My painting Off With Their Heads made it into Buchanan Gallery’s Water Works Show! If you are in Galveston between August 27 and October 1, stop by and check out the show! Buchanan is one street over from the Strand on 25th St. It is a beautiful gallery that I am proud to have the opportunity to work with.
I have been attending life drawing in Houston for the last couple of weeks with my wonderful mom and we have had SO much fun! Every drawing I do I can feel myself getting better, and that is an awesome feeling! I have also really enjoyed familiarizing myself with watercolor again, since I’ve been using strictly Acrylic for 3 years.
Here are some snapshots of what I did today:
All were 20 minute poses
Here is a sneak peek of a painting that I am currently working on. As an artist, it is important to me that I keep growing and trying new things. This is a different take on my usual pattern-overlay acrylic painting. This time I added a new pattern, inspired by a pattern I found on clothing in my closet.
I worked on my wood panel painting today. I focused on bringing dimension to the fish and tomorrow I plan to finish the background and add/touch up a few small details when the fish are totally dry. Then it will be finished. This has been a departure for me away from my more planned out paintings. For this one, I didn’t draw anything first and kind of just used my instincts to paint. I think when I add more contrast to the background I might actually like it…ha! I will keep you posted.
Today, I focused on my newest painting of angel fish. I’ve been wanting to do this one for a while. As I was painting the gravel, my mind wandered to when I was in 1st grade working on the set for my class’s marionette puppet show. We needed a castle and my teacher asked me if I knew how to draw/paint cobblestone. I had never painted cobblestone, but I thought about it and decided to draw random circular shapes all over the castle and bam: cobblestone! This reminded me a lot of that.
Today, I had lots of help from my Minnie baby, who kept scratching on my leg asking for me to hold her. Luckily she is pretty much the tiniest dog on the planet so I was able to work with her in my lap.
I dedicate this painting to her and my 3 angelfish that I had in Elementary school. They had some kind of mystery lip disease that made their lips grow enormous. It appears that when your lips reach a certain size, it actually prevents any food from getting in your mouth…and well, if you can’t eat you can’t live for too long. RIP homies. No wonder models are so skinny and Hollywood actresses die young; mystery solved! It’s amazing what random thoughts I have while painting. Maybe I should just keep those to myself…
I may make some small changes, but as of right now here is my painting. Feel free to leave comments!
By the way, after a long day of painting, Minnie is EXHAUSTED! What a rough life!
Because drawing from observation is the best way to learn to draw, I have challenged my students this year with several still life set-ups. We have done different projects/techniques with each one. I am unsure about the legality of posting student art so unfortunately I am not going to share the student artwork.
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I know if you read my last post about my trip to the hardware store, you MUST be on the edge of your seat wondering how my painting on the wood panel is turning out. This is the beginning stage of my new painting. Clearly the fish need a lot more detail. I work by building up thin layers of paint, so it is a process. I am my worst critic, but surprisingly I am liking how the wood grain mimics a swimmy, watery effect. As you might know, most of my paintings lately have focused on the contrast between man-made patterns and organic forms. This painting is taking a naturally occurring pattern and combining it with natural forms. ENJOY
I found myself at Home Depot tonight buying a screwdriver and I was reminded how much I love hardware stores. The reason I love them is because to me they are big art supply stores. Everything I look at I think of ways I can use things for art projects. I had to control myself from buying caulk and a caulk gun b/c I’m convinced that it is just a cheaper better version of acrylic molding paste. I did however leave with a giant plywood panel! I could see everyone in the store looking at me oddly as if they were trying to imagine what on earth I was going to do with a giant piece of wood. Let them wonder lol! I think I’m going to build up a lot of texture on the panel in a pattern with some of the mediums I got samples of from conference and do a new fishy painting. The natural pattern of the wood reminds me of water and fish already, so I think I’ll go with it. I will post pics once I get a chance to start.
Last weekend was one of the best I can remember in a long time!
I traveled to the spectacular Austin, TX to attend conference for TX art teachers! It is just so cool to have so many artists and art teachers in the same location! The conference was located in the convention center downtown, which also happened to be the same location as the Comic convention. This was awesome not only b/c it makes life interesting to see a group of people dressed up as characters walking around being awesome, but also because my sister’s very entertaining and talented boyfriend and his friend had a booth there for their comics (http://skweegieisland.blogspot.com/) so I got to spend time with my sister and experience that a little bit. While in Austin, (besides art workshops) I attended a trained cat circus (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tuna-and-The-Rock-cats/84494939571), saw a band that plays video game music on guitar/bass/flute/drums, and ate at a restaurant where the likes of Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, and loads of other cool people played back in the day! I must say, it was hard to come back to Houston after the amazing-ness of Austin. Here are a few pics:
 | MLEmiddletonART on Life Drawing! |
 | kimmyduh on Life Drawing! |
| MLEmiddletonART on Angels |
 | Mija on Wood Panel-Still in progr… |
 | Katie Story on Angels |
MLEmiddletonART 
