This past weekend Chef Kev, Chace and I went to to a birthday party for a very special three-year old girl named Aubrey. She happens to live next door so naturally, her mom and I drink wine, er, ah I mean watch the kids and laugh at all their antics together.

Then my little guy Chace must be pretty flattered.

Because I imitated him.

On canvas.

Now I’m not an artist or painter by ANY means, and I even hesitated to share this because I’m not any sort of professional on the subject… but then I realised I’m not really a professional on anything I blog about here! 😉 Just me rambling along about what I do. And this is what I did.

If we’re going to talk profession(al) mine is Graphic Design. Back in design school I did take some illustration and painting courses but have literally not done a painting since. Well actually I did do one in 2004 – but I wasn’t overly happy with it and I think I got discouraged so it was the only one I had done since I graduated. However, lately I’ve just had a really strong desire to paint. So I recalled any tips I could (from the back of the ol’ brain) and decided to start before I changed my mind – or got intimidated!

What I was thinking!? This is no small painting. It is 2′ x 3′! But for some odd reason I took the leap.

My reference was this photo of Chace that I took last year – one of my faves. I love his little expression.

I was hoping that it would turn out so that I could hang it above our living room couch. Chef Kev and I had been commenting lately that we needed some real ‘art’. Here it is so that you can get a sense of the scale.

Yowza!

Let me share my tools, tricks and tips incase they come in handy 🙂

Tools:
To do a painting like this you will need the following. I will explain what to do with each later…

1) Acrylic Gel and Gesso

2) Brushes

3) Acrylic Paint – in addition to the ‘set’ I purchased the citrusey green and teal as I knew I wanted to pull a lot of those two colours into the piece. I also grabbed an extra white as you will be amazed how much white you go through. It’s faster than a three year old going through underwear when you’re potty training (not that I have any first hand experience with that – cough.LIE.cough).

4) Palette

5) charcoal

And of course a canvas! As mentioned mine was 24″ x 36″. I bought all of my supplies at Michaels and everything came in at less than $100. Not bad for a majorly huge piece of custom art! And if I do future paintings it will be less as I won’t have to buy new brushes, as much paint, a palette etc.

Okay – so now for the tricks, tips and basic ramblings of someone fumbling through a painting and then blogging about it after.

First you will want to prime your canvas with Gesso (large round tub in the top ‘supplies’ photo). There are debates about whether or not you actually need to do this step but I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. I found the best way to apply the gesso was to liberally ‘paint’ it all over the canvas with my large foam brush.

It levels as it dries so don’t worry about brush strokes. You will need to let it dry overnight.

Once dry you can add some texture with your Acrylic Gel (tube in the top ‘supplies’ photo). I used the same brush but this time purposely painted it on with a more rough and ‘crosshatch’ motion. I wanted some nice globs. Those will dry hard and add some great texture to your painting (which you can see in some of the close-ups later). So get your glob on!

Once that is dry you are ready to begin painting! You can either freehand it from this point or transfer your image to the canvas as I did. I’m not the strongest illustrator (horrible really) so thought the best way for me to not pull out my hair and cry like a mad woman do this was to transfer my image of Chace to my canvas. That way he’d be ‘drawn’ proportionately and I’d have a framework to build my painting from. Some purists may call this cheating but I call it sanity. Pick your battles….

I blew my photo up to 2′ x 3′ and printed it out on a colour printer in ’tiles’ (pieces). Then I taped it together so I had a large paper ‘printout’.

From there I took the charcoal I mention in the supplies list and started scribbling like a toddler (again – experience here) all over the back. Side note: I did this step when Chace was asleep as he would have insisted he help with this part.

Charcoal = messy. Toddler + charcoal = you asked for it.

When you buy your charcoal you will want to get the ‘soft’ rather than ‘hard’ kind. A ‘soft’ charcoal will work better for this treatment as it’s darker and well, ‘softer’. In other words, it scribbles better.

You can see the tiled pages in this shot above as well.

When you are done you will thank yourself for putting your toddler to bed as your hands will look like this. Oh, and I’m right handed but my camera was in the right hand here so this is a shot of my clean hand.

Now go and change your white bed linens. Not a mandatory step in the completion of your painting but could still be fun? No. Okay.

Bad laundry joke aside, flip your large charcoal backed printout over and place on top of your DRY gesso/gelled canvas.

Then you trace your image. I didn’t trace every detail but rather blocked in my shapes, higlight areas, shadow zones etc.

When you are all done you will now have a line drawing of your painting that is in proportion to your reference photo. It kind of looks like a paint-by-number here but without the numbers and cheap packaging.

It looks creepy but really helps. Honest.

You can really see the Gel texture here after doing the charcoal rub and trace.

Next you can clean up/rub off the majority of the charcoal excess from your large printout and hang it somewhere visible as reference. I just taped mine up on the wall.

Now we start painting!

Add a splash of each colour to your palette…

begin mixing and GO. Have fun. Relax. Enjoy.

Here is where it gets a bit tricky as there is no right or wrong way to paint. It’s such a personal thing. I can only share how I did mine and encourage you to follow your heart (and eye) if you do your own.

I personally love the style of painting that has ‘hidden’ outlines. In otherwords, defined borders that are made of hits of colour versus an actual ‘line’. I hope my final photos explain that better but I began my painting by blocking in some ‘hidden’ outlines.

You can see I chose brighter colour on the right (highlight) and darker tones on the left (shadow). Establishing a light source allows your painting to look more natural. Not that this is supposed to look realistic but you know when you see something and think “that doesn’t look right” – a lot of the time it is a conflicting or unnatural light source.

Then I started filling in, and building ‘up’ my painting. My approach consisted of blocking in highlights, shadows and focussing on tone.

Attemping to do the eyes scared me so I left those blank as I built up my confidence.

This close up of the mouth is a good photo to show how I did my painting in layers. The mouth was not nearly as red and vibrant in the final piece but I started this way knowing that as I built up my layers of paint, this red base would peek through and add some ‘life’ and splashes of vibrant colour.

You can also see the charcoal rub drawing through this first layer. Once your first layer dries and you build upon it, those lines will disapear. After the first layer of paint the charcoal drawing isn’t really needed anymore so that is not an issue.

This painting is built up in about three main ‘layers’. Luckily acrylic dries fast so the actual painting part only took about 5-6 hours including the drying time.

Chef Kev was amazed how fast it was when it came right down to it. Yup, faster than Rob Pattinson moving out on Kristen Stewart. FAST!

Here is Chace’s face filling out…

And he now has eyes! Gulp.

Here is the background coming together. I orginally had done more of a foresty background like my inspiration photo but did not like it. It competed too much with Chace so I just painted over it!

It was as this point that I noticed his eye on the left looked a bit droopy. So I fixed it. You can also see a small printout of the photo on the left here. I had it right beside my canvas for reference (in addition to my large tiled one).

And kept building up the colour. You can see more highlights here – especially in the wood.

Starting to look a bit more finished now. I fiddled some more and then stood back and officially called it  – D.O.N.E!

My main goal was to challenge myself – and try to make it look like Chace. I’m happy with what I’ve done.

I also wanted Chace to love it.

FAIL.

He told me to take it back.

He said “No Chace funny face”

It scared him.

But he came around (aka I put it up anyway) and now loves it.

He calls it his “Chacey painting”.

Here are some close-ups and a few more notes…

You can see the ‘hidden’ outlines here. See how there are just little hits of colour that border his head? 

Here you can see how toned down the bright red mouth is after some more layering.

Adding little hits of colour (such as the teal in his eyelids) will add some character to your painting. Well, in my opinion anyway. Not necessary of course!

A close-up of his shirt collar and neck.

Here is close-up of the wood. You can really see a good example of the gel texture here.

To finish it all off I signed my piece and painted the canvas wrap edges black.

So there we have it! A crash course in portrait painting by this one little blogger.

What about you? Stepped out of your comfort zone recently? Painting something new? What do you think of my first painting attempt in 8 years!? I generally like to make jokes but this one I’m happy to not be the butt of so be kind 😉

wicka-wicka-wack – reeeewiiiindddd. This is a re-post, orginally from last July when I was a brand new blogger. Since I’m such a Christmas nut, this was a popular post (at the time) and my readership was much smaller, I thought I’d bring it back (waaaaay back) as I knew it would be new (who knew it would be new? I knew) to my new readers . HO Ho. HOt out today isn’t it? Enjoy!

My name is Elaine and I’m addicted to Christmas. No seriously.

Okay, so I’m not crazy-put-your-stuff-out-in-October-crazy but I do LOVE the holiday season. I love the warmth, the tradition, the coziness, the shimmering lights, the hustle, the quietness, the FEELING. I love Christmas.

I also love crafting and making things and that is how my little annual tradition of Christmas Craft Night was born. The concept was to get some girls together, drink some wine, chat, enjoy each others company and make a Christmas craft! And it took off. Big time. So now it has become an annual tradition that my friends say they love. And I love hosting it. Love it. The best compliment I received was from a friend who told me that the craft night was, for her, the sign that the Christmas season had begun. She looks forward to it every year to kick off the season and get her in the Christmas spirit. Wow.

So how I start is, I pick a craft that seems doable in a few hours. The point of Christmas Craft Night is that every girl leaves with a completed craft. I always host it right at the beginning of December so that the ladies can enjoy that years craft for the whole month.

After I choose the craft I do a trial run to make sure that it’s doable in an evening and work out any glitches. Then I design an invitation to send out that features what the craft will look like. In earlier years I’d include a list of supplies for the ladies to bring but now I just pick up the supplies myself (to save them running around and take advantage of bulk deals) and then just charge a fee that covers their potion of the supplies. I aim to always keep it under $20.

Here is what last years invitation looked like:

Last night I made Chace (my three-year-old) a special little treat.

That’s right. I made him a sweet (ha, get it) ice cream clown – in honour of him running away to join the circus… might have been kidding about that last part.

And as you can most likely tell, it was very easy to make.

First I simply melted some chocolate (I used Aero bars) in a homemade double boiler. If you don’t own a double boiler you can acheive the same effect by filling a pot about 1/4 full of water and resting a stainless steel bowl over the opening (like a lid). Once the water in the pot begins to boil, your chocolate will melt nice and evenly. Stir the chocolate though so it does not scorch.

Once melted, I twirled the open end of my cone in the chocolate.

And then twirled it once more in a bowl of sprinkles.

With my ‘hat’ made I moved on to Mr. Clown’s ice cream face.

To stop it from melting all over the plate I scooped a small scoop into a little condiment bowl and then stacked another small scoop on top of that. Then I topped it off with my waffle cone hat and made a face with Runts candy. I love how the hat hangs over the back as seen above.

What a ‘sweet’ (stop me now) little face.

I quickly snapped a bunch of photos as my time was limited. For obvious reasons – melting ice cream, yes. But someone something much more pressing was waiting in the wings.

Mr. Clown lived a short life but he was well loved.

It was a perfect way to ‘cap off’ (okay, done with those now) a warm summer evening.

I love doing little crafts like this with Chace and marvel at the excitement he gets from such simple things. It’s amazingly beautiful, and innocent, and ‘sweet’ (sorry – had to).

What about you? Any easy to make toddler faves that you want to share? Made any special treats recently? Run away to join a circus as of late? Please share 🙂

PSST – I’ve updated my Facebook page with a new seasonal cover photo highlighting some summery projects. Head on over and let me know what you think – and don’t forget to ‘like’ the page if so inclined. Thanks 🙂

You may recall in this post where I updated you on Chace’s ‘Big Boy Room’ progress, that I had another project in the works for this big blank space of wall…

link party

This past weekend we entertained some guests from England (Chef Kev’s Aunt and her husband) and it inspired me to do a casual country bouquet as a centrepiece.

To start, I went to my local garden centre and picked out $20 worth of the blooms I wanted. No filler, no branches of leaves, no fuss, just straight pretty blooms. I don’t mind that (filler etc.) for certain arrangements but really wanted to create a contemporary take on the traditonal ‘english garden’ as a nod to our guests :). So no room for extra fluff here.

I chose (from left) a soft green viburnum, pink peonies, and white and pink dahlias.

Here’s a neat little design tip that may be of interest. I learned it when I was in design school (I’m a Graphic Designer) but find it comes in very helpful for pretty much anything visual…

Things look better in ‘threes’. And along that same thought, odd numbers.

For example, this bouquet looks like a collection of random blooms. But break it down and it is purposefully made up of a combination of the following ‘three’ and ‘odd numbered’ elements:
– 3 viburnums
– 3 peonies
– 5 dahlias (odd number)
= 11 blooms total (odd number)

Look a litle closer and you may also notice that those 11 blooms are made up of 3 colours – green, pink and white.

Now let’s get to arranging these little pretties!

First up I chose my vase. I picked a simple one that wasn’t too tall since it was being used as a centrepiece. It’s kind of important that the guests can talk to each other rather than a large bouquet that they can’t see past. Ha. This vase had a nice wide opening which fit in with the vision I had in mind.

I taped off a grid – done simply with regular scotch tape – as I did here. The grid offers some structure and support (so your flowers don’t flop over) and allows you to plan out placement a bit easier.

I cut each bloom before placing it in the vase. It’s a good idea to always cut (at an angle) above any spots where a new shoot or branch would come out. I was told once that fresh water can get up the stalk faster/easier by bypassing this ‘intersection.

I started placing my flowers in, beginning with the viburnum.

See how the flowers are trying to flop over? I placed all of my blooms in the middle four sections of the grid since they are large and wanted to ‘hang loose’. Keeping them towards the centre ensured that when they did naturally flop down, they ended up where I wanted them (grazing the edge of the vase) and not hanging down over the sides.

The dahlia’s went in next.

Again, I kept all of these in the centre four quadrants.

As I trimmed the peonies to add in, I noticed a few petals that had begun to turn. It’s okay to remove them, and actually a good idea. Even if a petal is on it’s way out, it’s taking vital water away from the rest of the bloom so don’t feel bad removing the offenders.

In went the peonies and I was done!

Peonies open really fast so even though I made this the day before our guests came, that ‘ball’ of a peony was open wide and gorgeous by the time we had dinner they day after I arranged this.

Viburnum detail…

getting up in this dahlia’s face…

And some face-time with my favourite flower – the peony.

This arrangement was simple, fun to make and (in my opinon) beautiful!

Entertained any overseas guests lately? Used it as a (good) excuse to buy flowers? I did. Guilty. But in a good way.

Cheerio. Chip Chip.