Willow on the Water

I finished this painting on July 3, 2009. Then I gave it to my sister because she likes pink and green.

It's a willow tree on the edge of a little green river with a forest on the opposite bank. I liked the pink accent color against the greens so I added some flowers. I liked how the forest looked even before I painted the willow on top of it; maybe I will do another painting sometime just of a forest.

We raided Ulduar the night before, wiping for three hours while trying to kill Thorim on Hard Mode.

I set up my little easel in front of my second monitor and painted while raiding. I was healing (look, it's Grid!) but I don't think I let anyone die. Raid leaders talk a LOT, which meant a LOT of downtime between boss fights while they discuss strategy... which meant a lot of time for painting!

Painted Trees

When I tried my first paintings on canvas it was because I found some canvases on sale. Normally I just use my acrylics to paint little wood boxes, plastic blasters and Jedi comlinks, little things like that. So for my first painting on actual canvas I decided to try and learn from one of my favorite artists, Eyvind Earle.

I started painting the background and just layered on the green then mixed in some black and came in from the edges with strokes to look like grass or vines.

After getting the background the way I wanted it and letting it dry, I found a picture of an Eyvind Earle painting online and basically tried to copy the look of the tree without getting quite as detailed. His lines are too painstakingly perfect for my amateur ability so I took a more impressionistic approach and focused more on getting the idea of the shadows and highlights conveyed. I like how it starts with a silhouette but adds the contrasting white highlights to give the tree some depth. I noticed that a lot of amateur artists are doing the black tree silhouette-on-a-colored background thing right now. It's easy and can look great in a modern room. I am still trying to figure out where to put it in my new house.

I received a request from a friend to do a tree painting for her after she saw the first one I did. This is what I came up with based off of the following criteria she presented me with:

- whimsical like the Eyvind Earle-style tree
- mysterious (not obvious) background
- light-colored background but not too light
- "green is good"

I started this one by painting the background. I liked how subtle vertical stripes fading into the background color can look like trees in a fog, so I started with fat green vertical stripes blending into a yellow background and then painted over them with another layer of yellow.

Next, I added in the grass in several layers of shades of green but decided that the grass really should be the foreground, so after painting on the tree silhouette I repainted a lot more grass over the bottom of the tree. The nice thing about painting grass this way is you can keep adding on as many layers as you want and it just gives the illusion of more depth.

It's now hanging on the wall in my friend's home up in Victoria, BC!

Into the Purple Woods

There is no place more magical than the forest home of the Night Elves, bathed in an aubergine haze beneath a giant tree.

Disclaimer: This was one of my first acrylic paintings, certainly my first landscape. I am totally cheap because I am using the paints you get for $0.89/tube at Michael's. Someday when my skill has improved I will invest in the nicer, more expensive acrylics.

I achieved a cool panoramic effect by using two square canvases side-by-side. Normally these are supposed to be positioned vertically on a skinny piece of wall between two doors.

I don't always do things the normal way.

I started with a screenshot of Teldrassil on my computer monitor and then painting the scene on the canvas beginning with the background and layering my way to the trees and rock in the foreground, trying different techniques in order to make it look like the representation on my monitor.

In case you happen to NOT be one of the millions who plays World of Warcraft and you are wondering "What the heck is Teldrassil?", I am happy to inform you that tTeldrassil is a setting in the game. You get to frolic in this purple forest for your first 8-to-10 levels, if you start the game as a Night Elf like I did the first time I played it. Actually, my first Night Elf character was a Rogue named Avalyn.

BTW Into the Woods is a really fun musical. If you ever get a chance to see it, go! I love the duet the princes sing, "Agony".