Tyler Alexsandra Studio Blog

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Horns are Super Elegant

So this post is super late but…I chose a springbok as inspiration for my new painting which is actually already complete. I’ve been really feeling this concept of different goddesses in nature. I guess technically the fish piece was the start but the raven piece really brought it to life. I wanted to create a new piece where the “goddess” resembled her inspirational animal vs just being surrounded by them, plus painting horns are fun. So I chose a springbok because the shape of the horns are both beautiful and elegant along with the distinctive marks on the face.

This painting I actually decided to restart about 3/4 of the way complete. I was fighting with multiple pieces in the background and everything I attempted to do to fix it only made it worse. The figure and the composition I was satisfied with so I figured my best option would be a restart.

This is the first attempt. It just feels so messy and the tape is probably not helping. The background I changed about three times before ending up with this.

The second attempt is much cleaner and has a lighter feel to it and just for direct comparison…

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My First Blog Post

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.

For my first post on my new blog I want to start off by showing some of my old work from the last few year that has lead to the current work I am producing. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

Lost tribe

Finished piece and the start of a series…

The finished work is watercolor, pen, color pencil and metallic ink 11x14inch. After finishing this piece I was asked to create one for my cousin…

After finishing her portrait I decided to officially make this concept into a new series of mine

Tribes and such…

soo… I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of belonging, knowing, tradition, history and culture; mostly the idea of belonging. I started to really think about myself and how I fit into the world. I guess more specifically how my family and I fit into the country we live. There always seems to be this emptiness when I think about our history and where we come from, even after doing a dna test and see the results on paper I still felt stuck in a void where I don’t feel an emotional attachment to the places where a test says I belong. After thinking on it more I realized its because I know nothing of these places or people and a sense of loss overwhelmed me. I then circled back to the concept of belonging which led me to the idea of tribes. So I began to research a bit…

And I landed on the idea of a lost tribe. To me this idea of a lost tribe expressed exactly how I was feeling. With that in mind I decided to start with myself and incorporate different pieces of tribes and traditions into a self portrait…

to be continued….

Dragons are a part of Nature Right???

So continuing with Goddesses of nature series I’m feeling dragons maybe…why not.

Okay and Fairies…..

So…Dragon Tail butterflies are Awesome?

I stumbled upon the awesomeness that is the dragon tail butterfly and I knew I had to incorporate them in my work. Using the dragon tail butterfly and the snapdragon flower as inspiration I wanted to create something slightly magical…

I was still loving the gradient sunrise from my High Priestess piece and decided to use it again and add in cooler tones to create a nice contrast. I also reached back and incorporated the translucent wings from my Fish piece. With this painting I wanted to create a piece that was light, airy and has movement. It’s almost finished; probably one more session and it will be done.

Update

So I’m continuing to work on multiple projects at once and so far it’s going well. I don’t get that feeling of being bored or stuck trying to finish one at a time. So here are my current set that I’m working on…

Also I forgot to update this but…

The raven was finished quite a while back

The High Priestess

The high Priestess is the 2nd card of the deck

Update

with all this extra time and in order to be more productive I’m trying to start a few paintings going at the same time…

tarot card series still in process… and the first card his about half way done.

my latest two pieces… both untitled

Soooo….. Tarot Cards?

Maybe my next series?? Honestly I’ve been wanting to do my own version for a very long time. I think tarot cards are extremely fascinating and plan to start with the 22 Major Arcana set. It seems like it would be good place to start since it is considered the foundation of the deck. Originally I planned to start this series back in July… but I got stuck and started to lose motivation. So I’m curious of how many cards I will be able to accomplish before I have to take another break…

Im not interested in going in any particular order. So originally I began working on the high priestess and the empress cards simultaneously and since I got further along on the empress I’m going to start with it.

VERY basic sketch of my idea after reading the description of the card

This is as far as I got back in July, I was getting frustrated with the gouache paint. It was coming out splotchy and lifting in certain area, more specifically near the head of the eagle. It is supposed to be an eagle but with the lifting it became some kind of weird unicorn eagle thing… My other issue was trying to include the boarder detail on the painting which caused me to shrink the image and not get as much detail in certain areas than I would have liked. So between the uni-eagle, paint and small image I called it quits for a while and decided to change mediums and practice more before continuing.