Painted chair project, second part DONE :)

Hope you all had a nice Christmas time! We did :) a little bit of over eating but is expected for Xmas isn't it? :)
The weather has been amazing EVERY DAY
Between the cooking, eating, relaxing and enjoying the beach I managed to squeeze in some "chair panting time" too :)

I am done with the second surface, now working on the under panel, then back part then legs! still more work to do... :)

Happy Holidays!

HOPE

JOY

LOVE

…..

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

From the Pilawski family!

Top part of the chair DONE!:)

Another beautiful, sunny and very warm day over here! So,so gorgeous !
That's a picture of the painted chair at this point, time to start working on the lower part now!
Just a tiny bit of painting today because we are busy cooking here in Casa Pilawski!

Wishing you all a great Christmas!!

Chair project work in progress, done with drawing now it's time to start painting!

Good morning!
Another beautiful sunny day... pretty amazing actually! The sun is shining, the ocean is glowing and is also nice and WARM, aren't we lucky??1

Yesterday I did my drawing on the chair; I changed my initial plan to do something ocean related, and I went for some animal stuff instead :)
Is not very comfortable and easy to paint on the chair, due to the position, so is better to have a fun free theme at least ;)

Here are some picture of the work in progress :

 Drawing a giraffe while looking at some online reference on google!

 Mona took my spot while I was away for few minutes!

 I am back and we squeeze in !

 Cheese!! Picture time!

Here is where I left my chair yesterday evening, my husband famous delicious pizza was calling me! Time to put the painting stuff aside ;)
Going back to my animals right now!
Have a great Sunday everyone!

Painted Chair project :) let's start!

End of the fall semester at Art Academy University... feeling happy on side, since I am getting my "painting time back ", and sad on the other side....I am always sorry to say goodbye to teachers and fellow students...I think I could stay in school for ever!! learning, learning and learning :)  (if only it was not soooo expensive :)!)

A couple of months ago I decided to take part in a "Painted Chair project" organized by the Women' s club in Palo Alto.
I received a 1930's folding chair, a small piece of history of the Women 's club, and I agreed to return it fully painted by February 1st.
March 28th there will an auction and the fund raised will contribute to the financial future of the organization.

I was just waiting for the winter break at school to start the project and work on the chair with NO interruption.
Today step one: SANDING THE CHAIR

For the sanding part I took the chair down to the beach, is better to sand it while looking at the ocean!! :)

Also, I think I ll be painting something Ocean related...so a beach photo shooting to start seemed to make sense.

My little helper had to try the chair of course!!:)

The Queen of Clubs.

16x2o inches

The Queen of Clubs.

original oil painting on stretched canvas

 This was a good week!  Amazing weather, I did ok with my school assignments and I have only one mandala left to paint (in B&W) :) !!! WOWW! But the best part is that I found time to paint :) and to finish this first Queen. Planning to paint the other three soon. Can't wait!!

I don't really know WHY i like painting "my girls" so much! The process of painting girls remind me of when I was child and I was playing with my dolls, dressing them, putting make up on and inventing stories...maybe I am not fully grown up yet ;)

I still need my dolls.

You can find The Queen of Clubs and other new paintings in my Etsy Shop!

And do not forget to enter the coupon XMAS13 to get a 10%off at the check out!

Happy Friday everyone!

My version of the queen of Clubs, work in progress

Shop now on my Esty SHOP and use code XMAS13 at checkout for 10% off all shop items.


I scheduled my work load so well that last week that on the weekend I had enough to do a "painting for my self"!
Having " free painting time" turns a normal weekend into a very good one :)
Here is my work till now, I still need to work on the eyes and minor detail but is mainly finish.
For a long time I had this idea in mind of painting the Queens of hearts/diamonds/clubs/spades... I was just not sure which style to go.
Hopefully I ll will have time to finish it today or tomorrow and this lady will be nice and ready in my Etsy Shop waiting for someone to take her home :)

Enjoy this sunny and cold Tuesday everyone!
I am about to start painting another mandala :(((( two more weeks of color theory for me :)

16x20

Queen of Clubs

work in progress

oil on canvas

A walk after the rain, on Great Highway.

18x24 inches

A walk after the rain, on Great Highway.

Yesterday I had a bit of time and I decided to apply the last touches to my last landscape painting.

I am pretty happy with final result, especially with the wet look of the street.

I wish I didn't wait so long to finish it though...to me is always easier to do a painting in one go.

Happy Sunday everyone! The sun is shining but is very cold over here, going out for a short after lunch walk with the doggie now.

ciao!!!

Rangoli and Mandala

Last week, this week and next week are my "Mandala weeks".
The last assignment for my Color Theory class is drawing a mandala design and coloring using only the  three primary colors (Y-B-R) in a slip-analogous combination.
Last week was my drawing week, these were my best designs:

Then I started coloring them...more time consuming that you could EVER imagine :) still nice though:)
I read somewhere that painting a mandala is liking doing a painting meditation, true to me.

Since I was not very happy with these I went back to my first design, and I am focusing now on this one. Here are my color roughs till today:

And the last one from today

Painting another one tomorrow...and by the end of week I ll have a final rough for a final painting.

So, this  is the answer to those who have been asking how did I spend my Thanksgiving week, painting and drawing Mandalas! :)

Experimenting with ink wash, step by step

Watercolor, gouache and ink on canvas

Killed by his work (!) or by the bad people in Clash of Clans or by the Wharton homework load. 

(...your choice!)

I started from this picture.(..this is the "side" I see of my husband lately)


Step 1
Do the drawing


Step 2
Paint with white paint gouache  the parts that are supposed to be stay white and let it dry.

Step 3

Paint with waterpoof black inks the black part and also around it and let it dry.

Now the fun part:

Step 4
After the ink has dried I take a strong brush and with the help of that & running water, I carefully remove the gouache from the canvas.
Maybe I removed also a bit of ink actually by pressing too strong...

That was what I was left with:

Then I added the red watercolor background and here it is!

Hubby is still working :) OF COURSE!! I ll show him his artwork once he has a break :)

Hello surfer prints!! and HOLIDAY DISCOUNT on ETSY SHOP ;)

Another beautiful sunny and very warm day here in Ocean Beach, loving every second of it!!
Before lunch I walked with Mona to pick up my surfers prints :) and here they are:

The images are all 6x6 inches printed one by one on a nice thick sheet of paper 8x10 inches.

I tried with red and black ink, also i mixed the print with a bit of collage and finally I tried on a piece of music sheet :)

 In my Etsy shop you will find the black and white print :

If you are interested in any other print just drop me an email and
 DON'T FORGET THE COUPON :)
Just enter the code  HOLIDAYGIFT at the checkout to get a 10% discount
(valid through the 16th of DECEMBER )
  Drop me an email if you want to know more! Thank you!

Walk after the rain ----work in progress----

I took a day for myself today, the main activities of the day have been running, painting and running.
I LOVE days like this :) I wish I had  more of those :)
Of course there was a bit of cleaning and food shopping but they did not sopil the good mood :)

 18x24 inches

work in progress

This is how the painting is coming along, I am pretty happy with the progress, still a lot of work is needed but I feel I am going in the right direction, I really like the greens I got.
Tomorrow will be a all dedicated to school homework, there is a tough assignment ahead ... hopefully I ll be painting again on Friday ;) ( finger crossed!!)
Have a nice evening everyone!
Hubby and me are off to a sushi night ;)

Homework :) Landscapes with gouache

I spent the whole weekend painting small hilly landscape, the same kind of landscape using different colors scheme.

Starting from a value rough just in black to more colorful rough some with more saturated colors other more muted... 

It was a good exercise!:)

All the paintings are 5x7 inches, gouache on paper.