The Art of Shawna Apps
It’s probably no surprise, but I love painting and drawing birds. They’re the animal I create most often, and they are my most requested subject as well. On our vacations to the Outer Banks, sandpipers are one of our favorite birds to watch while we’re on the beach, and I knew I’d be painting one soon…
Title: Sandpiper
Continue reading “New Piece: Sandpiper”If you’ve been around for awhile, you know I love watercolors.
You might also know that I love drawing with graphite pencils.
I’ve been after a way to combine the two loves into one cohesive piece lately, but no matter what I’ve tried, it never looks…right.
Well, I decided to reorganize and redecorate my office, and guess what I found buried in a spot that never should have held this particular item?
WATER. SOLUBLE. GRAPHITE. PENCILS.
Continue reading “New Mediums”I was inspired to create this piece in February, but it took me a full month and a half to even attempt to try painting it! I tend to get in my head when I see things that inspire me to paint, telling myself it’s too hard, I’m not good enough to even try it, and I’ll waste my time and materials by even attempting it. I’m getting better about it, but it’s still a voice in my head that needs major work to silence it!
Title: Soar
Continue reading “New Piece: Soar”You’re never going to believe it…but this piece? It actually DID WHAT I WANTED IT TO. I’ve had so many recently that went their own way, so to have one do what I wanted?
It felt really, really weird.
I’ve had a couple questions about where this piece is from, and I love that even though it’s from Corolla, Outer Banks in North Carolina, that it reminds my viewers of their favorite bodies of water!
Title: Tranquility
Continue reading “New Piece: Tranquility”This piece was a rollercoaster ride to create!
I started out with this being an 18″ x 24″ piece, and some times it went well, others…not so much. Paint was running everywhere, the paper was warping from the water, colors were blending beautifully…like I said, a rollercoaster ride with its ups and downs!
It wasn’t until I was so close to being finished and getting ready to frame it that the unthinkable happened….
A question I get often is do I use reference images for all of my pieces or can I just draw/paint them by memory. My answer is always this: I have to use reference images!
That statement is no longer true because of this piece…
Sometimes I’ll make a piece and be like, okay, this isn’t bad. Others I’ll be like, oh wow, I like this a lot!
This piece?
I’d keep it and stare at it all day every day if I had wall space left for it! I really think this might be the best piece I’ve ever done.
Title: Twilight
Continue reading “New Piece: Twilight”I’ve mentioned before that there are times when pieces don’t go the way I intentionally planned…and this piece is no different!
This piece came together really easily. The color gradient, the clouds, it was so smooth and seamless…but it felt like it was missing something. I hadn’t planned for anything but the clouds to be in the painting, so I was feeling a little frustrated. I had the name Lullaby in my head, but that felt like it was missing something as well. I happened to be talking to my husband about something and it inspired me to try putting a moon into the piece, and it was perfect! The alliteration for using ‘lunar’ in the title with lullaby was the sprinkles on top (because sprinkles are better than cherries!).
Continue reading “New Piece: Lunar Lullaby”I went through a period of time this past winter where every watercolor piece I created looked great on my reference image, but as soon as I got it onto the paper, the composition was awkward. This piece originally had another set of clouds along the left, but I felt like it just looked better cropped, so I trimmed it down and went with the smaller, better composed piece!
Title: Sherbet Skies
Continue reading “New Piece: Sherbet Skies”We live in a beautiful part of Western New York where the views are amazing. I love driving down back roads, especially for sunrises and sunsets, and just take in the view. This painting was based on a late autumn morning, and I was taken aback at how the bright blue sky and purple and white fluffy clouds were so vibrant when paired with the bare, dark trees and chopped down cornfields. I of course had to take a picture and paint it!
Title: Autumn Farewell
Continue reading “New Piece: Autumn Farewell”
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