Painted Dog Wood Slices

In an attempt to broaden my range of products whilst still appealing to the dog market I've come up with these painted wood slice decorations.
I made a few of these for Christmas and they all sold on my Etsy shop, so I made more for the new year.

My Mum gave me a box of 50 wood slices for Christmas, so I don't think I'll be running out any time soon. I prime the wood first, just around the shape of the dog, and then use acrylics to paint the dog.

I love how this batch have turned out. I think my tiny dog painting skills are getting better with every one I do.

To make the paintings go further I decided to get a few of them printed on little pocket mirrors. I edited the images of Photoshop and added a pastel coloured background. I got them printed by Awesome Merch who did a great job. Delivery was quick and they even threw in an extra mirror! 

 Both my wood slices and mirrors are available in my Etsy shop!

Sketchbook Landscapes

Inspired by Minnie Small on Youtube I've been doing some small landscape paintings based on images from Google maps street view.
Have you ever just looked around on Google maps? Dropped the little man on a random spot in a random country and had a walk around. It's fascinating!

The paintings are done with gouache and are quite quick to do. I can get one or two done in an evening which is great for keeping my hand in the painting game without committing too much time.
The sketchbook I'm using is a little A5 one from Seawhite. The paper isn't the best for wet materials, but it was only about 60p so I don't mind.

I had a good look around this lake in China. I'd love to know what that colourful teepee type structure is as I saw a few of them around the lake. I also loved that image of the boy posing for a photo so I had to draw that. I switched things up by using colour pens rather than paint.
I like the mix of images and materials, all relating to one area, so I'm keen to do more pages like this.

Dog Paintings

When I found out there was a dog friendly cafe opening in my town I approached the owner about doing some dog paintings to hang on the walls. She gets some free artwork and I get some free advertising. Win win!

These are a few of the paintings I've done. 

These are A4 sized. I also did a couple of larger paintings, including one of the owners own dog who sadly passed away. It already has pride of place on the wall in the cafe.

I also made some leaflets to go in the cafe in the hope of getting some commissions for pet portraits, and I've made a new page on my website to advertise them.

I love how they look in frames! I got these white frames from Wilkos.

I can't wait to see them up in the cafe!

Fish Painting

Last summer, during our holiday to Austria, we visited Schönbrunn Palace. The palace grounds are so large they even house a zoo, which is apparently the oldest zoo in the world!

(They also have a bakery which offers apple strudel demonstrations!)

We spent a long time in the zoo, starting with the aquarium. I loved all the different colours and shapes of the fish and knew I wanted to make some art based on what I'd seen once I got home. 

I created this painting in about an hour. I wasn't too concerned with getting all the details exactly right, I just wanted to play around with different materials and show all the colours.

For the background I used watercolours to make it look, well, watery! 

I painted the fish using gouache paint as I find the colours are more vibrant than watercolours and it's easier to control. I added some gold acrylic paint which shimmers in the light like the real fishes scales.

I added details and brought out the shadows and highlights using colour pencils.

I love how this turned out and I'm really happy with the slightly messier style and mix of textures.

New Painting: Aberdeen

My latest painting is from a trip to Aberdeen a couple of years ago. My friend Daisy and I went to visit my cousin Miriam who was at university there. We did lots of exploring including hitting up three castles in two days.

For this painting I used a short video I'd taken as a referance. I just paused it on a good shot and took a screen shot.

The canvas is 40x50cm and painting using oils.

Quick Painting: Stonehaven

I made this painting as a little break from sewing all the dogs. 

I keep a folder of my photos that I think might make good paintings so when I decided I wanted to do a little painting I just picked an image out from there.

The picture is of Dunnottar Castle in Stonehaven, near Aberdeen. I visted there two years ago with my cousin and friend as my cousin went to university in Aberdeen. The trip was something of a castle tour as we hit up three in two days during our visit.

To create the painting I roughly sketched out the image on to water colour paper before painting it. I then went over the painting with colour pencil to add more details.

See the video below for the whole process.

Art Prints

I recently got a bunch of art prints made of some of my paintings, which are now for sale on my Etsy shop.

 I decided to get them printed with Moo as they allow you to choose up to 25 different images on the front. I picked their medium postcards which are 5x7" and printed on quite thick card.

I went through the archives to find paintings that people might want to buy. Aren't these two the sweetest!

I also made prints of these gouache 'dogs in flower crowns' paintings that I'm still obsessed with!

Check them out, and the rest of my prints, in my Etsy shop, and let me know which is your favourite!

New Paintings: Dogs in Flower Crowns

I came up with these images when I was working on some designs for new colour in magnets, which I'll be sharing soon. I loved this set of four dogs in headresses and wanted to do more with them.

They look so grumpy about having to wear flower crowns!

I decided to print out the designs on a larger scale on to water colour paper to make some small paintings. I decided to use gouache paint as a way to keep practising with it. I thought its ability to produce flat, even colour would work well for the style I was going for with these paintings.

When painting it was easier to go over the printed lines and draw them in again afterwards with a black felt tip pen.

I'm so happy with how these turned out. Gouache paint was perfect for these. I'll probably print out more copies of these designs so I can keep practising.

I'm planning to make these four paintings in to prints but for now the original paintings are available to buy on my Etsy shop.

Water Colour & Fineliner

I've been noticing some cool paintings of houses using water colour and pen over the top and wanted to try it for myself.

I started with a house that I know - the house I stayed in in Norwich during my 3 years at university. I found the house on Google street view and drew it out on to water colour paper. Then I painted it with water colour paints and went over the lines with a fineliner. The good thing about the pen I used is that it's waterproof which meant I could go back and add some more paint if I needed to with the water making the pen ink smudge.

Here's a video of how I did it:

I really liked how my first attempt turned out so I searched for another house to paint. I found this house randomly on Google street view somewhere in California. It's crazy to me that houses like this exist on a regular street.

I then did another painting using the same technique, this time working from a photo I'd taken at a beach. Using the fineliner pen worked really well to capture all the little details of the boat and the fishing cages.

Painting with Gouache

I've been following a few artists recently who use gouache paints. They're sort of a cross between watercolours and acrylic paints. I remembered that I actually have a set of gouache paints but I've never used them. They were on the equipment list for my art and design foundation course so I bought some, but never tried them out. That was about 9 years ago and luckily the paints are still in good condition.

I chose a photo from my America holiday to paint from. It shows the Multnomah falls near Portland, Oregon.
The paints took a little time to get used to how to use them but I'm happy with my first attempt. Here's a video of the painting, with some footage from the day we went to see the waterfalls.

Have you ever tried painting with gouache? What's your favourite medium to work with?

Geometric Wall Painting

I was really pleased with how my painting on the wall of my built in wardrobe turned out. My boyfriend and I really love it but agree that it's a shame it goes mostly unseen. Since the summer, we've been going back to the idea of doing a similar painting in the main part of the room.

I decided on two parts of the room that were looking a little blank and put together some designs that used the same shapes and colours from my original painting. I took photos of the areas and used Photoshop to play around with the design directly on the photos.

I drew the designs on to the wall in pencil and then got painting. I only had to buy one new pot of paint as I still had the other colours leftover, and thanks to my last blog post I knew exactly which shade to get.

The corner painting was done over the Christmas holidays, a few hours at a time, but the painting next to the door I was able to do in one day. I thought that was a good opportunity to set up my tripod and show you guys my process.

Geometric Wall Art

Hi guys, I'm back! If you follow me on Instagram you'll know that I moved house a couple of weeks ago, which is the reason for my blogging absence. My boyfriend and I bought our first house together and have been busy unpacking and decorating.

We've started with our bedroom where I've been able to put my first creative touch. The room has a built in wardrobe/closet space and I thought it would be fun to do a painted feature wall inside. Since this is my first experience of painting on such a big scale (ok, not true) I thought this would be relatively low risk as if it turned out really bad it wouldn't matter as the wall is going to be covered with clothes most of the time anyway.

I started by designing the wall in Photoshop. I'd searched Pinterest for geometric wall inspiration and used this image as a starting point.

With my design up on my laptop I started drawing it on to the wall. We'd already painted it grey when we did the rest of the room. Drawing the design involved a fair bit of measuring which I didn't mind, especially when I found a website which did equilateral triangle calculations for me.

Then it was time to paint. I'd say it took me about two long days altogether, and lots of podcasts. I decided to do the whole thing freehand and not use tape as I haven't had much success with it in the past. Mostly because I'm not willing to pay out for the good stuff #cheapo. So instead I used a small brush and a steady hand for the outlines of the shapes.

These are the different paints I used. The Dulux 'Chic Shadow' is the colour of the rest of the bedroom and the base colour of my design. The small tester pot in 'Slate' was left behind by the house's previous owner and turned out to be the perfect dark grey, although there wasn't quite enough of it so I had to alter my design slightly. I mixed the silk black paint (another one we inherited from the previous owner) with the white emulsion to make another shade of grey. Then for a pop of colour I used a tube of gold acrylic paint.

I'm so happy with how this wall turned out. I think I got the size of the pattern and the colours just right.

It's almost a shame to cover it up with our clothes, but we need the storage space! And we'll get glimpses of it when we're getting our clothes out. Maybe now I'll try something on a more prominent wall.

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Baby Painting

This painting was a commission from my Mum to give to her friend as a wedding present, and features the friend's son. The medals are for running (they belong to the friend, not her baby!) and she even ran the marathon when she was 5 months pregnant with this baby!

 

I worked from a photo my Mum got off her friend's Facebook page. I simplified the background and had to add the bottom of the feet as the photo cut them off.

 I think I managed to achieve a good likeness to the baby. I hope the newlyweds like it!

Follow me on Instagram @lisagharrold to see what I'm working on