step 5

green hair.... eyes are a little more defined, mouth and nose still undefined, skin still too dark

step 4

k, so sunburn is fading.... thank goodness it's not pealing! jk... I was worried, cause I had to stop and go to a little kid's b-day party, and I knew i would get home too late to paint, and the next morning the paint would kinda dry..... so I was worried it would be odd painting... but it ended up turning out for the best, and allowing me to work with the paints over semi dry paint, so i can still see the rich colors, but lighten them! eyes, nose everything is still pretty undefined..... so far we are at 9 hours of work! i can't wait till I put those rich brown curls in there!

step 2&3

progress is being made... except she looks sunburnt with a pig nose that is half defined! lol!.......still working!

Step by step! :)

Okay, here is a commission I am working on! I woke up this morning, jumped into my painting clothes, and got started..... 2 hours later here is the outcome! :)... i'm kinda slow.. but I want this to be right! :) This is the general outline:

This is maddison, and she is SO cute I am afraid to paint her now! lol! wish me luck!

Ok, so technically, I should be writing a 10 page paper for my Art History class... But am having sorta a writer's block type of thing, and can't get my ideas on paper! lol! So here I am jabbering away to my quiet little blog, just getting my ideas down.

So for the topic of this paper, I have been instructed that it needs to be on my "favorite artist".... okay.... well that's a really broad topic! I love many artists, and can spend a whole day in a museum just feeling. I especially love the impressionist artists, and sculptors. It has been a life long ambition of mine to be a sculptor and a painter.

I have been doing art ever since I can remember. I was usually creating 3D art, toilet paper rolls, beads, mud, leaves, rocks, cut up pieces of card board.. also I found a picture I had drawn at the age of 3, I had taken a piece of yellow construction paper, and completely covered the whole paper in solid pink crayon, my mother said I used a whole crayon to get the paper that sold color, except for a small squiggly shape on the paper, leaving one small spot with the yellow showing through. It almost looked as if I had colored a yellow blob on pink paper!

My mother and father always encouraged me in my artistic endeavors... even if it was letting me go out in town with a newly made brown paper bag vest! or with about 25 hair clips dangling from the ends of my stringy blonde hair! lol!

at an early age my parents instilled within all of us children an undying interest and passion for the masters of old. Living in france from ages 5-8 we often visited museums, and recognized the beauty of the scenery around us that was depicted in the work of many masters. Mom encouraged us to copy the artists, this was something that my sisters and I enjoyed very much. I remember sitting in front of many a Cassette, Renoir and especially Monet. As I child I was intensely captured by the bright colors, and the practical magic found in stepping closer to a water lily, finding it nothing but flecks of color, and often blobs of paint the size of my 6 year old hand! At the time I could not express why I liked Monet, in fact, I am certain I did not hardly think about it, But something about his art work excited me! I remember sitting in front of a huge water lily painting, a tiny sketch book on my knees and a box of oil pastels, trying to figure out how to most effectively copy this master! At the time I was immensely pleased with the out come, an opinion I still keep to this day! I was fearless and just dived in! I didn't

compare, I didn't worry about exactness, it is one of my favorite pieces of artwork.

I remember visiting Monet's garden in Giverny, where the french had preserved what Monet's home had been like, it was a tourist attraction, especially with the copious amounts of brightly colored flowers and his home renovated to look as it did when Monet had lived there! I remember the blue kitchen, and the japanese bridge, i remember "sketching" a flower or two as we walked through the garden, wondering if Monet had been in that exact spot. :)

I was introduced to many artists, and encouraged to learn about them, there wasn't any particular stress on one artist over another. But some how in my 6, 7, and 8 year old head, Monet just stuck. I know so many people say Monet is their favorite artist, many people know very little about the artistic world EXCEPT for Monet, Monet probably gets the very most puplicity out of any of the master oil painters. This is due to the fact that he is considered the father of impressionism. But I am not sure that is a fair statement..... I think that impressionism had been slowly making it's way to the surface, in painting such as Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold, The falling rocket.

And even found in a day before Whistler, as found in Gustave Courbet's painting "the stone breakers"

I believe "impressionism" is just a natural flow in the artistic world, it was of course ingenious, and beautiful, but I do not think we can contribute it to one sole person, I do not believe we can call any group of people the "father of impressionism" Monet was inspired, and followed the flow of the beauty all around him. If indeed we must give tribute to any one person for this blessing of artistic genius, I suggest we give all credit to our Heavenly Father who is the creator of all thing beauty, and all inspiration comes from Him.

Monet, though I refer to him as my "favorite artist" he is not my VERY favorite in his techniques, or his style, though love his ark work with a passion, there are many other artist out there who's art work I enjoy just as much and indeed, sometimes more. But the reason I say that Monet is my "favorite artist", is because at a young age in my life, his art work was quite influential. His work inspired me to be an artist, inspired me to open that part in my heart where creativity can flow. A few years have passed since I was introduced to Monet, and even now, as I paint, I think of Monet telling me "when you paint, only paint what you see, not what you know is there, where you see a line of yellow, paint yellow, where you see a triangle of red paint red, where you see a shape of green paint green.... " those aren't his exact words, but he did say something along those lines... and it stuck with me. When I look back on the things that have inspired my art the most they are my family, my religion, and Monet. Monet has played a major part in my life, he helped create me as an artist, and I look at him as some one who has given me the power I need to do art. Claude Monet has taught me what it means to be an artist.

gonna keep this going!

my last blog I neglected.... Yes, I was very much to busy for it, so this blog I have decided, I will pay more attention to.

So, today I went to class, found out I was doing better in my grades, which was good, i tried to finish a certain paper that is due TOMORROW! and all in all it was pretty much a good day. :)

So the paper I am writing is on this book called "Wild Swans" By Jung Chang. it is an AMAZING book, 500 some odd pages which follow three generations of a chinese family, Grandmother, mother and daughter. It is a true story, and so beautiful!

It really shows how the change in china happened. Starting with the end of the old ways, to chaos, to rebirth.... It shows the oppression the chinese people were under the emperor, the mayhem and brutality of the japanese, then the with the Koumintang, finally we come to the communist rule.... I was surprised as I read, about how good communism sounded, it offered protection, order, and a way in which the o=underdog could get on top. It taught of equality, and unity. The people who supported Mao were genuine in their desires to build a new country, and a new life for the people. But the very basis of communism does not allow unity by choice, it is unity by force, and submission to the one ruler. It worked for a while.... but it became corrupted, people suffered just as bad as they had before, people got greedy, and when times got harder, they took it out on each other, all ideas were suppressed, and they had to submit, not only was this order encroaching on human rights, but it was also forcing people to die psychologically. They had Any thought against the communist party, or mao was punnishible, with unspeakable punnishments, the pressure, and the stress wore on the people of China, they began to break as they saw no way out, stresses became higher, times became worse, and the country was in complete Chaos... in the book she tells of how she would see wrong things happening, under the order of the Party, and would know they were wrong, but would train her mind not to think that, she had been taught that thoughts against the party were wrong, and a fault of her mind, and she must change her self to fit the party!

It really surprised me as I read about how many awful things these people endured, it is almost as if Mao did every thing that is ever possible to ruin a society, to ruin a culture, and to destroy human beings.... to psychologically obliterate any thing human or good.

In the end, things turn around, Mao dies, and the country sighs in relief, no one really wanted things to be they way they were... now they could change things for the better, it really was more in the people's hands now. They began to rebuild, to remember what it was like to interact with out being afraid of being accused of being anti-party, or anti-mao, they could trust, and they could love, they could put effort into personal interests and begin to grow.....

As i see it now, China has progressed a long way since all that chaos, When I was over there I remember thinking how can the chinese still hold such big grudges against the Koreans and Japanese? It just blew my mind, but now I see, their Grandparents, and great grandparents must have gone through this chaos! They must have witnessed, first hand, humanity dying..... I then thought back to my grandparents and my great grandparents... who had to go through hard times, like the depression.....but never a complete slaughter of culture, humanity, and society. Here in america we take for granted our relatively happy lives, our easy lives.... peaceful for the most part... i thought that if I knew my great grandmother had been tortured by a Japanese, though it was a long time ago, and I am sure the Japanese on a whole are not bad people, but if I had known that, I think it would be hard for me to forgive. I look at what happened on 9/11/01 here in the United states.. one terrorist act, just one, and people saw all arabs as bad guys.... every one was very biased, and some of that still lingers today! That was miniscule compared to what happened in China!

I now see the Chinese with more compassion, and things have been made clear to me about their culture. I have always loved them, and other asian countries, but now I see them so much clearer!

Any ways... my two cents on china! haha!

Ok, so last time I posted I put up some art..... but you may have laughed upon seeing the last face! lol! So I decided I couldn't stand it, and gave him a face lift... So he's not perfect, and because I didn't sketch or graph him out first there was alot of permanent damage... So lesson learned.... but I have to work with what I got! lol! So even though it STILL doesn't look exactly like the original, at least now he looks like person! haha!

So there is Daeheum.. still not totally doe, but he's improved a bit I think! lol! You can see a more detailed journey on my facebook!