Hill House - A commission

Finished this on the weekend. It was my first architectural collage piece. Challenging, but worth it! Thanks Jennifer for asking me to do this for you!

Hill House 
Hand Painted and found papers on canvas

100 Followers!

Wow! I just noticed that I have 100 followers on my blog! Thank you all for taking the time to follow along, and I promise that I will try to post more often. It's been a busy New Year so far, but not artwise.  I've been busy with my hubby who had to get a knee replaced. Now that he is on the mend I'm finishing up a collage house portrait commission and I have an idea for a bunch of tiny watercolours.
Thanks again everyone!

Patty

P.S. The painting is a little doodle I did at my friend Lauren's house a couple of years ago, and I just found it in my files a little while ago. I decided I like it!

Have a Merry Christmas and a Hoppy New Year!

Merry Christmas Everyone! See you in the New Year!

Patty

Wetlands- WIP Finished!

Done! Now titled Elegant Ecosytem, this has been submitted to the Eco Arts Awards contest. It has been quite the challenge for me, but I think it was worth all the effort. Thanks to everyone for your support!

Wetlands - WIP 6

Finally I have finished the heron! I've also done the red-winged blackbird and have started on the cattails. The turtle and frog will be difficult, I think, because of the tiny details. This can be very frustrating, as I learned with the blackbird's eye. I had the tiny circle all cut out to the right size, only to have it fall off the tip of my finger and disappear! This only happened three times before I got it to stick! Anyway, I am going to try and work like a fiend today and get it done. (or at least very close!). I want to get it submitted to the contest, plus I need to get started on a Christmas watercolour commission.

Wetlands - WIP 5

I think I'm done with the water, next are the animals and plants!

Wetlands - WIP 4

I've finally finished the sky! Next, on to the water....

Wetlands - WIP 3

Today I finished my rough underpainting, rough being the operative word. I had to stop myself from putting in too much detail and remember that this is just a guideline and not the finished painting!
In the first photo, the underpainting is done and I have applied one piece of paper. (I forgot to take a picture before I glued it on.)

In the next photo, I've started working on the background. I like how the heron's smooth feathers contrast with the more busy background, so I will try to keep them that way when I collage the papers on to him.

Wetlands - WIP 2

Today I started to block in the colours in the underpainting. As you can see it looks really rough, but it will all be covered in paper eventually. The paint acts as a guide for me and also to test colours and values.

Wetlands - WIP

I discovered a great art contest the other day called Eco Arts Awards. I thought it would be a great contest to enter. Artists will submit artwork with their interpretation of the meaning of Ecology. 

The first thing that sprang to mind was Wetlands. I love Great Blue Herons, so I thought I'd make one the main focus, and also in keeping with the ecology theme, I'll be using my paper collage process, using primarily papers recycled from old books and magazines if I can.

I found my heron reference from Paint My Photo a great website where photographers can post their photos for artists to use as copyright free reference material. Thanks Tracee Murphy for the great photo!


After doing a couple of thumbnail sketches, I drew my scene onto a 24 X 12" canvas. Since this piece will be fairly complicated I will loosely paint it first with acrylics to give me a guideline while applying the papers.


Here is my drawing so far. I will be fixing that poor dragonfly!

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo, it's very hard to get a good picture of a pencil drawing!

More to follow!