Ballroom Dancing - Waltz

The most elegant of the smooth dances. Taking a waltz lesson was my introduction to ballroom dancing. I think that waltz was the first dance that I danced in dancing shoes (Which, I learned, did make a big difference over dancing in street shoes!).

Here a list of my current favorite waltz music/songs:

• Dark Waltz - Hayley Westenra
• Come Away With Me - Norah Jones
• Sunrise, Sunset - Jim Nabors
• Winter Waltz - Jim Brickman
• Fascination - Al Martino
• Tennessee Waltz - Guy Lombardo or Norah Jones' version
• Vito's Waltz (The Godfather) - The New 101 Strings Orchestra
• Sleepsong - Secret Garden
• Play Me - Neil Diamond
• I Go To Sleep - Sia
• Reach - Idina Manzel
• Buck's Nouvelle Jole Blon - Buckwheat Zydeco
• Around the World - Nat King Cole

What can I say; Eclectic is how I like my music!

I haven't danced to this yet but I think that "Silly" by Deniece Williams would make for a great song to waltz to. That's one of the really cool things that I'm finding with ballroom dancing, you start to hear the various ballroom beats in lots of contemporary music.

You can find my other posts on dance here.

Hair Experiment

A sketch to help work out an idea concerning hair. This wasn't exactly what I was shooting for, but its close. I think I know what I have to do to get it where I want it.

Study using Painter's Flat Oil Brushes

As I mentioned in this post, I was planning to try out some additional Painter brushes that I don't usually use. Here's this evenings tryout; the Flat Oils brushes. The brush was okay, but I think that using it in conjunction with some other brushes, instead of alone, might produce better results. I did use a couple of the blending brushes on the hair and to even up the skin tones.

Quick Finds: Weekend Sketch

The Broadview Blog - Weekend Sketch: Great character design and awesome brushwork.

Iron and Latex

I've recently been browsing the blogs of some character designers. I love that type of art, so I was inspired to do a couple of pieces this evening (between running back and forth to watch the Olympic games.). I decided to work with some different brushes and not to do an initial sketch first.

For the first character, I used the Sargent brush (Corel Painter 9.5). Its a brush that I like, but don't use that often. I used a reference for the pose and developed the character as I painted.

I used the Big Wet Luscious brush for the second painting. I'd been wanting to do an Iron Man painting since I saw the movie, but never got around to it. I took this opportunity to get it out of my system.

Using less familiar brushes made the exercise fun. It also helped me to approach the works in different manner than my usual method. I learned quite a bit while working on these two paintings. I think that I'll be looking to use the Sargent and the Luscious brushes more in the future. I also need to make time to try out some of the other brushes.

Quick Finds: Monochrome Portrait

During my travels on the 'net, I sometimes come across work that I like to share. I'll collect them under the title/tag "quick finds."

Bao: Monochrome
I love how deceptively simple this elegant portrait looks.

Cornrows and Hoops

I think that I mentioned before that I try and get in some drawing or painting daily. Today's digital painting was a portrait study, based on one of my old sketches.