Painting in Photoshop

These images are from a project I did for a friend who made a book about her Grandpa and these illustrate funny things he would say or do:

Christmas present 2010

These are some images I did as a Christmas present for my sister-in-law who lives in Seattle:

Giraffes

Here are some more watercolors. One was a Christmas present for my cute niece. Good thing we've been to the zoo recently, I have lots of fun animal pictures to work from.

Painting Demonstration

Here is how I create a painting:

1. plan the picture, small sketches to create the composition

2. nice sketch on arches hot press watercolor paper and sometimes I pick the colors I'm going to focus on

3. get the paper wet in the sink and flatten it out on a board. Get paper tape wet and seal the edges of the paper (this creates a flat painting in the end)

4. paint the background first. Here I painted the whole area with just water, and then added a color I had mixed a lot of:
I did the top background, then added another layer to the bottom for the floor area:
You can see on the sides where I test the colors I mixed before I paint them:


After it's painted I ink the outlines with a nib pen and acrylic ink:
finished:
scanned & cropped:

Murals

This is a mural I did for my nieces early in the summer. There are 3 girls in their family. And now another on the way. I'll have to see if I can fit another little girl into the picture somehow...

These other two are from my friend's little girl's room that I painted awhile back:

Blog art

These are 3 of the 6 pieces I am doing for friends because of a blog chain thing I posted awhile back. I have sketches for the next 3 so hopefully they will follow shortly.

Something new, really?

You know it's been awhile since you painted when you can't remember the way you always position your pallet, water bucket, paper towel and brushes. Pathetic. I vow to paint more.