Welcome to the third part of my Early Huevember series. If you missed the first two parts, you can find them here:
There is still a week until the official Huevember Challenge starts (1 Nov), but I wanted to share my early attempt at the challenge. At first, I was curious about how Huevember worked in practice. Then I wanted to give it a shot without having to split my attention between Huevember and National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which both take place in November. Overall, I had a blast. Now, on to the art!
Overview
This set of paintings was interesting. I started out with a rather detailed painting (which was carryover from the end of the previous set of paintings), and then decided that I needed to dial that back before I burned myself out. As such, the rest of the week (and challenge) ended up a bit different, but still really spiffy.
Days 13 to 18
You can find the individual paintings below, with some assorted blurbs from my experience of painting them.
Day 13: “A Dragony Reflection”
The idea for this painting took a while to figure out I had a vague idea of wanting to do something with a reflection, particularly some blending like a human with the reflection being a dragon. However, between my current skill level with drawing people and my thought that it would be funny to have an otherwise cozy scene with a dragony reflection, I chose not to make said reflection a large part of the painting. That and reflections are kind of hard to do well.
Day 14: “Wings in the Night”
Purple seems to lend itself to a night sky, and I thought that a full moon would be spiffy. Also, given that Halloween was approaching, I figured the bats would be a nice touch. Overall, I think this turned out well, particularly the bats silhouetted against the moon. I tried to get a bit of variety there, while having the nice close up of the one bat flying toward the camera.
Day 15: “Out for a Moonlit Stroll”
The topic of this painting took a bit of time to figure out. I was looking for something that wouldn’t have much in the way of detail, and as such more silhouettes against the moon seemed appealing. I decided on a darker purple for the sky and assorted silhouettes because I thought it would be a nice contrast to the bright moon. I did play around with the glow effect on the moon, trying something different from the previous painting. The deer family seemed to be a nice choice because of the recognizable shape. That and I had already done several other animals, and none of them were deer.
Day 16: “Cat and Owl Power Hour”
For this one, I was trying to think of something other than a night sky theme, since that had appeared in the last three paintings. I opted for the background with assorted purple dots just as a fun idea, and I wanted to have a cat and an owl hanging out as buddies. It was a nice simple design that let me do something different. All in all, it was a nice change of pace from trying to construct a more detailed scene.
Day 17: “Soft Shoe in Blue”
The idea for this painting actually came to me a week or so before I painted it. I’ve always liked Irish dance, and it occurred to me that I wanted to do something Irish dance themed. That’s when the name came to be, and the rhyme just seemed so fitting. I tried to hit all of the key points. The ghillies and poodle socks. The dress and wig. I’m pleased with how this painting turned out.
Day 18: “Puffins!”
I just like puffins… I was trying to figure out what to do for this painting, since it was the only blue blue. I figured the water would be a good choice, and when I tried to think of what else to do, I decided that I may as well do puffins. The accent colors on actual puffins isn’t actually blue, but it seemed like an easy swap to make.
Final Thoughts
By this point in the challenge, I was coming up on the halfway point of the challenge, and I’m fairly sure I was decently past the number of days I had consecutively done art. Some of the ideas were taking a good bit of time to come up with, much less execute. Having some time to put something relatively simple together relieved some of that pressure, and it was kind of nice to just do something fun. In addition to that, I think I learned a good bit.
That’s everything for this post. Stay tuned for the next set of paintings!
~ Theresa
Other posts in this series (links will be added as the entries are posted):
- Early Huevember 2022: Days 1 to 6
- Early Huevember 2022: Days 7 to 12
- Early Huevember 2022: Days 13 to 18
- Early Huevember 2022: Days 19 to 24
- Early Huevember 2022: Days 25 to 30
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