Daily Creativity: Lush Bath time – Love Your Body

Lush Bath - Love Your Body - Daily CreativityDaily Creativity: Lush Bath time – Love Your Body

I love Lush Bath products, and tonight I had a good soak (always good on Aikido nights), as I looked down at myself in the bath I was reminded of the Venus of Willendorf. Many believe the statue was created as a self portrait, that the perspective suggests someone looking down at themselves and gathering the proportions from the neck down. I thought of that as I looked at myself in the bath and tried to remember the shapes that made up my body for drawing later. I’m not sure I got where my knees were bent right, it was from memory so that can be hard. I was sitting up keeping my legs in the water to let the heat work on my knees.  I also noticed how the pink water created an illusion that the negative space around my body was more noticeable than my body, so I thought to recreate that in the drawing. Using the colors of the bath bomb I recreated the image as best I could. This year my art has become a lot more self referential, which makes me feel really vulnerable. Though I think drawing abstract lets me maintain a little privacy.  It’s a strange feeling sharing this with the world, and yet it feels really good to appreciate myself like this, to find the beauty in the shapes that make up me.

5×7 Colored Pencils on Paper, part of the Love Your Body series

Daily Creativity: Love Your Body

Love Your Body inspired by the Fat Naked Art ProjectDaily Creativity: Love Your Body

The Love Your Body series is near and dear to my heart. This sketch is done from a photograph taken for the Fat Naked Art Project by Durham photographer Heather Kolaya, and you should click that link to see the original image and explore their site for some inspiring photos. I love her energy and her smile.

5×7 colored charcoal on paper.

Daily Creativity: Victory #LoveYourBody

Victory "Love Your Body"Love Your Body: Victory!

This painting symbolizes victory to me. I don’t know where the idea came from but I just love the idea.This is part of the “Love Your Body” series. I painted this in the new Art Rage app on my iPad, taking advantage of that extra resolution.

Daily Creativity: Love Your Body

Daily Creativity: Love Your BodyPart of the Love Your Body series, Watercolor note card. You can find the inspiration for this painting on tumblr.

After a discussion about drawing fat characters thin I found myself needing to paint a lovely fat body. Most of my models in art school were larger bodies, they are easier to paint and I find them lovely. For some reason I am hearing people say thin bodies are easier to draw, and I don’t understand that. I think it may have something to do with the influence of anime and not drawing from actual models or images but from how to cartoon books.  Either way, I was very happy painting this.

Daily Creativity: April Fish!

April-fish-2015-smToday was April Fools, or April Fish as the french say. Each year I do a fish themed creation, today I took a photo I was saving for my Love Your Body series and transformed her into a mermaid. I tried to make it more realistic too, no hair, scales, and webbed fingers. Painted in ArtRage on my iPad using various watercolor and oil paint settings. 4/1/2015