Bee-ing Artsy
Technically I have been an artist all my life...but I never really tapped into my artistic side until I was in my twenties. I still don't think I have truly reached my full artistic potential, but I am still learning and experimenting. So, far I absolutely love oil painting! Indian ink is another medium I’m drawn to for a stark black and white contrast. I also enjoy charcoal and soft pastel drawing. And, I have been known to be crafty with my decorating, especially around holiday decor. The type of paintings I create are usually portraiture or landscape. The portraits tend to be vibrant, colorful and loud. The landscapes are a nice mix of true color and unique pops and tend to be fantastical in styling. My indian ink pieces are black and white and somewhat abstract, since I don't use a typical paint brush as my tool. I don't fully know why I usually use such extreme colors or just black and white in my creations. Perhaps it's because I soak up the variety of gorgeous colors in nature when applying paint to my canvas. Some of my pieces have aspects that when seen in person appear to glow from within. Again, I am still venturing into my unrealized artistic ability and enjoying every step of the way!
Apples are Made of Mostly Water
This is a modern or contemporary piece. Very simple, in design as a whole. Yet, the focal point, the blue apple is very complex. There is a lot of visual texture in the apple, as well as physical texture too. The reason...
Autumn View
The second landscape I ever painted was this fall landscape titled Autumn View. The picture I used as my reference had a lot of texture, but I felt that my painting didn’t need as much. I painted the background hills with a smooth brush stroke, giving them a sort of wind blown feel...
Black Heels
Like the majority of girls in the world, I love shoes. I also like to draw with charcoal. So, one day I combined my love of shoes and charcoal drawing and created Black Heels...
Blue-Green Rory
This was my first animal portrait. The first of four small paintings in a collection. I decided to not use the true natural colors, because I want the viewer to look at the painting of Rory in a new way. With the emotion that Rory was feeling at the time the original picture was taken. She was not happy,...
Blue Mountain
My first landscape oil painting ever in life was my Blue Mountain. My source was a magazine photo that was only 4 inches square. This was problem number one. With a photo that small you can’t see the details well enough to recreate them in your own vision. Problem number two. I painted it in 3 hours,...
Blue Sunset
This drawing is made of soft pastels. If you have never worked with soft pastel before, it’s chalky like charcoal. It blends together nicely, unlike oil pastel, which gets clumpy. I often like to draw in just black and white, but every now and then I like to “play” with color...
Bright Rory
This is my most recent painting. I painted it as a gift to my sister for her birthday a while back. This painting is the biggest of all the Rory paintings I’ve done so far. As you can see it is in my usual of the wall color palette, that I use for all my portraits...
Butterfly and Orange Mum
This painting reminds me of my papa, whom I miss terribly. His favorite color of flowers was orange. I love the golden colors of the autumn, and was inspired by the beautiful tones that come during the fall season. I also love butterflies,...
Eric
Many years ago, in my very first drawing class, not even my first figure drawing class. Drawing 101, I had to draw a portrait of someone. So, of course I chose my hubby, Eric.
Fav Rory
This is my favorite Rory painting to date. It truly captures the essence of Rory. In this painting her eyes are so expressive, which is how Rory really is. She has so much character...
Fire on the Water Sunset
I envisioned this sunset in my mind one day and just had to get it out on paper. I used soft pastels as the medium. They are fun to blend and play around with,...
Green-Pink Rory
I love the picture that I used for this painting. I actually painted the picture upside down. Rory, the dog, was on her back with her legs up in the air. The angle of the camera to her position was fantastic and created an awesome composition...
Hat Wearing a Lady
In my first painting class, we had to chose a painting to replicate that was created after the 1800’s. I chose Lady with a Hat by Henri Matisse. For those of you that don’t know the background of this painting, it was created in 1905. It is a portrait of Matisse’s wife, Amelie Parayre. The true title is La Femme au Chapeau, which is french for Lady with a Hat...
Jack
I drew this charcoal drawing a few years ago. It was featured on a local art galleries webpage about four years ago for Halloween. It’s fun, and simple, yet playful and intriguing...
Joker
In my very first drawing class we had to choose a famous person and do a grid drawing of them. I had never done a grid drawing before, and had only done a few portrait drawings, mostly of myself...
Modern Day Venus
I love Sandro Botticelli. He was an amazing artist. His romantic and whimsical style is mesmerizing. I remember the first time I saw a print of “Birth of Venus” I was in awe. That is one of the reasons I painted a sort of replica of his most famous painting...
Multi Colored Rory
This is the final piece of my four painting series of Rory, the cutest french bulldog. For the fourth painting I wanted to use a wider variety of colors. I feel that by painting in an off the wall color palette it gives the piece(s) life in a unique way...
Owl of Gears
I sculpted this branch, gears for flowers and steam punk owl in a design class I took the summer of 2015. I really like steampunk, and was inspired after creating a collage of tools, gears and other miscellaneous things in a previous design class I took the winter/spring of 2015. I also love owls and flowers...
Purple Rory
This is the second painting of a four piece series that I painted of my favorite model or muse, Rory. Rory is my sisters French Bulldog. She is the cutest puppy ever. And, has so much personality. The pictures my sister takes of Rory always tell a story,...
Self Portrait Blue
This is the second self portrait I’ve ever done, but the first one using oil paints. The first self portrait I painted was using acrylic medium years ago. I do like to paint with acrylic, but I love oil more. Being that this was my second self portrait I wanted to do something different with the coloring...
Spring Collage
This is the first collage I have made. I don’t know why it took me so long to make a collage, but it was worth the wait. I had wanted to make one for quite some time, but never took the time to do it. That is, until...
Struggle in the Open
I painted this years ago. I had just overcome some difficult struggles that I had been dealing with for many years. Painting this helped me heal. Like all my artworks, it just appeared in my head and I couldn’t stop thinking about it until I was able to create it...
Tree Sunset
I’m right handed, many, many years ago I injured my right forearm. I honestly don’t remember how I injured it, because it was so long ago...I needed to do an art project for a class I was taking, so I had to do it all using my left hand. Which was very scary,...
Volcano
This was the first painting I painted before my surgery to remove my cancer. I like to think that it is representational of my journey to rid my body of the tumor. Just like how a volcano erupts and causes a big explosion to push out the heat that collects inside it. This is what my initial surgery was like, to remove the cancer that was building up inside me...