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 ©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Sardinia Seaside View. Watercolor, 4 x 6 inches. This is my submission for this month’s Virtual Paintout, located on the island of Sardinia. Looking around on Google Street View, I thought that this would be the perfect vacation spot for me. I love the dramatic landscape, and the sea is so beautiful. I would love to go there for a week or two and paint lots of watercolors.  ©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Jersey Shore Overlook. Watercolor and colored pencil, 4.5 x 10.5 inches. This is my submission for the July VPO which is on the Island of Jersey. I usually don’t wait so long before submitting my painting, and I finished just in time. I started this picture earlier on in the month, but didn’t get around to finishing it until yesterday. I painted in watercolor first, and then went over it with the colored pencils. Finally, I used the colorless blender to brighten up the colors and smooth them out a bit. Since I was working on watercolor paper, I couldn’t hide the tooth of the paper, but I’ve always liked this effect because it allows me to get really bright colors. I wasn’t trying to be especially realistic with the colors and was going for something happy and sunny instead.  ©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, New Zealand Hills. Watercolor, 6 x 9 inches. After taking a break from the Virtual Paintout for five months, I decided to give it another go. This month, the location is New Zealand, which is a great place for finding beautiful landscape scenery. I’m really happy with how this painting turned out because it seemed so easy for me to paint, which is rarely the case. I almost completely forgot about the time and just had fun painting.  ©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Mexico City. Ink and watercolor, apx 3.5 x 8.5 inches. While looking through my paper collection yesterday, I found a pad of watercolor paper that had an old drawing in it, from over a year ago. I had made an ink drawing of a Mexico City street, originally intended for the Virtual Paintout, but I had abandoned the whole piece because the drawing had many errors in perspective. I never ended up starting over and submitting anything that month, so it kind of felt like a failure to me. When I looked it over yesterday though, I still liked one part of the drawing, so I decided to do something with it. I painted it in watercolor and then cropped out the part that I liked. Now I have this colorful mini painting sitting next to my drafting table.  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, County Clare, Ireland. Ink and watercolor, 6 x 9 inches. This is what I finally settled on for my Virtual Paintout submission for December. It wasn’t a sunny scene like I had originally imagined, but it feels cold and windy more like it really is outside right now. Below is the pencil sketch that I completed before I did the pen and ink drawing. I ended up painting the sky in just watercolor, but if I had decided to draw the clouds in ink, I would have used lines similar to my sketch.  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, Sketch for County Clare, Ireland. Graphite in sketchbook, 6 x 9 inches.  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, 12-7-10 sketchbook page (Ireland). Watercolor in 8 x 5.5 inch sketchbook. Yesterday I was playing around with some watercolors while looking for a scene to paint for my Virtual Paintout submisison. Afterwards I finally settled on what I was going to paint and I spent most of today working on it. I think I will hold off on posting it for a few days though, in case I paint something better in the meantime. I am really indecisive these days!  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, VPO Sketch (Ireland). Colored pencil in 8.5 x 11 inch sketchbook. I am just starting to feel semi-decent again after being sick (read: invalid) for the past week. I haven’t had a bad cold for a few years so I guess I was due for one! I only had the desire to start drawing again yesterday. I started off only wanting to do a “quick sketch” of a scene I was thinking of for the Virtual Paintout, but then I ended up spending a lot longer on it than I had thought I would. I think it is too depressing with that ominous tree and all, so I will move onto something else that I will spend more time on. The hard thing about this month’s Virtual Paintout (set in County Clare, Ireland) is that the landscape is so beautiful that it is hard to decide what to paint.  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, Avenida Niemeyer. Colored pencil, 8 x 10.5 inches. I finished my submission for the Virtual Paintout (set in Rio de Janeiro) just in time. I skipped October and I didn’t want to miss this month as well. Instead of doing something really detailed and time consuming, this is more of a sketch made up of lots of lines. I really enjoy participating in the VPO, partly because I would never be able to actually visit some of these places in real life and this gives me a chance to get a taste of what it would be like. Rio de Janeiro, for example, is a beautiful city but a very dangerous place right now. It’s really a shame.
I also used this drawing to form a part of this handmade calendar. Although I already bought a 2011 desk calendar that I will use for my appointments and such, I wanted a “year at a glance” type of calendar as well. I also thought it would be perfect for my new (freecycled) bulletin board that I got last week. When I get sick of the picture, I figure I can just change it out for a new one.  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, 11-14-2010 sketchbook page. Ink and watercolor in 5.5 x 8 inch sketchbook. Yesterday I was looking around on Google Street View for a good scene to use for this month’s Virtual Paintout in Rio de Janeiro. I didn’t find a scene that I wanted to use for the challenge, but I did find an interesting tree to sketch. I was attracted to the shape of the foliage and the gnarled trunk and branches. It was especially fun to draw the leaves. I spent most of the day today adding a Contact Page to my site (it is one of the tabs on the header). I have wanted to add one for a long time, and I finally sat down and did it. It looks really plain and simple, but the contact form part actually took longer than I thought it would. And although I didn’t do anything creative in the art sense, I do think playing around with html and css is pretty creative (especially since most of it is trial and error for me).  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, Entrance to Nature. Colored Pencil, apx 10 x 11 inches. I’ve only been to New York City a handful of times, and only once in the past ten years, despite living only a few hours away. I guess I’m just more of a country person. I’ve never been to Central Park as far as I remember, but I think I would like to visit if I had the chance. In this piece, I tried not to get too detailed and I wanted it to have a soft feeling. I also worked a little bit larger than I normally do. I meant it as more of a sketch, really. Because it wouldn’t fit on my scanner, I had to take a picture of it. I tried to correct the contrast a bit, but I wasn’t able to get it to match the original fully. Unfortunately, I do not have reliable internet access at the moment and have to use wifi hotspots to do my blogging. Luckily I saved a screenshot of Google street view so I was able to work on this drawing offline. If you leave me a comment it may take me some time to approve it as I have comment moderation turned on. |
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Copyright ©2012 Carolyn A Pappas - All Rights Reserved |
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