A New Angel On The Scene

Dropping in here to share my progress on the first Angel I’m creating in Kara Bullock’s Angels Among Us online workshop. The workshop features 6 artists and 12 weeks of inspired creations.

First, here is the sketch of my angel’s face. She looks good on paper. However, will she look the same or even bear any resemblance to this drawing once I put paint onto the canvas?

Angel Face Sketch

Instead of hoping I might be able to draw her face free-hand on the canvas, I opted to transfer the original sketch directly onto the canvas. Painting her face is challenge enough.

Sketch Transferred to Canvas

Okay, first layer of paint and you can see some resemblance to the sketch. Right? Some sort of modern abstract contemporary thing going on here. Face it (haha, no pun intended. Maybe), this is ugly stage. I am digging her turquoise nose however.

First layer of paint

More layers. Now she’s kind of rockin’ a Picasso look with that dramatic dark eye.

More layers

At this point I feel like she has too many layers of paint on her face and I need to move onto a different aspect of the painting. Onto adding her hair and a halo. Just because.

Face, Hair, and Halo

Here is what I’ve learned so far.

• Using a combination of Liquitex and Golden Fluid acrylic paints may not be the best idea.
• Be careful if you dampen your paintbrush with water, dry it, then paint again. You will pull up a layer (or layers) paint. Then Angel face looks like she has age marks on her cheeks.
• Put enough paint on your palette. This is still a challenge for me. I seem to have this mental block between squeezing enough paint onto my palette, not wanting to waste paint, and seeing dollar symbols rise from the paint puddle. You know the issue: “I paid a lot of money for this paint. I can’t waste it!”
• Using a paint extender can counteract the above problem. And, covering the left over paint with some plastic wrap kept it viable for painting later or the next day.

Angel Face still has a ways to go. I’m way behind in this online workshop. Haven’t even attempted the other lessons yet. Fortunately, we have “lifetime” access to the videos. Maybe I’ll be all caught up by the end of the year.

An Angel Appears

The month of September has come and gone. And with it we officially entered a new phase of life. Gone is the home we lived in for 12.5 years. Sold to a new family who seem to really love it and want to make it their own. It was a busy and stressful month with lots of back and forth between the old homestead and the new, moving out all those things we didn’t need, bringing home items that we wanted, and donating, selling, and tossing stuff in the trash.

Now it is time to breath and get back to the studio.

Today I want to share a newish painting that I created in over summer. In my last post, I mentioned a free tutorial offered by Kara Bullock . This angel painting was inspired by Kara’s tutorial. It is not the subject of her tutorial. I didn’t want to create the exact same thing and simply used it as a springboard for this piece.

Since I was thinking about taking Kara’s online class “Angels Among Us” I decided to try my hand at creating an angel painting. I combined some of Kara’s techniques with techniques learned in other classes. Here is the result.

I almost always consider the beginning (and sometimes the middle) of a painting to be the ugly phase. An angel is no exception.

And so we begin…

Scary face sketch

Looking a little more “human”

At this point I was relearning how to draw and paint faces. The errors in my face sketch became more evident when I started painting on the details. Eyes too close. Flat features. Asymmetrical. Oh well. It was a good time to move my attention to her gown and wings.

Angel gets a body

And her wings…

And her hair…

I didn’t realize the challenge of creating angel wings with feathers. When I first added the feather detail, her wings looked like they were hijacked by Spiderman. A fair amount of white paint and paint marker did the trick. More work on her face and her hair. Then, all of a sudden, a pretty angel emerged from the canvas.

Nearly finished…

A few final details on her sash and repeating the color around the neckline of her gown really pulled this piece together.

An Angel Appears

I did sign up to take Kara’s workshop, “Angels Among Us” and recently started working on the first lesson. I’ll share the results of those pieces in the coming weeks.