Category: Painting

Oil and other kinds of painting.

Art, Journal, Painting

“Be My Sexy Dead Wife”

maggiedot

Andy and I have been watching more of The IT Crowd, a bizarre and funny sitcom-style BBC show about an IT department in a large corporation. The first season was a blast–so odd, and yet so hilarious– that we actually rented it twice from Netflix, so we knew we had something good. This last week we got season 2, and while it’s different, it’s been a lot of fun. Hence, the bizarre quote. XD There are lots of them.

It’s been an excellent weekend so far. Last night, we hung out with Nate and Sadie, made spaghetti over at their place and then went out for gelato. Caught some live music in the process, which was delightful, and then headed back here to watch a few episodes of Futurama. ^_^ All in all, an excellent evening.

Today has been pretty laid back. I kept meaning to play a bit of Grand Theft Auto, but just never quite got around to it. (HAHA! I didn’t “get around” to playing video games! XD Love that.) Did watch some of my guilty reality-TV-show pleasure, Australia’s Next Top Model (I’ve been through most of America’s NTM, and Project Runway). It’s a fun show for just mind-vegging on.

Also got some quick editing in on the still as-yet untitled “DYSTOPIC SF SHORT STORY” and sent it off to meh mum, who’s my regular editor. Switched it to present tense, which I think works a lot better for the flow.

Then I topped off the afternoon with some painting. This face is slightly more realistic, I think, than the first one, but I still need to go back and add a little more peachy-orange to the left side of his face in places, just to warm up the lighting.

Dorian_3

Then Kaku and Andy’s classmate Leon are coming over for pizza and to watch Solaris, which I’ve heard is very good. Should be a good evening! ^_^

Art, Journal, Painting

Painting Progress

maggiedot

Haven’t had a whole lot of time to paint lately, so today I snuck in a little oil on canvas.

Dorian_2

Yay for progress! ^_^ I forgot how much I enjoy painting.

Yesterday, when Andy and I went to the Boeing Museum of Flight up in Seattle, I saw the small oil-paint gallery they have of specifically spectacular World War II dogfights. O.O I was in heaven. And also shocked by the amount of detail on even relatively small canvases! It was intense, and inspiring. Can’t help but love that! ^_^

I need to work on backgrounds soooooooooo much. >.< But doing any kind of still life just doesn’t interest me. Maybe I should take a class sometime that will *make* me do still life for practice. I sure could use it.

Art, Painting, Writing

Show and Tell

maggiedot

It’s late, so I’ll be brief! Thought I’d showcase my amateur painting process just for kicks. Here’s the basic paint-sketching I got done this last Saturday after spending waaaaay too much time trying to figure out a subject. Turns out, Andy is my subject this time around. I’m really stuck on the portrait thing, and on close-up face shots. I’d like to break out of that sooner rather than later, but I liked this set up a lot. Tentatively titled “Dorian”.

Dorian_1

Very, very rough. But started.

Also, I’ll post some of the pictures Andy took of his and my and Nate and Sadie’s trip to the beach in Pacific City yesterday sometime either tomorrow or whenever.

Writing Stuff:

Finished the POV rewrite at the end of “Swallow”. Check out the Writing To-Do List (WTDL) page to keep track of the things I check off my list. Also, got MY SISTER’S KEEPER on audio-book for the car since I finished SENSE & SENSIBILITY (not my favorite Austen), and picked up two nonfiction books on firefighting for research purposes.

Journal, Painting

So yeah…

maggiedot

I’m sick. Somehow I managed to get the flu, and since yesterday have been enjoying all the wonderful perks of a fever and no energy, drippy nose, and general achiness. Yum. Today, still have a fever, but it’s the achiness that’s driving me mad. Makes it hard to get comfortable. Bah.

At least today I can look at a computer screen without my head yelling at me. Figured I’d post the latest painting I’ve done–the one from last weekend (and a few weekends before that–it’s been a long project).

So there it is. Posted the Work-In-Progress shot Andy took a few weeks ago, too.

Now I’m going to try to rest some more… >.<

Art, Journal, Painting, Writing

Don’t you enjoy the rustic charm of the materialistically disinclined?

maggiedot

So! Still a little in that limbo land of the job-world. Seems like my current placement would really like to keep me on in some capacity, but I’m still a little uncertain what form that would exactly take. Ah well, no hurry. I’ll be staying an extra three days to help the returning employee get back up to speed and pick up some of the new tasks I’ve taken on.

Other than all that, though, the week has been good. We finally got the Jeep in to have the cracked evaporator looked at, unfortunately it seems like there are a lot of other “problems” it has, so we’ll have to evaluate what the most important fixes are, and what we can live with for a while. Heck, we *could* live without the evaporator, but the death-fog is starting to scare me when I drive. So at least that will get fixed. And we get a loaner car until it’s ready, which is nice. ^_^ You know, getting around places and all that.

House of MirthOn a more interesting note, I got to do some more oil painting this weekend! YAY! It’s the first chance I’ve had to really settle into a new image, because the last project I worked on (not yet finished) was done in non-water-soluble paint, and therefore took almost three weeks to dry out enough for me to take it off the easel. Now it’s dry, so perhaps next week I’ll do some work on that one.

The one I worked on this weekend, though, was good practice on faces, proportion, and skin-tone work. I used a stock image from “NormLifeBabyStock” on DeviantArt. It was a beautiful picture, and since I wanted something other than just a face, I figured it was a good image to work from. I realize now that the dark background which I added later ended up making her look a lot paler (though in the original image, she’s got a bright light on her and is therefore fairly pale then too), but I was enraptured with the Rembrandt dark-warm shadows. Ah well. Learn something new each time. All the same, I had a lot of fun, and though it doesn’t look nearly as realistic as the portrait photo, I think it gets the general gist.

In other news, still plugging away at Modified-Chekhov-Year (MCY) Story #1. It really took off today. I was panicking because I was running out of battery power, so I just started writing, trying to get into it as quickly and effectively as possible, and it worked. I barely remembered to eat lunch during my lunch break. lol. ^_^ Current word count total:

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
3,857 / 7,500
(51.4%)

Getting pretty far in, and I’m just going to say now, it’s going to be a tight finish to get in under 7.5k. We’ll just have to wait and see.

OH! And I almost forgot: got my edits for “Imaginix” from Fantasist Enterprises Editor-In-Chief William H. Horner! YAY! I’m so excited about getting the story polished up for print. Keep an eye out for the Fantastical Visions IV anthology due out this spring!