Blarg!

I have an aversion to the word "blog."  I shall refer to them henceforth as "blargs."
This should create no confusion at all.




As a bonus, here is a coloring page for you!

Outta Gas!

About every three months I visit Washington, which is two states over from mine.  This time, as I was getting ready to drive back to Montana, there was a problem with my bank account (namely my loving love spending more money than should have been spent) and it took a big chunk out of my gas money for coming home.
My friend, Vez, going above and beyond, sent me gas money (and enough for a tasty lunch). I told her I couldn't pay her back any time soon, and was met with "paint me a pretty picture."  So this is what I painted for my beautiful knight in shining armor:

And no, this is not me.   It is my PT. Cruiser, Eunice.  Really, it is not me though. But of course, it is modeled after styles representative of me .  I, however, have no adorable beauty mark by my lip. ;)

Caspa

One of the cutest youtubers of the atheist crowd, ScouseCaspaXS. I painted her previously and then she got a new camera and I could tell that she had blue eyes, so I had to paint her again.  This one came out much better.

Pictured here with her baby rat. Really pleased with how this came out.  I love painting rodent eyes.

For a bunny.

This is a gift for my friend (and muse) Muffin Von Chub.
Her bunny is sick and she was talking about her eventual departure to the "great garden in the sky."
It was so sweet that I really wanted to paint it as best I could.  The style is fairly different than my normal style but I was trying for more illustrative, like a Golden Book.  I had to wrestle my program a bit to get where I did but I wish to try a few more paintings this way because I like the general idea.

We don't need no stinkin' badges!

It's Cinco de Mayo. I am aware of that.  I am pretty good at recognizing holidays.
So last night, as I was going to sleep after reading Stephen King's Dark Tower - The Gunslinger, it occurred to me that I should do a "black velvet painting" to honor Cinco de Mayo and that it should be a gun slinging kinda of pinup.  And then, I shouted, as I often do, thanks to the movie UHF, "WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' BADGERS!" which startled my husband who was trying to sleep, and I was reminded of the movie "Treasure of Sierra Madre" and then I pictured something close to this painting in my mind.   I must also say that I was inspired by the black velvet world in the X-BOX video game, "Psychonauts" (which is an AWESOME game, all the way, but the end stage is freaking impossible. Like totally.. =[ ).

So here it is, STINKIN' BADGES!:

Look at it big, her face looks wonky all small like.

Gift Art - Hyperbole and a Half

A friend introduced me to Hyperbole and a Half last week. I was having a really bad day and spent the rest of the day (and several of the next days) reading the entire blog and laughing uproariously.  Check it out if you haven't already and you like to laugh. If you don't like to laugh, what is wrong with you?

Anywho, the whole way through, I was thinking I need to be her best friend!!!!  I want to thank her for keeping my loved ones safe from me by distracting me and making me laugh when I just wanted to be a giant stomping destroying monster of some sort.  So I painted this for her this afternoon.  I think it does a good job of displaying my gratitude (and it gave me a good reason to stare at a photo of Brett Favre):

Again, this was painted like the last piece, there was no sketching of the face first, just jumped right in with patches of color.  I like to imagine people can tell the difference. Pieces where I sketch the face first are usually painted much smoother than this, my signature style.

On Break

So I finished up about 21 of the pieces for the art gig that I am doing.  More are supposed to be coming in June. 
I have come to realize that my favorite way of paintings is kinda monochrome and expressionist.  I have done quite a few pieces this way, but while working on this project, I was tasked with the following portrait and man, I loved it.  It just emerged out of me.  Instead of sketching out the face first, I just started with blotches of color and built them up until the image was created. I feel like an "actual artist" when I work this way, whatever that means.  I'm just creating and not thinking about it... and more often than not, it works out, really well. So I give you the pre-production version of the portrait which now belongs to Disruptor Beam, LLC: