HAPPY 2012!

Another year has come and gone and my(!) how fast it flew by. It seems the older I get, the quicker time goes. We now have another brand new year to make of it what we will. This past year has been a mixed bag for me as I'm sure it has for everyone. Good times, bad times. That's life, I guess. In terms of my art life it has been the best year yet with more sales at the gallery than I've ever had and I've enjoyed trying new painting techniques and products. I'm also thrilled to see I have more followers on my blog. It's you, my followers, my visitors and those that take the time to comment that help keep me going. Thank you for a wonderful 2011 and I wish you all the very best for 2012.

Christmas Doodles

I am in such a funk this holiday season it's ridiculous. I realized I'd produced nothing of creative value in weeks so I got out a drawing pad and an array of pencils and have kept them next to me on the sofa. When I get in these moods I tend to spend way too much time in front of the TV so I figured why not keep some art supplies handy and doodle while staring at the idiot box. It worked. Santa cat and his sleigh pulled by a team of house mice was the result. I'm not sure I will develop this any further. I don't plan to create Xmas cards again this year and it's really too late anyway. Maybe next year. Something that I've noticed...people will buy Xmas cards at the gallery during the summer months so I may put paint to this idea and offer cards later in the year.

Scanner Art

In this image I applied the red eye filter, adjusting the level until I liked the results.

For this effect I moved the poppy while the scanner was running. I think it looks like little red tetras swimming in the black water of a Peruvian lake.

Here I've applied the 'twirl' filter to the image below.

The same silk flower/bud with decorative paper as a backdrop.

My silk flower simply scanned on the scanning bed w/o editing.

While watching a DIY show today I saw the host create some very cool scanner art as decorative wall art. Scanner art aka scanography isn't anything new but the creative possibilities are practically limitless. I will assume most people that own a computer also have a flatbed scanner so why not experiment with it? For the record, I used my Epson Artisan 725.

I used a silk poppy with an attached bud and some art paper I had on hand to see if I could come up with anything worth posting. I did several scans of the poppy and bud sandwiched between the top of the scanner and the bed, with the art paper as a backdrop and even did a few scans while moving my poppy across the scanner as it was running. For some of my scans I played with the resulting images in my photo editor to get further effects. I did not bother to use a black cloth to cut off all incoming room light but that is a common method used by many scanographers.

Some interesting links regarding scanography:

Tim Fleming~What is scanner art?

Tim Fleming blog

Scanography

Ladies on a Park Bench #I

SOLD

I hope everyone of my visitors that celebrate Thanksgiving had a great holiday. Mine was kind of weird this year and Christmas looks like it's stacking up to be the same. I did finally get one version of my 'Ladies on a Park Bench' finished, though.

After tranferring my drawing onto 90# Fabriano CP w/c paper and saving the areas I wanted left white with Pebeo drawing gum (love that stuff) I applied a thin wash of walnut ink over all. I then added more ink at the ladies' feet, base of the bench and dog to ground the whole scene a bit. I used subsequent washes of ink on the bench and was very happy to see the darker tones and richness of color my homemade walnut ink produced. I had some real fun painting the hair, jewelry, etc. with my Jacquard Lumiere metallic acrylics. When all the painting was completed I went over all my lines with an 05 Micron pen. The ladies needed some blush on their cheeks and lips so I mixed up a concoction of red and orange soft pastel and applied that with a Q-tip. Voila!