I Gold Leafed a Cicada!

I am so thrilled with how today's project went down that I am about to burst! I am literally shook with how wonderfully my most recent experiment went, and you know how psyched I get when exploring different art mediums... especially when they go well!

I have had the idea of metal leafing insects, animal bones, and dried plants for a hot minute now so when Kingboom offered this collab opportunity I was soooo ready to play!

Now I have done a fair amount of gold leafing on my oil paintings and within the resin pours so that was nothing new, but trying out different colors of leafing as well as using different specimen 'substrates' definitely was. I chose a handful of colors that I thought would go well in my nature inspired 3D paintings (Champagne Gold, Champagne Silver, Rose Gold, Emerald Green, Turquoise) and today I will share the results. Spoiler alert: they're awesome!

Grab some Kingboom metal leaf here:

https://www.amazon.com/promocode/A2CA4N2PSDLA3B

And use 15Caleigh for 15% off your entire order! Let me know in the comments how you like it!

3.14.2024

Blick Haul + Trying Relief Printing

I am so excited to visit a Blick Art store for the first time ever to pick out all kinds of new printmaking supplies!! Today I'll show you all the new supplies I got as well as my first attempt at relief printing on my own! Squeeeee!!

To any of my loyal oil paint ‘students’, do not worry - I’m not giving it all up for relief printing… I am merely interested in being able to pepper my future craft vending booth with small cards, patches, and prints that people can afford on a whim as they’re (hopefully) getting more acquainted with my paintings.

If you would like to help support my blog, purchase any art supplies through my special links - thank you!!

Blick Art Store

Here are all the supplies I used:

Lino Cutter Set with Handle

Grey Printing Block

Baren

Brayer

Caligo Washable Relief Ink

Inking Plate

'Block Printing Magic' Book

And this is a handy little relief printing starter kit you may enjoy instead of purchasing piece by piece

Happy printing!

8.5.2023

What's in YOUR Studio??

Aloha artists! Today I want to hear from you!!

I am about to move to my *forever home* of Chattanooga with my fiance - yay!! - and I would love your help setting up my new art studio. Now this house will be a rental.. but hopefully it's the last one until we buy land and actually build our own home, so I wanna make this space great for the time being!

Please leave me a comment below on some of the pros and cons of your own art studio, such as: what about your setup do you love? what do you wish to change? are there any items/storage hacks that you can't live without? are there any useful things/arrangements you use to help productivity?

My goal is to get you folks sharing ideas here with me (as well as on my Instagram @caleighbirdart and newsletter) so that I can setup an awesome new studio and share y'all's best tips with each other! This could be an explosion of great ideas for us all to share!!

It will be a few weeks til I move in, and then a few more after that to setup, but I'm hoping to have a 'results' video for you in September - stay tuned!

Thanks for contributing!!

7.23.2023

Travel Art Studio + Supplies

Do you like to bring art supplies when you travel? I love to create little works of art while on the road (or over the ocean!) to help commemorate my adventures and really cement them in my mind.

Today I want to share my compacted art supplies and how I set them up while out and about in the world, taking inspiration from all that's around me. I'm sharing what I bring, how I setup and record, and what my experience with bringing these art supplies through TSA has been.

Don't let distance from your home studio prevent you from making great art! There are only a few items that you'll be able to find or borrow wherever you land that will help complete an efficient studio space:)

My Art Supplies:

(some of these are affiliate links which help to support this channel at no extra cost to you - thank you!)

Himi Gouache

Tiny Gouache Sketchbook

Princeton Size 1 Round Brush

Da Vinci Size 2 Round Brush

Map Eraser

Washi Tape

Rechargeable Clamp Light

Phone Mount Articulating Arm

And thanks to the folks who submitted their own list of travel art supplies to be included in the video! I often ask my viewers for input thru Instagram Stories, so if you haven’t already, find me there!

7.2.2023

3 Tools You Didn't Know You Needed for Oil Painting

Hi fellow Artists! Today I am sharing three totally essential oil painting tools that you may not have even realized you needed, but will never be able to live without once you have used them!

(And I even include a fourth one at the end that you could literally implement today for free!)

The Goods:

(Here are a few affiliate links to the items I'm sharing today. Any purchase here helps to support my channel at no extra cost to you - thank you!!)

Tube Wringers:

Metal:https://bit.ly/3lDCo7O

Plastic: https://bit.ly/3EkuDu8

Mahl Sticks:

Metal: https://bit.ly/3SbXPZW

Wood: https://bit.ly/3IkwyAa

Chamois so you can make your own: https://bit.ly/3KjpoOX

Neutral Lights:

Table Clamp: https://bit.ly/3kaNJMl

Standing: https://bit.ly/3EmoLQZ

(and there’s more through these links if you peek around!)

2.19.2023

The Worst Resin Catastrophe...

…yet? …ever? … that made me decide to change how I approach my 3D oil painting technique??

I wasn’t really sure how to finish that title because ‘yet’ would imply that I am expecting to do worse in the future, whereas ‘ever’ would imply that I am brazen enough to think that I will never have resin issues in the future.

The last line is probably more accurate, but not so catchy as a post title.

Anyhoo, as you can surmise, disaster did in fact befall the Nest in the form of completely ruining the most ambitious painting I have ever created. It’s something I should have known had the potential of happening, but since it never had I figured it was less of a gamble than it truly was. Woe is me for sure…

I completed this epic painting I am calling ‘The Secret Garden’ and gave it ample time to cure (as much or more than others in the past) but did not varnish it (as I never do, expecting the resin to protect it enough) and proceeded to begin pouring the resin as usual after affixing the base layer leaves and real earrings.

Checking on the first layer of resin poured, everything was positively hunky dory for hours. No color change or noticeable chemical heating or reaction with all the bubbles coming out nicely. I set it up with a protective cover and eventually went to bed for the night.

You know that feeling you get on Christmas morning as a little kid? Well imagine if you legitimately woke up to nothing but coal. That’s about how I felt when checking on this the following morning. Like allllllll of the wind had gotten taken out of my sails. Uggggghhhhh

Notice how it didn’t even happen everywhere - the tummy stayed the correct color!

Essentially what happened was the titanium white I used in the skintones somehow reacted with the chemical in the resin turning my lovely shadow-splashed figure into a Marge Simpson lookalike. I wanted to achieve a sun kissed look - not a goldenrod yellow disaster!

I say ‘somehow’ because I honestly don’t know why it happened since I have literally painted with this exact tube of white paint and then layered resin over it using not just this same brand, but these actual bottles of resin, with absolutely fantastic results and no hint of any issue to come. So frusterating and weird at the same time!

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As far as the resin lumps/striations noticeable in the first pic, those were caused by me because I couldn’t bear to look at her when I first discovered what happened 😭 I leaned the painting up against a Rubbermaid container facing the wall before the resin fully cured causing gravity to drag down the layer a bit.

So after 30+ hours spent painting this extremely complicated piece, it is officially and completely ruined. C’est la vie.

But you know what they say, it’s not about how hard you fall, it’s whether you get back on the horse.

Well I’ve got two words for that notion: saddle up.

The new base drawing and aerosol background next to the ruined resin piece.

After a few months of grieving (and just being ultra busy) I have started to repaint. And wouldn’t you know it, but it’s even better than before?!

The first one is not bad, just a lil more textured and the mouth is less believable. It’s almost like I got a practice round - or at least that’s what I’m telling myself to ease the pain.

Much softer blends and more detail to the lips - plus a shadow on the neck for hair to overlap (which I forgot to add in the first one).

As far as how I will be treating my mixed media paintings in the future, that’s for another blog post. I’ve been doing some research and will need to do a bit of experimenting as well. I know I want to keep the 3D element to my art, but I need to re-evaluate if resin (or perhaps incorporating varnish) is the best way for me to do so going forward.

I’m even adding in more shadow details (because I like driving myself slightly crazy 😜)

It’s been a soul-testing journey, but my outlook is optimistic! Wish me luck, I’ll post about my new artmaking decisions when the time is right!

2.16.2023

Testing New Oil Paints :: Paul Rubens Art

I was recently asked to review a set of oil paints from a relatively new art company, Paul Rubens Art. I had never heard of them, and I’m assuming you probably hadn’t either, so I was excited to test them out for both of us and see how well they stand up to some of the more familiar brands I have in my paint box.

Upon first opening the set of 18 colors I was pleasantly surprised to see the actual paint swatches on the tubes. That’s usually a sign of real care taken when preparing the paints because the label is not generalizing the color, instead it’s showing a sample of that specific batch, making it all the more accurate when choosing what paint to buy or use.

You can watch the initial unboxing here…

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Large bright tubes of fresh oil paint sure are inviting! Now let’s bust them open and see how they fare…

First Impressions..

First impressions are that they are very uniform in consistency and texture. Often oil paints vary in consistency due to the variety of minerals and their chemical makeups represented in different colors. Usually artists simply make up for the inconsistencies by using a medium such as linseed or walnut oil to get the paint to their own preferred thickness as they mix their colors.

I have used quality brands before though that were more consistent in their viscosity that I believe was just accounted and adjusted for during the manufacturing process to be more easily used and mixed by the artist right out of the tube. One of my all time favorite brands literally never needs medium mix in it.

In a nutshell, consistent viscosity could be a positive or a negative, depending on how ‘oiled out’ the pigment is in order to reach the desired flow right from the tube, as well as the preference of each artist. Some artists like more control and others just like to be able to mix effortlessly without needing to work the pigment.

Now getting into them..

The Cadmium Red and Lemon Yellow both had a very smooth flow and were easily spreadable with good opacity on the canvas.

The Permanent Purple was a little dark right off the bat, but adding varying degrees of Titanium White produced nicely sumptuous tones, which is a plus considering how difficult purple can be to make by mixing red and blue (oddly way harder than you’d think, to those who haven’t tried it!).

I would also say that the brightness and the ease with which the various paints mixed was very appealing - they are like painting with something you might find in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory! The red and yellow mixed well into a vivid orange, and I was able to make some nice ombre transitions quite easily with those and from the Cad Red to a Yellow Green.

Now for the real test!

Next I decided to test the Paul Rubens sets against some of the brands I have in my arsenal that are a bit pricier and probably more familiar to you to see how they hold up. Most of them actually did quite well and had no noticeable discrepancies!

The only con I found was that a few of the colors, like the Cadmium Blue and Burnt Umber, were a little less intense pigment wise. They came out of the tube in vivid colors, but did not exhibit quite full capacity when spread over the canvas. As I tried to lay on a substantial layer, the brush would scrape away the paint and reveal the white of the canvas coming through a bit. If you are someone who paints with a really thick application then this would likely not be an issue for you but for someone like me who tends to blend relatively thin layers, I would feel the need for an underpainting.

I would also say that as a person who paints people quite often, I would also like to see at least one more brown in the collection. I most often use ochre yellow, burnt sienna and raw umber. This set has a good Ochre Yellow, but the Burnt Umber fell a little flat for me. I think having both a raw umber and burnt sienna is important because then you have both a warm dark brown as well as a cool dark brown that are both seen often in skin tones. But of course no paint set will have every single color an artist wants, so it doesn’t necessarily make a set undesirable that you may need to add a few colors once you figure out exactly what you need, just like when you become better at anything and learn how the equipment works more precisely and what benefits your personal skills the best.

Otherwise, I think it’s a pretty good spread of colors. Especially if you are interested in painting landscapes or nature scenes of any kind as there are a lot of blue and green hues especially.

So would I recommend this set??

I honestly think as a beginner set it’s quite good, especially for the price. Paul Rubens paints are vivid and there is enough variety that a new oil painter would be able to render many different subjects before needing to make their collection more robust. Some students get all flummoxed up with how much medium to use and since these are quite smooth already a newbie wouldn’t really have to worry about adding any themselves. They do feel better quality than some of the ‘student grade’ oil paints I’ve sadly experienced in my youth, and if a student brought this set into one of my ‘Introduction to Oil Painting’ classes I would be just fine with them using these all semester.

As far as for professionals, I think a few of the pigments would be noticeably different than pricier, more established brands. But honestly, advanced artists don’t really tend to buy sets of paint because they know exactly which colors they need and are usually just replacing single tubes when they go to the art store.

Paul Rubens has so generously shared with you….

Here is the link for Paul Rubens oil paints on Amazon. They are actually having a Black Friday Sale this weekend starting today (Thursday) and going until Monday Nov 28th where this set is a whopping 20% off! Not bad for perhaps an Xmas gift for that young artist you know who is dying to try oils but doesn’t know where to start (goes great with my ‘Complete Guide to Oil Painting’ video series too!)

____

I have been compensated for this review but the product link is not an affiliate link. Hope you learned a lot today! Happy holidays!

11.24.2022

Anatomical Skull Glow Up

Do you remember that trio of skulls I did a while back? They were some of my most popular prints n paintings and I really loved creating them, so I’ve often kicked around the idea of making more.

Somewhat spontaneously I acquired an anatomical skull just slightly smaller than in real life to use as a reference for more skull paintings. The material and accuracy was great, but I wasn’t really a fan of the color.

So I decided to give a glow up by actually making it look much older - ha!

I wanted the skull to have that antiquated, slightly mildewing, authentic bone aesthetic to try and mimic the real deal. It was my first time trying to age an object like that and it actually turned out better than I was expecting - Yay!

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First I plugged up the sockets with cotton balls so they wouldn’t get too light colored inside. Then I sprayed a nice double layer of white primer, which was perfect for adhering the acrylic paint with a sponge.

It was a remarkably easy process and only took about 90 minutes - super fun and satisfying!

What an improvement, don’tcha think?!?

Before…

After

Stayed tuned for some more skull paintings coming soon, just in time for spooky season! Take a peek at the preparatory drawings for now 🙌

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10.9.2022

New 'Siren of the Palms' Stickers!!

Oooh la la these stickers are supa sweet! One of my most favorite and beloved paintings, ‘Siren of the Palms’ found a new home earlier this year, which of course thrills me to no end! But I do miss seeing her around the Nest for sure.

Now though I happily get to see her everyday :)

These vinyl stickers are super thick and waterproof and they seriously POP! Like they are so vivid and high res they literally look like teeny tiny prints!

I just listed them in my shop for only $3 each so grab one or three and feel that warm tropical sun any place you stick ‘em!

'Siren of the Palms' Sticker

$4.00

Quantity:

Add to cart

8.11.2022

Fun Skull Study

We have a full sized skeleton in the anatomy classroom which is great for helping my students understand a little more clearly how the body moves. This week I had my students spend a class session drawing it this past week, and since it has been quite a while since I’ve had the opportunity to do so myself, I figured I would join them.

Of course I am always walking around the room, checking on folks’ drawings so I couldn’t get to the entire skeleton like I would have liked to, just the skull. I’m thinking of doing a video for my YouTube channel drawing the full skeleton just for fun. I would want to have it seated and maybe holding something, or at least have the head tilted in a way that looked in thought… I’m not yet sure exactly what I’d do, but I would want the skeleton positioning to look somewhat ‘lively’, not just stiffly standing there like a dry anatomical diagram.

Let me know in the comments below if a full skeleton drawing demo on my signature toned paper would be of interest to you:)

But in the mean time, enjoy this lil skeleton shortie vid…

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..and then enjoy a few of my student’s skeleton drawings too!

7.12.2022