Painting your favorite ornament- a tutorial!

I wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and give you all a little gift of art this Christmas. We have been painting ornaments for the last few weeks and I thought I would give you a tutorial on painting glittery ornaments since it can be a bit overwhelming to capture all the lights, twinkle and glitter. Diane sent me a photo of an ornament she was trying to paint for our Friday Challenge so that is my subject matter.

This time of year gives us a great way to practice some challenging textures and surfaces. I hope you enjoy this video and have a wonderful holiday!
Diane's ornament from Desiree Habicht on Vimeo. To make the video larger hit the arrows on the bottom right side of the video screen, esc will make it small again!

This will be our challenge for the next week also!  Because….

I will be off my computer, enjoying the holidays with family and house guests!

Friday Challenge - Capture a Christmas Memory

I love to make handmade ornaments and gifts at Christmas. There is just nothing as nice as getting something that is handmade to me. It says to me that I am important enough to spend my time making this for you!  Each year as I pull out my ornaments to decorate my tree I think about each of the people in my life who have given me that ornament, I pray for them and enjoy this special time.

I love sharing some of my special treasures and I hope you will share some of yours with me. Grab one or two of your favorite ornaments and paint them and then journal about what makes them so special to you!! Then share your little treasure with us but posting your painting or sketch using the linky tool below!

Shiny verses satin finishes

This was such a great study in my sketching class that I thought I would share it with you. It is painting shiny, reflective surfaces verses satin finishes. With Christmas just around the corner and while you are decorating you tree, take a minute and try this challenge. Get both a shiny and satin ornament and lets get painting.

 We will start with shiny:
 1. When painting a reflective surface remember that the reflection will take on the shape of the reflecting object and skew it. So with the example of our ornament, the image wraps around the round shape of our ornament. It is often hard to paint these weird, skewed images since our brain doesn't get it at first, but be persistent, it will all come together.
2. You also need to make sure you have good values. Lots of lights and darks make it look reflective! 3. Reflections have lots of hard edges, sharp, mirror edges, keep them crisp and strong.

Satin finishes:
 1. Satin finishes are almost the opposite of reflective images since they do not reflect an image but just the light.
 2. When painting your satin ornament make sure you keep all your edges blended and soft, no hard edges.
 3. No strong lights and darks, everything is soft but there is still value changes, just gradual.

 Okay, its your turn, let me see what you have! Give it a go, this is a great seasonal lesson just begging to be sketched and painted.

Black Friday Challenge - Lets paint Black Friday!!

I thought with it being Black Friday, it would  be a perfect time to paint or sketch something black or something related to black Friday.

It could be black cats

Black Bubblebees

Black Mailboxes full of Black Friday ads

Or it could be your favorite black pet. Remember in water color we don't use black or white. Try mixing yellow, blues and reds in different amounts to make your own blacks. There are other black recipes too like purple and green. Experiment with your blacks and see what happens! Whats your favorite Black recipe?

 Impress me with your creativity!!! Come on, impress me. 

Friday Challenge- Lets paint breakfast

Good Morning!!! Rise and shine, let paint our breakfast! I love to have my coffee and breakfast right next to my sketchbook in the morning. I know I have posted my breakfast sketches before but you can never have enough practice, right!? There is no better way to start the day than with a good sketch! Every sketch makes you better and better. 

First I sketch in my breakfast quickly. It important to make sure my ovals are correct depending on my angles. Those ovals have a way of tripping you up in a sketch or painting. If they aren't right your eye will catch it every time you look at the painting. Your brain will say that isn't right! So pay special attention to those ovals. Depending on your angle, the more over the bowl I am, the more round the opening, being a complete circle if I was looking directly down on it. The more off to the side you are the more of an oval it becomes, here is my quick sketch to help you understand what I am saying. Looking directly down over the bowl you see the bottom and a circle, then as you come down the side you see more of an oval top until you are directly along side and see a straight line, then once you travel below the horizon you see the under side of the bowl so the oval is about the same only your view isn't of the inside but of the backside. I hope this helps you when you are drawing anything with a circle like glasses, bowls, cups, etc. 

So I started with my cereal bowl, defining the shapes.

Next I painted the shadow areas, or negative areas around the items. Notice that the shadows are all the same intensity. Make sure you are reading you shadow values too! Let each layer dry or your paint will blend and you will have a mess! It shouldn't take too long.

I now am adding the color on my Cheerios and adding some more dark browns in the shadow areas. The pre applied blue shadow helps to give depth to your first layers of color.

I continue to add color to the bowl and spoon

I add some more shadows, leaving some light areas and add a background. My page is either ready to journal on or I could add a few Cheerios to the page beside this one and use it as the text page if I have a lot to say this morning!

So here is what we went over today:

1. Ovals, get them right

2. laying in shadows first, taking note of softer and stronger shadows.

3. Using color to define shapes and tell more of the story.

I want to challenge you this week to put these three things into practice as you sketch your breakfast this week! I can't wait to see what your eating in the mornings!!! Happy Painting