Banshee Painting

Long time no blog!

Just finished a painting this afternoon, so it seemed like a good time for an update!

Banshee, gouache 2015

This painting depicts the legend of the Banshee. There are several versions of the myth so I decided to combine a couple of the lesser-known variants instead of painting the typical "wailing hag."  In one story I read, the Banshee was a young woman who kindly ushered the dead to the other world, in another, she was an omen of death appearing as an old washer woman.  I thought these had interesting contrast (and would read together as Banshee-themed :)), so these are the two I decided on for this painting.

This is my first full gouache painting since taking a workshop on watercolor and gouache a couple years ago, and although it took some practice and tutorial videos, I'm happy to say gouache and I are no longer enemies!  I actually really like it, it doesn't require mediums or smelly "odorless" mineral spirits, it can be diluted like water color, it can be thick and opaque like oil or acrylic, and with some water, you can even adjust dried areas of the painting.  Overall, I think it's pretty fun to work with!

Thanks for reading, more paintings to come!

De-Stress Sketch

This is unfinished and there quite a few issues, but today was a bit of a stressful day at work, so I thought I'd try what I read other artists mention in their blogs, a quick "de-stress" painting. 

Massive Update!!

So... it's almost the end of February...

It's been a crazy busy (and embarrassing long) time since I updated this blog!  So since I'm online for the first time in a long long time, it's well-past time for blog updating!  Believe it or not - art has been happening!

Here's what I've been up to...

In November my work asked me to design and illustrate their company holiday card again.  Here's what I came up with:

This is the web-blast version so it's single-sided, but you get the idea.  Just for fun, these are my alternate thumbnails. I did three designs and the company chose the one they wanted illustrated for the card:

Then... in January I did a commissioned portrait of this adorable dog:

 

Which brings us up to present where I'm working on a project that is still top-secret (because it's not done yet), but has been in progress since late December! Hopefully that will be done soon so I'll try to add it if I get permission.

In the meantime...

Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, Happy Valentine's Day, President's Day, Anna Howard Shaw Day, Groundhog Day, and Happy Chinese New Year! 

Hopefully more to come soon!  Thanks for stopping by :)