Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Prepping Canvas

Trying to fight off symptoms of a cold & cough, today was mostly spent in resting. However, the one thing I managed to do in the studio is to unpack all 10 of the 12x16 canvas I got yesterday & prep them. My first step in prepping the canvas is doing a colored background. usually using lemon yellow or shades of yellow, I create the toned background before even thinking about what I am going to paint on them. I do know some of these are going to be Festival Elephants & some of these are going to be Sugar Skulls. Yellow toned backgrounds work best for me as the colors I start on these are usually bright. Here is a good introduction on toned backgrounds for those interested. I also managed to use up the last of four(!) different tubes of yellow & was glad to chuck them out. New Year, New Paints :)

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Stocking Up

Happy New Year! It's that time when I am taking stock of what's left over & ordering new stuff. I already took advantage of all the holiday sales / free shipping and got almost all of my paint supplies for next year. I also got a whole bunch of new canvases & after making a list of potential paintings I want to work on this year, ordered a bunch more. 


And the good guys from Fedex just dropped off these 6 boxes, ordered over the weekend!


One of my goals this year is to standardize the sizes in which I paint. Though it seems a little hard to eliminate a few sizes, I am not going to be working on 9x9, 9x12, 12x12 & 11x14 anymore. I am adding a couple of large sizes instead - like 36x36 & 36x48. 

Again, in 2016, I want to finish 100 titled pieces! May be more if I keep working diligently over this winter 'break'.  Off to prep & paint now!