Burnt Twigs & Hairy Sticks: Art by Ora Moon

Moonstone

noreply@blogger.com (Fantasy Faery Art by Ora Moon) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:15:00 +0000

Moonstone

Brightest blessings and a joyous New Year to all :o) I hope everybody had a fantastic holiday season!

My first painting of the New Year,

Enjoy,

Ora

Web: *http://oramoon.com*

Happy Holidays

noreply@blogger.com (Fantasy Faery Art by Ora Moon) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 16:08:00 +0000

Hawaiian Faery

noreply@blogger.com (Fantasy Faery Art by Ora Moon) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:01:00 +0000

Medium: Watercolor

Rendered: (C) 06-16-11 Ora Moon

This painting didn't turn out exactly as planed but I'm happy with the over all design and color work :o) It took longer then normal due to my bum hand which is still on the mend, hopefully permanently this time~ lets not re-injure it again!

The summer has been going well, we put an above ground pool in our backyard, which when lit up at night by its LED's looks like a giant blue UFO, lol. It really is quite funny to look at but also very refreshing~ my puppy Bichi just loves it, she's half Poodle and half Bichon Frise, which makes her quite the water dog!

Recently we took a trip to the beach, which was a blast! I practically grew up on the Pacific Ocean having been raised in N. CA., and haven't spent a lot of time on/at the Atlantic Ocean so it was really nice to see more of the Eastern Coastline.

Happy Summer Solstice everybody,

Love and Light,

Ora :o)

Two new paintings :o)

noreply@blogger.com (Fantasy Faery Art by Ora Moon) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 10:36:00 +0000

The first one is Lady of the Forest, the second one is Southern Bellepunk: the Bubble Blower! Both paintings were done over the last few weeks!
:o)

Yule Faery

noreply@blogger.com (Fantasy Faery Art by Ora Moon) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:50:00 +0000

Yule Faery

Medium: Graphite, Charcoal, & Watercolor

Size: 12”x17”

Rendered: (C) 01-06-11 Ora Moon

Samhain all the way through Yule was crazy busy, this painting was started weeks ago but I just finished it today and decided to post it on the premise of better late then never!

Hope everybody had a great one!

Brightest Blessings for this New Year :)

Images of my beaded baubles, my new to me therapeutic thing: http://oramoon.com/Link%20Bar-%20Beads.htm

As always my work is sold at my website: oramoon.com or at my Zazzle store: http://zazzle.com/orafaerygirl*

Midnight Masquerade

noreply@blogger.com (Fantasy Faery Art by Ora Moon) — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:11:00 +0000

Medium: Watercolor

Rendered: (C) 09-28-10 Ora Moon

Gentle breezes embrace the night

Phookas dance in graceful footlight

Midsummer stars twinkle so bright

Midnight brings bonfires to life

Crystal clear melodies from the fife

Breathe the beauty in joyful glee

Oh to witness such dizzying dillies

Drunk on the kiss of grace and magic

Dawn do not come and end this frolic

For I can not get enough you see

Gone am I at the mask in Faery

The idea was to create a Midsummer’s Night- Venetian Mask style painting for a contest at Elfwood. I wanted it to be blood red and black, and at midnight so that it could also go into another theme with the same title as this painting over at Enchanted Visions, which happened to came up with a new category (Midnight Masquerade) about half way through this painting, how wonderfully convenient, I hope they like it enough to post it!

I used the new-to-me color; Quinacridone Red, as the base for this painting- but it is not a deep blood red, rather more of a pink/mauve color, so it made sense to adjust the colors to this violet spectrum, which disappointed me so much I nearly gave up on it after the first initial color lay-in!

I have color issues! More often then not I don’t get the color I’m looking for or have pictured in my mind.

I debated this painting for a week, it was more like I scowled at it a lot and did some new-to-me beading which, by the way, is teaching me to work on my patience levels!

As time went by I began to think that it wasn’t so bad, it was, after all, a very pretty color- just not what I planed. I choose this color because it does not stain the paper as intensely as all my other reds, the same goes for the other colors used in this painting.

I absolutely hate not finishing a project, esp., one that took a week just to draw, so I stopped frowning at it and started abusing it, literally!

I scrubbed as much color out as I did applying it in. I reversed my usual pattern of going light to dark, in some cases, to dark to light, & then I scrubbed it again with various types of brushes. This seemed to work well and the results made me happy.

The wings were an initial disaster! The color went on and off so many times I was getting close to ruining the paper underneath it. This happens a lot to me, I get to the top layers of a painting then suddenly decide to do a different color (bad planning here) and it fails every dang time, why won’t my brain realize this and stop doing this? Lol :o)

I wanted to bring the background colors to the foreground but then decided it was too much violet/mauve, etc., so in came the brown. After another few days of scowling at it I decided to incorporate the browns into the background as well; tada success! I loved it!

That’s about the gist of it for now, over all I’m happy with the results, but didn’t finish this in time for the Elfwood contest, come to think about it, I never finish anything in time for contests and/or contests pop up that work well for my current project! Oh well!

Painting in color: love it or hate it!

noreply@blogger.com (Fantasy Faery Art by Ora Moon) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:05:00 +0000

Watercolor frustrations

For years & years I painted in bed, my futon mattress was directly on the floor; my pallet was also on the floor, one light attached to a table overhead. Then we (my husband Foxy and I) got a huge king size bed which made reaching the pallet box on the floor impossible, so I cleared out the spare guest room and set up my current art studio, including my first real drafting/art table, this came after a miserable attempt at using the dining room/table for art space which was really uncomfortable and lacked the privacy/space I needed.
Still, I had trouble sitting at a table to paint; I was so use to having my knees up and resting the art board on them, which also helped to keep my back feeling ok. I got in the habit of putting my feet up on the boards under my drafting table and kept the pallet (a huge chunky porcelain thing) sitting next to me on a low table that’s about two feet high, on my right side (I’m right handed).
This is how I painted, never really using the table at all! I could hardly see the pallet, my one light was needed for the art board, so as usual I would mix paint up, test it on a spare sheet of paper and hold it up to the artwork, trying to decide if this color would work out? I went thru lots and lots of trial and error with colors, I constantly made bad color choices and with watercolors, which can be scrubbed out to some degree depending on how they stain the paper (different colors stain more readily then others), you really can’t change them much especially if you paint them on heavily! My mindset was this will be x color, this will be xx color and so forth- which does not always work, let me tell you, my color frustration was plexing me out! So many times I thought they would go well together then they wouldn’t. Also the paint samples on the spare cheep paper never looked like they did on the expensive watercolor paper!
I fell into a rather I hate colors depressive state, all the how to paint books I own, and I own a lot of them, were not helping me one tiny bit. I just was not getting it! We’re talking years of color choice struggles here, with this boxed in non-creative mentality! Silly me :o)

Pallet Box

I had had enough and needed to make some drastic changes. I bought myself a smaller (and cheaper) plastic pallet box, which I now love! Unlike the old porcelain pallet, with its one flat mixing surface- and the little porcelain dishes I bought to keep the paint from running into each other, this new one has some divided spaces, and a whopping amount of 32 color wells! I use Winsor & Newton Artist Watercolors- I like these best after trying all sorts of different ones over the years! The pallet box interior, as you can see from the photo, is pure white and the colors are true to form, from pallet box to paper- this means no more trial and error, mixing paint and testing it on another sheet of paper, then applying it to the painting.
Nope no more of that crap-ola, now I have the pallet sitting Right Next to the artwork on the art/drafting table! I also bought a dedicated light just for the pallet and switched the bulbs out to the purer, more natural sunlight-like LED light bulbs, these made a world of difference, esp., because I tend to paint at night more often then not.
And yes, I’m sitting at the table and painting- something I’m trying to get use to! I’m finding if I keep my spine centered and my back rather straight (think yoga here) my back seems to be just fine, but if I slouch forward it will hurt! I’m still leaning back and putting my feet up (knees practically to my chest) to do the drawing part of each project, both of these positions are comfy, it’s just a matter of what works for you! I was born missing one vertebra in my spine and have to be very careful of how I’m sitting esp., considering that I sit for long periods of time when I draw/paint! But I found once the drawing step was done it was actually easier to paint on the table, the art board spins around readily enough to move around and approach from every angle. The ability to SEE the paint clearly before it’s applied is a true Goddess send! I’m kicking myself for spending so much money on that old pallet!

Color break through- Line Art

By now you may be wondering why I never changed the painting method? Why was I so stuck? Well, simply put I was afraid of change, aren’t we all? Of absolutely ruining the beautiful line artwork that sometimes takes me weeks to draw!
This is what the Southern Bellepunk- Just Peachy was for- a drawing that I’m happy with and my determination to be ok (and not chuck it out the window at the first sign of trouble, lol) if I ruined it with a new- outside the box- mindset for color choice(s). Please keep in mind that I am a self-taught artist and things would probably be a heck of a lot easier if I actually had some classes but I can go into that some other time!
So here’s the initial line drawing, and the process of colorizing it as it happened! I only have a few shots but hopefully you’ll get the idea. If you’re an artist and happen to empathize with this, please feel free to give me some pointers, I’m always open to suggestions and positive criticism! If you’re learning how to paint with watercolor, my hope is that you do not suffer as I did and give this method a try!

Layer One: Color Choice

In this first layer of paint (this made my hands shake because I really did not want to ruin it, and I feel very brave now), I made my color choices! Not in my head or spare piece of paper but on the actual painting! A totally new concept for me, the only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted the peach to be orange/yellow. I put the colors on very lightly, in fact their light enough that if I change my mind I can (A) scrub most of them out as they’re mostly non-staining, or (B) go over them with a different color and not have too much of a bleed thru or (C) trace the line drawing on another piece of paper and start over (not really a option for me).
I know it’s popular with some to do value studies and color studies- there are several artists out there who do this in multiple and sometimes excessive steps. If that’s your thing, go for it! Personally, I loose interest in a particular piece because I get sick of working on it! I don’t like to analyze it to death, study it to death and loose my creative flow by contemplating it over and over, I simply don’t have the patience- there are far too many ideas in my head that I must get out ASAP, working on a single piece forever is just irritating! I feel the same way about color, if I work in a single color for too long I get sick of it and must change! This is one of the reasons I like this new way, a little bit of this color and a little bit of that color, switching around from one to the other, sort of like a melody :o) it makes me happy!
In this first layer I have a lot of yellow, tan, pink and violet. Typically my backgrounds are darker (I did them first) and my foregrounds lighter. In this painting I’m keeping my background light and putting emphases on warm/cool colors. I’m bringing background color to the front and foreground color to the back in an attempt to create harmony throughout the piece.

Layer Two- Deepening the values

Two layers later, I’m building up the concentration of the color values here and strengthening the intensity, some of the initial color choices have been changed others deepened. I’m concentrating on what I want to pop out and what I want to be more neutral.

Layer Six- Color intensity

This shot is after about 4 more layers of building the paint up. As you can see the more neutral (cool) brown/tan tones are concentrated in the plants/animals/lower background (violet) that are recessing to the background, the warmer yellow/oranges are more in the foreground. I’ve introduced some greens and am maintaining the light cool pink. I’m not use to working light to dark and really am struggling with my mid-tones! I add some light violet shadows to help compensate for this. Next time I work a light to dark piece I’ll be more mindful of the mid-tones. I really want the Faeries wings to pop out, and need to balance that intensity with the lower values. I add a very slight tint of green to the upper background (how odd to work on the background after I’ve been on the foreground!) and deepen the over all intensity of color.

Southern Bellepunk: Just Peachy: Finished

Here’s the finished work. You can really tell its a few layers later now, the greens, gold’s, mid-tone browns, etc., are all brighter now. The bubbles stayed a single color and light, the frogs wings went from a cooler tone to a warmer tone and the intensity of yellow was beefed up in the areas that are the focal and/or foreground points.

What a wonderful learning curve this has been!
Peace and Love to all :o)

Southern Bellepunk Swallowtail

noreply@blogger.com (Fantasy Faery Art by Ora Moon) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:13:00 +0000

Here in the Deep South, we have unusual types of Faery, this one was spotted at our annual peach festival! The Southern Bellepunk Faeries are rather elusive but are being seen more and more frequently, especially in our orchards. I was fortunate enough to view this particular one; she appeared briefly so most of her rendering was from memory. I sure hope I see another one soon, if I do I'll be sure to share the image with y'all :)
Medium: Graphite, Charcoal, & Watercolor
Rendered: (C) 06-27-10 Ora Moon

The Phookas Gaze: Art by Ora Moon: http://foxora.com

Celestite Faery

noreply@blogger.com (Fantasy Faery Art by Ora Moon) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:42:00 +0000

My most recent artwork, enjoy!