Tag Archives: ACEO

ACEO Morgan Portrait, Part 4

September 20th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

ACEO Morgan Portrait
3-1/2 by 2-1/2 inches

At this stage of the painting process, it doesn’t seem to take much to go from looking good to looking better.

In the top image, a layer of Burnt Sienna has been applied to the previous work. Since the object at this stage was to adjust the color of the horse evenly, I mixed a little bit of walnut oil with the paint before applying it to the painting.

I discovered immediately that that did not produce the look I wanted. The paint was nice and transparent, but the paint film was not as even as I would have liked. In some areas, it even looked streaky.

To eliminate that streaky look, I added small amounts of additional paint to the affected areas and brushed them in every possible direction within the area I was painting. The end result was exactly what I was looking for, even if the method left a little bit to be desired!

Although the overall painting is still a little bit darker than what I’m looking for, I am satisfied with the work so far. Adding highlights to the horse will make a major difference, but that will have to wait for the end of the process and there are still a few other things to be done.

Like add some gold tones to the basic chestnut color of this horse’s coat.

After the paint was dry (24 hours), it was time for the next step.

Before doing anything else, I rubbed the entire painting with walnut oil, then wiped off the excess with a clean rag. The purpose was to allow the paint to flow onto the surface more easily without creating the ‘greasy’ look that resulted by mixing paint and oil in the previous work session. This method, which I have used before on larger paintings, does improve the flow of the paint and allows me to create smooth gradations of color as though I were blending wet-into-wet without actually working wet-into-wet.

I did notice one thing that caused momentary alarm…. There was color on the clean rag I was using when I finished. There wasn’t a noticeable difference on the painting, but some of the previous day’s work did lift in when I removed excess walnut oil. Twenty-four hours wasn’t quite enough time for that work to dry. Consider it a lesson learned and a mental note made!

But the rest of the work went extremely well.

The colors used were Cadmium Yellow Light mixed with Titanium White to paint the highlights in the face, upper neck and shoulder. Yellow Ochre was then applied wet-into-wet as needed to add yet another dimension to the array of colors in the highlights.

As the horse continues to advance, I am also adjusting the background. Those adjustments are less drastic and are geared mostly toward focusing the attention where it belongs…on the horse.

In this case, all I did was add some of the highlight colors from the horse to the background around the horse’s throat and face, then brushed them out into the surrounding areas so they blended smoothly.

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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Winner of the ACEO original art give-away is…

September 19th, 2008 | By Bethany Caskey
Black Horse ACEO

N. Faye!

Congratulations!!!

I will have another give-away soon, so keep tuned!

Black Horse ACEO

Posted in Giveaway      

©Copyright 2008 by Bethany Caskey. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Bethany Caskey’s website.

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ACEO Horse Portrait, Part 3

September 19th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

ACEO Horse Portrait
3-1/2 by 2-1/2 inches

Another day, a little bit more work.

At this point, painting is all about widening the range of values and continually defining the details that make this particular horse look like a unique and individual animal.

The horse in the reference photograph is a dark red bay with no white markings that I can see. A typical Standardbred.

I wanted to try a white blaze so I painted one in during the last painting session, then painted it back out again in this one.

I also moved and reshaped the eye a little bit, began adding more detail to the mane in the form of highlights and a more full cut (you will notice the bridle path was removed) and once again attempting to get that forward placed ear in the right location and position.

The 10/0 brush is still the brush of choice, but in order to get the very fine marks I want, I began adding a couple of drops of walnut oil to the paint to make it just a little bit more brushable. That helped a lot, though it will also produce some shine as the paint dries.

The shoulder had also been briefly touched upon, but not developed to any great extent, so I began working on that. The band of highlight sloping from the withers to the point of the shoulder is meant to parallel the highlight on the front of the face and the light coming into the painting from the right. To make that work properly, the shoulder needed to be brightened more, so I spent the most time on that. The upper right corner was punched up just a little bit, too, then a few other areas were touched up and the painting was set aside to dry over night.

And this is what the painting looks like after the final painting session for the week.

Work was basically the same is for previous painting sessions, but more of it.

The highlights along the shoulder were developed more completely and are now beginning to show the degree of muscling I like to see.

Highlights were added to the mane and forelock, especially around the poll, where they will be getting the most direct light.

The face was more completely defined and I worked on that eye some more, as well as the muzzle.

And the blaze was painted in again. With most of the lighter values in place on the face, it was a lot easier to determine just how bright to make the blaze.

There are still some problem areas. The ear is better, but still not quite right. Same with the muzzle and particularly the nostril. But the biggest problem area is the eye. It should look back at me when I look at the painting and it doesn’t do that, yet.

Hopefully in the next session, after a two-day break and some time for the painting to dry completely and me to develop a fresh eye for it.

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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ACEO Horse Portrait, Part 2

September 18th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

ACEO Horse Portrait
3-1/2 by 2-1/2 inches

Still thinking about the idea that resulted from the last painting session, I decided to continue work as originally planned in this session…at least as far as getting the details of the horse placed as quickly and completely as possible.

Using Raw Umber and Titanium White as the only two colors and using mostly a 10/0 golden taklon brush in the horse and a small flat in the background, I continued to build a broader range of values and more intricate detail.

But I think my mind has been convinced at a subconscious level because the ear was moved from a flat out and backward position that indicates effort and determination, the ear was painted forward, in a posture that is more alert and eager. It was painted out again, but the idea has been more firmly etched that a change of course has been taken.

Once I realized that I really did want to go in that direction, I changed the value pattern in the background, as well. The lightest areas had been centered around the horse’s head and face. They were rearranged so that the darkest areas are at the left side of the painting and the brightest area is in the upper right hand corner.

The next few steps will be about developing the under painting to as complete a version of the finished painting as possible. For the most part, that means the horse, but I am also going to pay more attention that usual to the mane in the next few steps.

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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Buddy Study #1, Part 5

September 17th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

Buddy Study #1
2″ x 3″ on Unstretched Artfix Canvas

The under painting is getting close to completion.

So close, in fact, that every day when I finish work on it, I think it’s finished.

The areas I wanted to work on in this session were the ears, eyes, nostrils and jaws. Basically, the things that appear in pairs. Up to this point, they have not been balanced and while no animal’s face is perfectly symmetrical, most of them are better balanced than what this little painting showed.

For example, when I finished with this painting session, I thought to myself, “Next time, color!”

But in looking at the image now, as I write this post, I see that the nostrils and the ridge along the top of the cheek are still not quite right. Better, much better, but still not right.

And now that I look at it, that left ear isn’t quite the right shape. Neither is the left eye….

And so it goes!

Fortunately, the earth tones I’m using (Raw Umber in varying shades) dry over night so it’s entirely possible to finish this thing the next day. I hope so because I am chomping at the bit to put some color on this one!

I also am learning something else…this would make a great portrait to do large! Just look at that right eye, the one with the highlight in it. That’s what I mean when I say a horse’s eye should look back at me. Wow! Can you imagine that enlarged to 20×30? Or larger? Gives me goosebumps just to think about it!

I can easily see something like that being the centerpiece of art show booths for as long as I own it (I don’t think it would be in my possession very long). What an attention grabber!

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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ACEO Horse Portrait, Part 1

September 16th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

ACEO Horse Portrait
3-1/2 by 2-1/2 inches

This is the second of two ACEO horse paintings started the first week in September, 2008. The first one (search for ACEO Morgan Portrait), is now in the color stages.

The surface is a gessoed archival mat board (Crescent museum quality, I believe). After gessoing, it was toned with a medium brown color (see along the bottom), then painted partially with a sky color. That’s why the part of the card that has not yet been painted is two different colors. It was originally prepared for a landscape painting.

That, as it turns out, is just the first of many changes of course with this painting!

The original idea for this painting was to paint a head and shoulders portrait of a harness racing horse reaching for the wire.

That’s what the reference photo shows. That’s what the drawing shows. That’s what I transferred to the surface.

It remained that way through the first painting session, during which the background was blocked in using Raw Umber and Titanium White in the M. Graham Oils line.

It remained that way during the second painting session, as well, even though most of the harness and bridle was painted over while I worked on the horse.

During this part of the process, the entire horse was blocked in, including a flying mane, which I wanted to be as important to the sense of speed as the horse itself.

The original intention was to repaint the harness after the horse was done, quite likely in the final stages of the color phase. Since harness and other forms of tack are usually painted in more opaque layers late in the process, that was what I planned to do this time.

But after I finished with it for the day, I realized that it had nearly perfect lighting for an idea I had to paint a painting called Eternal Life that features a horse running toward a bright light. This idea has been simmering in my mind since my Dad’s death last November and would be a tribute to him and a symbol of the hope that we have in Christ. I have even looked for references for such a piece, but while I’ve found many that beg to be painted, none have been ‘it’.

So it was quite a surprise to look at the work so far on this piece and realize that with only a few changes, this image could work very well for that idea.

I don’t know for sure whether or not to go in that direction. I would still like to do a portrait of a harness horse, but….

When I set the painting aside for the day to dry, the thought was to look at it again over the next couple of days and see which direction it wanted to go.

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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Buddy Study #1, Part 4

September 15th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

Buddy Study #1
2″ x 3″ on Unstretched Artfix Canvas

Major progress on this portrait!

The last time I worked on it was before getting the five new miniature-sized brushes and there just wasn’t much about the work to inspire me. As a result, it was set aside for over a week while I experimented with new tools (those wonderful tiny brushes) on other projects and began work on a larger portrait.

But on September 13, after pushing an ACEO portrait as far as possible, I took Buddy off the wall with the intention of either working through the problems and getting it back on track or coming to the conclusion that it was not salvageable and moving on to something else.

In this work session, I put the 10/0 brush to work and basically repainted the entire painting, including parts of the background. Work began with the eyes, which had been bothering me almost since I starting painting the horse. Getting them correct helped immensely.

But I also spent a good deal of time reshaping the jaws on both sides, the ears, muzzle and neck. In the process, I also repainted the background in order to push the edges around.

The end result was very satisfying. Buddy now has a presence that did not exist in the portrait to this point. The changes around the withers were also unexpectedly pleasing.

There are still some areas that need to be completed before the under painting can be considered complete, but the portrait is not only back on track; it’s many steps beyond where it was when I started.

I suppose the moral to this story is that having the right tools really does make a major difference!

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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ACEO Morgan Portrait, Part 3

September 13th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

ACEO Morgan Portrait
3-1/2 by 2-1/2 inches

At this stage, it seems I work for short amounts of time to do one or two things, then wait for two or three days for paint to dry.

That is especially true with a painting of this size.

It took two days for the previous work to be dry enough for me to work on comfortably both in applying the next color layer and in being able to wipe it off if necessary. As it turned out, I didn’t need to wipe anything off so there was no danger of damaging previous work, but I am glad I gave the painting an extra day to dry.

The only work that was done in the next session was applying a layer of Viridian Green to the background. I started with a dry brush application of straight color, but that was too opaque and the color was too obvious. So I thinned it a little with Walnut Oil. That worked very well.

I also put a little bit of the same color in the shadow areas of the horse.

As it happened, that didn’t change the look of the painting very much. One fairly dark color over another doesn’t create a noticeable difference.

I did think about brushing some yellow into the fresh paint, but decided to wait at least until the next day, when I could look at the painting again with a fresh eye. As wet as it’s been the last couple of days and as wet as it’s supposed to be over the weekend (we have area flash flood warnings out for most of the weekend), I should still be able to work wet-into-wet if I so choose.

The Next Day….

The rain continues to pelt down. I heard that the good people of Wichita and points south and east received between 4 and 8 inches in the last twenty-four hours. Lots of streets are awash, many of them closed. Even here in Newton, which is upstream from the worst of, the three or four small creeks that criss-cross the town are out of their banks or nearly so.

I walked to work in a driving rain. What an exhilarating experience! I made the trip intact, if wet. My umbrella did not. A gust of wind from a passing container train turned the poor thing inside out!

But all of the humidity meant the work I did on this painting in the previous session was still wet enough to receive some additional work, so I started with Azo Yellow, then re-applied Viridian to some areas to tone down the yellow. At the end of the work session, I went back to the under painting color, Raw Umber, and used some of that to tone done the overall greens and put the emphasis back where it should be; on the horse’s face and head.

I put just a touch of Azo Yellow on the shoulder, but didn’t like that and wiped it off again. No other work was done on the horse. The apparent changes in color have everything to do with the changing color of the background.

I wish there was some way to show you the actual colors of this painting so far. Especially the background. It is delightful, but not even the best digital images do it justice!

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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ACEO Original Artwork Give-Away

September 12th, 2008 | By Bethany Caskey

For anyone who does not know what an ACEO is:

ACEO stands for “Art Cards, Editions and Originals”. These cards have one main rule - they are 3.5 inches by 2.5 inches - the size of a trading card.

The reason for this is, of course, that Art Cards are made to be traded! But while artists were happily trading cards, the general public was left out in the cold, having no Art Cards to trade. A group of artists realized this, and quickly made their cards available for sale at remarkably low prices so that everyone could join in the fun!

Cards are also sold either as originals or editions. Make sure you know which you are buying! If it is a print it should say so, and it should be numbered and signed, usually on the back.

And, you can read more here: http://www.art-cards.org/

How do I enter? You ask in an excited and anticipitory voice.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post. Contest will end on September 18th, 2008 at midnight. I left plenty of time since I have SO many readers, I want you all to have a chance.
%^P

The winner will be selected using a random number generator that will chose a number that corresponds to your comment number.

Here is the ACEO you are attempting to win for your very own.

Black Horse ACEOBlack Horse ACEO

Colored pencil on drafting film. Original piece in a protective hard sleeve. Good luck!

©Copyright 2008 by Bethany Caskey. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Bethany Caskey’s website.

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ACEO Morgan Portrait, Part 2

September 12th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

ACEO Morgan Portrait
3-1/2 by 2-1/2 inches

The next step was color. The first thing I did in this session was review the painting with a fresh eye. Was the under painting really finished or were there areas that could have been improved upon?

Since another challenge with this technique is the urge to get to the color before the under painting is actually complete, I give the review phase special attention and am hyper critical of the work I’ve done up to that point. The goal is to apply color in transparent glazes, which means that for the most part, every detail I want in the final painting should be in the finished under painting. So I make sure that those details are, indeed, there.

The finished under painting should also look like a finished painting in two colors. Does it look that way?

When I can say yes to both questions, it’s time for colorl

In preparation for the beginning color layers, I gave a lot of thought to the colors I would chose. The horse will be a chestnut leaning toward the gold or orange shades, so I had a couple of options for background colors.

The first and most obvious is green. That would definitely be the most natural choice and greens and reds work very well together. A green with heavy blue tints would work very well for a horse of this color.

But the direct complement of orange is blue. How would a dark, red blue look?

I also had visions of purple. Don’t ask me where those came from, but that was the predominant idea.

When it came to actually putting paint on the brush, I chose Yellow Ochre as the first glaze for the horse. Paint was applied dry brush, then the excess was wiped off with a clean paper towel. Wiping off the excess accomplishes three things.

It leaves behind a very thin, very transparent layer.

It creates a paint layer that will dry quickly regardless of the color.

It removes brush strokes and produces a wonderfully even color layer.

The background was painted with Ultramarine Blue, but the excess wasn’t wiped off. The color was also applied in a variation of thickness. In some areas, the under painting shows through quite clearly. In others, it’s almost completely concealed.

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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Landscape Study #19 2008

August 14th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

Landscape Study #19 2008, completed August 13, 2008.

This painting is all about space.

The space between the large tree in the foreground and the tree in the middle ground; the space between the middle ground tree and the trees in the background; and, finally the space between those trees and the sky.

That final space is less obvious than the others. It is, for the most part, assumed in most landscape art. The sky is always understood to be a long way off.

The idea of painting distance (or space) is not a new one among artists. It’s not even new to me. Most of my Flint Hills landscapes, large and small, are more about capturing the sense of space that is so prevalent among those hills through the use of value, color, overlap and other composition tools.

Landscape Study #19 2008 uses overlap primarily, but also value and color. I am especially happy with the trees along the horizon. They were painted in after the other two trees were painted. Generally, I work from the background forward, but with this one, I put in the major elements, then added the background.

Landscape Study #19 2008
3-1/2 x 2-1/2
Original Oil on gessoed archival mat board
$25 unframed plus shipping

I also finished the 4×6 small format painting I’ve been working on. I even signed it so it’s officially finished. I had hoped to photograph it today, but was awakened by thunder and the sound of rain, so unless the skies clear before the end of the day, the photography will have to wait.

One new small format painting (5×7) and one new ACEO landscape were started yesterday. I also worked on an ACEO landscape that is about half done (one of the eight in progress). My goal for the year is 52 ACEO landscapes. That works out to one per week.

That’s not a bad goal, even if I have fallen way behind! Here’s to challenge!

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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Four New ACEO Landscapes in the Works

August 13th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

Yesterday, I worked on a total of six paintings throughout the day. One small format, which is very close to completion, and five ACEO landscapes.

The small format painting is the end-of-day scene I’ve been tinkering with off and on for a couple of weeks. I think it’s time to make an executive decision and just finish it!

One of the ACEO landscapes is one I started last Saturday at the gallery. I added a few more greens and a little bit of detailing, but the paint on that batch of ACEOs was still wet, so I didn’t do much with them.

The other four are new starts and they are featured above.

I used the same color combination for all of them. Cerulean Blue and Titanium White, but one of them has just a touch of Azo Yellow in it. All the colors are from my older, linseed oil based stock. Lefranc & Bourgeois, Winsor & Newton, Van Gogh and a Daniel Smith or two.

At the start, I was thinking only about painting skies. But it has been some time since I’ve used an under painting on anything, so I decided to design the full composition for each ACEO landscape.

They are all from imagination so are subject to metamorphosis as I work.

The net result of all of this activity is that I now have two batches of four ACEO paintings in progress. That should allow me to always have something to work on at the gallery.

I can’t remember the last time that happened.

A secondary affect is that I’ve now committed almost all existing ACEO stock to paintings. Time to start looking for more material!

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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Landscape Study #18 2008

August 12th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

Landscape painting ACEO copyright Carrie Lewis, all rights reserved.This is Landscape Study #18 2008: Silence.

An order for three new colors of M. Graham Oils arrived yesterday and I had to try them out.

The colors are Azo Yellow, Manganese Blue Hue and Viridian. All three appear in this painting, along with Titanium White and, toward the bottom, Burnt Sienna.

This original ACEO painting was completed yesterday. It was painted on a medium brown under tone and is on gessoed, archival mat board.

My original intention was to finish it after the paint had a chance to dry.

But now I’m not so sure. I like the stark minimalist look of the horizon so far in the distance coupled with the foreground and very little in between.

When I happened to think of the title Silence, that emphasized the vast distances and the silence that comes with it. So now, I’m thinking this one might just be finished.

Landscape Study #18 2008
3-1/2 x 2-1/2
Original Oil on gessoed archival mat board
$25 unframed plus shipping

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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Landscape Study #17 2008

August 11th, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

Landscape painting ACEO by Carrie Lewis. Copyright 2008, all rights reserved.Landscape Study #17 2008 is my landscape painting for the week of August 4, 2008.

It is an original ACEO landscape painting, so it doesn’t qualify as a small format work, but it is a landscape and that was the primary goal for this particular challenge.

It was painted over a toned multiple-gessoed archival mat board card using primarily five colors: Cerulean Blue, Sap Green, Yellow Ochre, Azo Yellow and Titanium White.

In some areas, the toned surface was allowed to show through and in others, the pattern of brush strokes and the use of transparent colors only thinly veils the color beneath.

This original ACEO painting was completed Saturday, August 9 after two days of work.

I also worked on three others during those two days, but they were not ready to call ‘finished’.

During those two days, I did work on the 4×6 small format, end-of-day painting originally intended to be the Landscape painting challenge for the week, but I ended up wiping off most of the paint I put on it and that meant some additional drying time was necessary. Hopefully, this week….

Landscape Study #17 2008
3-1/2 x 2-1/2
Original Oil on gessoed archival mat board
$25 unframed plus shipping

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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Exhibit & Concert, August 3

August 2nd, 2008 | By Carrie Lewis

The afternoon of August 3, I will be exhibiting work at West Side Baptist Church in Wichita. The art exhibit will be co-featured with a live performance by a local orchestra. The concert is at 3 p.m. and will be followed by a reception.

The art exhibit will be available for viewing before and after the concert (and during the concert as well for those who prefer to shop and listen at the same time).

The exhibit will include a variety of work from my ACEO Landscape Painting album to framed and unframed miniature paintings, small format paintings and larger landscapes and horse paintings.

West Side Baptist Church is located at 304 West Seneca in the Delano District of Wichita.

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.

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