It is all about the HATS...

As I continue to follow the Muse along with pencil drawing I am being lead (no pun intended! LOL) down this path to the beautiful Black and White photography and lighting of the vintage beauties of the early 1900's into the 40's.

I love everything about the 30's & 40's and swear my last life was during that time.

These renderings are based on images from that time with some redesign on my part when it came to the hats, particularly.

They were mad about hats in those days. I love them. It took some kind of self confidence to wear some of those styles!

In any case, these are fun drawings for me as I teach myself some textures and just ENJOY the process of working on these old beauties.

I have researched through some of the copyright free vintage image sites to pull some of my favorite classic beauties from the early 1900's and will use some of those public figures to do some more work in graphite.

I'm am interested to see where this is going...even I never know.

Stay tuned.

Exercising My Art Muscles

Sunday I was in the studio I worked on a couple of things that were close to being done. One was for our Atlanta mini show that AHA is going to do thanks to Andy Mathis our co-ordinator for that venture. One was the Penny Experiment...needed to finish that too.

So I did that. Then I sat.... and stared.... and sat looking and thinking.... had so many thoughts buzzing by, I wanted to paint something unrelated to animals or my usual...I have been having this image of an "African" inspired (ie: my version) head wrap and beautiful dark skin tones both of which I have never painted.

So the figure is a composite of many black women who are regal and beautiful and now I am going to find some great fabric to paint for the piece.

It is fun to do something unexpected...even for me. I was sitting there with that a blank canvas and was interested to see what was going to come out of the brush.

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Today I will finish two Dal pieces and continue on my painting journey.

When the figure piece is further along I will post the update.

It has been a while since I painted a figure in this way but I am in love with the colors and can't wait to do the material. Should be fun.

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Did I mention my Muse has been running around like a crazy muse waving her arms and shouting in my head with so many ideas that I can't do them all? I need to sit her down and have a chat. I LOVE the ideas but there are just so many hours in a day. And...some of them take some research and prep time. Yikes!

That was part of what happened yesterday. Even I was happily surprised when I started the painting above. Everyday something new.

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Stay tuned!