Creed Bratton.

Creed Bratton from The Office is one of the best characters. He's a true psychopath. My friend, Luke, asked me to paint a portrait of Creed for his wife, Annie. She's a huge fan of the show and he wanted this great quote about worms on there, too. Creed has a lot of great quotes to pick from, but this is a great one. Check him out!

Pet Portraits.

I had the honor of doing some pet portraits in December for some friends AND you get a bonus post that Matt Benyo did (of his dogs) for his dad. Matt is on the verge of something huge. I did a stylized kind of old school Chelsea portrait of some dogs and a realistic rendering of my friend's dog. It was a great time. Looking for pet portraits? I'm your gal (or Matt is your guy). Would love to do more in the future!

Max & Eleanor.

Matt and I are good friends with one of his former teachers, Amanda. Well, earlier in December, her husband reached out to me about creating a couple of portraits of their kids for her for Christmas and I was so excited to do it. She messaged me on Christmas and told me she ugly cried for 20 minutes and I don't enjoy seeing people cry, but when it's out of pure joy, it's a great feeling. Check them out below!

Hanson.

For Christmas, a coworker and friend asked me to create a Hanson piece for his wife (also a coworker). She's a huge Hanson fan and wanted to incorporate that love in with their love of Christmas. It was a real challenge, but it was a lot of fun to do! Matt did the glitter scarf as an homage to their album, Finally It's Christmas.

Old St. Nick.

When I was in college, one of our assignments sophomore year of college was to recreate a master painting using a limited color palette. We are always told that if you want to learn how to paint, you paint like the masters. It was even more challenging because you had a limited color palette which means you had 5 colors to try to make all of the colors you saw. Only a true master of color and paint can pull this off well. I chose Old St. Nick by N.C. Wyeth in 2007.

When you have a color palette, the choice of paints used determines a lot. With limited color palettes you can choose a variety of color schemes, but for this, I went with a warm color palette meaning that all of the colors had reds as their base.

I recently came across the painting in an old sketchbook and I thought to myself I wanted to give it another try. Surely I had to have improved in 11 years. I struggled and painted for 7 hours spread out over two days. At one point, I wanted to give up, but Matt urged me to keep going and I persisted. Have to say, I have majorly improved. There's an image below of the two paintings side by side and you can really see the progression.

If you're not constantly getting better and learning more, you're plateauing. You should always be working harder to be getting better. I hope that in another 11 years, I am able to make this painting look identical to the original. I used acrylic paint. Click to enlarge to check out details! Merry Christmas, everyone!

The Last of Disney!

This is the end of the Disney portrait series! 27 in all! I'm really happy with how these turned out. I bought a big set of acrylics to test out and used all of them on this series. I think it was a great experiment. My favorite is the poisoned apple.

More than half way there!

So far, the most popular Disney painting I have done is the last one here, THE HATBOX GHOST! I am going to have to do a spin off and do a bunch of paintings from The Haunted Mansion. Anyway, here are a bunch more Disney paintings!

More Disney!

The Disney theme continues! I think I am just going to post them in 6's. This is the next set. Pua, the little pig in the bottom middle, is one of my absolute favorites. There's a nice, eclectic mix here. I like the glitter a lot. It really makes these pieces.

Disney.

I've started a Disney series and each day I'm posting a different one. It's pretty neat because they're all in full color and have embossed glitter accents compliments of Matt Benyo. I'm really happy with them so far. There's a lot left to do and I have a long way to go, but here are the first 6.

Hogwarts.

It has always been a dream to do a Hogwarts painting and I got that chance recently. My friend, Justin, wanted me to paint Hogwarts with Harry flying over it. We agreed I'd do it in black and white, but when push came to shove, I did it in color and that was a great decision. Here's a couple of detail shots. Can't even believe Harry's face looks like a decent face. His face is probably the size of my pinky fingernail! Click to enlarge and I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed making it!

Bellatrix.

A friend recently asked me to do a portrait of Bellatrix LeStrange and what a character she is. I made sure to take my time and had a lot of fun doing the hair (though, I must admit, upon looking at it, I was incredibly overwhelmed). It has received a lot of positive feedback and that makes me happy. Lots more portraits in the future. Trying to get better with each thing I paint.

Newt Scamander.

Last, but certainly not least, is Newt Scamander! Really pleased with the way this whole series turned out. I heard the new Fantastic Beasts movie isn't very good, but I'm still excited because it's part of the magical wizarding world. Next up I'm doing a new set in December. I'll see you on the 1st while I prep and paint!

Gellert Grindelwald.

Johnny Depp plays the big villain, Grindelwald, that Dumbledore has an infamous duel with in the wizarding world. I think I did a great job with this. Also, I'm still unsure of this casting.

Leta Lestrange.

A new character from the upcoming Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is Leta Lestrange. Little is known about her, but I am looking forward to learning more once I see the movie!

McGonagall.

THIS IS MY 800TH POST!! I love a strong woman. It doesn't get any stronger than Professor McGonagall. She is a great headmistress and I would follow her into any battle. Maggie Smith is a gem. This one got away from me, but I like the colors.

Dumbledore.

While I do love Snape, Dumbledore is a close second. Wise, lots of good quotes, always two steps ahead; Dumbledore is great. I always identified more with Richard Harris, but Michael Gambon brought a level of certainty to the character that Harris lacked, though I did love how fragile Harris was. Anyway, his hat took me a long time.

Severus Snape.

I think Snape is my favorite character from the Harry Potter series. He is one of the most complex and layered characters in all of literature if you ask me. I love him so much. I also love to hate him (a little bit). Snape, like Rickman, was taken from us too soon. Did you know he died at the young age of 38 in the books? Such a tragedy.

Harry Potter.

You can't have the series without the main character himself! Did you know they had over 300 kids audition for the role of Harry Potter over a period of 7 months and they found Daniel Radcliffe because they sat in front of him at the movies and convinced his parents to have him audition for the role and the rest is history.

Hermione Granger.

Next up is Hermione Granger. Hermione is the only character to get a special gold background because she is great and deserves it. The Sorting Hat had a hard time placing Hermione. She almost went into Ravenclaw.

Ron Weasley.

I'm back at it with a small series of 9 Harry Potter inspired portraits as a sort of kick off/countdown to Fantastic Beasts! Harry Potter is a series I hold very near and dear to my heart and so I wanted to do these portraits. Matt helped with the embossed glitter you see around Ron. Glitter itself is pretty magical and I couldn't think of a better series to make it a part of. First up: Ron Weasley!

Day 31: A Collection.

THE LAST DAY! I successfully completed all of the portraits I set out to do. It was a real challenge, but one I am happy I undertook. For my final three portraits, I present: David S. Pumpkins (as played by Tom Hanks), my dad, and Michael Myers. All three are intrinsically linked to this day; Halloween. My dad was always a big fan of my art and so, I wanted to make him proud by sticking to and following through with this challenge. I think I did. I was able to have lunch with my mom today and it was really nice. Though we have reached the end of the month, these portraits inspired me and I want to keep making art. Tune in a week from today to see the next set I do. I'm doing 9 portraits each month until I get burned out. TUNE IN!

Day 30: Frankenstein.

As soon as I came up with the idea to do these portraits, I wanted to do Frankenstein. I wanted to challenge myself to do the best I could and I was really happy with how this came out. I like how flat and graphic it is. I think it reads really well. Can't believe I finished these monsters up!

Day 29: Dracula.

Bela Lugosi! I'm enjoying the Universal Monsters. Matt suggested I do Dracula because of the nice lighting that hits his face. Why not? So, here's Dracula!

Day 28: The Creature.

I knew going into this that the Universal Monsters had to be a part of it, but I only had one in mind. Matt helped me come up with the others including this one. Fun Fact: I almost gave up half way through this one. For real. I didn't think I could finish it and it looked really terrible, but I just kept going and here it is. This is a good one. This set is solid. Now this creature just reminds me of The Shape of Water, but that's fine.