Detail from
"Duck Pond - Everyone is a Winner"
by Liana Yarckin
I am in love with this painting. Not for Sale!!! Sorry, no arrogance intended, it just speaks to my heart right now. I am often asked if I use a projector for my drawings. No, and this is the perfect example of why I don't. I took several photos of the duck pond game at the Texas State Fair while my kindergartner played the game. I loved the way the sunlight was hitting the ducks. When I finally decided to paint it, I cannot tell you how excited I was that it was much faster to draw referring to my photos than pulling out the projector, setting that all up, tracing and then combining and scaling photos to work together. When I am ready to paint, I just don't have patience for that. This is just a detail of the entire painting. I used my photos to place the large ducks were they needed to be following design rules. I added more ducks AND had to take out some round happy face floats that were in the photos. In the original photos, there were not so many baby ducks covering the water, but in my mind when I was taking the photos, this is how I remembered it, lots and lots of ducks. I have a few people interested in this painting, but, I will do a few more studies before I decide on what to sell. Yellow is one of the hardest colors to work with for values and shadows, but, thanks to an oil portrait artist friend and neighbor, she made a comment that made the light bulb go off which resulted in that one beautiful, perfect shadow on the main duck. Now, I just have to learn to repeat that!!!! Intentionally.
100 Sunflower Fields
16x22 watercolor by Liana Yarckin
Inspired by the sunflower fields in Provence, once again, it was faster for me to create a composition using several photos rather than using a projector. When you are standing in the sunflower fields, it feels like the flowers are this close together, but, the photos (maybe I am a poor photographer) show a lot more space between the flowers and the flowers are not in the perfect "pose" for the painting. Again, I truly get so impatient to hurry up and paint that I can draw what I want from the photos faster than using a projector. I did go to college for architecture, which required a lot of free drawing classes, plus once out of school, for fun, I did a lot of figure drawing classes, which are the best for learning how to draw.
Detail from Commissioned Wedding Bouquet
Did you know the new trend at weddings is to have an artist do a "live painting" at your wedding?! I was blessed to be hired by a neighbor who loved my work to paint the bride's bouquet. I also painted the first dance and the wedding cake because I had time. When at a wedding with your easel and a crowd watching you - you can not set up a projector! One most know how to draw, quickly, I might add, while wedding guests are standing around watching you. It was so much fun and wonderful for me since I love anything beautiful and girlie. I have 3 boys so I do not get my share of buying dresses or tying ribbons in hair, so painting scenes from a wedding was absolutely blissful for me!!! I have 3 more weddings lined up!!! I will post the other wedding pics next time or go to my facebook page to see.
Come see me at the Dallas Arboretum Artscape Art Show
April 24-26
Booth 9
TIP on drawing: use your arm and body. It sounds crazy, but, really think of using your arm and body to mask out the overall large shapes. We get into trouble when we use are wrists and these little wispy, sketchy lines. The drawing becomes too contrived and stifled. You are just trying to capture the essence.
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#weddings #bouquet #livepainting #texasstatefair #rubberducks #provence #sunflowers
