Jill Millward Artwork

Doggie Portrait WIP

First, thank you for all the kind comments on yesterdays’s post of the kids on the Oregon beach! All much appreciated.

Now, this cute doggie is taking shape. I’ve only included this close of up of his face because the person I’m painting it for hasn’t seen any of it and I’d love for her to see it all at once. I don’t think she reads my blog so I feel fairly safe posting this here…but you never know. The painting is a landscape painting with a dog in it. This is the second dog I’ve ever painted. The first was Josie, my neighbors dog.

Here’s Josie, just for fun.

josie

Oregon Coast

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18×24 oil on canvas

I’m all done with this one and I am so happy with how it turned out, I’m not sure I want to part with it. I’m sorta sad to finish because I was having such a good time watching these kids come to life. And this is the piece that I struggled with at the front end trying to put together a composition that would lead you into the painting. I’ve decided to do a beach scene with a whole bunch of people, maybe one that I can keep adding more and more people to and have it go on forever. Like writing a book that never ends. I wonder if authors feel let down when they finish writing a book they love, or if they are relieved, or feel satisfied.

This is a commission piece for a very good friend. The kid in front in the orange shorts and the girl standing in back pointing are my friends kids and the other two are her nephews. The kid squatting in the front is a boy with lots of long hair. I’ve known 2 of these kids for a long time, since they were about 3 and 5 years old, the boy in orange is the same age as my oldest son and the girl is just a bit younger than my second son. They lived just down the street from us. (Their mom Angie is a delight. She found my son Sammy (when he was 4) when he set out to find me at the hospital the day I gave birth to Winnie. My little runaway dressed as Boba Fett.)

Anyway…My friend wanted to give her mother-in-law something special for her birthday and thought she would enjoy a painting of her grandkids on the beach by where she lives. I’m guessing that these kids were visiting their grandma when the original reference picture for this was taken. My friend was choosing between having me paint a portrait of the kids faces or a scene like this one. She chose this with the hope that it would capture the individual kids personalities through their body language and movement. And it does! I love painting figures so much, and have been wanting to paint a beach scene for a while. My favorite things came together. And my friend loves it.

I’ll try to take a better pic that is less blurry… FullSizeRender-97 IMG_4804-2

The Work of Vicki Hutchins

Hi everyone! If you are not already following Vicki, you should hop over to her site and check out the work she is doing. She has painted a collection of beautiful abstract landscapes that will knock your socks off. She also has a shop connected to her blog where you can buy a print of many of her original paintings. I love this painting of Vicki’s that I have reblogged, the colors, brushstrokes, and suggested forms speak to me.

Just after Christmas, I read a great book by Ian Roberts called Creative Authenticity. I highly recommend it if you’re an arty farty type.

Reading it gave me such a sense of affirmation and renewed belief that my approach to creating work and my processes were authentic, to me at least. In fact, I would go so far as to say that, being self taught, I actually congratulated myself on how far I’d come. Well, you know how ~~smugness~~ pride comes before a fall and all that…

Fast forward to now. Creating anything I’m satisfied with is a memory long gone it seems. Actually, that’s not true – I love painting my abstracts, choosing the colours, the emotion, the mark making, tuning in to myself so that I can produce some un-named feeling that I didn’t realise existed till I saw it on the canvas.

The reason for this abrupt desertion…

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Sunday Afternoon Fun

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The Art Factory is in full swing. I think my kids produce as much stuff as I do and soon we will be pushed out of our house by everyone’s masterpieces. I bought this gal a little watercolor travel set for her birthday. Normally she paints with acrylics along with her brothers but I thought she’d like to try a new medium. She painted some cupcakes along with me yesterday as we both experimented with colors and how watercolors go down on paper. She was happy with her cupcake painting.

I’m gearing up to try a landscape sketch in watercolors.

My oldest son set up a still life of his elephant and painted it. You can see it on the table back there. That kid can draw with pencil like nobody’s business. My other son was working on a monopoly board which was a school project.

Have a great weekend! Happy Friday night.

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Smile! Life is good.

Oh Watercolors, where have you been all my life?

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Happy Birthday! I celebrated the April & May birthdays with my running group and got a stack of cards from everyone.

My birthday is on Mother’s Day this year. I’ve requested a box of chocolate from my family.

I think there are close to 20 women in our running group and they/we celebrate every possible occasion. Lots of wine and coffee, although I don’t drink either. At our last birthday celebration back in March we celebrated 5 birthdays with everyone giving everyone gifts. It was becoming a little much so they decided to back off the gifts and just give cards. All my cards were very funny. I had the idea to paint little birthday cards for my running buddies as their birthdays come up. Here’s my first watercolor cupcake. I did a few in oils last year, but holy cow I love the simplicity of watercolors. I have quickly learned that simplicity is key. I tried one other cupcake before this and ended up ripping it to pieces. I was trying to paint like I would with oils building layers and it was an absolute mess. Plus I only have a few colors so I’m really limited. I love it.

Katie Peak WIP

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This might look familiar! But it’s a new little 8×10 that I started tonight. I blocked in the most basic colors and values. I like the warm start that it’s off to. The foothill painting I did for the art auction was square and 8×8 and I thought it would look better on a rectangular canvas so the hills would have a little more breathing room on the edges. My friend and running partner asked me if I would paint a 2nd Katie Hill for her. She tried to buy the art auction piece last Saturday but she was bidding by proxy and was outbid. Which is nice because she drove the price up a bit and made more money for the school. And I get to paint another one. It’s called Katie Peak because my friend used to hike in the hills with her kids when they were little and they named this hill “Katie Peak” to motivate little Katie to hike up it. Little Katie is starting grad school this fall and her mom thought this would make a nice gift. Very thoughtful and I’m flattered. I’ll post the finished piece in a few days, I need to patiently wait for it to dry and then give it another pass, or two.

Here are both Katie Peak’s together. The sky color is bluer in the WIP.

Watercolor Cuties & Oil Cuties & another marathon

Whenever I just want to paint something, I grab a bunch of little cuties. You know, the little mandarin oranges. Are they called Cuties around the world? I think I like my oil painting better…but this is watercolor #1. Or really #2 if you count the little Self Portrait I did in 2003. I see one little cutie in there that I like. The light was right overhead so the shadows were a little, meh. I thought the watercolors were fun to play with. Those tubes are so tiny that I could barely read the colors on the labels.

The commission piece I’m working on is nearly done and coming along, I took it to my class tonight and worked on it. I attend a painting class once a week on Tuesday nights and usually there are 5 or so people that attend. But today I was the only one that showed up, so it was a quiet night and I got to pick Geoff’s brain all evening. Check out his work, you will not be disappointed. Geoff Krueger is a fantastic artist and awesome teacher. And a great cheerleader who only has encouraging and positive things to say. But he tells me when something “bothers him” and needs fixing. Here’s the little guy I worked on today. Isn’t he cute?!

And on another side note, today was day ONE of training for my next race. My sister sent me her training plan for the week and I’m doing it along with her. My little sister Sara has tried 5 times to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I thought she was ready to throw in the towel but she has found a running coach that is going to train her through this training cycle. And she’s forwarding the plans to me. Today’s workout kicked my rear. Last time I ran a marathon with her she missed qualifying by 90 seconds. But I qualified because I am older than her and the qualifying time is 5 minutes slower. Poor young thing. So I’m going to run along and try to help her, my older sister Jeni helped her in the last race at the Phoenix Marathon and made it look way too easy, which made little sis mad. So I promised that I would not make it look easy. And I won’t. FullSizeRender-92

The Work of Jill Kuhn!

Hi Everyone,

Today I’m sharing the work of the delightful Jill Kuhn. I chose to share her scrabble “Happy Birthday” painting because it’s whimsical and a lot of fun and I grew up playing scrabble. And maybe because my birthday is next week. If you look through her work you will see that all of her watercolors have that fun whimsical flair. I also love that colorful floral watercolor that’s up on the header of her website. Along with many other people, I have enjoyed seeing and reading about your work Jill! And she shares my name. 🙂 Her work has inspired me to get cracking with the watercolors too…

Does everyone already follow Jill and I was late to the party?!?

Jill's Art Journal

Did you know that today is National Scrabble Day?

I decided to play along and join my friend, Charlie at Doodlewash in celebrating a National day today with a doodlewash. If you want to know more about Charlie or a doodlewash, please check out his awesome blog!

Did you know that Alfred Butts invented the game, Scrabble? I had no clue…(oh, that’s a different game!) Mr. Butts was a shy statistician with a degree in architecture, a mathematical mind and an aversion to spelling – go figure! If you’d like to learn more about this letters game, I’d suggest you check out Wikipedia at this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble

Since today is also Charlie’s birthday, I decided to create this message for him:

No butts about it, Charlie is an FANTASTIC artist and a great friend!

HAPPY Birthday Charlie! 🙂

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School Art Auction

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There it is all framed. I love the simple reveal “floating” frame, it’s my favorite. This frame always makes a painting look finished and professional. The little painting sold for what I would sell it for, so that’s great. I also helped with the 4th grade class art project that was sold in the live auction, this little hill painting was in the silent auction, and it did a little too well and we were not able to buy it, to my daughters great disappointment. I forgot to take a picture of the finished class project, oops. I know someone did, so I’ll track it down.

AND, thank you for the great feedback on what type of watercolors to buy, it helped a lot. I ended up buying W & Newton professional grade tubes, just the basic colors to start. The colors I use the most with oils. I also bought a little set of pans for my daughter that I will try out. Before I wrote the last post, I didn’t even know they were called pans. We will see how it goes…

Happy Monday! I love seeing what you’re creating. Jill