Paint Party Friday - Finishing something finally!

Do you ever start things and not finish them? It seems like I have a lot of unfinished projects in the works at the moment! I have made progress with my "dots" but it is not finished. Nor are my other painting WIPs but I did finally finish painting my Mexican Sketchbook. Yay!!

I took a Strathmore Windpower drawing sketchbook (with 80lb paper) to Mexico with me on vacation and tried to capture all the highlights of what I saw in this book. Some pages I painted there while others have been sitting since March with unfinished pencil sketches. This week I finally decided I was going to finish it,  and I did.

Here they are for Paint Party Friday. (Warning (and apologies) - there are a lot of pages so I will show most recently finished (and previously unshown) pages first.)

Sea Fan found beachcombimg

Statue of Balam

Beach Map

Sand Writing

Sergeant Majors and Brain Coral

Angelfish?

Variegated Foliage

Painted Cover

View from Balcony

Beach in late afternoon

Champion Fisher-Bird

Start of the Day

Sea Tang or Doctorfish?

Friendly Iguana

Mexican Flowers 1

Mexican Flowers - Hibiscus

Mexican Flower 2

Mexican Flowers - Bougainvillea

Mexican Flowers 3

Mexican Foliage - Banana Palm

Mexican Foliage - Purples

Mexican Foliage - Sun Palm?

Mexican Foliage - Elephant Ears

Pina Colada (help your self to one at the party!)

Eagle Ray

Sea Turtle

Sting Ray

Sketchbook pre-vacation

Travelling Paint Set

Travelling Pen Set

Do you ever paint on vacation? I found it to be very relaxing and a nice little break from reading, plus now I have a fabulous and unique souvenir of the trip. (And I fell in love with those waterbrushes!) I keep looking at the pages, trying to decide if I have a favourite painting or not but am so far undecided. When you finish a journal, do you usually have a favourite page? 

(Update - LOL!! My PPF partner and friend Kristin and I must be on the same wavelength today as she has tropical sketchbooks on her post as well! And she has just reminder me of Illustration Avenue's theme this week of "Tropical" and this sketchbook definitely suits that theme! P.S. Kristin, I LOVE the Thank You painting!! Thank you!)

Have a great time at PPF!

Paint Party Friday - Week 6 - Something New

Happy Easter and Paint Party Friday everyone! I am in B.C., on Vancouver Island, for Easter weekend for my Dad's 90th birthday, a family reunion and to bring my daughter home from her first year at University of Victoria. Busy! I can't promise I will visit you in a timely fashion but visit you, I eventually will!

Last week's poll on inspiration oddly inspired me and I have started a new piece because of it. Potentially a new series, if it works out. You'll see more what I am talking about when it's done but for now I am just hinting at what it will be (if my execution comes anywhere close to my vision, that is).

(WIP - except for a few brush slips, I actually think it looks pretty like this even though this is far from finished!))

(WIP - stage 1 Pencil Outline)

 (WIP - stage 2 adding texture)

Since I have "advance knowledge" of this week's PPF poll and questions, I wanted to mention two recent posts which I found to be very helpful for my own largely self-taught learning. The first is a video by Alisa Burke about her sketchbook. I have often admired her sketchbook when she shows glimpses of it but until I watched this video tutorial, I had everything backwards! I figured one did the ink outline first and then added watercolour  - not vice versa! Her explanation has made a real difference to my Mexican Sketchbook which I started shortly after viewing that post.

(Ink and watercolour influenced by Alisa)

Earlier this week I was trying to figure out the blue in my painting and knew I didn't really have a good handle on the shades in my paint kit so I created this "legend" to see which was the  just right shade of blue. 

(I ended up mixing it myself as no blue was close to what I had in mind.)

Then yesterday I saw this idea at Elvie Studio (someone else whose journaling I love). Fun and practical! I will at some point try that for both my acrylics and watercolours.

So much to learn and so many incredible ideas out there in the blogosphere!

Help yourself to an Easter egg while you're here and have a super long weekend!

xox

EVA

Sunday Sketches - more Mexican Sketchbook

I have been sketching a fair bit this week  - preliminary sketches/ideas for paintings, self portraits for an art journal cover and sketchbook pages - but for Sunday Sketches with Blue Chair Diary I thought I'd show a page from my Mexican Sketchbook that I am happy with. (Well I am actually loving the whole thing but I won't show it all today.)

This bird was fascinating to watch. I took several photos as I was watching him and was very impressed when he caught two fish at the same time!

Here are a couple more - the view from our balcony (sans basketball court)... not the greatest sketch but you see how pretty the resort was.

And the beach in late afternoon:

There are still some more to show you and about 8-10 more pages in one state or another of progress.  I wasn't sure if bringing art supplies with me on vacation was a good idea or not, but I am so happy I did!

I'm looking forward to seeing what you did for Sunday Sketches!

Mexican Sketchbook - Flowers

When I was away in Mexico in early March, I brought with me a nice new sketchbook. 30 pages. A perfect size to art journal every day! I've shared a few pages earlier this month. Today, I thought I'd show you some of the gorgeous flowers I saw there. (As the snow here slowly melts...nary a flower in sight.)

Hibiscus

(colours seem distorted by scanner - argh!)

Bougainvillea

I have lots more pages done and a few still to finish. I'll show more another day! See you for Paint Party Friday!

Creative Tuesdays - Breakfast in my Mexican Sketchbook

"Breakfast" is this week's theme at Mr. Toast's Creative Tuesdays. My little submission is another page from my Mexican Sketchbook, this time showing how breakfast started on my week of vacation.

Coffee and Mimosas! Yum!!  Join me?

P.S. Paint Party Fridays start this week! March 18th. Kristin and I hope you'll join us there too!

Sunday Sketches and my Mexican Sketchbook

I'm baaacckkk.... and I missed you, fellow Sunday Sketchers with Blue Chair Diary!

I had a lovely week on the Mayan Riviera and relaxed. I didn't turn on my blackberry or connect to the internet (or the office) once. I did however take some art supplies with me and spent a little time creating a Mexican resort themed Sketchbook. So my submissions today are some of the things I saw when in Mexico. I did do some snorkeling but it was much windier than I expected and there were either yellow or red flags on the beach - no calm water green ones. So not as much snorkeling as I would have hoped for but enough to make me smile and enough to see new (to me) creatures.

Here are a few of my sketches of what I saw:

A Sting Ray sleeping in the sand, partially covered! He was @ 4 feet wide! Saw 3 in different areas!

A charming sea turtle swimming along and grazing on the sea bottom. 

A leopard ray as graceful as a bird in flight. I don't really know if this ray is called that but his spots were very reminiscent of a leopard's.

And these are what I took with me for creating:

New Sketchbook (now about half full now and I have more ideas from the trip to finish it up later this month! More posts with pictures to follow!)

Paints and water brushes (LOVE these brushes!!!)

Pens

I am looking forward to visiting all of you but I have friends visiting from B.C. so I'm not sure how much internet time I will have or when, but visit I will! 

I hope all of you who are interested in painting more will come and paint and party with Kristin and I starting on Friday (March 18th) for our new Paint Party Fridays!!!

We're excited to have you join us!!

xo

EVA