A Watercolor Self-Portrait

You know, I've put several self-portraits on this blog already.  None of them really look like me.  So far, this is the closest I've come; it's from a picture from 3 years ago (my Sophomore year of college) and so, in reality, it really doesn't look like me now.  I did have a really fun time painting this though, especially with all the shading.  If you haven't guessed already, yes, this is another watercolor piece.  I tend to go through phases of art, where I focus more specifically on one thing for a period of time.  At the beginning of my art "career" it was sketching and drawing.  Then it was acrylic paints.  Next it was Sharpies, then a little bit of oils, and now watercolor (with the occasional other medium thrown in).  There's something so beautiful to me about watercolors.  Maybe it's the subtlety, or the transparency, or the way it just seems to flow.  I'm not entirely sure.  What I am sure of though, is that watercolors (I use watercolors from little tubes) are incredibly fun, and I encourage you to go and try them out.  You might just be surprised.  

Watercolor with a black gouache border. 

Work In-Progress

This is my current work in progress.  It is a watercolor portrait of my twin sister, sitting on a chair.
It's rather minimalistic, with the exception of the eyes and glasses, that is.  It took me a few hours to get this far on it.  But the really impressive part of this story is that I actually got my sister to sit still for that period of time.  Sure, she was watching television while I was painting, but still, the fact that she sat still is a small miracle.  You wouldn't know it by looking at this picture, but my sister has quite the personality.  And by that I mean that her personality is HUGE.  She's bubbly, talkative, hyper, dramatic, loquacious (I know I already said talkative, but I really like this word), funny, crazy, and mine.  She's the most amazing twin anyone could ask for, and so I decided to try to paint a portrait of her.  The painting doesn't do her justice, but it's all I'm capable of doing right now.

Watercolor Lamp

This is a watercolor, sharpie (or pen...), and gouache painting of a lamp that hangs in my living room.  The lamp itself is purple and black, but I really wanted to do a black and white painting of it because I thought the contrast would be really striking. 

The lamp caught my eye because of its shape.  It's rather convoluted and seems almost to be unidentifiable on its own.  I loved that I got to play with lines in this piece.  

Watercolor Class - July 2014

This past July I took a watercolor class at Hope College, taught by Bruce McCombs.  I absolutely love watercolors.  Although I wasn't taught a lot in my class, I did learn a lot.  I think that my watercolors have improved, and I'm so happy about it.

Flower

A Lautrec Bag: Moulin Rouge

Panera Bread Bag

A Moynihan Bag

A 20+ hour painting of part of downtown Holland, MI.  

Myrtle Beach

These are the watercolors that I painted while I was in Myrtle Beach this last Spring Break.  I think that would put me in February of 2014... or was it March?  I don't know.  Either way, I painted them this year.  I think my faces have improved; at least I like the watercolor portraits much better than the faces I tried to draw.

More Watercolors

I'm really trying to get all of my previous artwork up here, and these are some of my other watercolors that I'd previously done.  This first one is a rib cage (which I love) with flowers coming from inside it.  I had to be really careful with the shading so that it was obvious that some parts of the rib were further back than the front ribs.

 This is a dying rose.  It wasn't painted on watercolor paper and so it has started to buckle the paper.  I was really captivated by the sight of this dying rose, with the darker colors that were appearing in the petals.

This final picture (promised to my sister) is of an old abandoned wagon.  The wagon itself was in my Drawing I class during my Junior year of college, but the background and the overgrown flowers were all my idea.  

Random Other Art Pieces from the Past

Welcome to Miscellaneous Works of Art!!!  I'll probably come back to all these posts and add dates to the pieces of art when I can dig through my stuff to find them. 

This first piece is done in watercolor, and the cross was inspired by my friend Bekah's tattoo.  It's incredibly similar to her tattoo except for the color of the flower and the number of leaves.  I decided to do the immediate background of the cross in yellows and then darker colors around that to make it really pop out at the viewer.  Around that was a black background.  Later, after everything had dried, I took real leaves from outside and placed them on the page and then "watercolored" the edges.  I still don't entirely know why I decided to put the leaves on there, but I am glad that I did.  It gives something to the right hand side of the paper that otherwise would have been static and boring.

This next piece is also a watercolor (not done on watercolor paper, unfortunately).  It's based off of a modeling picture of my sister, Mary.  I love the way she's standing and the flow of the contours of the body.

 In my Sophomore year of college I was sitting in my friend's room and saw some metal or plastic birds mounted on the wall.  They were beautiful and I decided to draw two of them.  As it turned out, it looks more like one bird with a lighter "shadow" underneath it - I liked the overall effect and so decided to keep it.  I then decided to play with my sharpies for the background, using many vibrant colors in swirly twirly patterns.

Also during my Sophomore year I drew a cross.  The cross itself isn't very sophisticated.  You can see that the "arms" of the cross are different lengths.  However, the background is something more.  The cross, yellow, and inner red sections are done in colored pencils, while the darker red and the black background are done in.... yup! Sharpie again!

This picture (bottom left) is based off of a picture of me modeling on a car for my friend Jessica's art project.  Trust me, the picture is a LOT crazier than this drawing.  If you want to see it, click here.

 I did this final composition (above right) in my Freshman year of college, so in the Fall of 2010.  First I drew the bookshelf and television.  I scanned it onto my computer and then upped the contrast.  Finally I reprinted that off and then drew in Lisa and Bart.  After scanning it back onto the computer, I used the eyedropper tool on Paint to access the actual colors for their skin and clothes, and voila!

Basic Drawing I Class - Junior Year of College 2013

These pieces were created in 2013, during my Basic Drawing I class taught by Bruce McCombs.  All of these were drawn, not only off of pictures, but also of real objects sitting in the room in front of me (Yes, even the rib cage; we had an actual skeleton to work off of). 

This first drawing of the rib cage is incomplete.  I did finish it, but I gave it to my teacher and forgot to capture a picture of the final project.  The rib cage itself and the spine and vertebrae were drawn in pen, with lines and cross hatching to darken certain areas.  The background is... can you guess?  Sharpie!  I love sharpies and decided to do an intricate, somewhat abstract background using multiple colors.  

 This second piece (yes, those are my feel in the picture) is of a tricycle.  The entire tricycle is done in pen and ink, with the background being orange/red chalk (I think my teacher called it "cani chalk" but I can't find that name anywhere online, so.....).  The very bottom is in black, charcoal I believe.  It's basically a drawing of a person doing a drawing of a tricycle.








 This is another drawing of the same tricycle.  I had finished the first one and was sitting in class with nothing to do.  We were supposed to do two drawings of the tricycle, but I had put so much effort into the first one that I just felt completely uninspired.  So, what did I decide to do?  Why I decided to draw with my left hand, of course!  And no, I am NOT left-handed.  The end result actually turned out pretty well.  Who'd have thought I could draw with my left hand?  I certainly never thought I could!  So, next time you're stuck on what to draw, you can always draw the same picture you'd already done, but this time do it with your non-dominant hand.







 The quality of this next photo is not great, but hopefully you get the idea that I drew a skull.  I THINK this piece is in watercolor, with some black gouache for the eyes, nose, mouth, and background.  If you don't know what gouache is, you can find a reasonable definition here on good old Wikipedia.

Hey look, I found some more!  

This is a heroic drawing (which basically means a blown up or larger than life drawing) of a ring I had.  It's done on Newsprint with black and white charcoal.  It's not super sophisticated; it's really just a quick sketch of the ring, really. 

This next drawing is also a heroic drawing.  This one is of a rubber band ball.  I know, you probably didn't guess that, because quite honestly, it doesn't really look like one, now does it?  The answer is no.  BUT, I had a lot of fun with it because I used oil pastels and then smeared the heck out of them.  It made for a pretty sweet effect.  

This next image is clearly a Jack Daniel's bottle.  I don't know, it might be a little hard to read on the computer, but that's definitely what it is!  How funny is it that on a dry campus you can go into the basic drawing room and find an entire table filled with alcohol bottles?  Anyways, I just used graphite pencil for this drawing.  

Finally, the bags.  There are two bags pictured here.  The first is a Hallmark bag that says, "Life is a Special Occasion."  It was done in oil pastels, which allowed me to mix a variety of different colors, such as blues, purples, and whites to create a more dynamic color scheme for the bag, instead of it just being a regular plain purple background.  The second bag (the one on the right) is a plain old jane old brown paper bag.  There was nothing really remarkable about it, but I decided to draw it anyways.  I do like working with monochromatic works, and so this was the perfect opportunity for me!.  The medium is watercolor.  

Trees and Flowers

 These pictures range from 2012-2014, I believe, and are of trees and flowers.  Flowers were the first images from nature that I really began to draw.  I loved doing them in any medium, from pencil to watercolor to acrylic paint.  Trees soon followed and I fell in love with drawing them, especially bare trees during the winter time.

Inspired by a tree at Hope College

This first picture is done with oil bars, if you don't know what they are, they are like big cylindrical bars that are made up of something like oil paint.  That probably isn't a really good description... If you want a real description of what an oil bar is, go here. Oil bars are incredibly fun to use, very messy (that's where most of the fun is, in my opinion!), and vibrant.  I only used black and white oil bars here, but I love the result.  Oh, and do you see the human figure in the tree?  Was it intentional?  I don't know, and I'm not gonna tell!

This next piece was done with pencil, and was drawn from a photograph. The flower is originally red in color, but I decided to do it in black and white.  Noticing a theme here?  It's true, I do like monochromatic pieces.

                                            

Pencil drawing of a flower I saw in Spain

This flower below was done in watercolor and it is one of my favorite, if not the favorite, flowers on the page.  I paid close attention to the shading and made sure I defined the edges of the flower well. 

           

A rose from my grandma's garden

The next flower is... hard to see.  I'll admit it, but I wanted to include it anyways.  It was really the first time I had ever tried cross-hatching with pencil.  Cross-hatching is when you make straight lines in one direction, then go over it in another direction(s) to make the value darker.  It was not my favorite way to draw with pencil, but it was definitely interesting!

The same rose from my grandma's garden

You guessed it! The same rose, again, from my grandma's garden

This final flower is, I believe, the first time I ever really experimented with pastels.  I had a fresh new set but I didn't know what to draw. So, I turned to a subject that I'd already drawn several times before, in several different ways.  Is it weird to say that my favorite part of the work is, in fact, the background?  Because it is.

This final picture was not based on a
photograph, if I remember correctly.  In fact, I think it came straight out of my head.  Maybe that's why I don't like it as much...  Anyways, this work was done with watercolors, which is pretty evident by the rather translucent looking colors.  Let me just say, landscapes are really difficult for me!