Distorted Eiffel Tower

I really liked my idea of a distorted Eiffel Tower, it added originality to my piece. I've never painted with ink before, I thought it would be almost the same as acrylic paint, but it wasn't. I realized that ink is more permanent and there's no texture to it at all. It also doesn't dry like acrylic paint. The only way you can lighten the color up is if you water it down A LOT. At first, I thought about doing the whole picture in black and white, but someone told me I should use candy-like colors for the sky/clouds. I thought about it and practiced painting clouds with watercolor in my sketchbook. It took a few tries to get the right look I liked. I also looked up a few tutorials on how to paint the sky in watercolor; that helped me out a little! I proceeded the idea of candy-colors for the sky/clouds and I love how it turned out, I'm glad I didn't leave the whole thing in black and white. Besides the sky, the tower wasn't too difficult to make. If anything, I found it hard to pinpoint details from my picture as well as the shape of the tower. I wanted it to look accurate. I think that I did really well on this, with the detail and color. It came out better than I thought.

Interior Oil Painting

I love how this turned out!!! I can't get over how well I think I did. I never thought I'd be able to make the grass look that realistic and make my house look unfocused in the background. In some areas it took a careful hand, and in others I was able to paint messy and freely. It was important for me to keep focus on the realism of the grass because it takes up about 85% of the canvas.
I started off with a quick sketch of what my mailbox and house will look like. I forgot to put down a wash first but that didn't interfere with anything, I just made the wash really light over top of my sketch so I could still see it. Once that dried, I started painting. I made my house look unfocused by not adding all the details in the picture. I kept messy paint strokes throughout the whole house, I think it turned out successfully. The last area I worked on was the grass. I used a small paint brush the entire time, it was very tedious. I made my brush strokes taller in the front and shorter in the back to show realistic perspective. This and my pineapple painting are a tie, I can't decide which I like the most. I think they both turned out really well and I'm proud of them both. It sucks that it takes oil so long to dry. I'll have to wait a while for it to dry if I want to enter it into a contest any time soon. If I get another chance to enter into a contest, I'll probably enter this one.

Everyday Object (oil paint)

I am very satisfied with how my piece turned out! I decided after making this that I want to enter it into the State Fair instead of one of my summer pieces. Through the process in making this, I fell in love with oil paint. I really love the texture you can make and the thickness of the paint. Before I started drawing the pineapple, I put down a light purple wash as the background to make it easier on me when painting with the oil. After that, I made a quick sketch of the pineapple before I started painting. It was very tedious and time consuming making the detail in the pineapple, but the way it turned out was worth all that time. I've realized that I'm more of a detailed and realistic artist than a carefree artist who tend have a messy paint style. I feel that my art work turns out better when I put a lot of detail into it. I really want to work with oil paint more and try different techniques with it. Instead of using a paint brush like I normally do, I would like to try painting with a pallet knife to get more texture into my piece. And I think the whole point in using oil paint is to have texture in your piece, otherwise in my opinion it looks like acrylic almost.