MLK Backdrop: A Poster from my past :)

Good afternoon Lured Ones!

I hope you all are having a great week, but if not, have no fear for the weekend is here! ... well it's coming!

So it's been a couple days since my last post and I want to keep the goodies coming! I just started on a new project-- a 17"x13" colored pencil piece. I will not be showing updates for this as I go along because it's going to be someone's Christmas gift! I love giving gifts, especially things that I've made, but my problem is being too excited to hide the secret. So we will see how long it takes for me to crack. I will also be starting on two other pieces that are also going to be holiday gifts, so I won't be updating about those either. Or at least I will try my very best not to. If the secret gets out then I guess there's no harm in that, but for now the secret remains!

In the meanwhile, some eye-candy for you all! I am sharing a poster I did back in high school. I was in ASB (student government) and organizations pretty much the whole high school experience, and I was of course the one to make or take part in a lot of posters. During my senior year, I designed and rallied a small team to make sever huge posters for assemblies. The one I am sharing was from a Martin Luther King Jr. assembly. I am not sure on the exact dimensions, but it's even taller than me! I did it with some help from my art teacher and ideas from friends. This was acrylics on butcher paper. Since they were usually gigantic and put up only to be taken down after the event, I didn't have the resources to use actual canvas or panels. So butcher paper was my best friend :)

I hope you like it! More posters to come your way soon! I will be going back to Seattle stay with my baby sister while my parents are out of the country for a month. So I won't have my supplies to paint or anything, but I will be bringing my nice colored pencils that my husband gifted me for Christmas one year. Hopefully, I get some colored pencil stuff done and will be able to share those. Otherwise, I will be sharing older things that I've done in the past. In any case, it's fun to look back.

Have a wonderful weekend, Lured Ones! Until next time...

<3 Kara

Girl with Dragon - New Painting Complete!

Hey everyone! It's an exciting day because I just finished my first video for Be Lured! Instead of writing about my latest painting, I've decided to talk about it. I was nervous to be on camera because I'm usually the one behind the camera, so yikes! And at the end of the video, I've put together a series of pictures that show the painting as it progresses from beginning to end.

There are a couple people I'd like to mention and give thanks to. First, a big thanks to my friend Andi who drew this picture that I painted! He's a great artist and does beautiful portraits. Also, thanks to my friend Eric (known as Out of the Void) for allowing me to use his songs for background music in this video. He's totally cool and recorded these for me on the spot when I asked him about it! And finally, thanks to my husband for all the encouragement, supplies and helping me record the video.

Without further ado, here's the video. Please let me know if you like this format of presenting my paintings and if there's something else you'd like to see!

Until next time!<3 Kara

Self-portrait in the style of Amedeo Modigliani

大家好！ Hello everyone! Today I am bringing you a self portrait!

The first picture (top left) was a sketch I did in 2003. At this time, I was just doodling and drawing whatever I could.  As I became more involved with graphic and web design, I decided to mess around in Photoshop and make a rough digital version (top right) the following year. At this time I was so into making vectors, and I was still figuring out the ins and outs of Photoshop without a guide or tutorial, so I'm sure this digital rendition could use a bit of work. However, I do like this rough look to it and do not have plans to change it in any way.

The final painting (bottom picture) was the result of an IB art assignment. I was to research an artist of choice and do a piece in the style of that artist. At that time, I was trying to re-sketch this self-portrait from 2003 to make it better, since I was really interested in portraits. Now this was 2007, so a couple years following. I am basing everything on the sketch and digital version that I made (I couldn't find the original photo). Also, I could never draw myself to look like myself, so I was constantly trying to improve on that.

I was going to choose Georgia O'Keeffe because I had taken a bunch of close-up pictures of flowers and felt that her flower pieces were extremely beautiful. But I really wanted to work on portraits, so I chose Amedeo Modigliani. It turned out well because I was able to incorporate a bit of my style with some of Modigliani's style. I had fun with this, and there were two main reasons why I chose Modigliani. The first and main reason is the way he did the eyes, which I found fascinating. The eyes are just one murky color with no real details of what an eye really is. With the thought of the eye being the gate into someone's soul (wow that was corny), the lack of an eye really says something to me. The secondary reason is the backward "S" shape of the subjects. He paints is subjects in a way where you can trace the basic shape of a backward "S". I thought that was interesting too. And when I looked at my sketch, I saw that an "S" shape could be traced, so I thought this would be a good choice as the subject for the assignment.

I hope you enjoyed my self-portrait in the style of Modigliani. This was done in March 2007.

<3 Kara