My project for a skillshare course I am taking. I am trying to work on developing more textures and drama to my paintings as well as improving on the composition. Any advice or tips that you can share would be appreciated. Thanks!
Painted as a project for Painting Environments class: skl.sh/32Khrti
Project parameters:
- Mysterious Cave
- Dark but with moody lighting
- Mostly warm colors but with single blue flower
- Flower is the focal point - use composition to lead eye to flower
One of my botanical abstracts, this one centered around a pond. Though I will be selling the original locally, the print is available on thousands of clothing and home good products across my many websites. Browse them all here: https://linktr.ee/okhismakingart
Scans of my old school gel pen on construction paper early loops works. The green and blue are straight up scans. The others are playing around with mirroring and adding effects in Photoshop to scans of drawn works.
butterflies # ????? : two holly blues. This was a hard one and worthy of an art block
with top and bottom wings distinguishing the species, composition and pose was almost impossible. Cue two of the Holly Blues! :)
Only my second time tackling the lusca as a drawing subject… hopefully it checks out!
“The Lusca is a legendary sea monster from Caribbean folklore, primarily said to inhabit the underwater caves and blue holes near Andros Island in the Bahamas. Described as a massive hybrid—often half-shark, half-octopus—or a giant squid/octopus, it is rumored to reach lengths up to 75–200 feet.”
The tables were covered in white paper. Crayons, pastels, and smooth sticks waited quietly. Then came Lucy’s glittery purse—her 8-year-old hands had filled it with stones to pass along, one by one, to the strangers around the table.
We traced them. Pushed them. Held them.
Then we let the colors lead:
-Red for emotion.
-Yellow for curiosity.
-Blue for memory.
Each color came with music, with story, with space.
At the Museum of Wisconsin Art, we made marks not for meaning but for presence.
Thank you to Ann Marie and MOWA for the invitation and trust. And thank you to the participants—some new friends, some old students—for showing up and making lines that listened before they spoke.
A Brief Pause at the Edge of Becoming
It seems I am always seeking a place to sit—
not just to rest the body,
but to settle the soul.
Yet even in stillness, Gary Brecka’s words whisper:
“The quickest way to old age
is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.”
So I do not stay long.
I walked until I found a picnic table
beneath a canopy of bare-limbed trees,
branches like open hands waiting for green.
The blue spruces nearby—
stoic, unchanged, whispering that some things endure.
I sketched.
Not perfectly. Not for anyone’s praise.
Just a mark to say: I was here.
Alive in this in-between.
Waiting. Listening.
Not for leaves—
but for something truer than comfort.
Thank you for joining me in this small noticing.
A moment borrowed from the rush.
A table. A tree. A thought.
A gift.
Lino cut print over pastel. The story goes: The bird fell in love with the whale the first time she saw him break through the ocean’s surface, sunlight dancing on his back. From high above, she sang to him, and deep below, he answered with a song as old as the tides.
She longed to dive, to join him in the rolling blue. He wished to rise, to fly beside her in the endless sky. But air and water would not trade places.
So each day, at dawn and dusk, they met at the edge of their worlds—she on the wind, he in the waves—singing a love song carried by the breeze and the tide, never together but never apart.
Only just some more white dots on the blue and then the animals then a signature then the finishing gloss then let it dry and ship out after getting paid of course
