Busy, busy:)

I have been a busy girl!  Last week I helped a friend paint her kitchen a nice warm Toasted Nutmeg color, it looks amazing!  My hubby was at a place he was able to call from so I spent a lot of time waiting for phone calls:)  And too afraid to start something in hopes he would call.  Over the weekend I helped a fellow Navy wife with her homework.  She is a smart lady her brain was just overloaded with two kids, school and her hubby away.  She didn't really need much help, more moral support!

I just finished painting this Dolphin:

I am working on a couple other paintings I am hoping to post tomorrow!

Until then, here is a painting I did for my cousin for her wedding.  First, let me explain a little, her man proposed to her while playing the board game clue.  They played with their group of friend all the time and she was always Miss Peacock and he was always Professor Plum. 

I will post more soon!  I hope you enjoy my work as much as I enjoy creating it!

Painting the day away:)

I have been painting all day:)  My family has made some requests and I decided today was a good day to paint!  Evidently I was right because it was 19 degrees outside when I woke up this morning!  That is c-c-c-cold!

 My Aunt Linda called a few days ago and mentioned she needed a sign for my Memaw's room and the Bathroom so my Memaw remembers where she is going.  So, I volunteered to paint a couple of signs for my Aunt to hang on the doors.  I painted these today.

I painted this a few weeks ago for my Sister-in-law in Louisiana,

She loved it and asked me to paint a monkey for her new baby girls' room.

One of my Sister-in-law's friends saw her Fleur de lis and commissioned her own.

Our Neice's brothers saw her painting and of course they wanted their own paintings.

 For Hunter...Tennessee Volunteers

For Dominic...New England Patriots










I still have a dolphin for Dawson and the Philadelphia Eagles for Dillon, and Mason has yet to submit his request. 


My Brother's kids are on facebook so when my nephew Bram saw the monkey I painted he asked for a painting of an F-18.  Since my husband works on them everyday I had him find me a picture of an F-18 to paint, so that was his contribution.  This is an F-18 on the flight deck of the USS Harry S. Truman, which was the last ship my husband was deployed to.

Then I asked my Niece Sadie what she would like, and she requested a butterfly in a garden.

Since I am posting paintings for family, here is a painting of a pelican I did for my Dad for his birthday one in 2005.

I will post more as I finish them!  I hope you are enjoying my work as much as I am enjoying creating it.

Missing Key West

After posting the pictures of my paintings the other day I really miss my balcony in Key West!  Most of the pictures were taken outside on the balcony were I painted them.  At the time I am sure I was cussing the heat, but it is a chilling 29 degrees outside right now, and I am kinda missing my warm Key West balcony!  I am not the only one, my Boston Terrier, Bailey Buttercup is not much for the cold either.  She spends as little time outside right now as possible, and I am pretty sure if she could she would not touch the ground with her little dog feet.  I put little dog booties on her, but she wouldn't have anything to do with that, and immediately shook them off...I tried!

This is our Bailey:)  I think I might have to paint this picture of her too:)  She is a sweet girl!  She has one little problem though....she CAN'T control her LICKER!  She loves everyone and if you are within licking distance she is going to lick you! 

Some more History...

I have covered, high school, and college, and some of my adult life...so while I was bartering with my artwork, my then boyfriend was either 5 states away or out on an aircraft carrier.  Most of the paintings I posted in my last post were done while I was in a long distance relationship and living in the Riverside area of Jacksonville. After three years of dating long distance we finally decided to tie the knot.  I moved from Jacksonville, FL to Virginia Beach, VA.  I got a part time job at an Art Supply store and slowly built up my art supplies.  Our roommate, like my husband, was also in the Navy and when he returned from a 6 month deployment I painted him a painting as a welcome home/ Birthday present:

 

One of their friends in the Navy saw a picture of this and Commissioned me  to do a painting for her friend who was deployed at the time.  The girl's beloved dog had passed away while she was gone and her friend wanted to surprise her with a painting of her dog hanging in her living room for her return.

I was in Virginia Beach less than a year, when my husband got orders to Key West, FL.  So we packed up and moved to sunny, beautiful Key West!  Wow what an adventure!  My husband was on shore duty so he didn't have to deploy for the entire 3 years we were there, yay!  I worked part-time at a beautiful location where I was surrounded by water.  It was really hard to have a bad day in Key West, all you had to do was walk outside and look around and you couldn't help but smile!  I actually got to paint a few paintings just for me!  A lot of my work has been what other's have asked for, I finally got to paint a few things just because I wanted to! 

We would go to the sunset festival at Mallory Square every chance we got!  I could not get over how many different colors there could be in any given sunset, amazing!  I loved walking down Whitehead Street and seeing the light house across from The Hemingway House so I did a painting of the Key West Lighthouse at Sunset. 

 

As I mentioned, I really loved walking down Whitehead Street, so I did a painting of one of the Cottages along the way.

I have always loved the work of Vincent van Gogh, and I always wanted a painting of Cafe Terrace at Night, since I can not afford an original, I did my own! 

We went to the Key West Aquarium and I fell in love with Jelly Fish, they are so beautiful, so I painted one of those too.

I call this My Isle of Serenity, I painted this to hang over our bed!  

I also painted one similar to this called Single Palm Isle and this is about the time I discovered Etsy.com and started my shop www.andreamcgee.etsy.com 

After my cousins visit to Key West, I was commissioned to paint her, her own island too, but she wanted a boat on it. 

Same painting, just an Up-close picture of the island

I also painted a few coconuts, just for the fun of it, and ended up selling a few of those too! 

One of my co-workers saw my etsy shop and commissioned me to paint her a seahorse.

Then my Mother in Law requested a Bunny.

 

A friend requested a painting on the wall of her son's room, this was fun! 

Then my husband's squadron asked that I paint them an alternate squadron patch logo.

 

Then the VFA 106 First Class Petty Officer's commissioned me to paint a mural in their Mess Room.

Here is a close up...I decided to personalize this painting for the 7 current First Class Petty Officers and painted their names as the eyebrow ridge of each of the skulls.

Then my mom asked for a painting with palm trees, poinciana trees and sea oats.

I think this gets us through Key West...so this is a good place to stop for the day.  I hope you enjoy my work as much as I enjoy creating it!

Oh, yes...I didn't want to leave anyone hanging from yesterday's post...there was nothing but water in the dog dish, so I have no idea what the dog was doing!

Some history...

Well, let's see, I guess I will start with College, since that is when I really started trying to sell my work trying being the key word, I usually gave it away before even attempting to sell it.  During college I learned that giving art as gifts was a good way to promote your work.  So I gave paintings as house warming presents...which was usually apartment warming presents for my friends back then, not quite homeowners yet.  I would give them as birthday presents, and Christmas presents, and it turned out, word of mouth was a pretty good way to get started.  I am kind of disappointed, I do not seem to have any pictures to post here.

Painting on trade was good too!  I painted a couple of murals at La Nopalera, a Mexican Restaurant on the corner of Beach and San Pablo in Jacksonville, FL, they paid me some in cash and some in food.  That got me a couple other jobs, three paintings at the La Nopalera on Hendricks Avenue, and this Mural for a guy who worked for Honda, of which we made a trade for parts and work on my Honda Accord (including a Timing Belt).

This is a 3 x 6 foot mural of Dolphin Fish and Wahoo.

A combination of the fish mural and the murals at the restaurants, got me another job!  A lady who had seen the murals wanted me to paint a mural in her bathroom, of which I got paid money for.

Beginning of Fairy Mural

Once my coworkers saw pictures of the murals, a few of them decided they would like their own paintings.

Tampa Bay Buccaneer's Ship

Tampa Bay Buccaneer's Flag

The two Tampa Bay Paintings were done for a co-worker who wanted to surprise her Husband when he came home after being deployed in the Navy.  She had looked everywhere for the Tampa Bay ship on a poster but could not find one.  So
she commissioned me to paint one for her.








Then another co-worker and I went to St. Augustine and she decided she wanted a painting of Flagler College for a nook in her new house.

Another co-worker's fiance commissioned me to do a painting for him of a dream he had about her all lit up in moonlight.  So she modeled for this painting:

I guess I am at a good stopping place for now...as I said before, my husband is currently deployed, I shipped him his first care package from me today and ran a few errands, so I need to go play with our furry kids for a while, I swear my Havanese is blowing bubbles in his water bowl I need to go see what is in it, his whole face is wet like he is bobbing for apples...I will type more tomorrow!  Hope you are enjoying my work as much as I have enjoyed creating it!

January 17, 2011 - Introduction

A friend of mine suggested I start a blog to promote my artwork, since it is a good idea, here I go! 

I suppose I should start by telling you a little bit about myself.  I am a proud Navy Wife, and my Sailor is currently deployed on the USS Enterprise.  So I have some free time on my hands.  To keep my mind off missing my Hubby, I have been painting.  Lately they have been commissioned pieces requested by friends and family but I am hoping to go farther.  I love art!  Art has helped me through the most difficult times in my life and continues to do so now. 

High School.  I think it was difficult for everyone. I am pretty sure that the fact that I could sit in my older brother's room and draw until 2 am (when the bars closed and he came home) weekend nights kept me out of a lot of trouble.  Don't get me wrong, I still went out, I was just in by curfew and content with drawing instead of sneaking back out. I still have a box full of drawing from that time...and it is interesting.  Lots of tribal designs and potential tattoos in there, and I do not personally have any tattoos. There is a painting I did on newspaper while I was painting my room black...it is a silhouette of a surfer and his surfboard.  If I wasn't out surfing or at school or work, I was usually drawing, or painting. Despite my love of art I didn't have many art classes in school.  My first Drawing class wasn't until my Senior year of high school and the only other art class I had prior to that was 3 dimensional design in middle school.

So when I went to college I scheduled stress relief time, I minored in art!  I majored in Biology. So along with my love of art is my love of science.  My favorite subject in both is the human body. So I focused on the human figure in my art studies. I took classes such as Artistic Anatomy, which I took at the same time as Anatomy and Physiology, which deemed helpful on both parts. I also took figure drawing, and figure sculpture.  Here is one of my sculptures from college:

My figure sculpture class was one of my favorites!  I was the youngest by far in the class, most of the other students were auditing the class. It was a Saturday morning class.  One of the students was a Plastic Surgeon, his father was a General Surgeon under which my then boss had studied (I worked for a General Surgeon). The Plastic Surgeon's father was also an artist, his mom was into pottery, and I later took a painting class from his sister.  The Plastic Surgeon used to tell me I was sculpting myself instead of the model... I would evidently add a little in certain areas, where they were not as well endowed. The models never complained. 

A little over a year after I graduated from College with a Bachelor's of Science in Biology, my younger brother was killed in a car accident.  That was the worst phone call I ever received in my life. The following fall semester I decided I would register for some therapy...I enrolled in three art classes. I can not explain in words how much it helped me but I can post a few pictures:

This is Bill.  He holds a lot of the emotions I let go of after my brother passed away.

This is one my still life paintings from that time.

I learned a lot from those art classes, I really dove into soaking up as much about technique as I could. I learned how to stretch my own canvases, and I learned the importance of quality paint! I also took a design class, where I learned about gauche, and illustration techniques, of which I have incorporated into my drawings and paintings.  

I am fascinated and a little afraid of Watercolor.  Which brings me to my Mom.  She should have been mentioned before now since she is were I get most of my artistic ability!  She is the one who taught me how to paint when I was four.  That is usually when you play around with watercolor, not us...we used acrylics.  My first painting was of a bunny rabbit. I have no idea where it is or if it still exists, but I will never forget painting it with my Mommy. She majored in art in college. She loved to draw, but didn't do it often enough. She became rather sick and fought hard for a long time.  She started to knit and crochet to pass the time and when she was feeling up to it she would draw or paint.  She was really having fun with Watercolor.  I think her favorite subject was birds. She also liked flowers. She passed away about 5 months ago. So I set up an art room in my house and I am doing therapy in my own house this time.