Office Desk Steez: Post-it Portrait #3

Been having some MUCH better hair days lately. Actually I just dyed it too but didn't have a red pen handy to add a red tint to it. Maybe next time.

SN: The color is visible finally!! Yeah so apparently sometimes there is a bit of a difference in using some "ethnic" hair products. I've just used "standard" hair products for years with no issues, I prefer it actually. But I'm starting to see that hair color might be one of those things where I should really go by the picture, haha. But I digress...

Office Desk Steez: Post-it Portrait #2

Hey, sometimes you just don't care.

I doodled another "post-it portrait", complete with raggedy head of hair. The tank top I completely made up, but the scruffy hair was about right. haha

The blank face was pretty much how I felt at the moment.

Office Desk Steez

"self-portrait"

My name tag at work.

I don't know, I've always wanted to to a "portrait" of the back of my head. So I just did it. I'll probably do more of these post-it portraits...

Where it all started...

I've been really preoccupied with work and homework lately so I haven't had too much time to post like I want to. Sorry!! But I did want to push myself to make time for this particular post because it was around this time last year that I started up this blog. Soooo I guess that would make this my 1st Bloggiversary!! (is that even how you spell it?!)

Cue the confetti and triumphant horns.

Anyway, I thought that I would take things waaay back and talk about the first piece of artwork that truly inspired me. I was about 20 years old I think and I went to the National Gallery in DC for a field trip with my art history class. The main exhibit featured English artist Thomas Gainsborough and a vast collection of his portrait work and landscapes. In one of the rooms was this painting of a famous dancer in the 1700s:

Giovanna Baccelli, Thomas Gainsborough 1782. Oil on canvas.

Entranced, I was. It was the first time I felt a connection to a particular piece of artwork or artist. It also inspired me to make my first real decision about a career as an artist: to be a portrait painter. Though I had no idea how to make that happen, seeing that exhibit made the dream seem so possible. It literally changed my life!

Blue Flower

Blue Flower, T. Turner 2011

Even though I was gone for a while, I wasn't COMPLETELY unproductive. I was lucky enough to be able to get some time at work to create a piece of whatever I wanted as long as I used our computer software. I'm more confident in my painting skills, but I had never made a digital painting before! That's a whole different set of rules than I'm used to, but I understand the basics. In some ways it's almost better than using real paint! You can't ctrl+z standing at an easel or magically have an endless supply of the perfect paint color you mixed. I was particularly proud of this piece, so I thought that I should share it.

This was made solely with Adobe Photoshop. I've never considered myself someone that needs to achieve super realism, but I'll be damned if that doesn't look like a rose haha. I found a picture online

Can't sleep, and oh yeah...Happy New Year.

Why am I still up at 4:00 am?! Just can't sleep. Work is going to be a loooong one today I'll tell you that. At any rate, I just realized that this is officially the first entry I'm writing in the new year! Cheers to you all! I'm looking forward to a lot, but mostly I'm just looking forward to life. Damn I mean, if I get to see the end of the year I'd say it was a good one. I have to admit, I've never really been a "new year's resolution-y" kind of person. Not that I'm opposed to change or self-improvement, and I'm not saying that I don't have any goals, but I pretty much make them up and adjust as I go along - and depending on the situation...not necessarily because the next year arrives. Honestly, things are pretty calm right now. And that can be either a good thing or a bad thing, haha. Too soon to tell though...

As far as the painting from the last post, it's still not at a point yet where I feel like sharing the progress BUT I will as soon as I feel that it's done. Now that I've become preoccupied again, it might be a little difficult to try to make time for painting...but it will get done though. Until then, here's a little something that I completed as a class assignment: A photo correction exercise, but man this one was a doozy. We had several pictures to choose from, and my dumbass decided to pick a really hard one to challenge myself. It took a couple of hours, but it was a labor of love. I believe it turned out great in the end - not perfect, but definitely good. The hardest part was removing all the grainy dots, and repairing the torn piece at the bottom right of the original image. You have to make it believable and natural! Good lord...Well hopefully with more practice, I'll be airbrushing the Kardashians' cellulite and Alicia Keys' acne before I know it.

A little artwork housekeeping

A study from a combo of live model and photograph

Can't have a site talking about a paintbrush and not have any art! Well...I guess I could, the whole idea of a purple paintbrush was just a metaphor anyway so I really don't HAVE to talk about art. But I will. And I am. So I'll show a bit of mine. Now that I have a bit of free time, I'm going to use some of it to finally finish a couple of paintings that I started over the summer. I want to finish them before I move on to anything else. My queue is so backed up, haha. And I want to move on to some newer stuff fast so...aye yi yi, here goes. The struggle to fight how easily distracted I get.

Alright, I got this idea from talking with a friend of mine. So I'm going to show this painting while I'm in the process of working on it, that way I have a little extra mental accountability to get myself through it. At this point I'm nervous about going back into it, but I'm really tired of looking at it being unfinished. Who likes the feeling of unfinished business? Besides, I think this piece will be something that I can really use once it's done. I think I was able to get a good start on it, the stage it's in now is after about 9 hours of work total...so that would make it about 1 regular workday of painting. I still have a ways to go though. Well, hopefully I'll be able to give an update before the end of the week. Stay tuned!