Pop Art Olaf

I adore Olaf from Disney's hit movie Frozen.The animators really created the best, most hilarious and adorable character ever when they made the loveable and cracked out snowman. So what better way to show my love than to paint him not one but four times!?

I decided to give old Olaf the pop art treatment that I gave Dory last year. So, I got out another cereal box, drew Olaf on it to get my pattern and away I went!

And finally.............................

"Pop Art Olaf"
22" x 28" original acrylic painting on canvas

 



Doesn't it just make you want to sing about whatever snow does in suuuuuuuuuuummer? :-)

Snow White in Sepia

After a bunch of super challenging paintings, I wanted to give myself a break with a piece that had a pretty simply color pallete. I was starting to go mad from color mixing!

Here's Snow...

I could have left it at this, it looks pretty cool as is!

And finally......

"Snow in Sepia"
14" x 20" original acrylic painting on gallery-wrapped canvas

And for fun, here's a little comparison of how far I've come since I started painting in 2006...

Don't mind my caption...my painting-fumed brain couldn't do math well...It was 2006

Elsa of Frozen & New Art Show

Move over Tink....there's a new Queen in town!

Long before Frozen even hit theaters, I felt an instant kinship with Elsa after I saw movie promo pics of her on Disney fan sites.

 

 

I mean, we're practically twins! After seeing the movie, I was even more sure she and I are one in the same! And, walking around Disney World in January, I got several comments from passersby that I looked just like her. In fact, I even got a special fastpass from a castmember for just that reason! But have no fear Tink, I will always be a faerie at heart.

Anyway, here's my take on Elsa. She was surprisingly really easy to draw!

And finally.....



"Elsa"
22" x 28" original acrylic on canvas

It's hard to tell in the picture, but I added mini glitter to the paint, so her dress and the snow sparkle in the light.

Elsa and over a dozen of my other paintings can all be seen (and purchased!) at Grumpy's Cafe in Tremont in Cleveland, OH now through April 6. Come on down and show my art some love!

Please Stand Clear of the Doors...

Hey, remember me? I know it's been ages since I've blogged. Those of you who like my facebook page have seen some of my posts bitching about the painting from hell. Yeah, yeah, I know you've heard that from me before. Anyway, I've been slaving away on this one painting for that long!

I'd had this picture of the monorail in Epcot sitting in my prospective painting folder since last year and just couldn't get up the courage to do it. Honestly, I figured I never would because it just seemed a little too complicated and I could foresee all the many different ways I could screw it up. But, after tackling so many difficult paintings this year, each one more challenging than the next, I found some nerve and tried my hand at it. (hehe, tried my hand)

I started out with a bang, by choosing the wrong size canvas and completely ruining it with a sketch...That one will be thrown to my sacrificial art pile!

Here's the sketch on the correct size canvas...

That's when I realized just how much harder this painting was. Besides being so tricky getting the monorail perspective right, painting it was the worst. With so many intricate colors, I could only do a little section at a time. Talk about painstaking, de-motivating and soul crushing!

Can you tell I was putting off painting the monorail?

And finally, drum roll please.........................

"Please Stand Clear of the Doors"
24" x 36" original acrylic painting on canvas

Dabbing that last paintstroke never felt so good! During the end, my mom was over working on her longstitch while I painted, and the 2 of us were crabbing away like Statlor & Waldorf about our art. It was very cathartic :-)

And now, I'm thinking black and white. I'm so sick of mixing colors!

Iron Man

A recent dinner at Grumpy's gave me the chance to size up my soon-to-be-display space even further, (and gave me an excuse to try the most delicious pasta ever). Upon further inspection, I decided I would need a few tall paintings to throw in the mix. Which got me to realize that most of my paintings are wide loads, and not tall glasses of water. OMG, what did I just write.

Anyway, I spent the rest of dinner trying to come up with ideas for tall, narrow paintings and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to appeal to my male audience and show that I don't just paint princesses, butterflies and unicorns
(tho, ha! I haven't done a unicorn yet......but that is a good idea....).

Trying to think of stuff the Turtle would like hanging on a wall of a mancave (have I mentioned there's a light sabor hanging on our living room wall?), I came up with a few ideas and first up is Mr. Tony Stark himself.

I give you, Iron Man:



 A few years ago, I discoverd I have a nack for sketching robots. On a whim, I sketched Master Chief as a birthday gift for the Turtle and was surprised at the result. While robots don't exactly inspire me, they can be pretty easy to do (at least for me), because I can look at it as just a bunch of straight lines instead of curving, swirling fairytale whisps. Robots are pretty black and white, and you can forget the big picture of what you're trying to be drawing and just isolate it, line by line.

I painted black over the pencil so I wouldn't lose my lines if I smeared color when doing the yellows and reds

And finally.....

"Iron Man"
18" x 24" original acrylic painting on canvas

The Turtle is already begging me to overprice it so no one will buy it and he can have it all to himself. He's also threatened to poke a hole in Iron Man's chest and put a real light there. I'm going to have to keep my eye on him!

Just Keep Swimming

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I can't remember if I shared, but back at the end of May, I sent my portfolio to Disney Fine Art. I had been spamming their facebook and email with pictures of my paintings so much that they finally gave in and asked me to send my physical portfolio.

Annnnnnd, that's the last I've heard of that.

So, I thought to myself. How do I get through to them!? How do I get my paintings in front of them? I don't even know if they even got my portfolio!

If there's somethin' strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call.....Ellen DeGeneres!

I love Ellen, she's hilarious, kind-hearted and way more down to earth than Oprah (though don't come between me and the OWN channel!). Not only has she helped so many people when they've written to ask for her help, she also has ties with Disney as the voice of Dory in Finding Nemo and the soon to be made, Finding Nemo sequel. So, I decided to paint Dory and send it to Ellen, with a letter begging for her help to get me into Disney!

Here's how it turned out:

I was pretty nervous about being able to paint Dory exactly not twice, not three times but four times. I started by sketching her on a piece of cardboard so I could trace her in the 4 squares and have her shape come out pretty much the same. I noticed the bottom right Dory wasn't tilted after I took this picture and felt my heart drop when I knew I had to erase and try again. It is sooo hard to get even a half-clean erase on a canvas. Which is why I put it off until I painted all 3 other squares, naturally... Its un-tilted body taunting me from its bottom right corner home.

So, now's when I'm thinking, "Oh sure, the first one was so easy. Now, I have to make sure I paint all the rest in just the same way. Greeeeeat."

Sweaty palms and shortness of breath, commence! I'm starting to think painting might not be so good for my health...

3 down, 1 to go!

And finally............

"Dory"
18" x 24" original acrylic painting on canvas

Alright, Dory done and now all I gotta do is ship it out, right? Noooo, turns out, Ellen only lists a Po Box for an address, and FedEx/UPS doesn't ship to Po Boxes. Crap. So, instead, I've emailed, tweeted and snail-mailed my letter and a picture of the painting to Ellen. Hopefully, one of her minions will get it over to her and somehow she'll see Dory and help me! If you can, send some thoughts and prayers my way, this is my dream!

Alice in Wonderland

I have a confession to make, I do not like Alice in Wonderland. Just like Winnie the Pooh, Alice and her friends can take Tigger and Pooh back into the Disney vault, never to come out again....Unless someone requests me to do a painting of them. Then, I'll gladly welcome them out with bells and whistles!!!!!

I got a request to paint Alice at the Mad Hatter's tea party for an Alice-themed birthday party. With all the requests I've gotten lately, and my trip coming up, I got to work right away.

Here's the screen shot from the movie that I was asked to paint:

Original screen shot from movie

And here's my version...

 

I grew to really hate tea cups and kettles doing this! Making very fine lines, whether straight, curvy or intricate designs is very, very difficult to do. I was starting to go as mad as, well,  a hatter doing these!

Now, at this point I should have been finished, as the original shot from the movie was just a plain, black background. But, I thought it was just a little empty. It was missing something and I knew I had to jazz it up. So, I put the dormouse in the corner and added fireworks and stars that are from the scene where the mouse drifts down with an umbrella.

Here's Alice:

"Alice in Wonderland"
18" x 24" original acrylic painting on gallery-wrapped canvas

 



I must have done a good job, because not only did my client really like it, but the Turtle (who loooooves Alice in Wonderland) keeps saying he doesn't want me to give it to them. So, that's one done, and a bunch more to do. I better get crackin'!