Thursday, June 14, 2012

My new inspiration: Candy!


I've always had a big sweet tooth. Luckily, I'm pretty good at controlling my sugar intake... sort of, but it wasn't hard to draw inspiration from one of my favorite places to pass time. The candy store. In this case it was Powell's Sweet Shoppe.







-Mel

The Spring Show

If you haven't been out to the Academy of Art University 2012 Spring Show yet then what are you waiting for!? It's an awesome showcase of the ridiculous talent at the Academy from all the Art and Design departments. My shoes piece (which you've all seen before) is being shown there!


 



-Mel

Man in the Mirror

I started to work on another reflection piece but on a much smaller sized canvas that I've been becoming familiar with. This is the third painting that I've done on a 12"x40" and I'm absolutely loving this size! So much more interesting than the common canvas proportions, and I like the time the canvas allows for eyes to dance across the span of the surface. Here are some photos of my process. I don't have a picture of where this painting is currently at, but keep checking my website for updates on finished pieces! 

Take notice of the picture on top of my painting in the second photo. I manipulated the original image I took of the nail polishes in photoshop, and rearranged the bottles to work better on the 12"x40" canvas. In the last photo you can see that I have the original photo on top of my piece. After I sketched everything out I went back to this photo for color and detail information that was lost in the photo that was manipulated in photoshop.

As you will see in this painting and in all of my paintings, I make a lot of changes to the subject as I paint. Sometimes I change the color, the composition, leave things out, or put things in. In my reference photo I realized the cast shadows of the nail polishes were way too strong and busy. I wanted the focus of my painting to be on the glass reflection, so I decided to keep the cast shadows out.

What you should take away from this... Never be a slave to photo references!








Happy Painting!

Fallen Soldier

Unfortunately my lipstick reflection painting wasn't working out for me. It went through quite a few transitions, but after fighting with it for awhile, letting it sit, and fighting with it again... It's time to let this bad boy go. I'm not sad about. The size of this canvas was overwhelming for me (24"x48"). This may not seem big for many artists but I usually work much smaller, so I'm going to have to give myself more time to get comfortable working larger. This is the stage I'm stopping at! Time to recycle the canvas ;)