The Wild Hunt

The Wild Hunt is finished!  For those of you who ordered prints, you should be getting them soon!

Tomie dePaola Award Submission

It's done.  Now I am going to sleep before tackling Heart of Worship Camp prep tomorrow.  Oi.

From the Prayer Room: Burn Like the Stars

"Burn Like the Stars"
Watercolor,  8.75x9.5"

So here's the final.  I've got to figure out a way to photograph artwork instead of scanning it; all those shadows from the paper that are emphasized by the scanner are driving me nuts.

Dragon Tamer . . . Again

Housewives didn't kill me last weekend.  But this past week has been really difficult for a number of reasons that I don't want to get into.  Still plugging away at DT.  I have piled masses of color on it in Photoshop and I think I've found something.  I hope.

Where Dragon Tamer is now.  

Where I was going originally.

This is a little too dark, I think.  

But I have a tendency to leave my pieces too light, so . . . 

There are still a lot of aspects that I am struggling with, but I am happy with the overall values and I think that pushing the dragon back a little as far as value goes is going to work.  Hopefully the final wont be the riot of color that you see here.  I'm still not as comfortable with Photoshop as I should be.  But I think I have enough here to make informed decisions about my palette.

As you can see, I am no where near where I wanted to be by the end of last week.

1. Dragon Tamer: new color comps and start on the final again.
2. Clean my room (this is an epic undertaking, I may not survive, so if you don't hear from me again, that's why).
3. Sketches for the New Commission - send them off for approval by the end of the week.
4. Help my mom set things up for the Garage Sale this weekend (Again, I might die . . . or get mauled by housewives.  Whichever comes first).
5. Review and edit my summary of the steampunk Little Red Ridding Hood story and lay it out in the format I am going to print the booklets in.
6. Outline my plans for teaching art classes from home.
7. Continue to revise, edit and research painting for sister and FBIL.
8. Not die cleaning my room or setting up the garage sale or participating in the garage sale.
9. Wash my dog . . .
10. Start assignment for LPG class.
11. Email sample images to art directors.

Dragon Tamer: Still a WIP

I imagine sometimes that this stage of painting is not unlike being pregnant.  The vision of the final is so close to being real, but there's still so much time to put in before you see it.

Meanwhile you just feel fat and irritable.  Those of you out there who have been pregnant, let me know.

I did a study over a photo of the Dragon Tamer piece and it was . . . not a pretty sight.  So after aimlessly perusing the internet for "photo night scene" and "moonlit person", trying to remember the name of night paintings I'd seen or come across, and countless other queries, I hit the books.

Which is honestly what I should have done in the first place; I own a copy of "Color and Light" as well as "Imaginative Realism" by James Gurney, after all.  My obsession with books can get me into trouble sometimes; I have so many that I forget or get overwhelmed by too much information.

If I hadn't been so busy looking and reading I would have kicked myself - all the paintings, all the information was there.  At the very least I had a new direction to try and take the color studies.

And as you can see below, take them places I did.

Glowy dragon needs to not make a reappearance. 

Meanwhile I was also working on the final sketches for the Save the Dates.  Simple, I kept telling myself, beautiful color, strong shapes, concentrate on the feeling.

I can't help but think that simple really just means LOTS of work, but maybe I'm doing something wrong . . .

Last year when I went to Tennessee, I went to Cades Cove (possibly one of my favorite places on earth).  We got there before the gates opened and were able to drive through just as the sun was coming up over the mountains.  There was fog and fall trees and deer and it was amazingly beautiful. So when I started working on this piece, that morning is what I was thinking about.

The first one . . . wasn't awesome.  At the very least it didn't get me excited to start the piece.  It didn't recall any of the beauty, any of the feeling I was trying to capture.  There were things I liked, but overall it was just boring.  So I did another one.  It was better, but my struggles with Dragon Tamer have shaken my confidence, so I kept at it, trying to find something that really worked.

I looked up some morning fog, looked up paintings of fog (oh, hello Turner, hello Whistler), trying to just steep myself in the essence of what I was trying to create.

So I made, like, a million color comps.  And then just quit and broke out the watercolor paper and started doing it old school.  I didn't have much more success.

So here's where I am with Dragon Tamer:

Wait, aren't those color comps, you say? Why yes, yes they are . . .

Because this is where it is in real life.  Still.  I still can't seem to find the key.  I've been taking it into my room at night, hoping that by looking at it before I fall asleep, I'll be able to work out the problem in my sleep.

It hasn't worked.

And here's where I am with the Save the Dates:

Color comps everywhere!

Fog doesn't usually drift like this, I am discovering . . . 

I haven't done so many color comps since I was a sophomore in college.  Little Red Cap tricked me with how very easily the steam effect was created and I dived into the color comps here thinking "Fog is like steam, I got this!"

WRONG.

Fog is not like steam.  Especially fog that has light coming through it.  And I can't seem to make up my mind as to what this is going to look like - realistic?  Stylized?  And I'm worried about this nagging voice that's telling me to go make maquettes for the owls so I can light them (shut UP!) correctly.

Both of these were supposed to be DONE by now.  I have a schedule!  Save the Dates were supposed to be a mash up of watercolor-y effects goodness.  In-and-out, easy-peasy.

Freaking owls.  Freaking fog.  Freaking DRAGONS.  Do your worst, you won't win . . .

Working on something for Ten Paces and Draw: check back February 18th to see the final reveal.

Holy crows, I really am a masochist . . .

Dragon Tamer: WIP

Just in case someone out there is wondering what "WIP" means - it stands for "Work In Progress".

Moving along, slowly but surely.  This piece has become infinitely more intricate and complicated than I originally anticipated.  I'm about 22 hours in on the final, way off schedule (I'm supposed to be working on my sister's save the dates, shhhh), and I am now stuck and having to lean heavily on Photoshop to solve some of the color problems I am having.

I had intended to have the final done by next week's post, but I doubt that is going to happen.  So look forward instead to another update on this as well as an update on the Save the Date illustration I will be working on.

It's going to be awesome when it's finished, though!

The sketch for the Save the Date.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

A very merry Christmas and a warm holiday greeting to you and yours from the studio of Sara Silkwood. May your time this season be blessed and filled with hope.  

Here's the finished Christmas Spirit piece!

Thoughts and WIP

I've been struggling with this one - a lot more than I anticipated.  The whole piece feels like a representation of everything that is and is not going on in my life right now.  One of my problems with the piece is that I think it has potential, but I don't know how to go in, grab it, and drag it into the light.  Working smaller was supposed to make this easier and faster.

It's much easier to get strong darks with the watercolor on Strathmore 500 Illustration Board, but I cannot tell you how surprised I am that I am leaning more towards the Arches Coldpress Watercolor Paper.

Still attached to the watercolor/colored pencil thing.  It appeals to my inner OCD.  Which might be a bad thing.  I've been following a couple of people who are involved with the Moleskin Project #2 which is going on at the Spoke Art Gallery in San Francisco.  I think I have a Moleskin lying around and I am playing with the idea of taking it on Family Vacation next week and doing a couple of little studies in watercolor and colored pencil as well as some graphite drawings over the course of the week.  If I have time.  I still need to work on my execution and endurance.

New Work in Progress

Working on the sketch.

1st layers, acrylic on Strathmore 500 Illustration Board Vellum

Sorry, guys, another drive-by post today.  Trying out a new (for this process at least) surface for a painting I'm working on.  It's small, so I am hoping I will be able to meet my deadline for it.  I rushed a little putting the first layers down, so I'm not sure how I feel about it right now.

New stuff in the works for last SmArt School assignment as well.  I'll try and post something on it for next week

The Final Little Red

Just a drive-by today.  Look it's finished!

Here's what's next:

Steampunk Little Red Riding Hood - Part 8

I am having trouble with the scanning process.  Have I mentioned before how much I hate scanning?  My machine keeps picking up all the texture of the watercolor paper and it's driving me nuts.  If I can get home early enough from work I am going to try photographing it.  But since it starts getting dark around 4 here and I haven't been able to get home before 6 . . . well, you can see the problem.

Here you can see I am trying to figure out if I need to make her "dirtier".  I'm leaning towards the dirt on her shirt, but the general consensus has been that the smudges on her face make her look like she has a beard.

Sorry for the drive by post, but I have been really distracted and haven't gotten nearly as much done on the next piece as I need to.  Let me know what you think of Little Red - any suggestions as to a title?  I am considering Little Red, Little Red Cap . . . and a whole slew of others.

Steampunk Little Red - Part 6

18 Hours

I just want you to know that I'm not trying to make this painting a bigger deal than it is.  First of all, I'm not all that creative when it comes to blog post titles.  So.  Second, I'm also not trying to be all "look at me, look at me!" even though I know it looks like it.  I am always so curious about how other artists work and the whole process and time and all that stuff.  There's a part of me that wants to show others who may be wondering how that painting came together.  Maybe you'll get some insight or avoid some of the traps that I tend to fall into. And it's good for me to be able to look at my own process and see how my decision making process works.  So I might be a little over-zealous in the sharing department.  But you know what?  This is my blog.  You can deal with it!

I'm sorry, it's late and my brain is fried.  So now that I've got my little disclaimer out there, here's some more updates, and an actual scan!  Aren't y'all proud of me?  I am.

Original Scan

So my new-ish scanner is 9x12 I think.  I've got it in my studio now and it helps to not have to walk all the way across the house to set up a scan, then back to my studio to preview and then back again, etc, etc.  I know.  My life is so hard.  This was scanned in in 4 part and stitched together in Photoshop.  I played with the levels a bit, but I think most of the color was captured pretty well.  It picked up a lot of the paper texture though and that wasn't as cool.  

Edited Scan

I was a little lost with the piece, so I went in with Photoshop and did a paint-over, to see if the changes I was wanting to make would work for the piece.  It did, so then I did that in real life.  My dad came in as I was working on it - he's one of the reasons I pursued art growing up.  That and my mom says she doesn't think I could do anything else.  Anything not creative, I mean.  She doesn't mean it as mean as that sounded, but I can't think of another way to put it right now.  Anyway, Dad came in and called me on my laziness in forgetting/ not wanting to go in and define some detail in her pants the way I was with the rest of her outfit.  So I got down and dirty with my reference and nailed down some details in the pants and WOW, how that helped.  It's so subtle, but it really brought the piece up a notch.

Anyway.  I didn't scan it again.  You'll just have to make do with photos until it's really finished.  Cause aside from the general annoyance that scanning is, un-taping a stretched piece of watercolor paper to scan it and then trying to tape it back down was probably the blondest thing I've done all week.  Maybe all year.  So guess what?  It's staying on the board until Sara's done with it.

21 Hours

Steampunk Little Red - Part 4

At the 10 hour mark.

The Madness Continues

I am scrambling to finish things before I leave next week, but here are some photos of a warm-up I was working on this weekend.

These were the first "paintings" I have done in a while - confining most of my artistic pursuits to drawing in the past few months.  Color has never been my strong suit.  Drawing - love it.  Value - bring it on.  Color - ah . . . wha . . . is this . . . I don't  . . .

Yeah.  Color doesn't make sense to me.  I pick up the brush and look to my pallet and I'm . . . just lost.

When I was in school, my professors would make fun of me for limiting my pallet so much.  But it was the only way I could control the colors and the structure of the finished piece.  Fortunately, I managed to incorporated some reds and yellows in a few projects and they stopped harassing me.

Now, I don't want you to think that they didn't try to help me with my color problems - they did.  They tried very hard.  And conceptually, I thought I understood the process they were trying to get me into.  But whenever I took up the brush and applied the colors I saw them using . . . well, it's probably better not to talk about it . . .

Windsor Newton watercolors on an Arches cold-press block.

Hamlet Sketch

"This above all: to thine own self be true" (Hamlet, Act I, Sc. III)

This is the latest project that I've been working on. I'm trying to put together a couple of posters for various operas, ballets and plays to send out as sample pieces for theaters around Houston. This one is in progress for a Hamlet poster. My photo reference is up there on the left, and those are some of my color comps are on the other side. My goal is to finish it this weekend, but what with the Fourth of July and the huge barbeque my family is planning, who knows if that'll actually happen.

I'm working full time as a kind of personal secretary, and finding the time to do art has been really hard. I've been doing some life sketching but with Houston weather (i.e. it's really hot right now) it's king of hard to be out there for more than 30-45 minuets.

Copper River Fish Wheels and Sea Gulls

Four paintings so far this week.  Thesis deadlines are coming up, and I'm starting to feel it.

This is a painting, in gouache on brown paper (wow, something new), of exactly what the post title says it is.  In Alaska, if you apply for it, you can get a special permit to set up a fish wheel.  There are only two rivers that you're allowed to do this at (I think), and you have to be there at the river during the salmon season when it's turning.  Mostly all of the wheels are homemade, and you have to haul them out to the middle of nowhere to set them up, and then haul them back when the season is over (some people don't, they just take off their permits and leave the wheels there.  There's wreckage all up and down the river of old abandoned fish wheels that got broken up and carried away when the river floods.).  But the hassle seems worth it in some ways with how much salmon you can catch in a weekend.  

The wheel sits out in the river, close, but not too close to the shore.  The Copper River is very silty, very cold, and very fast, and because they have to push so hard, the salmon that you get out of this river are some of the best in the world, or so I'm told.  I'll eat almost any type of fish : ) Yum, and I'm no fish connoisseur, I'm not that picky (it's another story when it comes to coffee).  Anyway.   There are two baskets and two "paddles" I guess you could say, and when the wheel is "turned on" they spin.  Pretty simple.  The baskets are maneuvered so that as they spin, they create a depression in the bottom of the river.  When salmon swim upstream they look for places like big rocks in the water or depressions in the river bed, where the current is not as strong, to rest.  When they come to those depressions they're scooped up and dumped into a basket beside the wheel to wait until someone comes along to scoop them out and gut them, and eventually, eat them (Haha, "Eat them, eat them!" Sorry, LOTR flashback "Give it to us raw, and wwwrrrriiigglling!" Actually, raw salmon, fresh caught and cleaned is really good!).  You walk out on a little rickety pier to the wheel, your weight on the pier pushes the wheel into the river bottom to stop it turning while you're there, and you net the fish and carry them up to the shore to clean them.  There's no running water out there, so you have to store everything in coolers until you can get back to civilization.  It's nothing like dip netting, but pulling those fish out (they're HUGE, and HEAVY) of the waiting trough and up to the shore, cleaning them in the freezing cold wind, loading everything up on your four wheeler to take it back to camp, not a picnic. The flip side is that there are long hours of waiting in between for the wheel to scoop up fishy-fishy.  

Oh, and gulls are everywhere, just waiting for you to give up ground so that they can swoop in and clean up.  The bald eagles are more wary, but there were several out there scavenging, and they really were beautiful.  And huge.  People say everything's bigger in Texas - which is true - but everything is especially bigger in Alaska.  

Mozart "The Magic FLute"

This is part of a series  that I did from the Cornerstone list of the 20 most performed operas in the US.  It's a poster (without all the poster stuff yet) for Mozart's The Magic Flute (it's number 10 on the list if you were wondering).  

Let me just say that this is one of my most favorite pieces that I have ever done!  I cannot tell you why, it just is.  I think it's actually going to replace my Beowulf painting as my profile picture, which I never thought would happen.  This was one of those pieces that just painted itself, it's just a really fun, joyful, if I can use that word, piece for me.  All I could do was smile and giggle when I finished  I was actually able to go home and sleep when it was done, instead of spending two hours trying to wind down (Yes, this does happen, I don't set the time, it just happens, and it's always two hours.  Whether I've been out with friends or shopping or painting, I can never go to sleep right after.  Eventually I started noticing a pattern, and . . . No matter how late, no matter how tired, it's always two hours.  Yes, I know I'm ridiculous, thanks.). It was so nice.  

I've really come to appreciate Mozart through this painting, too.  I created a Mozart station on Pandora (Great, amazing, wonderful site if you haven't found it already) while I was painting, which was kind of appropriate, I felt, and he was/is awesome!  So is  Baccherini, and Haydn, and especially Paganini.  Jury's still out on Liszt, my internet connection hasn't been great so I haven't actually heard one of his songs in it's entirety, but I think we're gonna be cool with him, too.

More Houses Along the Bering Sea

Yeah, I love these views from the sea.  I've done three or four of them, and I don't think I'll be getting tiered of them anytime soon.  There's something really cool about houses buried in four feet of snow.  And it's even better with these ones because of the colors.  There are very few "regular" colored houses in Nome.

Iditarod Dog Lots

Ha!  I'm back!  I've been scanning, so I thought it was about time that I put some stuff up.  This is a painting that I did as a part of my Alaska journal.  It's more of a side painting, I don't think it'll actually be in the journal.  This is where the mushers put up their dogs once they had crossed the finish line, and before they shipped everyone back home.  Each musher got half a railroad car to store their dog's food, bedding, etc.  that they had shipped to Nome before the race started.  It's empty because I took the picture before any the teams had come in; no one was allowed to photograph the teams except the official race photographers.