First Art Show

In my continuing journey of developing myself as an artist, I felt that I needed to enter my work in some art shows or competitions. I recently joined our local arts association to meet other artists in my area and perhaps join in on some of the art events.

Currently, the association is holding a members art show in which I entered two of my art pieces. I had entered the cat portrait in which I titled "Younger Years" and "Morning Ritual" which I did last year. The art show was judged by a successful watercolorist with a MFA from Stanford, who has taught many workshops and judged many shows.

I am happy to say that "Younger Years" won an honorable mention and "Morning Ritual" won third place....both entered in the portrait category. This has given me hope that I'm on the right path. You can see both these portraits in my blog. "Morning Ritual" is under June 2007 under the archive.

Since I'm basically a self-taught artist, I've decided to take a life drawing class this fall at the local college. This is a class that I have always wanted to take in the past. I'm excited to have this time devoted to learning and development.

Finished cat portrait

Ok, I'm finally done with this cat. It's been a very time consuming process.
I'm only hoping that it gets better and faster with practice.
It took many layers of pastels to achieve the desired detail and texture.
Overall, I think I'm satisfied with how this turned out.

It's about time! A new post and a new medium

Sorry it's taken me soooo long to post again! I've been a bit sidetracked. I think that I'm back on track now.....

Anyways, this is my second attempt at using oil pastels and it's been a learning experience!
For those not familiar with oil pastels, they are like soft crayons. It was a real challenge creating the details I wanted on this cat portrait. I had to use fine blending tools apply the pastels in order to achieve a detailed look.

final scanned

Click to enlarge. Here is the final portrait scanned. Nice to be done!

final with hair darkened

I've darkened the hair on the left a bit. I've darkened the two beauty marks and lightened the shading on the right cheek.

Finished

Click to enlarge. Here is the finished portrait, unless PL requests changes. I'm happy with how this turned out. It definitely takes time to do the hair! I will scan the picture if there are no changes.

status 2

Here I continue to make progress on the hair, but not done yet. I still have to do the neck and shoulders and darkening of tones.