Arte de los Muertos

Hello everyone! This is my new piece, another Day of the Dead inspired painting. I have been given the wonderful opportunity of creating a couple little paintings for a show at Borealis Arts. This is a gallery here in Tucson which is owned by my boyfriend's brother Nathan and his wife Brandi.

They invited me to bring in "Spooky Little Friend," but I was fortunate enough to have that one sell right away in my shop. So of course I jumped at the opportunity to create a couple more paintings just for the show! As part of the show they will be building a little shrine honoring loved ones who have passed on, and my pieces will go on or near that shrine as I understand it. I am very excited to have my paintings in a gallery for the first time! :) The show is called "Arte de los Muertos." It opens October 15 and goes until November 17.

I plan on doing two more paintings. I don't have a name for this one yet, I may have to enlist the help of some of my Spanish-speaking friends. And of course any suggestions, in English or Spanish, are welcome! :) Any paintings that don't sell in the show will go into my etsy shop when it is over.

Here is another little painting which I have had in the shop for a couple of days already, called "The Candy Corn Bandit"! She is painted on a little 5"x5" stretched canvas and is available here.

I hope that you are all having a wonderful week, and I'll see you soon! :)

Spooky Little Friend

Hello everyone! Here is a painting I did yesterday, "Spooky Little Friend." I had Dia de los Muertos in mind when I painted this, which has a large presence here in Tucson. Every year we have the wonderful All Souls Procession through downtown. I will share pictures when I go!

I wanted her to look a bit like a little Victorian girl posing for a picture in a photo studio. Her name is Lucy and she loves her little friend Beatrice, even though some people think that Beatrice is a little spooky! She is painted in acrylics on a 5"x7" canvas and is available in my shop.

I have also been having a lot of fun making some paper spider webs from Vanessa Valencia's wonderful tutorial! I made four, but I could have gone on making 20 if it hadn't gotten so late last night :) They are really addicting because they are so easy and fun to make. She used spray paint for hers which I don't have, so I just dabbed on acrylic paint with a sponge brush, then dabbed on Mod Podge and sprinkled on the glitter. They are a little more flimsy without the spray paint I'm sure, but I still think they look great :) My favorites are the black and gold ones.

I also forgot to mention that I will be participating for the first time in Vanessa Valencia's fabulous annual Halloween party! I am very excited as I had a blast doing the Mad Tea Party this summer. Do come by to visit or sign up to participate yourself! I also plan on doing a little giveaway to coincide with the party :)

I hope that you are all having a wonderful Friday!! :)

At the Carnival

I am finally back with a new painting! This is "At the Carnival", painted with acrylics on a 5"x7" stretched canvas. She is available in my shop. I suppose this is more of a summery theme, but I have been wanting to do a carnival-themed painting for a while and decided to just go for it :)

I think I might do a couple more Halloween-y paintings next while I still have the chance, but we'll see :) I hope you are all having a wonderful Thursday, and I'll see you soon!

Giveaway Winner!!

Hello everyone! I have picked a winner the old-fashioned way out of a big bowl and the winner is...

FAERWILLOW!

Congratulations Faerwillow! Email me at laurenstar1@yahoo.com with your address and I will get The Pumpkin Queen shipped to you :)

Thank you SO much to everyone who entered, and I promise I will do another giveaway very soon! I have a lot of fun doing these :)

I will not be doing a Sunday Sketch tomorrow as I will be starting my new job (yay!:) but I should be back soon. I hope you are all having a great weekend!

Metamorphosis

Here is my new painting based on my Sunday Sketch, "Metamorphosis". I want to thank Lenora and her talented children over at Lenorita for the name suggestion! I felt like it came close to what I was trying to express with this. I really appreciate all of the title suggestions and interpretations of my sketch, they were all lovely and very helpful! That is one thing I really need to work on, actually articulating the ideas that pop into my head :)

Recently I have been really drawn to doing what I am calling "Surrealist Lite" :) I have been drawn to Surrealist art ever since studying it in college. However, in my own artwork I am not into doing the sometimes dark, more extreme aspects, if that makes sense! Just sort of a lighter, fun version that adds a bit of mystery and magic to the piece, hopefully :)

She is painted on a 5"x7" stretched canvas with acrylics and is available in my shop.

I also thought I would show you how good Jasmine is looking :) If you haven't seen my previous posts about her, she was a cat in our neighborhood who was abandoned and was starving to death. We took her in about a month ago. She went to the vet on Monday and she has gained 2 pounds :) She is up to 7 pounds now. She got her thyroid checked, and it turns out that we can decrease her medicine a bit. She is doing great and seems like a happy camper! :)

Don't forget to enter my giveaway here if you haven't already--I am going to draw a name this Saturday!

Have a great Wednesday! :)

Free Bird

Here is my new painting, "Free Bird." She is dreaming of being as free as the birds flying over the bright blue sea...

I have really been enjoying doing a little more detail in my work, and doing the 3/4 faces. I was inspired by John William Waterhouse's paintings to do the dress and the ships in the background. She is painted in acrylics on an 8"x10" stretched canvas, and I painted the sides metallic gold for a bit of a fun, Renaissance-y effect :) She is available here. I definitely feel like I am going into a bit of a new phase with my artwork. I like it, and I hope you like it too :)

I am almost finished with my butterfly girl painting, so I may have it to share tomorrow :) Have a great day!

Sunday Sketch

Here is my Sunday Sketch for this week. I have already started on the painting, so hopefully I will have it ready to share soon. I'm still trying to decide what to do for the background and what to name it. I also have another new painting which I am waiting to share tomorrow, or Tuesday at the latest :)

Be sure to check out all of the talented artists over at Sophia's blog Blue Chair Diary. I am also doing a giveaway of one of my paintings, so just scroll down to my previous post and leave a comment there to enter if you haven't already! Have a great Sunday! :)

Giveaway!!

I have decided to do a little giveaway as a thank you to all of my wonderful blog readers! I never imagined that anyone would read my little blog, so I am so grateful to everyone who takes the time to pop on over to my little virtual art space. I have made so many wonderful new friends!

I am giving away my original 5"x7" acrylic painting on stretched canvas, "The Pumpkin Queen."

All you need to do to enter is:

1. Become a follower of my blog

2. Leave a comment on this post

Please leave me an email address if you do not have a blog through which I can contact you (you can either leave it in your comment or email it to me at laurenstar1@yahoo.com)

I will choose a winner next Saturday, September 18.

Thank you, and have a wonderful Friday! :)

Autumn Breezes

Here is my new painting, "Autumn Breezes," from my Sunday Sketch last week :) She is acrylic on a 5"x7" strteched canvas and is available in my shop. She is enjoying collecting colorful fall leaves and letting the breeze blow through her hair :)

Below is a little commission I did last week for a friend of a friend, of her little daughter Juniper as a fairy :)

I also wanted to share the good news that I have a brand new, beautiful Canon camera!!! :) My parents were incredibly kind enough to give it to me :) It really is a huge deal to me, there is no way I could have afforded a new camera for a while and I really needed one. I can finally take good closeups of my paintings!

I have read the manual but I am excited to learn more about the different settings and start taking some great pictures :)

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day, I'll see you soon! :)

My little painting class!

Hello everyone! I hope you all enjoyed your Labor Day weekend! I had a very fun day yesterday teaching a little painting class to my mom (left) and her friend from work, Tonya (right). My mom has quite a bit of experience doing mixed-media artwork and decorative folk art painting, and Tonya has been getting into doing mixed-media work as well. However, they both wanted to give faces a try in order to incorporate them into their art. I told them to come on over and I would show them my technique! Not that I am an expert by any means, but I could at least show them how I paint my girls :)

We started out by drawing the faces step by step.

They wanted their girls to have long, flowing hair, so we drew that in next.

Then we started painting! I showed them how I shade my faces.

Once we finished up the faces, we got started on the hair! (Sorry if some steps are missing, we were having so much fun that sometimes I forgot to take photos :)

First we "blocked in" the hair color we wanted to use.

Then we added some highlights!

Next we got started on the dresses. We decided to make our paintings fall-themed, and so picked out our own colors accordingly.

Here are the dresses! I think everyone picked out some really great colors :)

We decided that we had to add some little witch hats too! Then we picked out our background colors and got started on them.

Here we all are working hard to get them finished up.

As the final touch, we added some clouds, a moon and stars.

Yay, we're all done!! :)

They did such a great job, I can't wait to see what they will come up with on their own now! We may do another little class again soon for fun :) I also wanted to show you this amazing mixed-media piece that my mom and Tonya made. They brought it over to show me:

Isn't it amazing?? It looks like something straight out of Somerset Studio. I had a hard time giving it back after photographing it, he he :)

Thank you mom and Tonya for a fun day of painting! I hope that everyone is having a great day, I'll see you soon :)

Sunday Sketch

Here is my Sunday Sketch, of another little fall girl whom I'm thinking about painting :) I haven't been able to get much painting done this past week, but hopefully I can get back to it in the next couple of days. Make sure to check out all of the other wonderful sketches over at Sophia's blog Blue Chair Diary!

I hope you are all having a lovely Sunday! :)

The Acorn Forest and The Fairy Queen

Hello everyone! I can't believe its been almost a week since I posted. Things have been a bit busy over here, Daniel and I have both been doing job-searching. I actually got these two paintings done last week but just now finally had the chance to list them.

This one is called "The Acorn Forest." Every year when the sweet fall air begins to roll in she goes to the forest to wander amongst the trees and collect acorns :)

This one below is "The Fairy Queen." Both paintings are available in my shop.

I also did a little trade last week, with Jie from JCSkyline on etsy. I got these adorable felt earrings. Aren't they so cute?? I can't wait to wear them, thank you Jie! :)

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Thursday, I'll see you soon! :)