Happy New Year!

I wish you all a very Happy New Year!

Illustration Friday - Mail

Santa's got mail!..........I love combining Illustration Friday themes with holidays. I guess I like more parameters when coming up with a design and holidays like Halloween and Christmas add to the fun.

A Baby Watercolor

Yesterday I went see the Kent Bellows show at the Joslyn Art Museum here in Omaha. Kent died in 2005 at the age of 56, a tremendous loss to the art world. His work was extremely realistic with pencil seeming to be his preferred medium but he had works in acrylic, oil, pastel, mixed media, watercolor and it was absolutely stunning.

So inspired by his carefully rendered paintings I decided to really blend the skin out on this baby which is not my usual method. I also stuck with mostly burnt umber and permanent rose to paint the skin because I wanted a subtle almost monochromatic look.  7 x 5 inches.

Watercolor Self-Portrait

I really wanted to paint today and this happened sort of spontaneously. There are several watercolor portrait artists who I greatly admire and who have and continue to influence me. One is Roberta Carter Clark. She is an amazing portrait artist who is comfortable working in just about any medium. I love her watercolors and was going to copy one she had in her book Painting Vibrant Children's Portraits. Instead I decided to just try to emulate the style which isn't far off from the way I paint but lately it seems I've gotten back to being tighter and I want to get back to being looser and letting the watercolor do it's thing. It's a test of willpower to mix up a puddle of paint, lay it down and then let it dry without going back in! 

Portrait Swap

I teamed up with Mark Satchwill, a watercolor portrait artist who I have known for several years through some online groups for EBSQArt's annual portrait swap. I posted his a couple of weeks ago and here is the one he painted of me. This is actually the first watercolor portrait I have of myself. Didn't he do a great job?

Blogger of the Week on EBSQArt & Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 This week I am being featured on EBSQ as their blogger of the week.
http://blog.ebsqart.com/2010/11/23/ebsq-blogger-of-the-week-kathy-jurek/#comment-5049

Self portrait

I thought I was going to do a self portrait in watercolor today. I got carried away with my drawing instead. Too bad it's on tracing paper. :)