Tag Archives: c2023

More Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone :)

December 23, 2023Uncategorizedacrylic paint, c2023, Christmas, paintFinch

For my friend who took this trip with me, for Christmas 🙂 I had a lot of fun discovering how to do the shadows and finding out how much detail I wanted on the trees. I’ve been experimenting recently with how I depict trees, there’s usually so many of them that I lose interest and just draw lines, but that’s not really what I want to be doing. I used a bunch of different shades of green for these, and I really like how the ones on the right turned out.

I only used my original sketch as reference, and worked the colors from memory as Thomas Moran did (though some of his sketches have colors written in pencil :)). I think it makes the final product more vivid and oversaturated, more true to how it felt to be there, and less how the camera captured it.

Project completed December 2023.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

October 10, 2023Uncategorizedc2023, watercolorFinch

This watercolor piece was inspired by my recent trip to Yellowstone and my newfound love for Thomas Moran. The man truly was an activist artist and helped convince Congress to make this area the first national park in the world – which happened on March 1, 1872. Also… Congress bought his 7 x 8.6 FOOT oil painting (below) for $10,000 ($251,660 in today’s dollars).

Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, from Artist’s Point (picture taken by me and used as a reference)

I did this painting for my aunt, using my late uncle’s watercolor pencils 🙂 It was so fun to discover how to use the pencils and bring out the colors of the canyon. I probably should have swatched the colors first, but I did it eventually and it was very helpful.

But… Thomas Moran himself said that the colors of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone “were beyond the reach of human art”, so I didn’t stress too much 🙂

my first draft – something happened with the proportions that I just wanted to start over; I used sharpie to sketch out the important shapes

I’m so used to black and white pen only drawings that I had to put some ink back on this piece – I wanted those deep, dark shadows and to bring details to the trees and rocks that I couldn’t finesse with the watercolors.

Time lapse of adding some pen and more watercolor layers

I used a lot of color layering, alternating around between pen and watercolor, scraping off paper with the wet brush, letting things dry and coming back.. and eventually decided it was finished. Final piece under different lighting below:

Project completed September 2023

Wedding Flowers :)

September 29, 2023Uncategorizedc2023, embroidery, hand embroidery, hand sewing, paint, stumpwork, watercolor, wired slipsFinch

I made these for my friend and her husband, based on their “Save the Date” stationery 🙂 it was super fun to revisit the wired slips technique and bring these flowers to the third dimension.

My reference! I was originally planning to do all the flowers here, plus one from the front of the invitation, but I decided to invest my time in doing three flowers well and being patient with the color blending.

I made three different flowers; one with 5 petals (the one on the right), one with 7 petals (in the middle), and one with 20 petals (bottom left). I wanted to have different colors and textures across the flowers, and different petal shapes. The 5-petal flower has teardrop petals that come to a point, the 7-petal flower has petals with flat tops, and the 20-petal flower has rectangular heart shaped petals.

Working around the border of a petal with buttonhole stitch

Top: back of petals that are cut out and ready; Bottom: leaves still on the hoop

I poked the petals into one layer of fabric and folded the ends up, then embroidered the center stamens and pistils onto the fabric and anchored the petals to the fabric. Then I added in the leaves and made tiny stitches between petals and leaves and into the base fabric to secure all the elements together. I added another layer of fabric underneath the base fabric for some structural stability, and glued the entire assembly to a square canvas. The plain background ended up too plain, so I added some watercolor to the background to spruce it up and give it the idea of more leaves in the distance.