plein air

These are two plein air (basically painting on location) paintings that I've done. The train one is fairly recent and steeple one was done a while ago, but I was going through my paintings, sorting out what I did and didn't want anymore and getting ready for a Plein Air Art Festival at Thanksgiving Point. The festival was a great experience and when I get my paintings back from that I'll post them up here. I started getting into plein air painting when I went to Italy a little over a year ago on a study abroad. My friend Jake Wyatt got me all excited about it and we did a bunch of paintings while we were there and have done a few together since we've been back—I think the bottom one was done on one of our painting adventures here in Provo. The train one was done when I was out painting with some good friends, Mary Summerhays and Sallie Poet.

Grand Canyon art trip

So I went on a trip with a grant-sponsored art group from BYU. It was amazing. Doing art was fun, but feeling the wind rushing through the Grand Canyon, hiking into the canyon to see the sun rise, throwing ourselves off the side of sand dunes and laughing with good friends is really what made this trip all that it was. Here are a couple of sketches that I did on the trip. The first is in marker and colored pencil (ironically, the exact colors that I needed were the only 5 colors that I had on my unprepared self), the second was in pastels borrowed from Jake and the third is just a photograph of the canyon. I'm working on another finished piece for a show going up. To be posted later :)

Head paintings...

 

Here's another 3 hour head study from my class... Our model wanted to wear a cowboy hat, I think to go along with his plaid, flannel shirt. :)

Adventure

 

For this one we had to illustrate a family saying. Growing up, every time that we would leave the house my mom would give us a hug and a kiss and say, 'Have a great adventure!' as we walked out the door. Thanks, Mom. Life has been a wonderful adventure so far. :)

Angel

This is a piece that I am still working on. I kind of like how it is coming along though.

Hello photoshop.

So. Photoshop. I've only ever really used it to fix photos (as the name implies) but I'm starting a digital painting class where we are learning to paint in photoshop and corel painter - I am so excited! Here's my very first one. A black and white sketch/painting that I did of one of Malcolm Liepke's pieces. I absolutely love his work and his texture. This piece's is nothing like his (which was done in oil) but I love the different types of texture that I got from using different brushes in photoshop. Yeah. I'm excited about this.

Southern California...

Okay - this piece was supposed to be inspired by a music video by Spike Jones about why someone would move to Southern California... interesting, I know -but the red-headed guy (Jacob Jones- an up and coming musician) is so cool looking! (and by that I mean not in my painting - but in real life :) )

Springville looking at Mt. Nebo...

This is the final plein air painting that I did this semsester and I did a little experimenting with color, which I really liked. Yay. I think that I might have found a new passion in landscapes. Weird. I'd've never thought... The scan is also kinda yucky on this one, I'll retry with a photograph and then update this.

palette knife.

So, this is a painting that I did in Justin Taylor's head painting class, all in a palette knife. Yeah. At first it was SO frustrating, but after the 3rd day of working on it I started to like it. The texture is just so cool.

So here is a piece that I did in my plein air painting class. I LOVE THAT CLASS. Anyway, I wanted to show three of the different steps, because I liked different aspects of all three. I think that the first one is especially cool because of it's abstract appeal.

A plein air sketch that I did in Florence this summer, where I fell in love with plein air painting... and Italy. This is the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge). I'm totally up for going back and painting again - anyone... anyone?   (Oh, I just realized that this looks so much better if you click on it and open it up...)

life drawings

These are some life drawings that I have done this semester...

A promise to post more...

So this was a drawing that I did in my head painting class... yeah, I said that right. I drew it on a textured, gessoed (sp?) board, and I liked the look and texture so much that I couldn't bring myself to paint over it. :)  I've also decided that I need to post more often, because no one will look at a blog that doesn't have new posts on it... although I'm not too sure that people look at my blog anyway :) -- Either way, this is my promise. More blogging from Natalie.

plein air painting

So this was a plein air painting done at Utah Lake... looking out at Mt. Nebo? Maybe someone can let me know...  I was told that was the mountain that I was supposed to paint, but to be quite honest I'm not sure which one it was :)

figure drawings

These are my most recent figure drawings that I like.
The first and the third were put up in the BYU Illustration Area's annual life drawing show