I want to learn how to do this … I was at Hobby Lobby (of course) with mom and she spotted this painting…
this is just a close up of the children… I hope that if I study the brush strokes, I can figure something out… now most would take a class… HA… lets do it the hard way, I say… lol… it drives mom crazy, but I love to just grab a brush and go to work…
Mom loves going to the beach… it is her go-to vacations spot… if she has a chance to go out of town, her first thought always goes to the sea… I would prefer to go on walk-about… just jump in the car and drive… the most fun I ever had on a vacation, mom and I packed up our clothes and the dogs and slowly made our way from the East to our destination of San Francisco… all the little stops along the way, all the wonder full roadside rest areas were divine… I loved it and would do it again and again, if I could…
but first I would like to paint the sea for my mother… 😛
this is similar to the abstract piece I am still working on for my mother… but this one needed to look good in my grandmother’s kitchen… she gave me a piece of the wall paper she planned to use, and I did my best to work up a painting that would work with what she wanted…
if I still had this painting, I would be reworking the flower petals… they just don’t look finished to me… but when she saw it, Granny-two said she liked it as it was… but looking at this picture, I have this overwhelming need to steal it so that I can fix the areas sticking out to me… grr… lol
Just wanted to show everyone this piece… right now, it is unfinished… I didn’t like the flower in the background, and in order to work on it, I had to cover part of the tree… the flower is finally just the way I want it… but I still have to rework the tree…
this was supposed to be a Christmas present for my mother, but sadly she is still waiting… I misunderstood, and thought that she said that she didn’t want a painting… and I admit, I got my feelings hurt… I left the painting waiting as I dove into other projects… but I just couldn’t white it out, if she didn’t want it, I decided I would just keep it for myself… 😛 but she said I misunderstood her, now I just need to finish
this is the last piece I did for my publisher, Mary Smith, over at Gone Writing Publishing, for her give-away boxes… there were a lot of fun…
book/ escaping stories
As you can see, by adding a little more to it, the painting started to look even better… that is what I love about oil paints… you can work on them, continue adding to them, for days… the fact that paint takes so long to dry can be annoying when you want to finish quickly, but it is worth it… you just keep working until you like what you see… and if you decide that you hate the entire thing, you just have to break out the white paint… muahaha
then you have a blank canvas to start over with, and no wasted material… oil paints are very forgiving… they allow you to work until everything is perfect… TRACEY CLARK
This is another of the paintings I did for my publishers give-away boxes… a book flower… this isn’t the finished piece but I forgot to take a picture before I sent Mary the three paintings… this is close to the finished look… the only thing I added was a bookmark with Shocking Finds written on it, falling from the middle of the book flower… and few books shooting off with the leaves like flower buds, and showing the name of my fellow authors and their book titles, those of use at Gone Writing Publishing… cute but I still love the painting of the flower shooting up out of an open book better… 😛
I added some different shades to the flower book pages, and placed some lovely book buds… the finished outcome that I forgot to take a picture of had the writing on the bookmark and the book buds… for that I tried to used a paint pen… next time I will just use a paintbrush… a paint pen is great for tacking you name to your work, but I needed something with a finer tip in order to write on the books… and if there is a finer tipped paint pen out there, I haven’t found it yet… TRACEY CLARK
this was a fun… a bit messy, but fun… I have this tree painting that I did in college, and I love it so much that I painted it on my wall at home… and apparently, my cuz loved it as well… she was getting ready to get married and she came across this idea for a wedding tree… but instead of buying the premade version that everyone else had access to, she asked if I would create one… and really… how could I resist…
wedding tree/ before marriage
I didn’t want the background to be complete white, and that is the only thing I ignored her on when I started this piece… I hate white… I just couldn’t do it… I did erase the clouds in the sky that resembled faces… they were supposed to be vague representations of my cuz and her future husband… but she didn’t like them, and I had to agree… I just couldn’t get them right… finally I got my sky just right and she loved it…
but I still wanted to put something into the piece that represented two bodies coming together… I decided to use the bark of the tree, making the right side darker to show something more masculine, to join it with the lighter/female bark on the left side… 😛
to represent their love, I painted a few branches in the form of a heart, and wrote their names in the smaller branches… Erin and Neil… Her name came out a little clearer than his, but the names were more for them to now that they were there than for the world to be able to see…
And finally, I added some roots shooting out of the dirt, and used them to write the date… Sept 2015…. mom thought I would look better with a few more roots, because that was the part she loved the best on my original tree, but Erin said she liked it as it was… and I had to agree… I mean, I loved my roots, but I wanted the date to stand out as much as possible… you still have to look close, but it can be clearly seen… finally the tree was ready for the big day…
wedding tree/ guest fingerprints
all that was left was the fingerprint part… I told Erin that this was incase any of her guests committed a crime, I would have their prints on file… muhahaha… just kidding… the fingerprints represent their friends and family coming together to join their newly united family… the messy part came in because I prefer to paint with oil paints… that meant that we needed a lot of baby wipes for the guests to clean off their fingers when finished… but as careful as I tried to be, I managed to get some paint on my pretty dress… some soapy water and all was fine, but I loved that dress so was a bit frantic… lol…
okay… this is where the insanity of an artist comes in… I hated my reeds so much that I didn’t finish this piece… and in fact, I broke out the white paint and decided to learn a little more before attempting this scene … I love bob ross with his happy trees and sound effect painting, but I couldn’t let this piece live… lol…
my water, my sky, and even my light house (though a little crooked) … those I love… but not the dang sand and seaside grasses… so I bought bob ross’s video on the basics… hopefully, after I have played around with that a little I will create a seascape that I love… lol…
I think mom wanted to strangle me when she found out that I had decided to start from scratch… 😛 but it just had to be down… lol… one day, but until then I will play with my bob ross goodies… man, I hate that that man is dead… he had a way with paint that was magical…
okay… for now, I must be off to the world of book edits… but first, I think I will look for a few more of my previous paintings to post here… happy wordage everyone… TRACEY CLARK
I know this isn’t the third week (Friday) of the month, but I thought I would start things off with one of my favorite paintings… get the ball rolling while we wait for the third Friday to roll around… I forgot to take a picture of the finished look… just imagine some darker book pages on top of the flower roots…
Because that is what this is… a flower growing out of the pages of a book… when I first started this painting I didn’t think I would like what I found after the last brush stroke… but I continued to come back, adding more strokes, more color, more definition… and each time the painting grew… when I finally came into my office to work on it that last day, I just knew that one more brush stroke would ruin it all…
that has happened to me a lot… when that happens, there is nothing to do but pull out the white paint and start from scratch… and man does that hurt… but if you keep trying to fix the flaws you see, you end up with a final result that you will never be happy with…
but this painting is my favorite for a lot of reasons… and not just because I love the final look… this painting is about hope to me… about learning to fly… when you see a baby bird falling from the sky, the feathers sooo brand new, it is hard to imagine that the little guy will move in just the right way, soring back into the air…
this painting is about my writing, my MS, about life… it isn’t this moment that defines us… it is the next and the next… all we need is that one final brush stroke and we will finally be where we were meant to be… we will learn to fly… (and if we fall on our face, we can white out the board and start over) Happy wordage everyone… Tracey Clark
clark arts and crafts 