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.

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.

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.

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!

Pink Hydrangia

My latest acrylic painting. I liked the colors so much I'm using it in my header. These are my hydrangias this year...all pink and green. I did feed them once in the spring. If anyone has experience with turning them blue, I'd like to hear.

This was so much fun painting. It's kind of what I'm trying to gear towards...a more abstract approach to my paintings and ideas. One nice thing about acrylic is because it drys so fast, you can go over areas that aren't working. I started this painting with a pink to yellow underpainting and then painted the flowers around the colors.

I'm not sure if this painting's finished. I have to come back and look at it in a week. That's when everything finally jumps out at you.

Who Are You?

Here's another experiment in watercolor. For some reason, I need to follow a system or step-by-step process or I lose my way.



So here's what I did....the bird and swirl/leaf are taken from some fabrics samples that came from work. I just traced them. The round flower/snowflake shape is just a made up pattern. Then before I actually painted the background colors, I used colored paper to move around the color and come up with this pattern. Keeping the white behind the bird to draws your eye.

When it was almost done, I scanned it once and studied it on the computer. I realized that there needed to be a black line at the top also. So I added that (which should be darkened), and removed a leaf that was making the bottom right too busy. Sometimes seeing the painting on the computer screen really helps seeing it. I also added the series of dots to fill in the empty space.

I'm experimenting and trying to find my look...Do any of you know when you had a breakthrough that defined your style? I would love to hear from you.

Snow Flowers

My first attempt at acrylics. I tried to keep the colors simple so I could concentrate on technique. I love the fact that I can go over and over unlike watercolor. I made stencils like one of my favorite artist, Kate Birch. I also cut out oak leaves from wallpaper and glue/gesso it on. I had to go over the design with brown paint because they faded away too much.

I might hate it tomorrow...Tell me what you think?