Posts Tagged ‘photorealism’

Two Pink Cupcakes

I finished the Two Pink Cupcakes painting!  (Here is a photo of the painting in progress.)  I’m really happy with the way this one turned out.

Two Pink Cupcakes

Two Pink Cupcakes – 5″ x 7″ – Acrylic on Wood Panel

Available for purchase here

Here is a side view of the painting on my work desk, taken shortly after I finished it.  You can see the reference photo behind it:

Cupcake Painting

The photo was taken as dusk was settling in, hence the slightly bluish tinge.  I will take another photo when the lighting is better!

Here is another view of the painting on my desk.  I wanted to show this one because it captures two more paintings behind it: the funky abstract on the left, and the expressionist portrait on the right.  I hate wasting paint, so I normally work on several paintings at once.  Hence you can see a similar color scheme amongst all three of these paintings.  When working on the photorealist painting, I usually have to wait awhile for the thin watery glazes to dry, so I need something else to do.  This is when having other paintings-in-progress comes in handy!

Paintings on my work desk

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In a museum

Okay, so I probably could have easily done this myself in Photoshop, but it was more fun to have this quickly done for me.  At this website, you can upload an image and choose a museum setting, et voila – within seconds you get a neat image of your photo/artwork on display in a museum!  Pretty fun.  I was curious to see what my normally small-scaled artwork would look like at that size.

Orderly Chaos in a museum

First I uploaded my abstract painting, Orderly Chaos.  The original painting is a mere 12″ x 12″, so it was really interesting to see how it would look on such a large scale.  Pretty cool, I think!  If only I had the time and space to do such large scale works… but since I travel a lot, it’s much more practical to work on small (8″ x 10″ or smaller), portable artwork.  Someday I hope to stay put long enough to create some really large pieces!

Then I decided to upload a couple of my photorealist still lifes, which are even smaller.  Here is Purple Cupcake, which is 6″ x 6″:

Purple Cupcake in a museum

Heh, that looks pretty neat. 

Here is Easter Bunny, the original of which is 5″ x 7″:

Easter Bunny in a museum

There’s something amusing, yet scary and imposing, about these gigantic sweets.  They’re cute in a fake digital form, but I’m not sure I’d ever get the gumption to create photorealistic still lifes on this scale… that would be a ton of work!  I love using a tiny tiny brush, so to create photorealistic paintings on this scale would involve totally changing my work process. 

For now, I’ll stick to making tiny creations…

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Two Cupcakes – Work in Progress

Two Cupcakes - work in progress

Here’s one of the paintings that I’m currently working on… a photorealistic acrylic painting of two yummy pink cupcakes!  I’ve finished the icing on both of the cupcakes, and almost done with the sprinkles.  My next step, after finishing the sprinkles, is to finish the ‘cake’ part of the cupcakes, and then to finish the paper cups, and then the shadows.  The shadows are always the hardest part because it is so hard to blend ‘wide’ expanses of color in acrylics, due to their quick drying time.  Therefore I work in a series of extremely-watered down glazes, so I have to wait for each layer to dry before I can add another one.  I do the same technique for achieving the dimensional illusion in the rest of the painting, but the shadows are always more difficult because they are basically blobs.  I find it much easier to handle nitpicky detail rather than nebulous, nearly-monochromatic blobs!

You can also see the tiny easel that I work on, as well as the photograph tucked behind the painting.  This painting is 5″ x 7″, acrylic on wood panel.

I finally got my new camera (YEAH!!!) but I haven’t had time to play with it much, let alone take pics of my Spoonflower fabric.  I’ve been sick for the past week with a strange stomach bug, which has left me in a state of relative weakness and a diminished ability to concentrate.  So I’ve been slowing down and focusing on my health and getting better.  The fact that I have the energy to write this post shows that I am on the mend, so hopefully I will be back to normal speed in the coming days!

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