First, some good news, I will resume my internship at the hospital in a month! I finally feel confident to start again. Atm I got one year of med-school to go and then I will finally be a physician :)

Now, on to the important part ;)

I finished the first painting today … and discovered that ‘finishing something’, for me, is more a question of deciding when you are done with it than actually making ‘the last’ brush stroke. There is no ‘last’ stroke … I could go on working on this forever, but eventually I would get to the point where it would stop getting prettier with every stroke … and that’s where I am at now. So, I decide it is finished :)

I call her ‘Lady of the Beast’ .. one of the names of Roman goddess Diana, who is goddess of Nature. In essence, she is the same as Gaia, our Mother Earth. This painting resembles the dual nature of our divine mother, she gives and takes and we must never forget that we are here by her grace. We have to respect the gifts given and honor her beautiful earth.

Since this is my first painting, I’d really love to know what you guys think ! Drop me a message with some feedback if you like.

The painting is about 60x60cm, done with acrylics and watercolor pencil on a plywood board. For sale for €1000,- (for inquiries, send me a message!).

Detail:

Last week I had the honor of being the ‘best man’ at my sis’ wedding ! We had a blast and she and her husband were gorgeous and so happy !! It’s kinda weird when I imagine that my little sister (she is only one year younger than me) is now someones wife …. it’s so strange seeing younger siblings grow up ! In my mind she is still that little girl that I used to play with when we were young .. somehow the image of her in my mind seems reluctant to evolve over the years passed ^^

Shot some small pics with my phone …

Next to love, there is painting ! I started a new project yesterday, which will be called ‘Acceptance’. The idea behind this painting is very personal … at the moment I feel I have problems with accepting things the way they are. I am someone that is constantly looking for improvement and therefore I feel I cannot always enjoy things for what they are. From this came the idea to turn acceptance into an image, to help me remind myself to sit down and enjoy every once in a while :)

This is the progress so far … of course this is only basic stuff and there will be a lot more detail added before this is done!

With my painting so rapidly progressing it’s already time for another update!

Ok, let me break this one down for you. Once I had blocked out all the basic shapes (the hair, the skin, the leafs) I started working on the face. I always try to start on the face as late as possible .. because I tend to loose interest in a piece once the most difficult part is done (which is most often the face since it has the most detail).

As you can see in the picture below I did the eyes first .. then worked on the skin tones a lot ! They were to ‘flat’ at first .. but I started to add little touches of blue and red in the shading .. which made the color more interesting. I also added some small details with colored pencils! Because the canvas is very rough it’s hard to get the small details in with paint .. so I used my Caran d’Ache watercolor pencils :)

{several stages of the painting}

I was not very happy with the composition and felt like the painting lacked a little depth. I did not want to do the cliche antlers here (I draw those all the time!) .. so I settled for a goddess-like halo that loosely resembles horns or antlers. It’s there, but it does not take the attention away from the face .. perfect!

{“she has a halo …. I really adore her”}

Right now it looks like this. The shading doesn’t really come out right because of the light coming from the window (on the left) .. but you get the basic idea! I am very satisfied with the composition and I love how she really seems to be gleaming out of the painting :)

{painting so far … and my messy work station}

Ill be working on this one a lot the coming weekend .. so expect some more updates!

XX
Chantal

This week I started my first painting on a wood panel! I got some acrylic paint in a limited color palet (just some green, brown, fleshtone and blue) and I went to our local hardware store to get some wood. Luckily I found the perfect piece of plywood which was only €5. It’s about 60x60 cm and a whopping 3cm thick with a lovely texture.

c’est moi! doing some canvas prepping in the sun :)

canvas after prepping with white gesso !

I started with a simple sketch which was based on a colored sketch I did a while ago. A portrait of a goddess like figure with leafs flowing under her hair … I did it in blue & orange back then but I want to redo it now with more realistic colors.

Well, after painting some basic layers it looked like this.

I roughly defined where I wanted the leafs to be first .. then I blocked them in with color. I will add details later.

Right now I am busy with the details on the face and I am having a hard time with the skin color and what I want to do with the background. I’ll keep you guys posted !

XX
Chantal