Christmas Tree

I wanted to do a nice little filler painting for the house for the Christmas season and came up with this. I used some cheap acrylic paint from Walmart. It was fun, easy and way cheaper than buying a Christmas painting from the Mall.

sgasgsgdfsg

Pirate and Pin up Girl

Sailor Beware - Sailor Jerry

Pirate - Sailor Jerry

The Word Bird

The Word Bird - recreation of Sailor Jerry

Pirate girl

Pirate Girl, recreated from Jason Lambert's image. Border was used by putting water around image (descent amount) getting a good amount of ink on your brush and dot the brush around in the water. It is a pretty cool effect I am working on perfecting more

CA the seamstress

Wife got a sewing machine, wanted to make her a professional sign. Used coffee to make it look old.

Tracing

A great way to get a nice clean picture of something you are attempting to re-create is by "tracing" or "stenciling" it. turns out most people do this, would of been nice to know that A YEAR AGO!! Let me explain what this means.

Step 1: you find a picture you want to paint and print it out, or if you find it online and do not have a printer, trace off the computer screen (can be difficult). 

For the example, I printed out a picture of a guy with a cuckoo bird in his head.

 Step 2: Place the tracing paper of the picture and trace all of the lines you wish to re-paint using a fine pencil (I left out the blue tattoo ink on the man and the borders)

Step 3:  Get your water color paper and put the tracing paper over it (line it up how you want it to appear on your paper)

Step 4: Slide the black transfer paper over the water color paper, and under the tracing paper (a.k.a. Tracing paper, transfer paper, water color paper - stacked on top of each other)

side note: Dark black side should be facing the water color paper/ down, NOT towards tracing paper/ you)

Step 5: Re- trace the lines on your tracing paper using a fine pencil, remember where you have traced because when you lift up the papers "what you see is what you get!" unless you want to erase it all and start over again! (yes, the transfer paper comes up with eraser)

Step 6: Re-trace the lines of your image on your water color paper with your artist pen/ calligraphy pen. (yes, this is a lot of tracing! but it is a clean exact copy) After you finish tracing with pen, take your eraser and rub down the whole image so the transfer paper image is gone. You should be left with a dark permanent ink outline of your image and ready to be filled in with your talent. Just like a coloring book picture!

peacock

Be careful, too thick of lines will give you a cartoon look!

Spit Shading for real!

Well, I finally put some real ink to real paper with a real brush! He gave me black ink and red ink and said this was all I would need to get started. Of course I am a suck for color and went out a week later to buy 2 more colors and began mixing away! I got these images out of a Sailor Jerry book my friend brought over and stenciled them out. I will explain what that means soon!

Transition Period. New Essential Supplies

Well, I stopped painting and blogging for a while because it got nice outside and I took a job in Virginia. After moving, my new neighbors had some friends over and one had a bunch of tattoos and I brought up "tattoo art". He showed me all of his traditional flash spit-shading he has done and I showed him my desperate attempt. This was the first person to ever give me a personal tip on how to spit shade. He brought over many supplies I had never heard of and taught me some techniques I had not found in any previous books. He learned from a friend of his that is a tattoo artist in VA Beach. Below are the materials he gave/recommended to me.

Essential Supplies:

Good Water Color paper (not mixed media)
Artist Pens (good sharpies, get a fine and medium tip, I even use the bold - Friend uses a calligraphy pen)
Thin tip pencil (I use mechanical)
Calligraphy black ink - "super black india ink by speedball"
Professional Acrylic INK!!!!! - I use liquitex because Dr. Ph. Martins' is expensive
Good brushes - both #1 and #4 are essential - I use Beste round tip

Other Supplies:

Transfer paper (black sheet in corner of the picture)
Tracing paper

 I will explain the use of these in a future post!

Day of the Dead Man and Woman

Wanted to make 2 pictures to go side by side for the family Room wall. Made in April 2011. Inspired by Jason Lambert