Daisy

Well, I am back in Annapolis. I've had the craziest two months of my life, but all is well and even better than when we left. My husband's orders to Afghanistan got canceled. We had already moved out of our house. We drove across the country to Utah, played with our families and made a marathon drive to come back for my husband to start work again. We had a great time house hunting, moving and figuring everything out. All the while I was trying to keep up with two summer term master's classes. I had my portable easel and a laptop all summer, so it all worked out. I didn't do as well on a couple of assignments, but in the end I'm really glad I did it.
Here is one of my last assignments for the class.

Christian- SOLD

Just a touch of Optimism

This is my last assignment for my classes this semester. I've had a really hard time focusing on painting. Nate got orders yesterday. He is going to be deployed to Afghanistan. He'll be away from us for 15 mo. He leaves really soon too- In about a month and a half. We're going to try and pack everything into storage by the end of this month and then we'll head to Utah. I'm going to move in with my parents.

This painting depicts my mood at the moment perfectly. I had painted a great flower before wilted and hung over like that, but i liked it better down- YOu can see where I wiped it out. I should have treated the background a little differently, but oh well.

You can tell I'm tired when I post something and don't put a title on it. Sometimes thinking of a title is more challenging than thinking of a painting. Any suggestions for any of my untitled work?

Self Portrait

Kind of struggled on this one. Oh well. you win some, you lose some. I think I'll have another shot at a self-portrait this summer for another class.

Unusual Suspect

Salt and Pepper

Red Lady

This is just the start of a pastel assignment, but I think the drawing turned out really neat, so I'm posting it here.

A Little Color

This painting was for another assignment. We were just supposed to have fun with color and use pure intense colors. I had so much fun with this. Hours went by- and I was just responding intuitively to what I was seeing. I think these are the moments that artists live for- when things just flow.

Savannah

Marisel

Projects and NEWS

So, I'm sorry to those of you who check here pretty frequently that there hasn't been anything new for a couple of weeks. I have had some interesting things going on. I had spring break for my classes- I thought I'd do some artwork, but I was pretty tired. Jake's birthday fell on St. Patrick's day, and we went all-out for the party. I made 14 Jedi costumes for the kids.

Here's the news: I'm Pregnant. Due Halloween. So exciting, but I've been pooped. I seem to be doing better than I was the past few weeks.

Nate was out of town all last week and I decided to take on some major projects. I completely reorganized the family room downstairs, moved furniture, got new shelves and a desk from freecyle, totally re-did my whole dining room set, and a bunch more stuff. I sanded primed and painted 9 pieces of furniture. All in all, it was totally insane. I had some great help from friends and when Nate got home it wasn't all a mess.

It's a little out of focus, but you can get an idea of how brave I was from the picture.

More Fruit Texture Style

My third assignment of the same subject, this time "high key" I decided to use a palette knife and had a lot of fun with it.

hands

I haven't posted anything forever. I was really stressed about this hand assignment. I thought I was going to get a C, but it was the first time in the class I got a solid A on somthing.

Here's a similar painting to the last one, but it is supposed to be "low key"

"A Little Fruity"

Green Without

Lemons

More Heads

Apples in a Bowl

This is an assignment I had to do of something that was a reflective surface.

fabric study SOLD

more assignments

The Art Student

So, most of my postings for a while won't be too original or anything, and pretty academic in nature. It may be fun for any of you who happen to check to see what I'm up to. Definitely not slacking though.

Head Drawing Studies

Value Studies

Ava idea II

After working on that pastel some more, and going further and further downhill, I decided I might have to start over. Here's a sketch from another picture of the same model that has a little better shadow shapes.

AVA (work in progress)

I keep thinking I'm almost done with this one and then I see more things I need to fix. I'll post it when it is done. I think it will be a really nice painting.

Head Drawing

I haven't posted much lately because I decided to forge ahead with my MFA and I am in a couple of intense graduate art classes. One is Advanced still life painting and the other is head drawing. above is a work in progress and below is a still life value study. fun fun fun

"Beverly Beach" SOLD

Here's what I've been working on the past couple of weeks. It is finished at last. I've also been working on my house, my routines, and trying to get everything ready to start back up with my MFA classes. I'll be starting on Monday, so I guess I've been sleeping in a little, knowing that it is going to be back to the drawing board pretty intensely. I have three portrait commissions which I will be working on this week as well. I'll do my best to get as much done as I can before Monday, but we'll see how it goes.

Pirates and Princesses

Here's my little fam all dressed up on my 30th birthday. That's the dress I made. It's even reversible. Too bad they wouldn't let us into Disney in our costumes, so I had to wear a Mickey shirt with my gold skirt all day. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

"Memories on the Bay" SOLD

Well, thanks to Nate, I got at least one image up here more quickly than I thought.

Happy New Year

After a week in Florida, Christmas, and a great week of having my family in town, I'm finally ready to get back into the swing of things. I scraped off my palette, cleaned out my studio, and I got some good painting in yesterday. I'm still having technological difficulties. We got a new computer from Nate's brother. The computer that I saved all my pics on doesn't have internet yet. I'm going to keep up the painting, but it still might take me a couple more days to get all the bugs worked out with the computers and stuff.
Happy New Year! Thanks for checking out my blog. Don't give up on me. It will be a little more action packed soon.