Paint Party Friday - Sailor's Delight

"Sailor's Delight"

Here's my week two Paint Party Friday Submission.  I'm actually quite happy with this one.  The colors are a little off from the original painting, the purple is more of a lavender color in real life.  I realize that my boat is a little skewed and the line for the sail is bowed out instead of a straight angle but overall I like this one a whole lot more than my first one.

I got the idea from Paint Works Magazine August 2010 edition.  If you've never seen this magazine and you love painting, I highly recommend checking it out.  They have ideas for acrylic, oil and watercolors in every issue.  I own several issues but this is the first time I've actually taken the plunge and have tried one.  I have the newest edition that has a beautiful watercolor tulip design that I'm really wanting to try but want to wait until I have more practice first.

If you would like to see more PPF submissions hop over to the Paint Part Friday blog here.  Happy Friday!

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New Season - New Look

You may have noticed the totally new look to my blog.  I was so tired of all the white.  I know it looked nice and clean but it reminded me of all the snow we've had and I was ready to look at something else.  My blog header came from the image below that I created on Saturday morning using my new soft pastels.  It is the first piece of artwork that I have been really proud of and absolutely love.  So much so, that I have actually framed it!  That's the first piece of my artwork that I have framed and will be hanging in my home.  Yay!  So exciting.  :)

 "Autumn Sunset"

Soft Pastel on Strathmore Pastel Paper 80lb 118g/m 9"x12"

And here it is framed.  It's just a cheap black frame with white mat that I got in a huge set.  For now it will be staying in that frame.  I have so many of them I plan to just use those to frame my artwork and will be hanging them in my bedroom/studio, once I find the nails that is.

I couldn't get the scanned image to show the bright, vivid colors correctly.  If I lighten it too much the colors get faded and if I darken it too much the colors look dull.  The original is very vivid and the sky looks like it's on fire. So pretty!  Of course it is cloudy today so I couldn't get good light for the actual photo either.  I was going to save this for PPF but I couldn't wait that long!  I also was so bored at work last night I decided to start changing my blog and figured I might as well post about it since it's my new blog header.  I know I should be doing Spring colors but for now, this will have to do.  I'm thinking I may change it with the seasons provided I come up with images I like enough to use as my header.

Hope you all had a good weekend.  I go back to full time at work this week which has it's good and bad points.  The good is the income, the bad is actually having to work (lol) as well as switching from mornings to afternoons every two weeks.  Totally throws off my sleeping.  At least I'm still on afternoons for one more week!

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