CREEative Reflections by Katherine Cree

‘Tis the season for gift giving, and like many people at this time of year, my stress level has ramped up. I give art, and unlike some artists, who make one Christmas themed image to give to most people on their list, I try to give every person a different piece with them in mind.

The biggest problem I have is coming up with the great idea. If I start painting without a concept in mind, chances are all I’m going to get out of it is generic mediocrity. I tend to have many ideas in mind, while none says ‘Yes! This is the one!’ so I do a series of sketches for a single person. Sometimes all it takes are a few concept sketches, and a good idea will come out of nowhere to hit me in the back of the head.

Sketch of a record player

For example, when I was trying to figure out what I should do for my boyfriend, I was kinda stumped. I just brainstormed what he cared about most. I did a sketch of us in santa hats for him last year, so couple art could get repetitive. I decided to sketch out a record player with a lack of any better idea, since he’s in love with the one he picked up this year. As I was working on the image to the left I decided that while I liked it as a study piece, it really wasn’t gift material. I skimmed through pictures of us to hopefully trigger something in my head and I ended up looking at photos of our cat Milo. He was the most adorable cat I’ve ever met, and his death in the summer hit us both rather hard. I ended up working on an image of him instead. I’ve tried to paint him realistically before, but animals aren’t my forte – shading fur is hard! I ended up with the image to below, which surprised me with how much it actually resembled him and made me cry when I finished it.  I had a hard time leaving the image alone at first; I felt the coloring was too simplistic. I took a short break and came back to decide that the limited color palette and lack of shading boosted the impact of the image, rather than detracted from it. Sometimes you have to stop yourself from trying too hard!

Milo, aka 'Buddy'

I gave a print of it to my boyfriend and he “couldn’t get over how it really looks like him.” So I have to declare the first gift art this season to have been a success!

Self portrait practice

After doing the self portrait to the left a few months ago I decided I needed to do another, for several reasons. For one, all the warm tones are a bit overboard (I refer to it as my tomato face portrait) and another that the camera view on my reference photo caused my nose to seem huge and my eyes tiny. It was done as an experiment with using more tones in my skin, and I succeeded admirably, and being my second drawing with realistic hair, the fact that I came out with realistic looking hair, if perhaps a little simplistic is a definite achievement. I spent a week working on this several hours a day and am still proud of it, with all its faults. I really enjoy the learning process, and getting to try out techniques suggested by several different sources online is always frustrating and rewarding.

Ghostly Reflection Speedpaint

~*~

I decided to try a portrait fading in from a black canvas, with bluer tones with my goal to make a speed paint out of it just last night. Speed Painting is an exercise, primarily digital, in which one

paints on a time budget, using already developed methods to create a piece. So saith Wikipedia. Anyway, working on a deadline and working without an underlying sketch is difficult and useful practice. Unfortunately for me, who has done only two to date, they are also somewhat below my standards. The face looks somewhat squished or distorted, and it lacks the more polished look of the previous one.

However overall, this was really really fun. I allowed myself to start off really sloppy and simply tighten up somewhat as I went along. I rather like the effect of fading the shadows to the canvas tone.

Two expressions. Same face

And the best part of that painting is that if you hold your hand over one half and then the other, there are two separate faces in it!

Finally got my Commissions page all set up. Well content wise at least. I’m still working on making the whole site pretty~ graphic design and code isn’t really my area at all sadly. My tentative plan is that once I get a commission or two to offer pay one of my friends to beautify my pages, and give me a basic instruction on how they did it.

I painted a wallpaper for my mom for Mother’s Day. I was originally planning to do a bouquet of flowers, but when I arrived home yesterday she had flowers on the table. And we all know how I have a drive to be different and special. I was also planning to have fairies floating around the image- perhaps handing flowers to the viewer or hiding behind the box- but as I was painting with no lines (tedious) I simply didn’t have the time. I hope to finish my fairy version and use it as my own desktop. I really like the soft calming colors, with just a bit of brightness and energy from the box itself. The Bow was the most time intensive part of the whole thing, but I really do believe it came out looking fantastic. This is a full version if anyone is interested in using it as a wallpaper!