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 painting is on a 6×6 “Claybord” panel with the undertone painting done in gold metallic paint that’s roughly the color of yellow ochre. (Like a rank novice, I wasted decent money on metallic paints and have never figured out a use for them — same with the iridescent paint I bought last year. Anyway, I recently read about an artist named Michele Usibelli who uses gold metallic paint as her undertone in a number of her paintings — bingo! I’m going to try that myself.
Turns out either the metallic paint or the Claybord (or both!) had a slippery sensation that was hard to work with. (But that could be me…)
In any case, these sunflowers come from one of the 7 paintings demonstrated at the 2024 Summer “Challenge” at Acrylic University. Which I didn’t participate in at the time, but am trying my hand at now that I have some more time.
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.
This is the week 26 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s called “Blue Sky Poppies” and is based on a reference photo by Sergey Schmidt. 6×6 canvas panel, untoned.
I’m not overly happy with this one. I struggled with the flower shapes and the soft focus of the reference photo. The result is that it’s more abstract than I had originally intended. However, I AM (mostly) happy with the colors.
This is the week 25 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s called “Mountain Flowers” and is based on a reference photo by Emmanuel Lamboley. 6×6 canvas panel, untoned.
This was fun to do!
This is the week 27 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s called “Desert Sky” and is based on a reference photo by Joe Cook. 6×6 canvas panel, untoned.
I’ll be working on some of the previous weeks’ mini paintings in the next few days, skipping ones I’m not fired up about.
It’s been 7 weeks since I’ve picked up a paintbrush… just busy doing other things, (like reading for a book club, Ancestry DNA analysis of my mom’s matches, and some day trips w/ hubby). I had this red-toned 8×8 canvas lying around so decided to do a grayscale version of a coffee cup (image from Unsplash).
I actually painted this back in mid-May: it’s on offer from Ali Kay‘s “Fresh Paint” membership, and I never got around to posting. I went with my own version of the background as I’m getting tired of copying teacher’s work, lol.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 