Day 358: Camper

My Dad is very hard to find gifts for, I guess because he doesn’t ever really want anything. Sometimes he needs new sweaters or a new baseball cap, but I’m not sure he really cares about getting those kinds of gifts. I’m not sure why. I love presents. Socks, scarves, books, candy bars–I don’t really care. Unlike my Dad, I just think presents are fun.

Anyways, because I really didn’t know what to get for my Dad, I decided to make him a painting. See, I made him a teeny tiny painting of a house several years ago, and he still has it hanging on the wall, so I figured a painting is a gift he might actually enjoy getting.

The little artwork I made for him this year is supposed to be our camper during a trip we took as a family many years ago to Mackinac in Michigan. We stayed at this cute little campground on the water and camped right on the beach. It was pretty.

I gave him the painting on Christmas and I think he liked it. He said something like, “Well, that doesn’t exactly look like our camper, but this must be us in Mackinac!” and then smiled brightly. It was nice.

Day 312: Abstract Nature

On Wednesday night, I made this abstract painting with new my new fluorescent acrylic paints.  Turned out okay.

Day 308: City Sunset

On Saturday night, I made this gouache painting of a city skyline at sunset, which is actually composed of a background and multiple layers of watercolor paper shaped like buildings. Here’s how I did this:

• I cut a piece of watercolor paper into pieces – 1/3 for the painting background and 2/3 for the layers of buildings.
• Next, I painted the background using orange red and orange yellow gouache.
• After that, I cut out the layers of buildings, starting with the shortest buildings and moving to the taller buildings on the back layer.
• Then, I painted the layers using black and grey paints. The first layer is all black and the last layer is mostly grey with a teeny bit of black.
• Next, I used a glue stick and glued all the layers on, with the tallest grey layer on the bottom.
• Finally, I used a white Uni-ball Signo pen to make the little windows.

Day 306: Abstract Watercolor

On Thursday night, I toyed around with my gouache paints and a leaf, which I used as a sort of stamp, to make this watercolor. Turned out pretty cool and inspired me to order some neon paints. Can’t wait to work with those.

Day 305: Pumpkin Head Bird Trainer

Tonight, I made this rather random pumpkin head bird trainer guy. This piece came about as I was looking through a free booklet of photography I got at one of the museums in Barcelona. There was a picture of a bird trainer in it, which I thought was already kind of weird. I decided it would be fun to make it weirder.

Day 303: Skull

Happy Halloween!

Day 298: Creepy Character

Jim thinks this guy is really scary, but I rather like him!

Day 291: Watercolor Practice

Last Wednesday, I played around with my watercolors. Mostly, was trying to use salt to push away the watercolors, but it wasn’t working with the cheap paints I was using. Then I pulled out a tube of color and it worked. Definitely looked cool.

Day 287: Watercolor Woman

Last Saturday, I pulled out my watercolors and did this portrait. It was fun, and it made me realize that I definitely need to start doing more watercolor stuff again.

Day 275: Digi-painting

On Monday, October 1, I made this little artwork with the online tool Bomomo.