Paint Party Friday & Colour Me Positive

Colour Me Positive Challenge

I worked on my week 4 Colour Me Positive challenge, including the not very good self portrait. I play a game sometimes, going through the alphabet and thinking of a positive and good feeling word for each letter. That is what all the writing is in the background, I went through the alphabet two or three times.  I can tell tho that I am not in as good feeling a place as I was a few years ago, by the words that come to mind. (I don't always use the very first word that comes up). Acrylic background, everything else is color pencil. I'm linking up to Paint Party Friday, hop on over and see some great art from all around the world.

Rustic wood signs

I also made a few rustic wood signs. The laundry signs were by request and I will make some others to sell. The chicken signs were for me, but again, I am going to make more for sale.

The are made of old oak pallet wood and acrylic paints, then clear sealed.

More Practice

man waiting  pencil on paper

I was very brave last week to sit and surreptitiously draw this man from life while we both waited for an oil change. Again my proportions and perspective are a bit off, but not too bad.

Random animals from a magazine pencil on paper

chickens in colored pencil

I finally found my bag of Prismacolor pencils. I really like the waxy sort of feel they have.

colored pencil

Some more chickens, a little better, but the cat is ugly.

random faces in color pencil

More random faces from my facebook feed. They don't really look like the pictures much tho.

fruit in color pencil

Last night I worked on this picture of fruit. It's not finished. Color pencil takes a long time, it's not as easy to smudge and blend like paint, pastels or regular pencils.  I'll probably try and finish it tonight.


Sorry I'm late but posting this to Paint Party Friday, even tho it's Saturday. Go on over and join the part, I always love to see all the cool art from around the world.

Happy Holy Days

The Green Man

Merry Christmas, Happy Yule, Wonderful Winter Holy Days. I don't care how what you believe, that is between you and your gods.

And Happy Paint Party Friday!  I love doing this blog hop and visiting all the other artist's blogs and seeing so much wonderful art. Stop by and visit!

I am loving the Green Man more and more. I just wish Blogger would post the picture the way I have it on my computer.


I have been putting the Green Man on a lot of items over in my Zazzle shop. My most favorite item is this pillow. I just love the way it turned out.

Green Man Pillow by maryhysong

Browse more Green Pillows at Zazzle

Spring

Here is a final picture of "Spring". I'm still not totally happy with her face, but much better than before! If you missed it there are some progress pictures here.

Owl Woman

Here is a little better picture of Owl Woman, tho it is a little crooked so I'll have to take some more.  I'm pretty happy with the way she turned out.

Owl Woman, Green Man, Spring

Owl Woman

Woot It's Paint Party Friday! I missed last week, was just too busy. I love PPF tho, great art all over, hop on over and take a look.




I've been pretty busy the past two weeks. I finished Owl Woman, this phone pic does not do the colors justice but I haven't had a chance to get a really good picture of her yet. 16x20 acrylic on canvas.  Some in progress shots can be found on this post

Green Man 

After Owl Woman I did a Green Man, 8x8 canvas on the diagonal, acrylic.  I am pretty pleased with the way he turned out. Again a crappy cell phone pic.

work in progress

After the Green Man I started this one. Not sure about a title, but leaning towards Spring.  Took me three tries to get her eyes even and I"m still not thrilled with her looks, I know her proportions are off.  Hoping I can work on her some more this weekend.

The Show is Hung

Jim Coates hanging my paintings.

I'm hooking up to Paint Party Friday for the first time in a long while. Many things have been going on in my life and I have been very busy with other projects and not really painting the last few months.

My first show, Copper Mine Picture Cafe, Miami, AZ

All that said I am having my first show and am soooo excited! The opening reception is tomorrow. I went over and delivered my paintings a couple of days ago and watched the owner, Jim Coates do a great job of hanging everything. He really has this down to a science.  The Copper Mine Picture Cafe is located in Miami, Arizona. So if you are able to I'd love to meet  you in person on Saturday! If not my paintings will hang until March 11, 2012. The photo is just one section of the space; there are 14 paintings in all.

LADYBUG ROCKS

A Flock of Ladybug Rocks

After a couple of weeks with no time to paint I managed to paint a flock of ladybugs. I also took pictures and typed up step by step instructions and published a free tutorial: How To Paint Ladybug Rocks. I'm thinking about doing more tutorials, just not sure what to do next, after all, ladybugs are pretty simple. But then maybe some people would like more complex projects to work on?


So this is my entry for Paint Party Friday: I hope you will stop by and marvel at the amount of beautiful art that is all around us and the wonderful artists that share their visions with us.

Now one of the reasons I haven't gotten to a lot of painting lately is because I have been quite fixated on getting as much wall building done as possible before it starts freezing at night and I have to stop the concrete work. Also I've been working in my garden and last week got my first harvest of baby lettuce. Have loads of work to do out there before frost too. I will probably get back to painting more regularly when the weather cools off a bit more.

PS: I just discovered Marsha's Spot with a blog hop for Squidoo writers. Sounds like fun so I've jumped right in and listed this post for the first time.