Personal Style

 

Art Sherpa Tutorial

Unable to sleep, I arose at 2:30 a.m. and have been incredibly busy since.  Here is one of the paintings I did so far today.  I also spent a great deal of time on my book.

I have been struggling with the issue of my own personal style in my art practice.  I copy the work of others fairly easily, but to create unique work that is my own is challenging.  I have been following the advice I read somewhere:

Copy, copy, copy until you no longer need to copy.

It’s like following a recipe.  You make the same thing over and over, but then you start to tweak it.  You add a dash of this, eliminate that, until the recipe you began with is uniquely yours.  In art, you learn the techniques, duplicate art by other artists until you reach the point you create your own unique artwork.

Here is what I have written down to describe my personal style.

1. It must be able to be rendered quickly.  I am easily bored.  If a painting takes longer than a couple hours, I am sick of it.
2. Riotous color.
3. Use paint or multi-media materials
4. Layers

There will be more, but it’s a start.

I’m looking into subjects I find interesting.  Architecture, vintage tools, flowers, old barns, boats, zoo animals.

Pop art is interesting to me too.  I really enjoy the pictures that have these elements.

Lots of color, fun designs and a real sense of joy within the art.  It’s possible to do this to any image, really, but my concern is that I won’t get the tonal values in where they are needed.  It looks exciting to try and I will begin this particular part of my art journey tomorrow.

Have you checked out this fantastic website?  Paint My Photo.  This website is a gift to every artist.  Photographers upload their photos and allow artist to use those images free of charge and copyright-free.  What a blessing to all of us!  This website is a game-changer.  I use the images all the time.  Earlier today I made 5 or 6 sketches of ballerinas.  Then several elephants, tigers, boats and boots.

Check it out, if you need some spectacular photographs to work from.

Quest Everyday

 

Here is today’s fantasy eye/Face Quest.

You know, I have tried to encourage everyone who reads this blog to do something.  I have a daily art practice, which I often share here, and this keeps me going when times get tough.  By that, I mean when I am struggling with physical limitations.

Each day I take up the challenge to create something is a victory for me.  Each day I tell my disabilities to “bite me!  I’m gonna do it anyway!”  is a successful day.  All of us have limitations we are facing.  Those may be physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, financial, whatever.  That’s just our personal reality.  This does not mean we are without the ability to do something.

Each day, no matter how miserable it might be, can be made better if we have a positive attitude and a willing spirit.  Our struggles can crush us or make us stronger.  That choice is ours to make.  Our situation may not be what we would want, but how we react to it is all in our hands.

Today is not my best day.  But you know what?  I don’t care!  I am going to live my life in spite of it.  I refuse to give up and give in.  I will continue to create whatever I want, however I choose and whenever I feel like it.  I will fake it ’till I make it!  It’s the power of positive thinking here people!  If I can do it, you can to.

Remember the challenge for this year?  Using the Secret?  Well, where are you on that journey?  Have you made your vision board?  What about your daily meditations?  Are you focusing on drawing the positives into your life rather than focusing on the negatives?  The Law of Attraction does work and it will work for all of us too, if we use it.

If today is not great, how can you re-focus and change that?  What steps can you take to improve your situation.  One thing I know for sure, no one can want it for you more than you want it for yourself.  And if we allow bad days to overtake us, they lead to bad weeks.  Then the weeks add to bad months, months to years and years to a life.  You don’t want a bad life, so change your bad day.  You have the power and the strength to do it.

One breath, one step, one moment at a time and you can change your life.

Now that’s a challenge worth taking!

Grace and Frankie

are the best!  If you haven’t watched these two incredibly talented and funny women in this show, you need to.  Grace, played by Jane Fonda, and Frankie, played by Lily Tomlin, are just delightful.

Made more so because they are just like me and my dear friend Mary.  She’s Grace and I’m Frankie.

Seriously.

We are these two women, just younger.

I am always watching this with the two of us in mind.

It’s so true, it’s scary.

I love the way Frankie dresses.  I have several things similar, but have never fully embraced my bohemian gypsy-which was the name of my first art-related business.  I think I’ll just go for it and wear the clothes that really reflect who I am as a person.

And since this new medicine is causing me to pack on the pounds-I need new clothes anyway!

Mini-Art Quest and 1500 Color

mixing recipes book arrived in the mail!  So did the Color Mixing Recipes for Landscapes.

 

 

I really like the Walter Foster art books and have a few of them.  This one is particularly interesting to me, as it has 1500 paint recipe mixes in it!  I have another color mixing book for skin tones. I have found there are mixes for both skin tones and landscapes in the 1500 one too.

Now I can use the recipes as they are, obviously, or as bases to create my own unique blends.

Here is the conversion chart for Oil paints to Acrylics  and Oils to Watercolors which are used in the book:

Chart

It is nice to have consistent colors throughout your art practice, by paint type, for ease of mixing.  I am not an oil painter, nor will I ever become an oil painter because I don’t care for it, so my art practice does not include any.  I do, however, use acrylics and watercolors every day.  By having the same colors, by number not necessarily by name, I can develop a consistent palette for both mediums to create my colors.

This isn’t required or even necessary, it’s just an option I have with these pre-determined mix recipes.

Art Quest, mini-quest:  three simple skin tones and three hair colors.

 

You may have noticed, I am easily bored.  I switch what I am doing often, so as not to get sick of it.  This morning was all about paint, this afternoon will be all about writing.  Maybe tonight I’ll make jewelry…

One must have options.

Unbelievable!

I was in the middle of this mini-quest when my computer started to yell at me:

“Your computer is infected with spy ware which is currently stealing your credit card numbers and passwords.  If you exit this warning without contacting Microsoft we will be forced to shut down your computer to protect our system.  Contact Microsoft immediately for assistance.”  And it repeated that, over and over again.

REALLY loud and it scared me silly.

Scott came downstairs and shut the computer down while I was asking “what on earth is going on with this computer, blah, blah, blah…”

He said there is a new thing, hostage-ware, where you click on the warning and then someone takes control of your computer and you have to pay to get it back.  I am guessing they claim to be microsoft and want access to your system in order to help you prevent further stealing of your information.  Only you are talking to the people trying to steal your information and then you give them access to do just that.

My husband says if they catch these people, take them into the middle of town square and publicly execute them,  it will greatly reduce the problem.

He’s kidding, obviously.

All I know is my blood pressure went through the roof and I nearly wet my pants.  How that message could come out of my speakers at that volume, I don’t know.  Nothing has ever been that loud from my speakers before.

How do these computer-creeps do that?

Who do you report this crap to?  Isn’t there some sort of agency somewhere that can track this harassment and do something about it?

Just a heads-up, in case it happens to you.

Here’s the mini-quest sketch. 

 

Corrected Color Chart and Odds and Ends

Here is the corrected color chart using the colors I most often use.  The tutorial is from Clive5Art.

The four squares at the bottom of each column are:  The straight color, toned with raw umber, toned with the complimentary color, then with black to make the shade.

Every time I looked over at the chart it sort of set my teeth on edge because the 4 toned boxes were not beneath the color, but along side them.  This was unacceptable and I finally had time to fix it.  Even though I did not re-tape the squares off this time, I am satisfied with the way the chart turned out.  If perfect squares are important to you, please feel free to tape yours off.  It’s not that important to me, so I skipped it.

I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of a paint recipe book I ordered weeks ago.  I like the idea of having a ready-made book of recipes I can use as jump off points for more of my own recipes.  This, quite frankly, is becoming a bit of an obsession with me.

There, I said it.

Maybe I’m a frustrated chemist.  I just love adding this color, that color, then some of this and a touch of that…then the surprise of the colors that show up when I do that.  I love it.

My next project for the day will be watercolor cards.  I donated all mine to the youth group auction last month and need to make more.

Lindsay, the Frugal Crafter, just gave a great suggestion:  When using an art technique, use large tags or a journal and put that technique in there.  Add what materials you used, how you did it, any information relevant to the technique and the results.  If you make a tag, add them to a ring and keep near your work space.  If it’s in a journal, make sure it’s a dedicated techniques journal and keep it close to your work desk for reference.

This is a brilliant idea, as I often purchase materials for a project and then forget what I bought them for.  If I use the techniques on a tag or in a journal, I’ll have the materials list and instructions right there no matter when I get to the project.  Leave it to Lindsay to come up with these great ideas.  I just think she’s a genius.

Hogwarts!

 

Another delightful castle:  Hogwarts. 

Cinnamon Cooney, Angela Anderson and Lindsay Weirich, the Frugal Crafter each have painting tutorials for a castle.  Lindsay’s is in watercolor and I’ll do that one next.  Clive from Clive5art also has a paint tutorial for Big Ben and the London Westminster Bridge, which feels rather castle-y to me.

Just in case you’re in the mood to paint castles, you have some options.

In addition to painting Hogwarts, I did some minor clean up to the work room.  Seems as though I should have accomplished more than that, but there you have it.

A Fun Angelooney Painting

Here is a quick, easy tutorial by Angela Anderson.  I have a deep love for castles and so this was a fun way to spend a dark and dreary afternoon.

Oh, here’s an idea for you.  I used a disposable paper palette with this painting.  I liked the combination of colors on the paper.  That’s when I thought, hey, why not let it dry and use it for art journaling.

You can cut it up and make ATC’s with it.  You can use it for tags, pockets, book covers, book marks, inserts, collage, anything you can imagine can be made with this paint-covered paper.

Recycling at it’s best!  Using something meant to be thrown away!  I love that.

Oh, and another thing!  Lately I have been collecting my kids Monster drink cans. (They are old enough to make their own choices.)  Some of these cans have really cool embossed stuff on them.  I will be making jewelry from these cans.

This is another way to recycle, although here in Michigan we have a deposit on our bottles and cans of 10 cents.  So you bring them back to the store, put them in the can machine and get the 10 cents back.  This is fantastic when you’re totally broke.  You grab a couple garbage bags filled with pop cans and go to the store to return them.  Before you know it you have $50.00 in returns.

Seriously.  I have returned $170 worth of cans at once.  We were unable to walk through the garage anymore…

I have been acrylic painting on my watercolor paper.  I am really enjoying it.  I am able to paint to my heart’s content, yet not have stacks and stacks of paintings laying around.  They also fit into my three ring binder, so I can keep them organized.  This is particularly important for the Art Quest stuff.

I also have a product recommendation.  I really like this brush cleaner.  I am very pleased with the way this cleaner works.  Acrylic brushes are consumables, because they will not last.  The make-up of acrylic paints is such that it destroys brushes no matter what you do.  Unlike watercolor brushes, which will last forever if you take care of them.  In an effort to make your brushes last as long as possible, use a good brush cleaner.  The Masters Brush cleaner is a good one.

My acrylic brushes are not expensive but they aren’t cheap either.  I think the most I’ve spent on a brush for acrylics was $20.00.  And I really don’t plan to spend more than that on any one brush.  The brushes I do have, I take care of.  I try not to leave them in the water so the handles split and the ferrule falls off.  I try to let them dry lying flat rather than bristles up in the air.  And I try to keep them clean.

The biggest problem with acrylic paints and brushes is the paint works it’s way up into the ferrule.  It drys there.  This spreads the bristles open.  Now you have a popped brush.  It’s a bushy mess, perfect for painting clouds but nothing else.  So when you are painting, try to keep your paint from working into the ferrule.  This is challenging and I have struggled with it myself.  One idea is not to mix your paints with the brush but rather use a palette knife.  Another is to keep wiping your paint off your brush as it becomes overloaded.  I never wipe my brushes off.  It wastes paint!  I scrape the excess paint off the bristles with a palette knife.  Or smear it off on my palette.

Yes, this is gunky and fairly ineffective.

Seriously, how can I waste that paint?  I’m to frugal for that nonsense.  So I make it work.

 

About Face, the Big Art Quest

Cinnamon Cooney, the Art Sherpa, is teaching about faces.  Here’s my second About Face painting, Quest #2.

I was able to access Cinnamon’s tutorial on the drawing of faces.  For some reason I was not able to get the video to play before this morning.  I prefer this painting to the one I did before.  I really learned a lot about sketching faces from her tutorial, which made a huge difference in my Believe face.

I’m not sure why this is, because anything you draw is just a series of shapes, I am intimidated by portraiture.  This is obviously a fantasy face, but I was still intimidated by the thought of making it.

Cinnamon talks about “just giving people their crayons back” when she talks about creating.  Allowing people the freedom to create just for the joy of it rather than focusing on the end results.  What a gift that is!  How many of us have hang ups from something someone said to us when we were a kid?  Something cruel or unnecessary or untrue?

Somewhere along the way I became scared of faces.  I don’t know when or why, but there you have it.

There was an English teacher I had in 10th grade.  I had been writing short stories for years and years by that time and really enjoyed it.  This particular teacher was struggling in her own life, I found out years later, and was not at her best.  I turned in a short story writing assignment and received a lousy grade on it.  I was a straight A student and was naturally confused by the mark.  I went to her and asked where I needed to improve.

She said I needed talent.

At that time I was pretty sure I wanted to be a writer.  I was working on my third novel-a trilogy-and it was nearly complete.  I had written children’s books and a play.

This comment crushed any desire I had to be a writer.  I was taken aback by the harshness of the comment, but figured she knew better than I did what talent looked like and I didn’t have any.

I put my novel away, along with all the other stuff I wrote, and moved on to something else.

But I pulled everything back out the following year when I was no longer in her class.  I went back to writing and actually wrote several more books.  The reality is, however, I have never had the courage to see if they are publishable.

Maybe they really are the worst thing ever written.

An abomination.

Maybe the editor will read it, set fire to it and send home the ashes of my manuscript because it’s that horrible.

This is what taking someone’s crayons away looks like.

Through Cinnamon’s tutorials and her positive approach to life, I have the courage to create another novel.

And this time I’ll be sending it off, out into the world, to sink or swim.

Has someone taken away your crayons?  Is there something you always wanted to do but someone said something and crushed that desire into dust?

Okay.

Forget them.

Who says their opinion is the right one?  Who gave them the power to crush a dream?  Well, we do if we stop what we love to do because of that comment.

There is a quote I saw recently:

“Don’t give a temporary person a permanent place in your life.”

There are people who come and go in our lives.  Some for the better.  Some not.  But to give these temporary people permanent input into our lives is foolish.  We are the only ones who can make permanent decisions about our lives and how we live it.  We should not turn over that decision making to anyone else.

Come on my friends, let go of what is holding you back.  Get out there and live your life.  Tell the doubters and the haters to kiss it and move on.

Take back your crayons.

Writing is a Process

which takes a great deal of time and effort.  I have been writing since I was in middle school.  I have written 12 novels and countless children’s books.  My problem is I never have enough nerve to send them out to a publisher.

Enough of that!

Right now I’m in the process of writing my 13th novel.  I am also considering reworking my children’s books and illustrating them myself.  I wrote an entire series of children’s books with Pingpong the Penguin as the main character. There are also some pre-teen and young adult books which could be re-visited for editing.

I mean, seriously.

Why did I spend all that time writing these things only to have them sit on the shelf doing nothing?  What’s the worst that can happen?  The people I send them to hate them and won’t publish them?  They are not being read by anyone right now anyway so what’s the difference?

Grow a spine and send ’em out!

Sometimes we just have to take the leap and have faith.  After all, if it’s meant to be it will be.  If it’s not, it’s not.

Which really takes the pressure off.