finishing works for gallery

Our gallery is open, but I should find a good frame shop to frame my works before I hang them. Luckily Hikmed has alot of paintings which are not so necessary to frame, otherwise our gallery would be as good as empty. I have made a few imaginary drawings and finished some realistic works.

The first one is my cat, which I started already more then a year ago. Now that I have a shop, I really feel the urge of finishing things, otherwise there is no way I am going to get any customers. I think especially my mother will be happy with this one. It is when she saw the beginning of this one, that finally she realised that the best present for me to buy is a box of pencils and I definitely know she was kinda of hoping this one was for her and she will get it, when she comes over for a visit :) Maybe it took longer then she had hoped for, but it did get finished and I am really pleased with the result.

Next two are imaginary drawings. With these drawings I dont need to think and plan. I just continue drawing non stop and most of the time I like the results very much. These two are made with only two colors. The yellow one is the biggest imaginary drawing I ever made which got finished !!!! :) It is size A3. The purple one is about 20 cm -20 cm.

Then another imaginary drawing with more colors. This one I made when I was still in Belgium.

I have also made a kingfisher, since my collegue told me birds always sell. I dont really like making birds though, cause I dont feel so much affection to this subject. But he convinced me to make it and I have to say the result is pretty good. I jut forgot to make a picture of it.I will post one when I have one.

long time

Well, I havent been very disciplined to write once a week, but a tremendous change happened in my life with which I was totally preoccupied. I have left my home country, Belgium and moved to my husbands home country, Turkey. It is a big change, but one which was already in my head, when I first met my husband 11 years ago and now finally we are here. I have started a blog (only in Dutch) for my family and friends in which I explain a little what is going on here.

Now for my artistic ambitions... we have rented a place here, which I will be using as gallery and atelier. I will be a fulltime artist...scary but really exciting. Since I have moved, my website is gone offline, since the provider isnt available here in Turkey. I was planning to make a new one anyway, and I hope to do this within a couple of months. I am going to work together with a fellow artist who does mainly landscapes with oils and palletknives and I hope to make him a site as well.

Well... so far the big changes in my life. Now, the portrait of the boy which I was working on didnt get finished. I really feel a little bad about myself, since I promised him. Definitely I am going to finish it, but right now more important issues are going on. My first commission portrait did got finished (way back in May or such - money I earned from it is also finished ...lol ) and here is the result.

Again a baby portrait. For my next portrait I definitely want some hair to paint. I like to do hair, but I am not yet completely an expert to it. If you happen to have a nice picture and have great hair and are a woman (I prefer women or girls to make portraits) please mail it to me. I need something to do for fun, no promises though.

Well... I have done other artisitc things also but apparently dont have any pictures of it on my pc. Probably for later.

Three finished

Well, I have gotten an enormous amount of energy last week (must be due to the sunny weather) and I finished my last three projects. I am especially happy with the baby portrait of Daen which I made for Marion. I consider it my best piece uptill now. I feel with each portrait I am doing I am getting better. So this is the time to order a comission portrait, especially with all these positive vibes I am getting now (definitely the weather:) I got a comission request from a guy who came to repair my kitchen and saw the portrait of Daen with which I was busy on that time. He thought it was a good idea for mothersday :) I am so thrilled. I will post updates when I start it (I still need to get a picture though)

Well, here are the three children which I made in sepia effect. The likeness is definitely there. It is size 17x17cm.

















Then the bird... I am not totaly satisfied with it. I feel though it is the best I can do for now. I think I need alot more experience in our feathery friends before comitting myself to these kinds of projects. Sabrina (the woman for who I made this one) on the other hand liked it very much, so if I can make somebody happy, I should be happy with it also I guess :) The size is 10x18cm












Then the last one, like I said my best piece uptill now is baby Daen. Could be also due to the fact that I am getting alot of requests for baby portraits lately, so I am really getting the hang of it. The size of the portrait is 18x18cm



I also started a new portrait of a boy, but it is still in a preliminary state (not good enough to post an update) I actually promised him a little while ago to make one for him. Its just because he looked like a difficult subject (no offense) that I have been waiting for so long. I will post an update or I might post when it is really finished.

More promises

I am busy making three portraits in the same time. Maybe this doesnt sound like a good idea, but I have noticed if I continue on one piece only I get bored and at the end I tend to hurry too much because of this. Now if I am bored I can continue on another one. I hope to finish all of them by the end of next week.
The first one I started in the beginning of the easter holiday. It is done in three colors only, with the intention to have kinda sepia-effect. It looks already kinda finished, but I have a few more details to add.













The second one is a portrait of a bird. I started this one on monday. I feel I have a little overestimated myself to accept such a subject, since I dont have any experience at all in birds. Well, here is my humble try. I still have to add a more feathery look to the main body (I am still figuring out how I can make this realisticly looking)














The third one, again a baby, but this time a boy. This one I started on thuesday. Its going pretty fast and I am really happy with the result already. It needs some more layers and more detail in the shirt. The colors on the picture I took of the portrait are a little off, but when its finished I will post a better one.













So, next week hopefully I will get heaps of discipline and finish all of them. In between I have some jobinterviews also, since being unemployed has too many negative financial consequences and I also miss the social interaction.

Little Kiana (3)

I finished the portrait of Kiana, just like I planned by the end of the week. In case you didnt know, if you click on the picture, you can see a much bigger version with more detail and it actually looks alot better than the small one.

Now I am off to another portrait, since I made many promises to people for making their portraits (maybe I shouldnt do that - then again if I promise something I at least finish what I started :))

Little Kiana (2)

Though yesterday I had alot of other things to do, I couldnt resist to continue a little on the portrait of Kiana. I think I actually spend four more hours. Ohh, how I love to draw. Too stupid all these administration tasks in life eat my precious time. Time which I cannot spend on my passion. So, here's the update so far.

Little Kiana

I promised Stephanie to make a portrait of her little babygirl .I really love to draw children. Babies are something different, because they are so fragile and to put that fragility on paper is something hard to do. But I will give it a try and do my utmost.

I will show you how I started. Again it’s not yet finished, but I just want to show how I work and maybe fellow artists who pass by will critique or might learn (though I prefer the latter, the first would be more usefull for me personaly). I will definitely finish this portrait, since I promised it and to me promises are sacred. I intend to finish it by the end of the week and hopefully I will succeed in it.

First you have the reference picture of little Kiana. I just loved the eyes and the way they smiled to me in the picture.

And this is how far I am for the moment (after 4 hours of dedicated work – I know I know I am slow) Weekends are always so difficult to draw when a young toddler constantly wants to play with you and your husband is also craving for attention. Anyway I think starting the day after tomorrow I will definitely get in full speed to finish the portrait. Tomorrow some boring tasks are waiting for me to be finished so I cant continue then :(

One finished, Three to go...

Well, I finished the one on which I didnt have so much more work. Mainly I just added the background on this one and putted more detail into the cabin of the boat. I thought the reflections in the water were gonna be really hard, but I tried some white wax crayon to give it a watery look and I find it worked out well. Now that I see it on my computer, maybe the grass on the right side needs to be darkened a little.... nah I am gonna leave it like this before I mess it up. I will try to finish the belly dancer for tomorow... or I might start something new :)

defragmenting

I have been busy with so many things at a time I actually dont get anything finished. My fathers birthday was yesterday and the painting didnt get finished. So I bought a present instead. Now probably it will lay there for next year or maybe hopefully for fathersday. I sure could use some more discipline. Does anybody have some advise on how to train this.
For the moment I started at about five drawings and I only finished one which I dont really like. The first is a really tiny portrait of a cat which would take me little less then an hour to complete. Here is the wip (work in progress).

The next one is a small portrait of me and my son, which still needs alot of color layers. I actually only have the sketch for the moment. It was a picture I really liked and I have been wanting to draw it for a long time.

I am always in admiration for people who know how to draw these beautiful fantasy women. It is one of my aims to be ablte to do this also and this just from my imagination. Since I dont have yet a good understanding of the proportions of the human body, I drew this one from a picture, but it is also still waiting to be finished.

I also have something not living. My first try at something like a landscape in colored pencil. For the moment I am rather happy with, but it is still not finished. I am doing this one for the March colored pencil challenge on www.wetcanvas.com

Then the last one, which did get finished but actually isnt really good. Maybe I should do a few more layers on it to give it a more finished look. On the other hand I have so many other things to finish and so many more to start :) This one is a selfportrait. I wanted to try a new method. So I drew the sketch with a light gray, then added darker parts with a darker grey and then added color. The colors could have been a litlle more nuanced, but like I said my biggest flaw ever is I like to start new things so sometimes things have to go fast.

Well, alot to look at and for me alot to finish. So I think I might as well start now :) Hopefully in my next post I will have at least one update from one of these drawings ;)

If you check on my website, you can see that now and then I do finish something. So, I am not yet completely hopeless. If I would get some commissioning work, I am sure I would be much more disciplined about it. Now all of the things I make are for fun and pleasure, so there isnt any haste involved.

Work in progress

For the moment I am really trying to figure out how I can live with my art. It seems I still have a long way to go, but it is something I really want. I sometimes wish I could just draw and everything else would follow. I guess it doesnt work that way. Probably I should go out and find customers, but pushing myself to other people is something I hate to do.
Luckily I have a husband who really believes in me, maybe he is a litlle overestimating my artistic capacities. On the other hand it is a good compensation of me underestimating myself.
For the moment I am busy making a portrait in colored pencil for my father. His birthday is soon to come. I hope I make it in time. It is drawn from a photograph of him and my son. For the first time I tried a full developed background. I am really happy with the back ground I have already drawn. Now lets hope the faces will be ok also (I do have more experience with it, so it should be ok)
Here is a picture of my progress so far. The picture is not so clear, but when it is finished I wil definitely post a better one.

Latest work

For the moment I am busy making a portrait in colored pencil of an actress. I got this idea from a chat friend, who told me my portraits on my portraiture site look really good, but he didnt know any of the people so he couldnt really tell if there was any resemblance. So I decided as a marketing stunt to paint a famous person. The portrait is not yet finished, but I cropped it so it looks sort of finished. Anybody can guess who it is? I hope you can.

Life as an artist

As any person with artistic ambitions will tell you, their dream is to be known and to live from their art. Since art is something that sets your soul free. It is something you dont need to do as a living, it is a feeling, an urge that sais you have to do it. It is difficult though. To go in against all opinions of family and friends. They acknowledge the fact that you have talent, but they dont want to see you as an artist, because they think that kind of life is too hard. It is probably true, since to get out there and show what your capable of is one thing (since artists most of the time are solitary beings not that easy either), to be recognized by the big public all has to do with marketing yourself as an artist and this is totaly different from creating. The best artists probably never get recognition in their own life. Take Van Gogh for example, he was a real trend maker and breaker and I find it actually horrible for him that nowadays his paintings are bought for million dollars, while when he was alive he didnt have a dime. Ok, this story probably has been heared a thousand times, but it is such a huge example of the hypocrisy of the world we live in. Why did he need to kill himself, before people understood he was a special person, creating beautiful pieces of art? If he wouldnt have killed himself, would his artwork be worth anything right now? The value lies in the eye of beholder, which most of the time corresponds with the public opinion. Just think about it next time when you see a piece of art. Do you like it because you are supposed to like it or do you really like it because it does something to you personaly. Since art is one of the most subjective things one can do, the products of it are also very much dependent on the subjective minds of people.