New Loves

Hello!

I had to do a couple of presentations in my painting class on my favorite historical and modern painters. During that process of looking up images online I stumbled upon several amazing artists, and was introduced to some others by my classmates. I thought I'd share some of my favorites from three of the more recent artists. I resisted putting up a lot more pictures than I did, so just look them up on Google or their home pages if you're interested. These are all fairly recent.

The first is Illustrator Nathan Ota. He does these amazing fantasy paintings that tell stories of monster trees, robots, birds, and monkey guys. I believe these are acrylic on wood. Love.
www.nathanota.com

                         Robo Baby                                                             Wishing on a Star

      Going Home

Past Notions

Broken School House

Next is Amy Sol. She creates these beautiful scenes of a girl with her cute little companions and nature. She is influenced by Manga, folk art, vintage illustration and modern design. I love the way the wood grain looks and how it complements the image. She's also self-taught which is pretty cool. Enjoy!

http://www.amysol.com/

                                    Music of Turtles                                                           Plumlit Night

Flying Fish

 Starlight Crumble

                                    The Cloverline Slumber                                 Spring Blush

Leave the hair and go free

And last but not least, Jacek Yerka. He is from Poland, and is an AMAZING Surrealist painter! I keep staring at the incredible detail and thinking about the bizarre ideas and worlds he's come up with. I wanna live in one of those tree houses! Seriously some of the coolest paintings ever. I'm not positive on the medium of each, but I think most are done in oil, maybe some in pastel?

 http://www.yerkaland.com/

The Piano

 Autumn

The Sargass Sea bishop

The Walking Lesson

Bible Dam

Green Squall

What I love about all three of these artists is their ability to paint realistically rendered fantasy scenes. They pull me into their stories and seem to capture this other-worldness that can be very difficult to accomplish. I am very much inspired and I want to go paint something...  

Take-out

Wow, it's been a while since I've made a new post! Things have been a little busy, but I finished my painting class project. 

Inspired by Elizabeth Murray:

It's hanging on the wall in this picture, and it's a few feet tall. Acrylic paint on gessoed watercolor paper.

 Mmmm steamy noodles make me happy...

P.S. I'm going to do another post hopefully tomorrow on some modern art...

The back way

A day of photographs, sunshine, and love.

{Taken off the back 118}

I leave you with this quote by author Madeleine L'Engle,

"We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts."

Projects

Here are two of my paintings from this semester in my painting class at Moorpark College...

This was a color wheel project, so we had to use all 12 colors and their tint, tone and shade. I was inspired by the book "Water for Elephants." Sorry the picture quality isn't too great : /

I just finished this painting for my midterm. We had to combine collage and realistic painting (from a still-life of skulls and flowers we had set up in the classroom). I based mine on Ecclesiastes 3- "A Time for Everything."

Almost all of my collage materials are from antique stores : )

For my next project (which I mentioned 2 posts ago), this is my inspiration...

And now, I bid you goodnight.

I like birds. Especially little ones.

Just a little taste of some of my sewing mischief... 

My niece Daphne with Viola the baby bird

Betty                            

Another Betty (they all come out a little different)

"Owl be home for Christmas" owl ornaments

I've been saying this for like 50 years(?), but one of these days I'll get my Etsy account up and running to sell my French Buttons softies. Stay tuned...

Inspiration

For the next project in my painting class, we are using the work of the late American artist Elizabeth Murray for our inspiration. She did very large, bright and bold paintings that are cut out in unique shapes. I'm really starting to like this very bubbly and graphic style of art she used. Instead of the normal rectangle canvas, she had these large boards or maybe wood cut out in whatever shapes she sketched out. I'll talk more about my project once i figure out what I'm going to do!

Arts, crafts, and the like.

This is going to be a blog about art and related topics. 


I'll be posting my own artwork (including paintings, softies, mixed-media etc.) and also the works of those who have inspired me and who just make darn cool stuff. 


So here begins the journey of the blog and my adventures in art!