Swirly tree & love birds with my siblings,

Yesterday, I painted with my siblings.
(I also stopped and grabbed 4 $10 easels from acmoore, which were $6 each after the 40% of coupon)
From a list of tutorials, my autistic 16 year old brother, chose this swirly tree.
We sat together and painted while watching the laptop at the dining room table, not peaking at eachothers work until we were completed with our colors/before our tree, and when we were finished. I love how different they are.

Brushes: 1 inch, 1 inch sponge, #4round #4flat, #000, #2. Colors used:white red orange yellow blue green purple black.

A few things we did differently:
1. I made 5 birds on my tree, since we are a family of 5.
2. I added a clear glitter acrylic to my entire dried back ground prior to doing my tree.
3. We all decided we liked the idea of purple after the blue, so we added purple.

Here are the pictures of our progress and finished product...

CREDITS:

A big thanks to heathers hobby for The video tutorial we followed: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ae0bgqdp6Y&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Her website: www.heathershobby.com

Magnolia Blossoms with the children.

For our second round of painting, we decided to try the magnolia blossom tree, with our children.
We all sat in the living room with youtube hooked up on the TV, followed along and paused when needed.
My 9 year old daughter is able and willing to try new things, but gets very discouraged when she sees that hers isn't "as good" as someone else. So it was a bit of both worlds for her, we just had to keep encouraging her and assuring her she was doing fine.
My son just turned 5 last week. He cannot write, and he has trouble forming pictures even when showing him shapes, he would rather just scribble around. I have to say, I was extremely surprised with the outcome of his painting, AND that he was able to follow along and was eager to do so. Homework like tasks are a big challenge for him, he's unable to focus. He kept asking for the next step, and couldn't wait to show us his work, which he kept secret until we were done. We all tried to keep ours private, but as I said I had to keep checking my daughters to brighten her mood, so hers was general knowledge to all of us.
In the photo you will see out finished work. My husband's is the big one on the left, my son bottom middle, daughter top middle, and the last big one on the right is mine.
All in all we had a great time, and I have four beautiful matching pieces for my living room.
the only thing we didn't do with the video, was I prepainted each canvas a different color that we picked, and let them dry prior to starting the tutorial.

 We used a 1inch brush for the background, and #4 flat brush for the trees and blossoms, only cleaning it off after the brown paint, and continuing to usd from white to red back to brown, for blending. Colors used: background, brown, white, red.

Credits:
A big thankyou to Amy Pierce for this video tutorial which can be viewed here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KDvdH1TROk&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Additionally she has a blog and facebook:
www.herartfromtheattic.blogspot.com

facebook.com/HerArtfromtheAttic

Our first adventure, Palm tree beach sunset...

My first painting tutorial was completed with my husband today,I LOVE our finished products and I'm overjoyed that we both had a fun time, and finished successfully. In our ten plus years of being together, we have never found anything"at home" that we like to do together. While a night out to a movie is fun, there is no connection, your just sitting watching a movie.
We talked, we laughed, we were even a bit competitive. We agreed to not help each other, and focus on our own until we were finished. I really thought he was going to pick up the brush, and say it wasn't for him and give up, but he actually liked it! Can't wait for the kids to come home so we can try a family painting night!

Brushes an colors: 1-2inch brush for entire background. shades of purple, yellow, orange, red. Black paint and small #4 flat and #4 roundpaintbrush for beach and tree.optional 000 brush for leafs, or side stamp you #4flat.

 P.S can you guess who's is who's?

Credits:
A big thankyou to Amy Pierce for this video tutorial which can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrWv0hRKKgw&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Additionally she has a blog and facebook:
www.herartfromtheattic.blogspot.com

facebook.com/HerArtfromtheAttic

Welcome to my painting adventures...

Welcome to MY Painting Adventures.
I've been seeing more and more paint bars and paint nights recently that have caught my attention, offering a stress free night out with friends, while completing a painting project. While they interest me, its not really in my budget, and a lot of places didn't fit my schedule.

Over the years I have painted drawn canvas images, wall murals/characters, and projector images, but I have never just sat down to paint a random unplanned image for the first time, completely free hand with the paint brush.

I decided since I had a ton of paint and brushes, that I would search the internet for some tutorials.
Low and behold, I found a bunch, that I couldn't wait to try! So off to the craft store I went.

Canvases were about 4-5 dollars for a two pack, for the basic white artist canvas. I opted for the mulitpack for $20 that brings 10.
Basic acrylic bottle paint was also on sale 3 for 1 dollar, so I grabbed a few colors I was running low on.
Brushes, foam brushes were 20/$1, and a pack of 25 basic mixed artist brushes was $5. Total shopping purchase was around $30 and I have enough materials for 10 paintings.

Im very excited to start this new "adventure". Not only because it was open me up to a new world of painting, while having cute wall decorations and relieving stress, but more so for the quality time with family and friends.

I do ALOT of crafting. Bow making, crochet, sewing, embroidery, beading, clay, NONE of which my close family and friends are ever interested in...they don't have my creative juices. However, since mentioning this painting stuff, TONS of them want to get together for painting days! Even my husband has agreed to try! Fingers crossed we have finally found something we can all get together and do for fun with little cost and no travel.

I can't wait to jump right in and try some out, and maybe one day share my own tutorials with others.

I hope you enjoy viewing our finished products, and thank you for reading.

On the right you will find tags for keywords, and tutorial contributors.