This was painted on a 12×12 canvas panel, and is based on a paint-along work being done by Dianna Shyne in Acrylic University for a series of holiday / winter scenes this month.
This was fun because I did it on my own using the reference photo, not a photo of her painting, and not watching the video (which is not yet available).
This was painted on a 12×12 canvas panel, and is based on a paint-along work done by Dianna Shyne in Acrylic University for a winter challenge back in December 2023 (before I had joined AU as a member).
I started out following her, but then I gave up and focused just on the reference photo for guidance.
My husband thought they were Christmas lights until I had completed the tags. (That said, I’m now working on a piece that IS of Christmas lights, part of this year’s winter challenge. Hopefully, I’ll have it done before Dianna’s paint-along this Friday.)
In honor of that, here are 11 Fascinating Poinsettia Facts You Should Know
Earlier this year, I painted a red poinsettia based on a painting by Ali Kay. Today I painted a white and pink one (always my favorite live poinsettias) on an 8×10 canvas based on an image by Cindy from Pixabay.
This bird was painted on a 11×14 canvas which I toned with Blick Studio neutral gray — but I should have added at least one layer of gesso. (Cheap “pre-gessoed” canvases are less and less appealing to me.)
This is from another class on the Acrylic University website, originally shown to the public on YouTube for a brief period of time back in January 2022. The focus of the week’s classes was “Radiant Landscapes” and this class was about going big and bold with your brushstrokes to paint a chickadee.
There were 4 ways suggested to “go bold”: 1) limit yourself to 30 minutes painting (and that’s it, no going back later); 2) Limit yourself to a certain number of brushstrokes — say, 50, or 75; 3) use a large brush throughout; 4) paint with your non-dominant hand
I went with a larger brush than I typically use, and I had a lot of fun with this painting. It makes me happy to look at.
This is the week 32 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s called “Venice Boats” and is based on a reference photo by y-heng. 6×6 canvas panel, toned in a medium gray.
Dorsey used a sky blue acrylic paint marker and a black one at first to do the outlines. I used a small brush with acrylic paint since my markers dry out so fast.
It felt good to paint again.
Back in March, I posted about painting a vase of purple tulips, from a one-off online class by Ali Kay. I had decided I would consider joining her “Fresh Paint” membership, which from what I can tell operates more or less like Jed Dorsey’s Acrylic University.
So, the doors opened for a limited time last week, and I joined for a year. We’ll see how it goes. I like the work she posts on Instagram, and I like her subject matter — a lot of people and animal portraits, as well as flowers.
This painting is actually based off of an Unsplash photo. I struggled a bit with her process, which seemed a little bit paint-by-number to me, but I wanted to try it. Hardest for me is remembering to leave touches of the underpainting visible, as I’m used to often painting on white canvas and skipping the whole underpainting thing. Also I rarely layer to the extent she does — but perhaps I should.
She also primarily works from photographs, and transfers the key lines from the photo to the substrate so you focus on painting rather than drawing. Also, she works on gessoed wood panels, using fluid acrylics, while I’m working on canvas using heavy-body acrylics so the flow is obviously different. (It’s too hot where I live to use a lot of fluid acrylics — they dry in something like 2 minutes.)
I’d like to try doing this on a wood panel to see the effect; I might like it. But I’ve got a stash of canvas to work through first.
I based this 8×10 painting on a photo by Autumn Mott Rodeheaver on Unsplash.
I did this painting on an 8×8 canvas which I had months ago applied modeling paste to, without knowing what I was going to do with it. So I decided to paint the crow (based on an image by mycol from Pixabay). After a while, it gets tiring to paint other people’s work from class, ugh.
I enjoyed painting this.
I’ve been taking a couple of Lauren Rudolph’s classes at Kara Bullock Art. This portrait is not part of the class; I found it on her website, and found it at least as interesting as anything in the class.
This was done on an 8×10 stretched canvas. The value on the ear is completely wrong; I need to go back and fix that.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 