My last custom portrait giveaway was several months ago, but a lot has changed for me in the art realm since then. With previous giveaways, these portraits have all been done using colored pencils. But a couple of months ago, I started trying to learn how to use oil paints. It’s been quite an invigorating experience, so I thought I’d
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With my 9th painting, I ran into a bit of a conundrum and drove home a good lesson for myself. To this point, I feel like I had shown a pretty steady improvement in my paintings. They certainly weren’t masterpieces, but I was encouraged by the practice showing tangible results. The other side of this coin though is the fact
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This write-up covers some tips and thoughts regarding European travel, specifically when taking a Mediterranean Cruise. Like a lot of the world, we haven’t traveled much over the last couple of years. Some small voyages occasionally, but my wife and I are fairly cautious people so we’ve been hesitant to take any major trips that couldn’t be avoided. However, this
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When I shared my last custom portrait giveaway, I mentioned that I had somehow let a year go by between these artwork raffles. I thought that was sort of an aberration due to the pandemic and all. Yet here we are again, almost a year later, and I let time get away from me again! I’ve had some good experiences
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In my last post, I wrote a bit on the fact that my posts are often a bit delayed from when the artwork is actually finished. As I said previously, it’s probably a fairly common phenomenon for many artists to delay sharing something by a month or two. But there have been times when those delays stacked up quite a
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Buried deep towards the end of my last post, I posed the question, “which style of time-lapse drawing progression is your favorite?” I embedded a crowdsignal poll with some options I’ve used. I have long struggled trying to figure out which is truly the “best.” The slideshow-style .gif images are the easiest to make, but it seems like videos are
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It’s been quite a long time since I’ve done a portrait giveaway – somehow, the last one was more than a year ago! It’s hard to believe it’s been so long since I did one of these artwork raffle/sweepstakes. The two I did in 2020, which resulted in “The Boo Crew” puppies and some fun beach portraits, were really great
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Over the last week or so, I went on a sudden Princess Bride artwork binge. I started outlines for three different scenes! I’ve only finished one so far, but I was surprised by the sudden surge of Princess Bride-related activity. I think it was partially inspired by our recent move. As we’ve been slowly getting things unpacked, I found one
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I’ve been tinkering with this website pretty consistently over the last three-and-a-half years. Throughout that time, I have maintained interest in ways I could make the website pay for itself. Portrait art and web development are hobbies for me, so I have never really sought to monetize them heavily, but I have long believed it would be nice if web
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I am getting really bad about writing on this blog! I am also not really keeping up with my artwork hobby very well. I have a long term goal of sharing at least one blog post per month, which I have been able to keep rolling for over three years! Considering that my last one was towards the beginning of
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I think I’ve enjoyed some pretty good luck lately with portrait giveaways. I had a great experience with the last giveaway winner, which really left me with a positive feeling all around regarding this hobby. I’ve also done a couple of free portraits for healthcare/essential workers during the pandemic which were also very positive and encouraging projects. Experiences like these
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It’s been quite a busy last month or so. The family and I finally made our long-delayed moved to Texas. It’s something that’s been in the works since late February, and we made the leap a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit of a trial though; the movers were late, ran out of room on their truck, and
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It’s taken me quite a while to actually get to the writing portion, but I’m finally sharing the portraits from the most recent giveaway. The original giveaway was back in April, which somehow feels like both an eternity ago and just last week. I guess pandemic life warps time in strange ways. Anyhow, according to the giveaway widget dashboard, this
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As you can tell from the homepage, Amdall Gallery has a custom portrait raffle going right now. We’ve got about 12 days left on the contest, so if having some artwork similar to what I share on this site is something that interests you, give it a shot! I’ve done these a few times before, but one difference this time
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As I was thinking about tentative plans for a few upcoming posts, the thought crossed my mind to do another artwork giveaway. It’s been about a year since my last one, so I think it’s a great time for another. They’ve been a fun way to generate new art projects, and the four or five I’ve done previously have had
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