s Fine Art and the president of the company sent me back some encouraging words within 10 minutes of sending it to them. He suggested I try acrylics for more color saturation as art licensing companies look for saturated color. He said he could not use my art this point in time. but it was “Awfully good”. I’ll take it! Usually you get nothing back but a rejection letter. This was nice.
He did like my scarecrow and my santa holding a present, which explains the reason for all the scarecrows. The more the better! Hope you like them.
I forgot to post this picture. I keep creating the Christmas designs because that is always the most popular with any kind of Licensing company or Greeting card Company. So even when it is hot and summer-like, I probably will still be pumping out Christmas. Oh well, at least it’s a fun holiday and you can think of so many ideas.
But anyway here is the latest and as you can see it is in my new banner overhead. I posted one with and one without text, just for interest. Hope you like it.
Santa peeking
Just put a new banner/header on my blog page and I like it! Do You! Lookin’ good! 
Here is a picture I did awhile back. It is a quote from Helen Keller, and a beautiful one at that. I did this in colored pencil and since it has many hearts and since Valentine's Day was only yesterday, I figured this would be great to put up. Hope you like this oldie but goodie. :)
Cheryl
