Saturday, December 26, 2009

Sunny Card

I've been wanting to experiment with collage.  So I used Sunny's image to make a collage card.  I had fun experimenting with different ideas I've read about. 


Here's the shorthand version of what I did....

I used  some patterned paper I bought at Michaels and glued ripped pieces to make the background.    Then I water down some white acrylic in matte medium and went over the whole thing to push it back into the background.  I glue "Sunny" on top of this.  Then, I printed his name on some yellow flimsy paper and glued it on over the stripes.  I stamp a couple of paw prints in gesso.   And the sun was a juice glass stamp with black and a credit card for the rays.  The black around the dog is a charcoal pencil. I also used distress ink to age it a bit.

I going to give my friend a few for her sister.  I hope she likes it.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Sunny Portrait 2

I decided to do another portrait of Sunny to fake a sit up position.  Because all the photos I have of him are looking down , he's appearing chubby.  I think this one's a keeper.   He looks happy here.

Sunny







 Sunny, a yellow lab of 9 years, suddenly died, and my friend asked me to do his portrait for the family for Xmas. This was the best expression of the dog to use, but the picture was not clear.  So I had to use other pictures to make up the details.  Not as easy as when its all in front of you.

I just stuck the mat around it to give myself an idea of cropping.


Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Island of Misfit Ornaments

This past summer, my sister-in-law and I went to a neighborhood garage sale for fun.  I hadn't gone in years, because I've been trying to get rid of my own stock pile of stuff.  Anyway, I didn't find anything except a box of "misfit ornaments" selling for $1/piece.

As you can see, some are perfectly fine.  One has its legs on backwards, 2 of them, the twigs are broken. So, I put them on the shelf in my art room all this time awaiting the holiday season until it was time to add them to our tree and our collection.  




At the time I thought, well I could get another twig and fix this or I could resew the legs.  But then I realized their imperfections are what makes them so endearing and the "Rudolph" movie with the Island of Misfit Toys came to mind.




Santa didn't come and fix them.  He found a home for them.  Sometimes I too feel like my feet are on backwards, and I'm glad I am loved with all my imperfections.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Free Photoworks Book




I follow a blogger, Heather at  Freebies4Mom that has many coupon type offers.  I got this photobook totally free!  At first I was going to do a book for my mom as a christmas gift of all the grandchildren.  But to get all their pictures would have taken too long and time was of the essence.  So I thought, maybe I'll make a coffee table book of my artwork for me!

If anyone has ever done something like this before, you know the time involved in uploading and finding photos, captions, what to put together.  I spent so many hours on it that by the end, I was like ... who cares, and hit the submit key.  Anyway it was totally free, 26 pages...even shipping.  I think it showed $59 before the coupon code.



It's really nice to see artwork in print.  I left 3 pages blank because of frustration.  (I think I got locked out).  Now I wish I had it all filled.



The offer came from the Bonnie Hunt Show.  I just checked and they reach their quota give away.  But, good deal I think.  I'm not a coupon shopper, but I love deals like this.  I also got our photo Christmas cards through Heather's blog, too.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Photo Collage




I put together a few photos I've been playing around with.  I'm using Picnik to play with my botantical pictures and make these line drawings.  My goal is to use this as a tool to make a painting but so far I just get to this point and don't have any inspirations on what to do next.  Painted the way it is probably is not enough.  


Anyone have a good idea, I'd like to hear.   


In case someone wants to try one.  This is what I did.  Just upload a picture like this one:




Don't worry, this branch came from a group of bushes I was pruning one weekend.  It also had started to wilt so it looks rather flat.   Then in Picnik just go into Edit and crop and fix the photo.  Next, go into Create, Effects, and use the Neon selection.  (You can play with the colors).  Next, go into Invert. You will have something like this:

 With the above collage, I took it a step further and chose Duo-Tone to pick 2 colors.
It can be addicting. Have fun, its free!