Long Lashes and Soft Cheeks, and one year blogoversary

Long Lashes and Soft Cheeks

6" x 8" acrylic on canvas

This is my second acrylic portrait (if you're not counting the two or three disasters that I scraped off on my first try, which I am not) and it went much better than the first. I felt like I had a better understanding of how acrylics worked and also I was able to mix colors that are close to what I use with my watercolor portraits, which for some reason seemed impossible with my first one (which explains the monochromaticness of Emerge).  My favorite part are his lips, they were so fun.

And. . . . tomorrow is my one year blogoversary!

Huzzah!

I never imagined all of the benefits that would come into my life from starting this blog. I've found motivation to paint more often, I think I've really figured out a lot of things about why I paint and how I like to paint and what it means to me in my life right now. And probably most importantly, I've made friends and found support from so many amazing people that I never would have even known existed without starting this blog.

It's been a crazy fun ride, that's for sure.

Thank you so, so much to all of you for following along with me. I hope you feel welcome and appreciated here, because my good friends, you truly are. :)

I thought I'd leave you with my first ever blog post, just for kicks. (And talk about a wierd coincidence that this piece is SO similar to the piece I've posted today.)

January 14, 2010

Beautiful to Me

20" x 24" pastel on toned paper

Hello, I'm Crystal Cook welcome to my blog! I'm a full time mother of three and part time artist, whenever I can fit it in. I specialize in portraits of children in watercolor, but also use pastel, charcoal and colored pencil. I just finished this pastel in black and white and was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I was very drawn to the child's concentrated expression along with those full cheeks and lashes. But the thing that inspired me the most was the strong back light that framed that sweet face and caught the soft hair that only babies have. This was a fun piece to do, usually I work in watercolor which requires me to plan more in advance and usually takes me a while to finish. But this time I just sketched it out fairly quickly and tried to be as expressive as I could with my marks while still capturing a likeness. I think I need to break out the pastels more often it helped me get out of a rut I was in and inspired more creativity in me. Who knew a few little sticks of powdered pigment could bring such a change in my perspective?

Note to self: I've learned so many things since January 14, 2010. Including that it pays to break up your text a little bit. Paragraphs are your friends. Oh, oh and maybe think about titling your blog posts Crystal. Just an idea.

Have a great day everyone!