New Art from Lis: Marguerite

Always fun to see how sketches turn into final paintings and what changes. Look back a few posts and you'll see my initial sketch for Marguerite. I finished it during a mentorship I'm doing with Rebecca Guay, along with another piece - Night Song.



Go check out Night Song, from Hans Christian Andersen's "The Nightingale," over on my blog!

Craig's New Unicorn Horn

I was experimenting with better lighting to photograph my art - and it helps a lot! Here is a new picture of my Unicorn. I tweaked the horn and seriously hope it looks centered at last. I also toned down its color and texture. I think it blends in much better now, more ivory than gold.

Craig's Unicorn Painting

Owen's Unicorn

Finally I have finished my Unicorn painting.  I really loved working on this piece, so I wanted it to be the best it could be, I reworked and repainted far more than I usual.  There should be a second layer to all my paintings, but I rarely have the time.  I hope this comes off as a good young adult or children's book type piece.

Lately I have been using a very limited palette of Raw Umber, Ult. Blue, Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow,  a bit of Burnt Sienna, Titanium White and Ivory Black, and maybe a few other colors for the flowers.  The outcome feels very natural to me.  

If anyone looks at the Unicorn in Captivity Tapestry from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you can see that I modeled the flowers, unicorn, and pomegranate tree on that piece.  I still think that's probably the best, most sophisticated unicorn.  My fiance has a poster of it in our living room.  What a great piece.

The Unicorn, 21"x16", Oil on Paper on Masonite, 2011. 

Craig's Unicorn Drawing

Here's my drawing. Sky and sea and a small island peeking through at the right. This will need a color sketch to figure out color and values. Should be a challenge with a white dress, white birch trees and a white unicorn.

Craig's Unicorn Thumbnails

First of all thanks to Becca for inviting me to be in on this Unicorn "assignment" and thanks to everyone for letting me be part of Running with Paintbrushes! Let me dive right in ...

I like the upshot of the Unicorn. For some reason I think a unicorn should be with a young woman, maybe a "barbarian" girl?A much more active shot. The woman has just jumped on.

But I think I like this more. A little "posey" but I like the interaction of the unicorn, woman and landscape foreground and background. I'm going to start drawing this up but there's always room for input.