This wreath is based on a photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash, but I also referred significantly to the painting that Ali Kay did in the Fresh Paint class. Unfortunately, too many layers when using heavy body paint isn’t so smooth, so ridges do show, which is irritating.
My effort is more impressionistic than even Ali’s so one just gets the sense of green, but not pine boughs and various evergreens. Oh well, moving on, and glad to have put to use this canvas with the gold metallic paint!
I had a lot of fun painting this one and I’m quite satisfied with the result — although at first, I thought “small pumpkin, ugh, how boring”. This was one of the offerings of Paint Week ’26 that Ali Kay Fresh Paint was offering the last week of September. Mine is not exactly like hers — partly because I don’t want to copy exactly, and partly because she uses Golden Fluid Acrylics. While I have some of those, mostly right now I’m using Liquitex Heavy Body (although I have no particular attachment to any given brand. So, naturally, my colors were different.
The olive gray-green was made from Raw Umber and Cad Yellow Medium; I then lightened it with one of those pre-mixed paints all the brands have (in this case, “Vivid Lime Green”). In the upper left corner, it’s mostly straight Vivid Lime Green (which is a mix of phthalo green, titanium white and the yellow PY97).
My underpainting was cerulean blue; I don’t particularly care for the magenta that Ali uses in a lot of her paintings. It was difficult not to paint over all of it, but I managed, and I’m pleased with how it turned out.
Today I tried painting a Christmas ornament in ArtRage Vitae, and I used as a reference a painting by Teddi Parker, which you can see here.
As with the sketch of Simba, I struggled a bit. In the Simba drawing, I used the felt pen tool; in this case I used the square flat brush, and widened the stroke.
It should be obvious that Teddi’s painting (master copy) is on the right.
The funny thing is, it actually felt like I was painting, despite using my finger tip! But I want to get back to the brush tomorrow.
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 snowman (painted on an 8×8 canvas) was inspired in part by snowmen done in pastel by Karen Margulis. It’s been warmer than normal here for December, but we might actually have a freeze tomorrow. No sign of snow, though. (Sigh.) So I thought painting a snowman would put me in a winter mood.
I’m not sure if you can tell, but the (viewer’s) right side of the snowman is a gray-white, while the (viewer’s) left side of the snowman is a sky blue-white mix.
The other colors are Pyrrole Red (straight from the tube), Yellow Ochre (mixed with the red for the carrot stick nose), Sap Green and Mars Black (straight from the tube) and the lavender background is a dash of Dioxazine Purple with Titanium White.
This was done on a black canvas, so the cast shadow is actually unpainted. The lights were painted in Hansa Yellow, but then I came back with some of my silver and gold metallic paints from Lascaux.
I finished the Halloween-themed works in time for the holiday. I’ve got to get in costume now to greet trick-or-treaters!
This is based on a new Halloween-themed Patreon post from PaintCoach. I’m using a 9×12 canvas, and I did a tone of Pale Umber (Winsor & Newton Galeria) thinned out with water. As with the skull and pumpkin painting in my previous post, I sketched it out with willow charcoal. The background in this case is Ivory Black rather than a chromatic black of Burnt Sienna and Indanthrene Blue. Near the bottom, I’m using Raw Umber.
On from pumpkins to skulls… this work-in-progress is from another PaintCoach Patreon post. I’m using an 8×8 canvas; the ground is a Neutral (Gray) 7 mixed with a bit of white. I initially sketched out the image with willow charcoal rather than paint as I’ve been watching the World Series, and it was easier just sketching on the canvas while sitting on the sofa.
