Paint Party Friday and Mary's Graces Givaway!

Whew, what a week! Sorry I missed everyone, but the overtime at work ( 9 hour days) is cutting into my painting and blogging time ( the extra money will be nice for the holidays though !). I might have to cut PPF down to every other week for a while. And now for something completely different, my first give away, yipeeeeee!!! It will be for our group site " Mary's Graces" , and it is a 3x5 embellished print of my watercolor aceo entitled " Mary Of the Earth" . So keep checking over there for details ( I don't think it is up yet but should be soon) or if you'd like you can mention here in the comments that you want to be entered and I will pass the info on to Mary's Graces. For all you fellow reptile lovers, I promise to get back to the little lizzies we all know and love so well next time. Happy PPF everyone!

Magaly's All Hallows Grim Party and Paint Party Friday

Who's that flying beneath the moon

on her itty bitty tiny broom?

It's Geraldine Gecko can't you see

the greenest little witch to be?

Children scurry from her wicked sight

as she hovers over the lake at night,

holding a pumpkin in her hand

small as a wedding band.

Her cauldron contains an evil brew

that'll stick to you like super glue.

It's Halloween, yep, that's the day

when Geraldine Gecko hunts her prey.

She'll slime you silly, then leave you in stitches.

The wildest of reptilian witches!

Double the fun this week! Be sure and check out Magaly's All Hallows Grim Party ( click on the sidebar icon!) where the wickedest of witches are running wild, kackle, kackle! And our paint party is now over 70 strong so get in on the excitement and happy blog hopping!  This should take us all week for sure! Yipeeeee!

Paint Party Friday Skink Close Up

Wow everyone has been leaving such great suggestions. I want to try them all !!! And I can now because I got ink in the printer, yipeeeeeee! I really like the idea of making a shadow under him to make him pop out. I need to practice first though to see if I can pull it off without ruining the painting so no promises yet,lol! For now I will just show a close up of some of the details I did this week. It was bugging me that his head wasn't as pointy as in the original photo so I fixed that. Then I started putting scale designs in his tail. This painting has a long way to go still so I think I will start posting other things in between just to change it up a bit. Like, next week is Magaly's All Hallows Blog Party on Oct 13 ( see sidebar!) so stay tuned for Geraldine Gecko on her broomstick!!!! Happy PPF everyone!!!!

Paint Party Friday Yep Yep Yellow!

I want to thank all of you for your helpful suggestions last Friday. That's what makes this group so fun! I really liked Faye's suggestion about using a lighter "mottled" orange. I'm not sure but is that where you use a sponge and dab the paint in? That would be really cool ! And I really liked Elisa's suggestion about making the lines blue and white like a water effect. I loved the symbolism behind that idea and I almost tried it but I was afraid the blue tail would get lost. ( It got me thinking about a whole other painting idea though, so thank you Elisa! ) And Rushmore, you are so sweet for worrying ( right along with me,lol) about what to suggest like it was your own painting! We are too much alike my friend! ( I love how your blog profile says Chief Salamander Catcher!). I probably should have listened to those of you who said to print out a copy to try backgrounds on, but our printer is out of ink and I didn't want to go out so I dived in with the yellow paint! Yes I can see how the yellow in the lizard is getting lost because of it, but I was thinking I could put more detail into the yellow in the lizard ( like scales or lines ) to bring that back out more. Or I could try "mottling the yellow in the background to make it different from the yellow in the lizard. I still would like to get a little blue in too! Would it be too much to sponge in blue water effects lightly in the yellow? What do you think? Maybe I can get some ink this weekend and try the printer this time! Happy PPF everyone!

Paint Party Friday and Thanks Dana!

I'm so excited I have to share with you all a pic of the wonderful goodies I got in the mail this week from Dana at Sinderella Studios. I won her giveaway a couple of PPFs ago ! The prize was the book Taking Flight by Kelly Rae Roberts (which is wonderful by the way!) but Dana even threw in 3 of her beautiful note cards and an adorable tag! Thank you Dana for such a generous giveaway and for picking my name! You are a sweetheart and very talented!

Ok, its back to the ole skink tease. I told you it takes me forever to finish a large watercolor! This is where I need your help too. I'm not sure what to do in the white areas. I kind of want to just do a gentle yellow stripe and maybe outline with blue like the tail. But the detail fanatic in me wants to go crazy and do wild zentangle stuff there too or southwest designs. I still need to put darker detail in the tail and darker outlines everywhere for more contrast. What do you think? Happy PPF everyone!

Paint Party Friday and Happy Birthday Stacy!

I have two reasons to party this weekend! One is Paint Party Friday and the other is that it's my sweet talented friend Stacy's birthday from Magic Love Crow this weekend. Hit the link to check out Stacy's cool blog! So to celebrate both events, I am going to give you all a break from our little blue tailed friend and show you the new aceo I made for Stacy! Its called Geckostone and Magic Love Crow!( this will be winging its way to ya soon Stacy!) So party on everyone! Happy PPF and Happy birthday Stacy!!!!!

More Orange for Paint Party Friday!

Just added more orange this week. Didn't have much time to paint but I squeezed in a few strokes last night! Oh yeah, more oooooozing orange!!! Yummy! This pic of our little model friend was taken when Jeff rescued him from crawling under my shoe. You can tell by his hand he is a carpenter, lol! Happy PPF everyone!!!