Reverse color portrait -

Today I started with acrylics to do a reverse color portrait of a photo of me.
I had reversed the colors in my Paint Shop Pro software and liked the brightness of the colors in reverse.
I also fuzzed the photo a bit with the brush stroke filter.
Copying the photo was Hard!!!

Ultimately, I used less colors than the photo, but finished the exercise when I felt like I had done enough!




Sometimes, just time finishes a project for me. At least with this drawing and painting stuff.

When I make a skirt or knit top, enough comes with the final hem. That is a nice bonus with sewing. There is an obvious stopping point.

Not so with drawings and paintings!

Oh well, what are you goin' to do? I have too much paint and too much paper hanging around to quit now.








The other interesting thing is what happens when you take a photo of your work.

It's an opportunity to see glaring flaws.

This left eye crease shadowing is too well defined. The eye color is good, though.













The right eye looks OK, but I'm still working on tilted faces.

The angle of the eyes and cheekbones require a lot more attention than a full front drawing.

Additionally, I did a very fast sketch in order to get to the color and perhaps that limited the shading effects.

Still learning what I like to do.









Close up of the right side eye shows lots of color in the iris which is something I know I like to do.

Acrylic paints are a challenge! They sure do dry quickly, and sometimes that is good because I can lay another color on top to change direction.

Of course, using glaze is a option and is a really great way to go over a graphite sketch to "nail it down", but today's play was just that.

Play.

Very good, Adrian! Now smile and when you come back in a week or two, this is gonna look even better.

A graphite portrait -

This weekend I picked up my pencils again to see what I could do with graphite and no paint to confuse me!

This took a few hours, but it was fun to do. I'm not so happy with the paper. It is a 9 inch by 12 inch, 65 lb. sketch pad that I am dedicating to just portraits, but the paper seems to fill up with graphite very quickly. I've noticed that drawing on watercolor paper is a lot different. The graphite smears more and I have a much easier time getting shadows and shading the way I like. Oh well, live and learn.

Does she look black and beautiful?

I think so.

January - day 2 of journal

Day 2 of January journaling.
Since I was taking so many photos with my new Zumi camera, I just had to put them somewhere. This was so much fun! I know it's hard to see these photos, but they are intensely colored and slightly grainy.
so cool.
I printed out 9 to a photo page and then used a punch to cut them out. Since I just couldn't limit myself, I made a little booklet of water-colored paper and double-stick taped them down.

Adding more photos to the page is easy when you have a journal within a journal - yes?



Did some stitching to decorate and secure the booklet and the pix.
The background page is gessoed,water color spray painted and highlighted with wax pastels in rose, one of my favorite colors.
See how the booklet opens? My first.
sigh.






This is page 2. More pix, more color, more fun.
It was a chance to use some stamps to "auto journal", too.
My husband, the house, our dog, Candy is her name, the feral cats eating (they're always eating! I feed them three times a day!) the pool, the sky, my garage/studio, a messy unmade bed.
All good fodder for fun camera pix.







See! Page 2 on page 2 opens two!











And this is how it looks all closed up and done.

Happy Saturday, January 2.

My new Zumi Camera!

I got a new camera!!!! It's a Zumi! Formal Name: Digital Harinezumi 2. How's that! It's a wonderful, little, digital, plastic lense camera that even takes videos!!! Yeah!!! Last year I got a Holga and loved the pix, but couldn't keep buying all that film. Now, I can take hundreds of photos and load them into my computer to pick and choose which ones to print. Oh, how I love this camera! It has two ISO settings- 100 for daylight and 800 for low light conditions and it even takes black and white photos with just a few pushes of the few buttons that are on this little camera. I got it on-line at www.photojojo.com - the place for cool photo stuff! I cannot stop taking pictures!!! My pix look like I have an old camera that is slightly amused at being asked to take pictures because it is so not perfect. Love the distortions, love the grainy-ness, love the super saturated color I sometimes get in daylight, love the strange color tinges that come up, and it is so small! Fits into the palm of my hand and I just point and shoot. There is no window to see you picture before you take it, but there is a nice review display so you can delete a photo if you want to. (I never do, I'm in too much of a hurry to get another photo and see how it turns out. Everyone is different because the effect of changing light conditions changes your photo amazingly.
My P.T. Cruiser never looked so - interesting.
Our Florida sky never looked so - painterly.
Our house never looked so -blessed by the Light.
And, I never looked so - mysteriously curvy?
Oh, I am in love with technology. Thank you PowerShovel,Ltd! Fantastic! Fun! Fully functional and all mine......

A New Year, a trial journal -

OK, so I'm taking the plunge, like so many others. Taking time to do some art in a journal of sorts.
Not worrying about how much I do.
No rules.
Get to it when I can.
Do it when I feel like it.







First day of January - easy peasy because I don't have to go to work!
Yeah!
Step 1. Flop around my garage/studio with some music on and a few spray bottles of watercolors in pretty Florida colors.
Step 2. Use double stick tape to adhere some photos. So easy and so not messy.
Step 3. Sew the photos down with metallic gold thread (my favorite- hands down, all time, go for the glitter even though it shreds occasionally)



Step 4. Take some pictures.
Step 5. Admire.
Step 6. Take a nap.

Playing with Oil Pastels

In July of this year, I participated in Pam Carriker's Pursue Portrait class.
Well, participate is a broad term. What I did was make several pencil drawings.
At that time, I just could not bring myself to add color to any portrait work at all.
So, for most of the class I monitored and observed what my class mates were doing and I guess I stored it away for future use.

As I was attempting to put some order in my garage/studio yesterday, I came across the sketch book with the portraits I had drawn.

And, having just gotten some Sennelier Oil Pastels over the past few weeks from Dick Blick on-line art supplies, I stopped cleaning and just sat down with this.


I soon had a sore index finger. These things are crayons. Very soft. Buttery, in fact. Nice to apply, easy to smoosh around, but doing an entire 9 in. by 12 in. area is too hard to do with one's finger!

I took up a couple of stencil brushes and used them instead of my finger and blending the oil pastel colors was a lot easier. I used the very edge for detail work around the eyelids and for coloring the iris.

The whole process was a lot easier than I anticipated. However, next time I'm going to use them on studier paper. The sketch pad paper was only 65 lbs and it didn't take long to fill up the surface and it felt as if the colors were sliding around on top of each other.

Not that it really mattered. This was an experiment and it went well.


This is what it looked like as a pencil sketch. Pam Carriker gives you a basic face to try out at the beginning of her course, so it's good for all us beginners.

I see improvements in my sketches now and thanks to Mystele's Gut Art class, I finally, finally got the courage to work with color.

So, now I have a small amount of experience with graphite pencil, colored pencils, acrylic paint, water soluble oil pastel, PanPastel and now, oil pastel.

It's no wonder my garage looks like an art supply store.

PanPastel play

This is a small, about 5" X 4" size, and I'm not used to working small, angel done on a piece of office depot paper I took from my printer.
My computer had been working even slower than usual, so while cleaning up and moving files on Saturday, I made five small sketches for fun.
With a 4B pencil and the PanPastels from the 10 piece Painting Set, I smudged my way to this little angel.
These pastels are amazing! Not dusty, very intense colors and so smooth.
I'm used to working on larger spaces which gives me room to play with coloring the eyes, so this small format was - different. Just the lightest touch of the side of the Sofft tool was all that was needed to put a blend of color on the iris. The wings were fun, though.

This was a small, torn piece of watercolor paper that had a text stamp on it. I was just practicing making a face, not using anything as a reference, and before I was done, the halo appeared. sigh.
I guess all the Christmases of my childhood are seeping in because this doesn't look like just a girl to me, it looks like all the pictures of Jesus that were hung on the walls of the Presbyterian church I attended as a kid.
Of course, if Jesus was born in the middle east, he would not have looked like this, but this does look like the white Anglo-Saxon version printed in all my Bible study books.
Childhood experience really is imprinted strongly in brain and body memory.
After completing nursing school, I began studying Judaism and found its' teachings of personal responsibility for personal actions more consistent, so I converted. Now I was a stranger in a strange land. I didn't have the same background as the Jews I was meeting, but the warmness they extended to me more than made up for it. It took years for me to not want to put up a Christmas tree, though. And, memories of singing Silent Night in the church choir still peal loudly in my head this time of year.


This is the practice paper. All the stuff I've been reading about using the right kind of paper for the particular art media was suspended. Like a kid with crayons, I remembered that if you have a white piece of paper, you can color it!
Why are there so many rules? Why does everything have to be perfect? Why do I listen to everybody else?
And what's so important about being perfect, anyway?

Chanukah and PanPastels

Friday night was the last night of Chanukah and so the last candle was added and what a nice space of light it makes.

This is a photo taken with no flash.

My favorite.





And, this one was taken with the auto flash. I am always amazed at the pictures this Canon Digital Elph SD800IS takes.

I've had the camera for about 2 years now and I like it because it has a function that stabilizes the image in spite of any shake your hand might do.

Sometimes however, you want a blur and boy do I have to swing my arm to get it!





This week when I came home for lunch I found some PanPastels waiting for me. Oh, do I love the mail lady!

This is a quick play with a Love stamp on watercolor paper. Wow! do these colors blend!!!

I bought some bright colors and pastels to try on some portraits.

We'll see what happens.

Glass Art Pendant

A great way to use your own art is to make a pendant!
I got the inspiration from Willowing on youtube -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XT5ZOATsWw

She uses a wonderful little kit put out by Annie Howes -

http://www.anniehowes.com/056.html

It comes with some pretty papers, pendant glass, glues, bails to hang it with and some black cord to tie around your neck to wear it right away.

It also comes with complete instructions and lots of good tips.




I used some 7 mm silk ribbon and a plain hook and eye to fasten it.

Since the back was plain white paper, I added color with some ink pads and a small word stamp.

I am lazy and didn't want to go out to the copy store for prints of my art, so I used my ink jet printer and sprayed the images with fixative.

When that was dry I gently brushed on Golden's UV gel to seal the image and protect the colors from fading.

Surprisingly, when glued to the glass with diamond glue, non of the image ink ran. Whew!






I resized the photos of my artwork down to
7/8 inches and copied and pasted them in my Microsoft digital imaging software.

To print this out, I used Great White Imaging Photo Paper which is heavy and smooth, and not as thick as regular photo paper.

This was fun and easy to do. What else can I do with my art work?