I still consider myself to be new to painting. I’ve mentioned before (here and here) that I love me a good creative outlet. You name it, I’ve most likely tried it—other than sewing things. I suck at sewing. It’s not that I consider myself terribly awesome at painting, but I’ve dabbled in it here and there, and I absolutely love it. My paintings are pretty similar to each other so far, and I really enjoy giving them as gifts. It’s a stressful thing, to give your own art as a gift. Especially since I’m still new to painting! You never know whether people actually like it or are just being nice!
That being said, I am pretty certain I knocked my most recent painting out of the park.
A close friend of mine is pregnant with her second baby. I came up with the idea to gift her a painting as a present for the new baby (and delivering it lined up with giving her our old diaper genie and pull-ups that we don’t need any more, which was win-win if you ask me!). Today, I’m walking you through a little step-by-step of my fox painting. It ended up a little more Asian-inspired than I had planned, and I had a little encouragement from Brad to add cherry blossom-type petals to the tree, which really impacted the Asian feel.
One day over the holidays, I decided that it was time to get this painting started. It was the afternoon, we had spent some time outside and the kids were settling down with a movie. I still had a bit of time before I needed to start making dinner, so I took out my paints and canvas and got the background done rather quickly.
Let's Get Painting!
I knew that my friend Aubri likes foxes, so that part was a given. However, there are a lot of varieties of foxes, but I eventually went with this picture—from Pinterest—as my inspiration. Painting for me is a learning process, so I did a bit of research in layering paints, finding that orange doesn’t typically cover well. So I started with a white background for the little guys.
I didn’t want them sitting in mid-air, naturally, so I added the ground before finishing another layer of orange. This was not something I thought about beforehand, adding the ground and tree … I just went with what felt good.
Once I added the tree, Brad suggested that I add cherry blossom petals to it. I had initially planned to add a few green and yellow leaves, but I am so glad I went with pink! I did the outline of the foxes with an oil-based black paint pen that I had. Knowing myself and my perfectionistic tendencies, I knew that it was best to try and use the pen instead of a brush and paint. And I learned about using oil-based paints and acrylic, which makes me even more proud of the finished product! I love the way my hands learn with every brush stroke, but appreciate the time I had to learn about the process of painting. Trial and error is a great way to learn, too, but I was able to finish the painting the day after I started, and learned a lot along the way.
The Finished Product!
The trickiest part of this now is that I am itching to keep painting … and playing with my Cricut and writing my book and keeping my journal …
Being creative is taxing.
I love it!
At what point do I become old at painting? Ha.
Brush in hand,
Anya