Of Oil Paint, Pumpkins and Flowers

I have been so busy reading that I have forgotten to post. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel is wonderful... but yes, this is a blog about art, not books. So I have been taking an oil painting class, and while I am also working on a still life, I have no pictures of it. We must content ourselves with the portrait. 

This is a portrait by Ingres I am copying for the class. This is the original, I didn't paint it unfortunately.

Here is my preliminary sketch.

My beautiful, glorious paint that cost me about 100 dollars... 

And voila! The beginning of my 'forgery' (that's its nickname. I have no prospects whatsoever of selling it mind you... this is just practice)

Here is my mom's Christmas present. I am trusting in the fact that she never looks at my blog. 

My mom already knows she's getting a leaping giraffe though. She wasn't thrilled with the idea, but I think she will like it when she sees it. 

Here is a 2 minute sketch I did of myself for practice.

I did this acrylic paining this week. 

Here is my meager studio...

These are our family Jack-O-Lanterns! Guess which one's mine... I'll tell you at the end of the post.

Flowers in the snow we got in October. Sandy sure messed the weather up, but it was a picturesque scene...

A rose with no petals

My favorite one... the picture quality is great.

OK... The one on the far left is mine. It's the one that's a rib cage if you didn't know what it was. The one in the middle is my brothers, and the one on the end is my sister's.