Tag: mixed media

Inktober 2019 Conclusion

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Oops, pretty late on this one! Another year of #Inkotber has come and gone.

This is my 5th year participating, but only my 3rd year actually managing to make a new painting for nearly the whole month. I usually burn out somewhere in the last week or am too busy with the influx of holiday portrait commissions to be able to finish, but I’m always glad to have participated.

This year, as anticipated, I crashed and burned near the end with the incoming commissions. But I did make a few pieces I’m really proud of, and really solidified a style I enjoy working in.

The fox painting below has already sold, and I was honestly a little heartbroken to part with it. It’s one of those pieces I keep looking at and I can’t believe I made it. Real proud of it for now, so I’m probably going to make a print to hang on my wall.

My favorite Inktober pieces from this year! (A few of them are still available in my Etsy shop)

I also got pretty obsessed with the purple/orange/black palette I ended up using. Still on a roll with it, and trying to incorporate some more colors into it.

The main four colors I used for it are Dioxazine purple, Mauve, Cadmium Orange Hue, and Payne’s Grey. Then obviously black ink along with them.

A little tip I discovered (which is honestly probably common sense to you if you use ink frequently), is that you can clean a plastic ink palette really well with rubbing alcohol!

My palette has been stained and building up ink for like 5 years now and I didn’t want to throw it out, but I couldn’t see what colors. Was actually mixing in it. Then I realized if I clean my dip-pen nibs with rubbing alcohol, why the hell would I not try that on my palette?!

Works like a charm. Except for the areas that had the least diluted ink. Those are pretty caked on, but at least now I can actually see what I’m mixing. I hope that tip can help someone!

That’s all I’ve got for now. Most of my original Inktober paintings can be found in my Etsy shop, and I’m working on making prints of the few that people requested on Instagram. Now, onward to the holiday shop rush!

Thanks for reading, and stay warm! ❤

It’s that time of year again…

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Inktober time! I’ll be trying again to complete a new ink painting everyday for the month of October. I’ll be posting them daily to Instagram (find me @cait_gadd on there in case you wanna follow along!).

As per usual, I’ll be loosely following a weekly prompt. So far, I’m starting of warming up my inking skills with a week of painting antiques. I bought some new inks, so these will also serve as tests of sorts.

For the rest of the prompts, I’m thinking a week of insects and flowers (Fall always reminds of spook Halloween things, which always makes me think of bugs), different animals with their respective skulls, and not sure about the last week yet. I may just go rando and toss themes out the window by that point.

My whole goal this year though, is to get better at using colored inks and incorporating more ink into my work in general. I have a ton of colored, and even some iridescent, inks but I have a hard time making them work in a piece. I also pretty much only use inks during October for the Inktober challenge and for the occasional black and white commission so I’d really just like to get some more use out of them as I enjoy painting with them and really love how they look.

New inks I’m looking forward to trying out:
-Speedball Acrylic Ink in Indigo (cobalt or primary blue would be more accurate, though)
-Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bombay India Ink in Violet and Teal
-Daler Rowney FW Acrylic Inks in Sepia and Process Magenta
I’ll post an update on how it goes at the end of the month!

I thought it was the ugliest palette ever…

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I picked up a reddish-orange colored pencil to sketch with the other day and decided, “I should base today’s color scheme off this pencil.”

As my hand automatically reached out for the paints, my brain short-circuited. I don’t normally use a bright, bold red in my limited palettes. What do I do? Pastels don’t match this color, do I even have matching colors?? In the midst if the internal struggle on what the hell color even is, I looked down to find my hand and eyes subconsciously coordinated what I thought was the absolute ugliest color palette in the world.

This grody palette consists of vermillion, a weird/obnoxious limey-yellow-green color, a sort-of-pastel yellow, lilac, and a dark periwinkle I like to call “burple”. Burple can’t decide if it wants to be blue or purple. How am I supposed to make that work?? Just imagine those colors for a hot second. Laying those out on a palette looked like fresh spring barf…gross.

The paint was already on the palette by this point, so I’m basically committed now. I decided to start painting. To my surprise, the owl that I painted looked kind of alright in the colors. I mean it is an obnoxious owl so it gets a pass on the weird color combo, right? I decided to give the palette another shot and went for something I thought surely could never work; a portrait.

As it turns out, I really liked the effect on that too! It looked kind of vintage, and…I don’t know. Something about it just works. Suddenly my brain explodes with 2.3 billion other ideas on what I think this palette would be suitable for. It has certainly grown on me, so expect to see this pretty-ugly combo for a while 😉

Lots of Commissions After a Slow June

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Business was painfully slow in June, but luckily picked up for the month of July. Mostly painted pet portraits (my favorite!), but I did get some fun new inquiries as well. My favorite commission this month, was painting an animal in a glass bottle with a detailed background.

I love designing unique bottles for the animals I paint in them, but it’s something I hadn’t done in a while. The client was super lovely to work with. She asked for a fairly detailed swamp-like setting, which I was a bit nervous about at first as I don’t often paint detailed scenes. It turned out to be a fun challenge, though, and we were pleased with the result.

Process of painting a watercolor, bottled salamander in a swamp

Painting stages

Another unique commission I’m currently working on, is painting a snowy evergreen scene for a local client. Lots of backgrounds this month so it’s been good practice. Got clearance yesterday to go ahead and start painting the sketch, so I’ll be sure to post some progress shots later.

Between working and waiting for approval of various stages of paintings, I’ve just been working on filling in some gaps in my portfolio. I’d like to continue painting animals, but I’d really like to paint more food and just general…non-animal things as well. Admittedly, it’s been more difficult than I thought to adapt my style to other subjects. Hopefully some pieces will actually be making the cut soon. Always a work in progress~

As always, thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely week! 🙂

More Commissions & Last Call for Christmas!

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Haven’t really had the chance to work on those lofty shop update goals I mentioned in an earlier post, as I’ve had a lot of commissions lately. Not that I’m complaining, I’d love for my day job to consist solely of painting adorable animals and lovely people. Between those and my current day job, however, I’ve had very little free time for all the other shop updates I’ve been wanting to do.

On the other hand, I can start plenty early for next year’s seasonal shop update by starting all those ideas I had in January 2019!

Here were a few of my favorite commissions over the last couple of weeks:

I have to say, it’s been a huge learning curve for selling things during the holidays. From item stock to time management. It’s been rough trying to figure out the last day you can ship something and have it arrive in time for Christmas. But hopefully I’ll have improved a lot and will be better prepared next year!

Last Call for Custom Art Christmas Gifts: DECEMBER 10th!

As of right now, DECEMBER 10th will be the cutoff point for ordering any custom paintings to arrive before Christmas. (US only) This date may change if I get a bunch of orders. (I’ll keep you posted!)

You can still order after the 10th of course, but they may not arrive until after Christmas at that point.

(For international orders, I can’t really give a date due to the delays packages can face going through customs, but the sooner the better!)

Etsy Shop