It has been a bizarre year. All I wanted after the nightmare that was 2019 was an entirely uneventful year. Nothing like the whole world sinking into pandemic chaos to make your problems feel small. I don’t have very high hopes for next year since we’re still in the full swing of the pandemic right…
Category: Fishished
2020 Inktober
You may have noticed the distinct lack of ink drawings this year if you’re following me over on instagram or facebook. I do still plan on doing inktober this year, but I’m thinking of maybe starting late or waiting until next month and do… inkvember? The name certainly isn’t as catchy. That’s for sure. I’m…
September 2020 Strada Easel Challenge Days 25-30
I made it! The final six paintings of the challenge are finished. For day 25, I came across these shells and thought they were perfect for the prompt. My other idea was to paint another feather. It was nice to do something I’ve never done before though. I seriously lacked energy on day 26. I…
September 2020 STRADA Easel Challenge Days 18-24
I’ve been wanting to paint a raw egg for a really long time. I can’t think of a good reason why I haven’t either. Especially now that I’ve discovered how fun they are to paint. The egg is from my chickens so it’s almost half the size of a normal egg and the yolk is…
September 2020 Strada Easel Challenge Days 4-10
Here we are, more than a week into the challenge! This first day was probably a stretch of the prompt, but aside from sitting outside and painting a literal structural, I tried to think of things that were structural. To me, origami always has a very structured quality about it. So I made some buffalo…
September 2020 Strada Easel Challenge Days 1-3
I’m off to an interesting start with this gory skull painting. This painting kicked my butt! I’ve been painting with gouache for most of the year so switching back to oils was definitely a challenge. Note – no skulls where harmed in the making of this painting. I put Saran Wrap down before pouring red…
In Need of Inspiration
I don’t know what it is about this year; the residual trauma of 2019, the pandemic, or simply art block. It could just be that I don’t like painting people as much as I hoped I would. Maybe I just need a project, a focus, a deadline. Maybe it’s everything. It’s hard to know. Anyway,…
Mack’s Commission
I don’t accept commissions very often, but I’m glad I did this one. Mack was a police K9 that belonged to an officer in a neighboring community. Sadly, Mack passed away unexpectedly. So a few of the guys at my husband’s department decided to commission this painting as a gift to the officer. I don’t…
Classically Bad
Yikes! I really struggled with painting this week. This first painting was initially really off, proportionally. So I sprayed it with a fixative thinking I could seal off the paint underneath and just go over it without completely redoing the painting. Boy was I wrong. It turns out, once you spray watercolor paper with fixative,…
Framing Some Old Work
After buying a Logan mat cutter at the end of last week, I finally got around to cutting some mats. Last year when I started painting with gouache, I painted on some randomly sized tiny pieces of paper that didn’t fit in any normal frame sizes. I think I painted so small because I wasn’t…
A Million and None
Do you ever find yourself with a million things and nothing to do? I feel like this sums up my week. I’ve been really trying to save money lately which means little to no shopping. On the face that doesn’t seem so hard, but thinking and doing are two total different things. It turns out,…
Dressed in Blue
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve started to use free reference images from Pixabay. My focus this week was on the female face and I had a little fun with some bright blue brush strokes. This week I also put more time into each individual painting and didn’t pressure myself to finish a…