I love drawing musical things because I can actually draw music notes exactly correct -unlike almost all musical art that exists.
My life goal is to draw music videos with a conglomeration of abstract, realistic and actual music notation. My daughter and I, as well as many of my students, can see movement when we listen. I really want to work towards transcribing "my head movies" bhahbhahahaha.
Watch out, world!
This is a large oil painting I made for my friends Maryna and Troy.
Here it is in their home. They are awesome for sending me a picture!
Once I started painting in oil, I haven't gone back to acrylic because it seems higher quality.
Below are the things I've learned:
Oil is great to paint with because you can move the paint around and carve and push a line to be thin and dark ...or the opposite: thin and white.
I learned from my oil painting teacher that you add oil to oil paint (and water to acrylic paint). Each layer should have more and more oil -lean at first or else the painting is too wet.
Oil paintings can have layers of color that you paint over to give a painting real skin tone. A person will be red or green under their skin.
To clean brushes, I think the orange flavored Citrasolv Cleaner & Degreaser Concentrate, is the BEST.
Mixing white and paynes gray are very great colors to work with. Titanium white and black use sparingly.
To paint a green landscape DON'T USE GREEN! Use yellow and brown more. Green is not accurate because if you paint a board green and put it in a green landscape, it stands out like a very weird sore thumb.
A useful brush to have is a filbert rounded brush that's the size of your fingernail because they're great for pushing paint around into finite lines and you can almost finish the whole painting with that type of brush.
To paint mountains: paint a rock because it's exactly the same material.
To paint trees: get outside and look at a tree, count the branches and treat the wood as you would a human leg with muscles and rounded blobs molded with clay. Don't draw lines for branches -draw small blobs connected to big blobs or work a connected series of blobs that create a branch shape.
To improve your skills do the BRAVERY CHALLENGE! The Bravery Challenge: Draw yourself with two mirrors and erase it at the end of the day to start over the next. This takes courage, but it is key to improving spacial reasoning. I personally struggle with seeing objects relative to each other sideways and this definitely shows up when I tackle this exercise.
Don't draw from pictures if possible because the better you get at seeing, you'll see that cameras are not as good as the human eye and that the whole point of painting is documenting a human experience: looking. Photographs aren't as good because: not big enough (we see all parts of something with a huge oval and a camera sees a tiny square), they simplify color (an orange sunset in the sky shining down onto the orange sunset on the water will be defined as the same color when they're different colors and textures and would be painted differently in real life). Also, if you plein air paint (from real life), you'll get a feeling from your painting that will literally remind you of that day -like the best diary ever that you can pass on to your children. People LOVE to see you paint from real life and will reach out to you -which is like a dream-come-true for me because I like people but am a bit of an underdog. They'll have a higher likelihood of purchasing your art because they saw it in action. Art is worth more if it's not from a picture. Is this because it means the artist is capable?
My personal goal is to eventually be able to paint what I see when I hear music.
This is an oil painting of the inside of an arcade machine, specifically Mortal Kombat 2.
San Francisco Rush, Mortal Kombat, three Japanese game cabs, and two monitors on the floor in a two-point attempt at a perspective drawing in oil for my class and the NWPAS 2017 convention.
1951 Gottlieb Mermaid pinball
I have wanted to draw a mermaid for a long time and since I'm looking forward to showing my art for the first time at NWPA 2017 on June 10th, I drew this for the show. It's in oil and of three people put together. In the original pinball art, a blonde mermaid sits on top of the words, "Mermaid". It's not quite finished and I haven't signed it yet.
If you recognize this jet from Dodonpachi (Bug Princess), you might be best friends with my husband.
This is a painting from a picture my multi-talented photographer friend took of her beautiful horse.
A side view showing how I wrapped his hair around the side.
This is an oil painting for my very special friend. This is her beautiful horse named Moose. She took this epic picture and I painted it.
En plein air (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ plɛn ɛːʁ], French for outdoors, or plein air painting) is the act of painting outdoors. This method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules that might create a predetermined look.
For three days, I drew this sitting at my table at the Pinball and Arcade convention. Two people wanted this painting. I have to do it again for another person soon! He said he'd pay double and was getting it for his friend who owns most of these games.
A speaker at the convention that's a professional illustrator for pinball games, John Youssi, told me that this was what I was doing. Without him, I wouldn't have known. Thanks for his kindness!
I brought my oil painting stuff with me on a camping trip. When I paint in public, people that would normally never talk to me come up and talk to me. They encourage me and give me strength to do a difficult thing in front of other people. I like painting more than taking a picture because I remember and learn more about the happy time.
I've always loved my Grandpa Preedy's house because it is nice and big and I have lots of happy memories there. It gives me a warm comfortable excited and special feeling. I hope that I can keep working on this or redo it so I can keep this special place. That color blue with the white top with the green and the camper and the barn -love it! I love the big round rocks in the driveway. I love the flower beds. There's bees and apple trees out of frame. In the window, I'd like to have Grandpa and Uncle Jeff and Aunt Ramona and Kathy doing the Preedy wave:)!!
I drew this is my first art class in high school with Mr. Ken Rose -who changed my life and taught me about drawing things upside down and also balancing objects on a page. This picture is a rendition from my trumpet lesson book. I got to see the author at All-State Band and then he was my trumpet teacher in college for four magical years. He was very nice to me and helped me be a lot better. He was also very kind to a lot of my dad's band students. Thank you, Mr. Vizzutti!
To draw people, I have practiced Negative Space. Negative Space is just drawing around the objects instead of drawing the objects. For example, instead of drawing a cord with one line, draw the outside of a cord with two parallel lines.
Other tricks I have to match proportions relative to each other are drawing two things at one time. For example, when you draw knees, draw them at the same time by squinting to blur your vision and don't make a mark until you look at the other knee -even draw a light line connecting them. Don't think, "Knee... and the other knee". Rather, think, "Where's the other knee... okay now where are they relative to the background shadow.
Always draw shadows and the background because you'll have more to draw off of and it will have depth.
Look at things upside down to get proportions right.
Take a step back often.
Things close are defined, things farther away aren't as defined.
Faces: The corners of the mouth will be in-line with the pupils. The ears will be by the mouth. The face only takes up the front lower part of the skull. Noses and mouths = envision that they must be molded with clay when you're drawing them. For example, the nostrils wrap and fold into the upper lip.
Nipples aren't round. I'm told that butts are supposed to be drawn square.
Hair and fabric always are coming from somewhere.
Muscles are smooth and round.
There are key parts that make a body work: bump on the wrist and ribs are just two examples.
Once she was mounted on the backside of the door to the beer and wine cellar, I matched her to her other side using mostly black colored pencil. She is a surprise!
This is a colored pencil commissioned drawing I created using many pictures and combining them together. She is going on the back door of a wine cellar. On the other side of the door is Boris Valejo's Josie. I drew her in a burnt umber and will need to change her to a dark brown instead because when I compared her to the other side of the door, she was the wrong color! So, here's Josie's Backside in before she's dark brown.
This is when she was a work in progress. Strong.
This is a hilarious Boris Vallejo painting with my uncle's head on it. I added a tinsy bit of glittery eye makeup to the crotch. I used a projector and climbed on my roof risking my life to blackout the skylight with a blanket.
I drew this in 30 minutes while Ryan watched a movie. I did capture his face well. He is dreamy.
This is my first painting of a person. My husband photoshopped his head onto Ben Stiller's painting in Dodgeball and then asked me to paint it. This painting hung in my husband's cubical when he worked at Marchex. This is the first Christmas present I gave Ryan before we were married. I signed it, "Love, Hilma", which was me hitting pretty hard for he was still living at his parents house. He got me a Wii and Zelda Twilight Princess. MFEO.
I spent 15 min drawing my husband as a centaur and then my 1 year old daughter at the time took a blue paint brush to it. I washed it off and then got discouraged because I realized that I didn't want to cover up his body with myself as a mermaid and now his hands are doing nothing. Then, Ryan and I had marital strife when he suggested that there could be two sexy fairies in his hands.
December 2016 Figure Drawing Meet Up in an art store with teacher Jessie and model Gloria. It was fun.
I painted my husband, Ryan, on a couch in the same pose as Bride of Pinbot. Yay for sexy men in their undies.
I painted my husband, Ryan as Bobbin Threadbare. He posed for me outside in a cloak -a good sport!
I put a new face on a snapshot of a picture from Amsterdam.
Piano in Hansee with Headphones and a Metronome: For my first art class at the University of Washington, Professor Sean Walsh had us draw whatever we wanted showing negative space in charcoal. He loved my drawing and told me in a one-on-one meeting that I was the best student he ever had and that I needed to major in art, and draw every day. He put in a good word for me and got me into an overloaded second art class with Q, which taught me how to draw people. Changed my life. Thank you!
C Trumpet: I drew this with charcoal for Keith, my friend that helped me with trumpet sectionals, pit band... and he cooked the salmon for our wedding. Unlike my Trumpet Teacher drawing from high school, I didn't look at a picture. I used my C trumpet as a model. I actually drew this two days before my wedding.
This is a charcoal drawing I created from the old side scroller SNES game: Gradius III. Normally, this enemy is a totem of identical caricature faces. I drew their unique full bodies and in varying sizes. The circles to the left are the blue and red Cheerio fireballs the boss shoots are you as it spins. Oops, maybe I should draw it spinning. Hmmm...
Piano in Hansee with Headphones and a Metronome: For my first art class at the University of Washington, Professor Sean Walsh had us draw whatever we wanted showing negative space in charcoal. He loved my drawing and told me in a one-on-one meeting that I was the best student he ever had and that I needed to major in art, and draw every day. He put in a good word for me and got me into an overloaded second art class with Q, which taught me how to draw people. Changed my life. Thank you!
I drew this with charcoal for Keith, my friend that helped me with trumpet sectionals, pit band... and he cooked the salmon for our wedding. Unlike my Trumpet Teacher drawing from high school, I didn't look at a picture. I used my C trumpet as a model. I actually drew this two days before my wedding.
Here's my dad holding the drawing newly framed. He sent me this picture the day before my wedding to say, "I got it frame for you -don't worry! It's ready to give to Keith." Thanks, Dad!
This is from my very first ever Meet Up for artists. I got to meet some cool people and I felt in my element. This is a great exercise for looking and using your left brain. Our model, Gloria, has been doing this for 30 years and is the most drawn person in Washington.
This is an original oil painting of Bobbin Threadbare from the Amiga graphic adventure game from 1990, LOOM.
The is an original oil painting that was inspired by King's Quest V's Princess Alicia -the Weeping Willow. This is an example of Anthropomorphism: assigning human qualities to non-human entities. She is a tree-woman -stuck with only her lute to make music. Her tears created a pool. She is stoic.
The house in front is the home I grew up in. I like this one a lot because it's real to me. It is crayon and water color mostly. In this picture you can find a shoe-boat that held our shoes on the deck, a tent, a bicycle, and a bbq.
This is my room. You might be able to notice that I shared a room with my sister. This is done with crayons. I'm glad to have drawn this, because the house is gone now. I highly recommend to all people to draw your normal life. What is real says more because it tells a story.
This is a picture that I drew for the assignment, Negative Space. I love this drawing because it expressed my hatred for lots of cords tangled and in the way. Now I am a choir teacher that has to deal with coiled cords all of the time -doh!
I took this picture and then colored it with colored pencils while looking at my laptop screen. This is the first drawing where I realized that colored pencil is erasable!
I painted this for my Mom J, my mother-in-law for Christmas. These are her two dogs, Lincoln the German Shepherd and Daphne, a mix with Australian Cattle Dog. Mom J likes the color blue and roses. She got teary when she got the painting which made me feel like I did something special for her. It's hanging in their TV room:)! It's an original acrylic painting. I looked at a picture of the dogs to do it. For the roses, I printed out a rose and then cut up the rose and then traced the shapes and used different blues. I left a tiny white spot on the side on purpose because I thought it added character. I signed it in black on the bottom right, "Hilma Josal". Idk if there's a date -can't see it in this picture! I couldn't find the light switch at Thanksgiving and used a flash on my camera in the dark.
An original work inspired by a game (that I've only seen videos of). This is done with colored pencil. I thought of the pose after seeing the Fire Dragon Boss circle the fighting jet completely.
This is an oil painting I created for NWPA 2017 Convention. The original art work for the pinball game is a blonde mermaid on top of the words, "Mermaid", but I have wanted to draw a mermaid from this angle for a long time so went for it. The Hilma Boat under her armpit is from my 1st birthday where my Great Grandma Yetta from Sweden visited me. My dad found the boat in the dump and fixed it and painted it with house address letters as my name on the stern. I love rowing! Now that boat is a planter in front of my parents' house decomposing, so it was fun to bring it back to life. The mermaid is three people fused together: mostly my eyes and body and a stock image from google for the nose and mouth. This drawing is before I had my first oil lesson and learned that oil painting uses oil to move the paint around and erase and layer. I haven't signed it, but the boat says my name. I actually haven't finished it and the top is "impressionistic" still haha.
I had my husband pose on the couch the same way as Bride of Pinbot. Then, I Mod Podge'd the couch using torn up pictures of the Pinbot pinball machine using them as grayscale.
This is a two point perspective drawing exercise that I created for a lesson and with the NWPAS in mind. That is three Japanese game cabs, two monitors on the floor, Mortal Kombat and two San Fransico Rush machines.
An oil painting of the inside of an arcade machine, specificially Mortal Kombat 2.
For three days I oil painted this en plein air. Two people wanted it and I actually have to paint it again.
I was just having fun and drew a picture for a young person I met at the convention. She asked and I delivered! This is in colored pencil and I just looked at a pic on my phone.
Blast City arcade machine. Colored pencil. I made stickers of this for the convention.
This is a colored pencil commissioned drawing that is 5'4''. I looked at many pictures to create her. She is supposed to be the backside of Boris Valejo's Josie. My drawing gets to live in a wine cellar on the backside of a door to surprise guests. I'm going to change her to a darker brown next week, so she'll look different shortly.
My amazing friend, Minta, wanted a large prop from the TV show, Grimm. We took a grand organized trip to Oregon with the Kitsap Haunted Fairgrounds. They spent thousands on props from the Estate Sale. It was pretty fun getting attention from the line as we loaded huge pillars, morgue doors and a truck load of just walls. However, this Raven and Rose prop sign had already been sold and Minta was heartbroken. So, for her birthday, I painted it for her! Happy 33, Minta! It's an oil painting with a lot of glitter involved. I must confess that Dad J snuck us in the back so we didn't have to wait in the really long line and possibly not even get in. Thanks Dad J!
Eleroo and Lady Lovely Locks: This is my first painting in acrylic. I put up a huge canvas at my birthday party and then everyone was having fun drawing on it. I left the cherries on the left (thanks random dude) and the palm tree on the right (thanks, Dylan the clarinet). I had so much fun swirling the colors and adding gloss. The sides are red and white fine tip permanent marker checkers. In the center by the moon, you can kinda tell that it was initially going to be a portrait before I scratched it off. I couldn't quite paint over my own head. The colors are Eleroo and the swirls are Lady Lovely Locks. The moon is probably from how The Smashing Pumpkins' Tonite Tonite video influenced my life.
This is a screen shot of my husband's friend, Bryon playing Bug Princess. I used oil paint, glitter, varnish, metallic powder and linseed oil blobs.
I love to paint for haunted houses and I love colorful things, so when the Kitsap Haunted Fairgrounds asked me to paint for their black light room, I was elated. Black light paint is super awesome. Check out my family's haunt http://www.kitsaphauntedfairgrounds.com.
Autumn Leaves: This is an acrylic for my Grandma Preedy of something that reminded me of her inner beauty. I wrote, "Merry Christmas" because she made that holiday very special for our family.
T-One-Eleven: This is the house I grew up in that no longer exists. It's a mixed medium of pen, crayon and watercolor. This drawing is very real and a bit painful for me and my family, but I don't want to hide the beautiful truth that we had a humble life and have empathy for those that live in T-One-Eleven summer homes.
Mason Lake: Charcoal 2005
Mason Lake: First pastel drawing 2005
I used powder in the rock in an attempt to get it to look real.
This is a conglomeration of my experimental artwork where I have fun and put mediums together, paint things that aren't canvases, or am creative with visual art. I'm not putting food on this though -I'll spare you!
I tore up pictures of the Pinbot arcade machine to the grayscale of a couch I had my husband pose in the same pose as Bride of Pinbot. He has a green base and is silver. This is in oil paint and Mod Podge'd paper.
This is an acrylic painting with lots of glitter glue and metallic powder. It was inspired by a bag my SISTER (she's totally amazing) gave me for being in her wedding. I gave it to her for her birthday in 2009.
This was originally green, but when it got weathered, I repainted it. I added glitter in the beard. Genius:)!
I made this at a "paint pottery" place Country Village and the owner said it got lots of compliments from customers before I picked it up.
I have thrown two epic Lord of the Rings parties: my sister Emma's baby shower and my school's Holiday get-together. We included musical performances with trumpet and piano of the actual score, costumes, legitimate food, a baby Gollum, and handmade decor like this.
I was on national television for 15 seconds with the middle picture and the top picture was on the Seahawks website a couple seasons ago. Same photographer and I loved him! Last season, my favorite photographer didn't showcase people painted up -darn! I use Wolfe Brothers paint and got my start at my family's haunted house. I paint myself and my husband for the haunt, Seahawks, Game of Thrones cosplay, and zombie runs.
This expresses my affinity for balancing objects. I learned this from my very first art class my senior year of high school with Mr. Rose. Notice the big circles and the small circles. Black with red on white. This also expresses my wedding colors and who I was at the time: in love with pink and green and my future husband Ryan. I was by myself a lot and I didn't have much to do sometimes and would paint at pottery painting places by my apartment.
The Moon Snail means a lot to me since I grew up on the saltwater for three years watching seagulls drop them to break them open. I wrote a song about it actually and it's on Youtube. I left that home in Victor before living in a cabin in the woods at Mason Lake. I painted this in a flash when I was 20 and my grandma was really excited about my talent. She immediately fired it and matted it with green felt, put it in a nice frame, sealed the back with fancy art paper and had me sign it ...twice haha. I played with crabs my whole life because I had to kill a lot of time when my parents worked on their sailboat at Jarrell's Cove Marina.
With the help of my grandma, I painted this when I was 7. Sonia Preedy was a very special person that had a mega affect on who I am.
I china painted this when I was 10. Out of an entire book of pictures, I picked this one and painted it at my grandma's house. What does that say about me? I am a bit concerned ...and a bit proud.
This is a Pygmy Kayak I made in 2008 thanks to the help of everyone in On Paddle's Wings Methodist Youth Group in Belfair. I added glitter in the epoxy resin. Yes, that was genius -I am not modest about that. I spray painted the inside neon green (sorry everyone for the smell) and added hatch art of giant squid attacking my kayak and added some actual squid jigs as well. I named my boat "Squid Jig" because I went squid jigging as a girl and I like the way the name sounds.
