Lorie's Got a Face!

I had a breakthrough in painting yesterday. I decided I'd better just pick up the paintbrush and start mucking the paint around because it wasn't going to paint itself. Plus I could always paint over it. Luckily I hit a groove and little Lorie's face turned out great. I still have to do the hair, shirt, and rest of the painting, but the first grader's face was the hurdle I was trying to jump.

Back to Painting

I thought I'd start posting parts of paintings, since I don't like to post the whole painting until it's done. I've been working on this double portrait of a friend on and off for several months. I just painted the nose yesterday after not painting on it for over two months. I thought that maybe posting the progress would force me to paint more often.

Plinki the Bunny Carrot

I know it's been a while since I last posted. Did things like got engaged and stuff. Went to a great craft show today called Felt Club today which had a ton of fabulous hand-made stuff ranging from t-shirts to stuffed bunny carrots (we bought one shown above with my son Christian). It's inspiring me to get creative again (the craft show, not the carrot).
Trying to get back into the painting, but in the meantime, I'm selling some prints of my paintings on etsy under the name franticmeerkat. Hoping to get some of the prints made into magnets to sell, too.

Noah's Finished!

I finally finished the Noah double portrait, "Noah always does what he's supposed to." That was taken directly from his kindergarten report card. The other possible phrase was "Noah's very quiet."
We've had out-of-town guests we were entertaining, which included cleaning the whole place, but I hope to get back to painting now. Today I also took another reference portrait photograph, so I have another painting I want to start soon. I still have to varnish this, paint the edges and sign it.

Helen's Rage

Here's another art card I just completed. I'm having fun, but I also painted edges of paintings, and boring things like that today.

Art Cards!

My boyfriend, Matt, has been selling hand-painted bird magnets on etsy.com and has been telling me to put some stuff on the "all hand-made" arty website. Since I've been doing collage items in my free time just for fun (calendars, cards, etc.), I thought it would be another creative outlet for me. I love oil painting, but sometimes you just want to go back to kindergarten and cut and paste. So far this is the only item in my store (franticmeerkat), but I want to do a couple of pieces a week.

Almost finished....

Finally! I had a minor setback, what with discovering that I couldn't paint letters. I've been trying to repaint the yellow over my smudged attempts, and in the meantime failing to finish up the portraits. Tonight I worked on young Noah and now I just have to glue the letters on. I hope to do that this weekend and will try to post here more often. Just took quick photos to get them on the blog, but will take better ones in the daylight for the website.