Minion Mashup

One of the swaps on ATCs for All that I've joined is Minion Mash Up which was to find a famous painting and put minions in them. Now I am an enormous fan of minions and I am thrilled to bits that they get a whole movie to themselves next year!!! Here are a few that I've done so far. I was tempted to stick to my ultra vibrant colors but rather experimented with trying to get the colors close to the original painting as possible. A very fun endeavor.

So here we have “Minion’s Mother” – inspired by “Whistler’s Mother”

 

2.5" x 3.5" ACEO - Minion's Mother

"Whistler's Mother"

A Salvidor Dali inspired mashed up painting inspired by “Sleep” 

2.5" x 3.5" ACEO - "Sleepy Minion"

"Sleep" - Salvidor Dali

My last one is for sale in my Etsy shop – inspired by “The Metamorphosis of Narcissus”. I absolutely love Dali and will probably keep using him.

"2.5 x 3.5" ACEO - "Metamorphosis of Minion"

 

"Metamorphosis of Narcissus" - Salvidor Dali

I've also been experimenting with different pen thicknesses with some great results. It helps that I've also acquired a tiny thin brush to do all the fiddly detailed bits!

Baby Georgie Atkin

As promised here she is - the cute Georgie Mary Ann Atkin.

Born 16th April 2013 at 2.48am - 7lbs 10oz, 18 inches long.



Georgie is Born - Watercolour ATC

She is now nine days old, given me three sleepless nights, five not so bad nights and one good night of sleep.

She has thrown up on two baby grows as soon as they've been put on.

Georgie sees Cookies - Watercolour ATC

Gone through three bags of nappies already.

Two packs of wet wipes.

Georgie Gremlin - Watercolour ATC

She always sneezes three times in a row.

She gets hiccups about three times a day.

Woe is Georgie - Watercolour ATC

She slept through us using the hoover in the same room.

She is my pride and joy and can't believe after only nine days her little personality is shining through.

Life drawing taught me something

A couple of years ago the idea that I might be painting portraits would have astounded me. I studied life drawing in college for 2 years and I hated it. Don't get me wrong its all valuable experience, but being cooped up in a small room with 20 other students, trying to fight to get a donkey easel (they were more comfortable) was not my idea of fun. Painting from a photograph is so much more relaxing, you can take as long as you want, the subject won't move and you can sit at your computer desk checking your Facebook at the same time. Did I mention how much I enjoy painting now? I started this painting for my fiance's Dad who had his 52nd birthday recently. I had a feeling this might be a difficult photograph to paint, I've never been fantastic at painting hair. So I started this painting at least a week before his birthday. This first picture is what the end of that day brought, a basic outline of the image and facial features and I deliberately made it high contrast. A technique I learnt (grudgingly) in life drawing was how to underpaint, this is when you paint quite heavily, in big block shapes, often in colours that are not in the photo. (Obviously not in this case but the principle still stands). Then you spend some time with watered down greys and whites to bring the painting to a more likely range of colours. I'm still pretty new at this and still find it pretty awesome when it works. I never really know how well a painting will turn out. After the first day of painting I left it, I wasn't that keen on it and I had no clue what was next. So rather than hitting my head against the wall I left it for a few days. On the day of his birthday I finished it (yes I know I left it to the last minute)! Now I had a fresh idea of what I wanted to do to it. I've learnt not to be too bogged down with your first impressions, after all it is acrylic and you can paint over all that isn't working. So that's exactly what I did, I toned down all the heavy lines I'd created around their faces and slowly but surely brought the tone back. I find it much more difficult to paint somebody I know, however immensely more satisfying. Needless to say he loved it.