Cleaning house: Old art

While we were on our Christmas break at my mom's house, we helped clean the last of the things out of her old house, as she has moved to a new house up the street. While there, I was able to document some of my old artwork that I didn't have in my possession yet. I'm realizing now that there are a few things I got rid of- mostly ceramic sculptures- that I forgot to photograph, and I'm just kicking myself for it. However, many things were preserved and I posted them on my art blog.
There are some cool creations involving Xerox, spray paint, and Star-wars references in one post:




















And in another  post I show a couple of paintings that I really like. Who doesn't like post-apocalyptic landscapes in China?






































Finally, there were a few sculptures that I did remember to photograph, and these are posted as well. This one is my favorite:

ceramic 2x15x20", approx.

So if you're so inclined, follow the links and go see them! Right now, they should be the three most recent posts, so if you don't want to follow each link and just go to teareseart.blogspot.com
Enjoy!

Portraits, Paper, and Lamps

Over the last few weeks, I had the chance to work on four portraits for my cousin to give to her parents for Christmas! The portraits are of her four nieces and nephews, my cousins too.

 I was so happy to have my daylight lamp that Joseph got me for my birthday this summer!

 

 

 

There is generally only a small window of daylight where I can work on portraits,(one of the reasons it takes so long to finish) depending greatly on the weather and time of year. Winter is generally a dismal time to do such work. But with this lamp, I could still work on overcast days, and even when it started getting dark! It was a great help.

Regular lights are too dim for my eyes, plus they make the colors look wrong on artwork so it's not advisable to work under those conditions.

 

Here is the first one I completed of "S". The photo was really nice! It had great lighting, the clothing and pose were interesting; I loved it. I hate how my camera doesn't capture the subtlety of colors in colored pencil, but this was the best picture I got. Just believe me that there are lots of colors in her white ruff, and her face. I was sad too when I tried to print out my own copy, the turquoisy blue of her dress didn't translate in the ink colors of my printer. Oh well.



 

 

 Next is her cousin, M,  who has one blue eye and one brown eye! That was kind of cool. His photo looked like it was maybe taken under fluorescent lights, because his face had a yellowish green caste to it; I kept having to remind myself to correct the color and not copy it exactly. Again, there is a lot of color in his face that wasn't captured by the camera!

 

Here is a close up to show some of the color, though it's still not as bright as real life.

 

 The third drawing of "S"s little brother "W" is on a different kind of paper than the others. When I first started doing these commissioned childrens portraits around 2007, I had this perfect paper. It was a light pink in color, thick and sturdy, and perfectly smooth, which worked great with the way I draw. Eventually, it ran out and I haven't been able to find a similar paper since!

The paper on which I did these other three portraits was the same type of paper I like, except for the color: light blue. It works, but it's not nearly as perfect for skin tones. Anyway, I bought this paper thinking I'd found the perfect thing, but it turned out that it had more texture to it than I first realized.

 

In this close up, you can see how it has these ridges. Blah. I don't completely hate it, because it made the drawing look almost like it was in pastels, as I couldn't make any hard lines. But yeah, I couldn't make any hard lines. So this is the only one on the pink paper.

 

 This final portrait is also an "M" just like her brother with the mismatched eyes. She was wearing a cute Minnie Mouse outfit in the photo-complete with ears! I decided to leave out the ears (I didn't ask first- maybe I should have. Oh well). This photo was taken on a phone and for some reason my computer couldn't read the file types of all the pictures of this girl, so I had to take screenshots of my email, and print sections of it-it was bigger than the screen.

I think this one turned out technically well, though I worry that it doesn't look completely like the real girl. Hopefully the recipients will think it's perfect.

 

Here is a comparison of the pink paper to the blue, though the photo doesn't show it as well. Maybe you can see how the skin looks warmer and..pinker on the boy, but the background turned out nicer on the girl's portrait. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't' cover up the ridges of pink for a smooth background.

 

All in all, I think it's a pretty good set of kids!

 

 

 

October and Halloween

Yes, I am aware it is almost December. What else is new? So, Halloween. This year, we did a few extra things to try and make it a fun holiday. My mom had sent Elora's birthday present packed with big pieces of butcher paper, so we thought, "Hey, decorations!"

 

 

Everyone got to draw something to hang up...even Josh participated, and he never likes to do creative stuff. He made three big ghosts; this was the most unique of his creations:

 

 

He says they're all screaming ghost faces all on the same body. Creepy.

 

 

Josh also made Mike Wasowski from Monsters Inc. I think he forgot about the whole 'one eye' thing. Oh, and Elora made a ghost with a rainbow outline.

 



 

 



 

 

We carved pumpkins just a couple of days before Halloween. We usually do it earlier in the month, but we forgot to get pumpkins when we were all in town...you know, the store being far away and all. This year, Elora and Joshua carved theirs completely on their own! Good job, guys. I helped Jonah make his skeleton pumpkin.

 

 

from left: mine, Eli's, Joseph's, Joshua's, Jonah's, Elora's

 

As for costumes, I was keen on spending as little money as possible. Also, I don't want to sew much. So this is what we came up with. Elora wore a dress that I've worn for Halloween, as has my mom and grandma! I just hemmed up the bottom so it would fit her. I bought her a $4 mask to go with it, and we said she was maybe going to a costume ball? We weren't sure what she was, but she looked cool!

 

Josh was excited to be a pirate. We already had the sash, we just had to buy a cheap set that came with a sword, earing and eyepatch. (He kept making the sash tighter.)

 

Oh, and we added the beard. He was quite dashing:

 

Eli and Jonah had fun trying on all of our costumes before they decided what to be:

 



In the end, Jonah got to wear a cape and the fireman hat he got for his birthday; Jonah was a clown, wearing the same costume that I wore (my mom made it),Josh wore, and Elora wore before him! We got him a wig and some clown makeup to, which he was very excited about. In fact, at the end of the day when I was washing it off, Jonah had the biggest sad lip. When I asked what was wrong, he lamented, "I don't want you to take the clown off!"

 

Can you believe he's not actually wearing any white paint on his face?

Oh, and as for me, I wanted to be a gypsy. Because that's not racist. Actually, I just wanted to wear the purple striped tights I bought, so I wavered between witch and gypsy: I decided the skirt I had looked more gypsy. I just wished I had some brightly colored scarves, or you know, coin belts like belly dancers have. But this would have to do:

 

At the school thing, Elora and Josh both got second place for their costumes in their class! I think they were also judged on if they danced or did something cute as their class walked around the gym.

 

 

 Eli and Jonah didn't get to walk around with the preschool age kids-they didn't do that category this year- so they walked around with Daddy and his second grade class. I think Jonah was a little embarrassed, but Eli loved it!

 

 

If you couldn't tell, Joseph was superman. All in all, we were  a pretty good looking bunch!

 

 

Before we went out trick-or-treating, we had mummy dogs for dinner:

 

Then it was off into the night! In our neighborhood, the majority of people leave and go to a bigger city to get their candy. We have found that there is plenty if we stay here though, even though we go to maybe ten houses- it still lasts for weeks after, with rationing.

I got better pictures of us trick-or-treating, but I thought this one looked cool:

 



 

I hope your Halloween was just as fun!



 

 

Autumn Colors

Autumn in South Dakota! While we had that huge snowstorm the first week in October (you know, the one that killed tens of thousands of cows, and left some people without power for weeks because of snapped poles on the power lines) the rest of October was beautiful! I had the opportunity to take a few pictures when I was driving west to Pierre (pronounced "Peer") later that month. A lot of crops were ready to harvest, like millet, wheat, and sunflowers. While North Dakota is the state with Sunflowers on the license plate, South Dakota has it's fair share. Check it out:

 

 

The red stuff is millet.

I love this shot of the sunflowers!

This is a little roadside park near Hayes, SD. There were some migrating geese hanging out when we stopped by.




Now these fields are all yellow, but they looked cool as we approached home
 this day.  Look, over there is where we live!