New Painting! Operation Fill-A-Frame #7

My mom gave me two giant silvery frames that my husband and I decided would look good behind our couch in the teal room of our house. The two frames have been sitting in the office forever, and since they're part of Operation Fill-A-Frame (even though I don't plan on selling them), I figured since I had the idea and the intent, might as well get started on them.

We decided that some tropical birds would look cool in that room. The only birds I'd painted were these penguins and the blue heron, and for a few years now I have wanted to paint some more tropical birds... just kept putting it off. I knew right away that one would be a toucan but was unsure of the 2nd bird.
I got out a couple of canvases and began painting blue skies:

The skies were tough because if I made them too dark they would look nasty and stormy, but if I made them too light, they'd clash with the dark teal that's already on the walls. I thought these were going to be too dark for my liking but they ended up being just right.

I started the first one and sketched a bird I found after extensive research online. I ended up changing the bird quite a bit though, and added those fun little plumey things on his head.

First coat of paint, just blocking in color.

You're going to think I'm crazy, but after the first night of painting- sketching out the composition and blocking in the color, I was playing around online and went to GraphJam.com, one of my favorite silly sites. I saw this graph and didn't care so much about what the graph was actually representing- I just couldn't get enough of the color scheme.

I had to have it.
I decided to adapt my black bird to this color scheme. I made him a dark purple instead of just flat black.

I did a little more work on the plants, painted his wings, and gave him a bright orange beak rather than a plain gray one.

Finished up the details on the bird and the plants and framed him up. Done!

I'm not too happy with the composition in the mat the way that it is- even though I measured, I still went too high with his head. I might have to actually use my husband's circular saw and cut off the bottom 2 inches of the painting (I didn't paint anything there anyway) and move it down in the frame to where I want it. It's a canvas panel, so I think sawing off the bottom should be OK.

I also changed up my painting process on this one. Instead of taking a month or more to do a painting, I did this one in about 4 nights- 10 hours. I could have easily spent 40 or more hours on it though. What I'm finding at art shows is that people enjoy my art, but they seem to enjoy the subject matter more than the technique and craftsmanship that goes into it. If I spent 40 hours on a painting, I've got to charge a pretty good price for it to pay myself for my time, right? But if people like a picture but don't care or notice that every leaf has the tiniest amount of detail in it and is blended to perfection, why painstakingly take the time to do all of my paintings that way?

It's tough because you don't want to sell out, but at the same time if you have an idea that you think people might like, you've got to make it marketable- if you're going to try and sell it, that is. I'm experimenting a little with trying to find a balance there, so as I do more paintings, you may notice some of my new stuff being cheaper. I figure if I ever get myself into a prestigious art gallery, that market is going to be a lot different than the outdoor-art-show crowd (at least the ones I've gone to). The art gallery can appreciate the detailed florals, the outdoor crowd will probably enjoy the same subject matter with a fraction of the time it takes to create a more detailed piece.


Have a great weekend everyone!

A commission that *did* have a happy ending :)

And now that I know it arrived safely and has been received by the birthday boy, I can post about it. Yay!

(I added the bolts that hold the sign to the post later, hehe)

The painting was commissioned for me to do by the wife of one of my best friends. Route 30 has special significance to him (or as Ruby would say, it's "sensitive," hehe... I just love her). So his wife's idea was to paint the Rt. 30 sign with some local foliage/wildflowers. It was a lot of fun to do this since normally I just focus on ONE foliage or flower in a painting, not a bunch of different kinds. And I learned something interesting in the little bit of scenery included in this piece. I now know why scenery is SUCH popular subject matter for artists:

IT'S EASY!!!!

Bob Ross? Happy little trees? Just start throwing down shapes and light and shade- it's nearly impossible to mess them up. Rolling hills? Curvy shapes, overlap, light, shade, blend, blend, done. It made me want to do more scenery pictures... which is something I always thought would bore me.

Saying good bye.... in a good way :)

I'm always flattered when someone wants to buy any of my work...

especially an original...

and especially as a gift!

It's one of the greatest feelings...

A couple weeks ago I got up and checked my email to find a request to purchase this painting--  I don't sell the original paintings (unless they're commissioned) through PayPal to avoid fraud issues, etc. Instead anyone can email me if they're interested in purchasing an original. (Hopefully they don't suffer from email-phobia like me!)

I'm so relieved that this particular piece is going to finally find a home because it's one of the few that I spent way too much on the frame (lesson learned), and I've been getting tired of hauling it to art shows and being SOOOO paranoid about the frame getting messed up every time! (Soon I hope to start making my own frames, and thus will be able to easily repair them when needed.) Each and every time I've taken this painting to an art show or gallery event, it's been wrapped up in a giant fluffy cocoon for protection. Now it can finally find a permanent spot on a wall- I'm sure he painting is much happier now :)

I hope the recipient enjoys the gift and it finds (and creates!) a happy place in his or her home :)

Caterpillars Finally Finished!

Yay! My little Monarch Caterpillar Triptych is finally finished!! I just have to spray them with sealer, but right now my porch is too sunny to do so.
I must wait. 

What's fun about these little guys is that there are a variety of ways to hang them... I originally designed them to be in a vertical configuration, but my husband suggested trying them horizontally and I found they worked that way too.

Or they could be hung separately- the two smaller ones on one wall, the long one on another wall.... however you like!

Horizontal with edges lined up...

 Horizontal & centered...

Vertical.

I kept these guys way, way, WAAYY less detailed than my usual work. I was going for something fun and illustrative rather than realistic. I did try to keep the caterpillars themselves pretty realistic looking though, and because of that I didn't want the plant life around them to distract from them. I also found Milkweed is a pretty challenging flower to paint- there are just so many tiny flowers all clustered together. But after I had two layers of paint on these flowers, I decided I was satisfied with them. If I had put too much detail into them, I think the leaves and stems would have looked unfinished.

I'll be bringing them to the Ned Smith Nature & Arts Festival in a couple weeks. Come check em out in person! :)

How to Scan In a Painting

When I'm at art shows, I have a lot of other artists ask me who makes my prints, how do I make the prints, etc. etc. Answer is that I do about 95% of it myself.
Here's step 1 of the "how do you make prints??" process.

Why scan? Most professionals would mount the painting on a wall or large easel and take a VERY high resolution digital photo. I haven't found much consistency doing that myself, but my scanner seems to always give me results that I can work with and create a great looking finished product.

Ideally, I'd take every painting I've ever done to American Art in Annapolis and have them do the image capture. They're AMAZING at what they do!! But sometimes I just don't have the time or the money for that luxury. Plus... Either I'm cheap or smart, because I generally hate paying someone to do something I can do myself. Thus, unless a painting I've done is over 16" x 20", I'm going to scan it in.

I use a Canon scanner and Photoshop to create my final digital image.

I lay the painting down on the scanner (I keep it about 1/4" away from the edge) and scan in sections. For a 16" x 20", I usually have to do 4 scans because my scanner does a piece about 9"x11". Lay one corner down on the scanner, scan, slide the painting down, do the other corner. Pick it up and rotate it 180 degrees (resulting in these last two scans being upside down) and scan in the last 2 sections.

Now I open Photoshop and create a new document the size of the paintin at 300 dpi (so you can print it perfectly and *maybe* even go a little bigger without losing much detail... printing on canvas seems to be pretty forgiving that way). So for this one it was 16"x20" and 300 dpi, which will create a HUGE file and make your computer really, REALLY SUPER PISSED.

Then I copy and paste the contents of each of my scans (in this case 4) into the new document. Once they're all in there, I save it so I don't lose them. After it's saved, I can close all the individual scan files since I no longer need them (and keeping them open will use more memory and make the computer run slower and be more pissed).

(Note: It's probably best *not* to listen to music on the computer as you work on this project, or have anything else open that will take away from your computer's memory. Then you will get freezing or the program spontaneously quits which makes YOU want to spontaneously combust SO SAVE OFTEN! That is in huge font for a reason :)  It might actually take a few minutes to save a file this size. Go grab a snack.)

Once in a while if there's part of the painting that's just not coming together well, I'll do an additional scan of just that part (example: a person's head. You don't want someone's head to have any inconsistencies. When you're putting the scans together it's just easier to have that additional separate scan of the face, too).

So here's the recent scan process of my painting "Sunflowers." Aren't the colors gross?? We'll fix that later. I like to do that part last- it seems the most rewarding :)

This is a Photoshop file size 16"x20" and all 4 scans are just thrown in here (the two upside down ones have been rotated) and stuck in their respective locations.
The black around the edges is from the edge of the canvas not being right up against the edge of the scanner- I want my scan to go alll the way to the edge of the canvas, and include it, rather than chop it off.

The first thing I'll do is start sliding around the 4 chunks of the scan. The arrow keys will be your BFFs (that's "best friends forever", nerds) for this process. Hopefully you've got your scans in relatively straight, because it sucks to have to rotate them and get them JUST right. As you can see, above, the lower right corner isn't quite straight so I had to rotate that one just a leeeeeettle.

Sometimes for this part of the process it's easiest to just pick ONE of the 4 scans and choose that one to line everything else up with. You can move around all 4, but sometimes when you do that, once you move one, another section is all thrown off, and you have to scoot everything around to get it to fit together again. Also sometimes for this part of the process, you can adjust your layer transparency to slightly below 100% opacity and then see exactly what's underneath- this will make lining things up pretty easy, too.

Scoot, scoot, scoot. Nudge, nudge, nudge. Is it lined up yet? As soon as it is, SAVE IT! And then use your crop tool to cut off anything around the edges that you don't like. Your file might end up slightly smaller than exactly 16"x20". That's ok.

I zoom in to the middle of the painting, where all 4 corners line up, to make sure it's as close as I can get it. It sort of doesn't have to be PERFECT, more on that later.

But check out the inconsistencies in lighting. Some parts of the scans come out a little dark if your scanner isn't perfectly flat. Usually this is pretty easy to fix. Here's a good example...

Ewwwww, look at this nasty line. Luckily my scans overlap some, about 2 inches on all sides. This is great because that means I can just erase some of that layer in the front to reveal the still-brightly-colored scan underneath, and the flower petals will look nice.

When erasing on something like this, I prefer to use a relatively large eraser brush (not TOO huge, maybe 1/2"-1" diameter on my screen, depending on what I'm erasing) and really soften up the edges. You won't get a hard line where you've erased that way.
Be careful, if you erase too much, you'll go overboard and erase some of your scan where they don't overlap. Not good!

Ahhhhhh. That's better. It takes some practice, but you want the eraser to just gently blend the layers together. While you're doing this, not only are you fixing the colors, but if there are places where things didn't line up *just right* you'll be fixing that at the same time.

Now here's something I get really, really anal about. I learned this the hard way (and of course went back and fixed it). Zoom WAY in, extremely close up, and check out everything. Chances are you'll see some dust or scratches or flecks of random crap or cat hair. In this case I probably didn't clean off my scanner before I used it.... oops. So when you're zoomed way in, you'll probably see stuff that looks like this (I circled in yellow):

THAT doesn't need to be there!! It might seem silly to go into this much detail- after all, you're not going to be printing your document THIS big. Yeah, you'd think. But that's NOT the way it works, at all. The rule of thumb here is,

IF YOU CAN SEE IT ON YOUR SCREEN, YOU WILL SEE IT ON THE PRINT.

I promise.
So just go fix it. It doesn't hurt, really, and it will be well worth it. It only takes 10-15 minutes at the most depending on how dirty your scanner is- I don't know what you did with that thing.

Just use the rubber stamp tool and set it to pretty small, and maybe a hardness setting somewhere in the middle. You don't want really defined circles where you had to fix things but you don't need to blur the edges a whole lot, either. Sometimes I even 'fix' little tiny inconsistencies in the painting or drawing during this process. Once in a while the scanner will pick up something that is just part of the artwork and doesn't seem to show up in the original piece, but it's there, and certainly doesn't add anything to your prints- example: a thick dab of paint that creates a weird shadow, or a slight inconsistency in the canvas fabric itself that might create a shadow. Get rid of it!

Start zoomed in on one corner and just go horizontally across the whole painting. Then when you get to the edge, scroll up, and go back to the other side. Think search and rescue pattern here.

There. Isn't that better?? :)
NOW SAVE IT! 

So now your scans should be all lined up perfectly (double check!!), your colors should be consistent all around  (double check!!!), and you shouldn't have specks of stuff showing (not too important to double check, you can fix this any time). If everything is perfectly wonderful, FLATTEN ALL THE LAYERS TOGETHER now so we can do color correction! Yaaayyy!

I have to confess, I don't have any elaborate calibrating software. Hell, I don't have ANY calibrating software at all. I did recently get a new monitor which threw a few things slightly off, but I guess by now I've had a lot of my stuff for so long that I generally know how things tend to scan and print for me. Like I know one of my printers tends to darken the reds a little, I know the other one makes some cyans a tiny bit green. I know my scanner HATES orange and blue-green. Anyway... for color correction, I'm not going to go into calibrating- I can't tell you anything about that.

Luckily this painting has no blue-green, so my greens are pretty decent. The oranges are vomitous, non existent actually, and that makes me sad.

I use the Selective Color tool to adjust most of my colors. You can go in and *just* adjust your greens, your yellows, then your reds, even neutrals, black, blues, white, whatever. My yellows were too dark so I lightened them. My oranges were too red, so I took out a bunch of magenta from the reds (orange isn't in the color menu). After the colors were the hues that I wanted them to be, I used the Brightness/Contrast tool to brighten it up just a little and then upped the contrast- seems like with my scans I always have to do that. Sometimes if necessary, the last thing I do is use the Hue/Saturation tool to increase the saturation a bit- my work tends to be pretty bright, and this helps make the prints as accurate as possible.

Voila, the finished product.

Nice Surprise, from a month ago...

I mentioned that I had a nice surprise at the Patriot News Artsfest show on Saturday morning. Here it is!!

My "Passionflowers" painting made the cover of The Patriot News' Go! section of May 27's paper (before the show).

You can click the image to see it full size.

A lady came up to my booth first thing Saturday morning and congratulated me... I had no clue what she meant. She pointed to the "Passionflowers" painting and said, "Your painting there was in the newspaper last week. On the cover!!" I laughed a little and said, "Oh... uh... no... I don't think that was me. They are using a picture of pottery to promote this year's show."

(Besides, why would they pick my random passionflowers picture to use on anything? Especially after my "Spring Lilies" had just been used in September to promote Kipona!)

No. Of course not!

She shrugged and said "Well....... maybe it was someone's photograph? But I'm pretty sure it was THAT picture. On the cover of Go!." I thanked her because it was still a compliment, and she left.

As the day went on, more and more people kept mentioning it... so of course my curiosity was getting the better of me. I hadn't looked at any papers all week since I was busy getting ready for the show. Finally one of my artist friends, Brownyn, showed up at my booth and confirmed that it was definitely, DEFINITELY my painting on the cover.

However, no one had a copy with them to show me, of course. It was driving me a little crazy that everyone had seen it but ME! Eventually a super, super, super nice friend of mine who I met at a show last year told me that her son would be at Artsfest the following day and she'd send her copy of it with him. And sure enough on Sunday he came in with it... lo and behold, there it was! (The pottery picture they used this year was inside, right on the official Artsfest Guide that people can take out of the Go! section and bring with them.)

I still found it pretty random that this bright colorful picture of a totally non-native plant was used to promote an art show all the way up here in PA... but I can't complain! :) I wonder who saw it and picked it?

I haz the warm fuzzies....

Art in honor of NATIONAL POLLINATOR WEEK! and a story.

 

 This one is done! Except not signed yet in this photo.

I've been working on my caterpillar triptych a lot the last couple of days and managed to finish this one about an hour ago!

Last night I worked on the little flower buds while watching "The Wedding Singer." I hadn't seen that movie in YEARS and it's such a good one! I was so thrilled to find it on (and they even showed it twice in a row)!

The paintings are also a great distraction from obsessing over house hunting / endless thoughts of decor and my imagination running wild / realizing that packing suuhhh-hucks and I need to just go buy a bunch of packing tape already and stop putting it off (but I hate to leave paintings halfway done for weeks/months on end..........)


 Um...  I guess from that paragraph you can tell how scatterbrained I am at the moment.

So scatterbrained this whole week, in fact, that I missed an allergy-shot appointment on Wednesday so I had to reschedule. They fit me in this morning at 9, and of course I was running late (I was trying to finish up the black on the caterpillar!). I wasn't speeding or going crazy because of running late, just feeling frazzled.

I accidentally went through a left-turn-yield-on-green light, following the car in front of me, not paying as much attention as I should have been- I totally admit. I guess one plus side is it wasn't like I just ran through it in the middle of the green-light cycle, that would probably have been worse. But then again had no one been in front of me, I would probably have paid a lot more attention to what was going on in the intersection. Since I ran through it when it must have *just*changed, the cars across from me hadn't started moving yet. But wouldn't you know it, right in front was a cop who saw me and honked at me and then pulled me over.

I was so embarrassed.

I never do things like that. I HATE when people run red lights, hell, I am all for red-light photo enforcement. I'm sure since I followed the person in front of me, it looked like I was saying "SCREW YOOOUUU!" to the folks across whose light had just changed to green.

So the cop asks me if I know what I did. I responded with "I thought I still had a green arrow.... but I guess I didn't."

"NOOOOO!... you DIDN'T and you almost took off the front of my car!"

Ok... that was an exaggeration because if I had looked up when he honked and seen his car thisclose to me, I may have literally peed in my pants. Instead I looked up and my first reaction was annoyance... not panic.

I get that what I did looked like a dick move, but both cops were standing there by my car and kind of making wise-cracks the whole time. They were really laying in to me, and I deserved it, I know, but it seemed like it was getting to be a bit much. I was on the verge of tears, and stuff like that doesn't make me cry. Why were they treating me like this??

It dawned on me later that maybe... it was because of.... my car. (Is that like pulling the race card? I don't know.)

They saw the obnoxious fluorescent color, tinted windows, and I'm sure assumed I was just some young punk who habitually drives like an @$$hole. All I needed was a big loud muffler. I am pretty sure that they saw the car and formed an opinion instantly and jumped at the chance to rip apart one of those drivers.

I don't blame them. I would love to do the same.

But I still wasn't a fan of feeling judged. Maybe they would have treated me the same if I had been driving a station wagon or minivan. I have my doubts.

Adaptive Caterpillar-tych

Jessi's 'Pillar Pic... "Peekaboo!"

My best friend since elementary school recently posted a couple of pics on Facebook of some monarch caterpillars. As you may have guessed.... I kind of have a thing for caterpillars- especially after spending so much time with them last summer at the Hershey Gardens butterfly house. Soooooo I've been wanting to paint some more 'pillars for a while now. After I saw this picture last week, I couldn't get it out of my head and the deal was sealed. It's been so long since I did anything art-y...

I HAD TO START SKETCHING.

After about 6 renditions, here's what I came up with:


I thought it would be best to keep the painting small as I don't have a TON of time to do anything too big and involved. PLUS I have a new technique that I want to try and really don't want to go experimenting with a big ol' expensive canvas!

I've had these two really nice 6"x8" canvases for a while that have just been sitting in a closet on a shelf where I see them ALL the time, but never had any ideas for them. They were given to me as gifts and 6"x8" isn't an "off the shelf" easy-to-find-frame-size, so I knew I'd have to paint something on them that wouldn't need a frame. Since I have two of them, I figured I would keep the two odd-sized canvases together and always assumed I'd use them for some kind of diptych. That seemed perfect for this project AND I love the idea of eventually doing a bunch of caterpillar paintings so why not do..... A CATERPILLAR DIPTYCH!

Cause we all know TWO are better than one! :)

I began working on ideas for the 2nd composition and made sure to arrange it so that the plants between on the two canvases didn't connect perfectly, but it would be enough to show they are meant to go together. Thus it can be hung vertically or side-by-side, and it won't matter which is on the right or left.


So... the new technique I mentioned.
Here you can see something I started last summer in my "30 Bugs in 30 Days" series, when I decided the background didn't have to be 100% photo-realistic ALL THE TIME, and for the first time I played around with bright colors and more imaginative effects.

There's a 2nd part of the new technique that I'm going to play around with on this one, too...


The leaves that are painted green here are probably pretty much done. Usually I'd blend them more into the background in a fuzzy way, the way a camera lens might if this was a photo. This time I'm going for something more illustrative- not necessarily catroony, but definitely not realistic either. I want to see what happens if I do some layers throughout the painting and these leaves are the furthest away, so they'll be close in color to the background and have no detail on them (but keep the sharp edges). I'll do some light coats of the background-yellow over them to blend them in a little more. As I work toward the foreground, I'll add more and more detail. I'm hoping to paint the caterpillar and leaves with as much detail as possible to really put the focus onto them. We'll see how it goes.

~ * ~ * ~

I've recently discovered that I'm not a hoarder after all. Like most artists, I have a decent stash of blank canvases put away just waiting for a creative moment. A lot were given to me as gifts; some I got when a local store went out of business and had canvases on sale, so I picked up unusual shapes that are harder to find at the big box art/craft stores.

When I pulled the little 6"x8" canvases down off the shelf, at first I thought I had 3 of them as there were 3 canvases all stashed together and from the side they were all the same size. I immediately considered doing a triptych, but found the 3rd canvas was actually 6"x12" (which is a pretty fun size to work with) so I put it away to save for another day.

I kept thinking about that canvas being 6" wide, the same as these, just sitting there up on that shelf. Today became "another day" when I decided it would make a perfect and really interesting long, skinny triptych with these caterpillars. When I showed my husband my idea, he arranged the canvases in yet ANOTHER cool and interesting way (cause he's an engineer and that's what they do) which made me even more excited about the project, since my slight hesitation was that if someone fell in love with all 3 canvases, would they be just happen to have the right long skinny wall to hang all 3 of them on???

Check it out:

I love this idea because I can paint them subtly enough to "go together," but no matter how they end up being hung they'll still have a nice flow between them. Of course, each of these can work as a stand-alone painting and I'll especially keep that in mind for the long one in the center. Then they can be placed in different spots throughout a room- or if all 3 don't end up being purchased together (sad!!), it won't look lonely :)

Commission Piece Finished!

Pollinators Diptych

A friend of my husband's contacted me last month about creating a couple of paintings for her baby twin girls' bedroom. I love doing art for kids, so I jumped at the opportunity!

She was able to give me a lot of great information from which I could work. Things like: the colors she was looking for (pinks, greens, and purples, with touches of yellow and white), and a couple of photos of the existing decor in the girls' room. She also expressed a lot of interest in the style of art from my fire hydrant- so more illustrative and cartoony rather than realistic. I had a great time painting the hydrant (taking a break from my usual style), and knew I'd have fun doing something similar again!

Starting with the background blends. You can see my digital rendering on the computer screen behind me...

Surprisingly the paintings didn't go as quickly as I had hoped- it turns out I had to do a lot of double or even triple coats with the paint I was using. I also noticed that when I'm painting something in my usual way, like a big flower, I can be more messy and no one is going to know :) I blend the colors and then go over and over them with watery coats of paint to perfect the blend. It's a very, VERY forgiving process! When you've got precise outlines and shapes you're working with, you don't have as much wiggle room. It wasn't a bad thing, just different, and now I have a better understanding of how long things will take if I embark on one of these kinds of projects again.

Sunflowers... finished?

I still have to scan them in so the colors are correct- the colors shown here are still a little off. I think it might be done, but there's a possibility that I'll be adding a ladybug to one of the leaves on the flower on the left. A little more pop of color and something random to add interest.

However, two friends have suggested something else. One friend of mine (author of this wonderful blog) suggested a honey bee, either on a flower or flying toward them. Another friend (and author of another great blog!) mentioned that she always has grasshoppers on the leaves of her sunflowers and suggested one of those.

Either that or the bee would be interesting because I could do either of them in a way that they would almost blend in and not be noticable right away.... so there are still some other possibilities with this painting!

Sunflowers

Here's what's been on my easel the last couple of months! I've taken some time away from it to get the Christmas artwork/gifts done, and have also been spending a lot of time on my triathlon training. But I do hope to finish this one very soon and finally remove it from my easel!

I'm debating on putting a small lady bug on one of the leaves on the left-most side of the canvas. What do you think? On one hand I think it would be quite cute and visually pleasing. But I also know not everyone likes bugs.... but everyone likes ladybugs, right? Decisions, decisions!

I've done a slightly different technique with this piece, once again trying not to hide my brushstrokes like I used to do- just trying to be happier with keeping things simpler. I'm working to blend more efficiently (meaning, without having to do each coat 10 times) and I think that seems to be going well. I've also been keeping track of how many hours I've spent on this piece and so far it's only about 12. Go figure! A painting has been on my easel for 2 months (or more) and only worked on 12 hours. That is SAD. I need to really spend more time painting. Even just an hour here and there makes so much progress!

Keeping track of my hours like this will help me to figure out what's taking the most time, and when I'm done, should facilitate in pricing the art since I have such a hard time with that. Plus trying to spend less time on things will also mean lower prices on these paintings, too. I kept this one so simple, yet it still has taken me longer than I would like to complete.

Temporary deviation from Bugs to Pugs

Not a bug. Not even bug-eyed.

My husband has a rather large family, so the last couple of years at Christmastime we've taken to drawing names and doing a gift exchange. This year in the gift exchange, I drew my youngest brother-in-law's name.

My in-laws have this Pug that they all just adore. I don't think Pugs are generally the most photogenic dogs, so when I heard they got a dog and what they picked, I honestly wasn't impressed. Until I saw him in person. Not only is he so much cuter than the bugged-out-eyes-pointing-in-two-different-directions-underbite-having Pugs of the World Wide Interwebs, but he has a GREAT personality too!

I thought a great gift idea would be a portrait of the fun loving Pug. I've wanted to try painting animals for so long. I LOVE animals, problem is, I have no idea how to paint fur. The closest I ever came was painting the wispy feathers on the neck of my Great Blue Heron. But it seemed like such a perfect gift- and what the hell do I know about shopping for teenage boys!? So I embraced the wispy-feathery technique and gave the Pug a shot. I knew I wouldn't exactly be going for photo-realism anyway, since the last few years that's just not been my style. So how hard could it be?

The subject matter posing- same head tilt. Awesome.

I'm pretty happy with the results (although could've easily spent another week tweaking it, cause that's just how I am), and luckily my brother in law-and the rest of the family-seemed to like it, too.

Christmas day...

I had a blast doing this painting and definitely hope to try some more pets in the future! :)

Happy Halloween!

"Dream Girl"
11" x 14" Acrylic

Hope so far everyone is having a great Halloween!

I created my first spider artwork about a month ago, specifically for a Halloween art exhibit at Gallerie 13. Since it was for a Halloween show, the artwork was meant to be somewhat ominous and have a spooky atmosphere. That seemed appropriate not only for Halloween, but because most people (including myself most of the time) feel that way about spiders: That they are SCARY.

But I've said many times that I really enjoy showcasing the beauty of bugs (insects, arachnids and the like) and helping people appreciate them.... even if maybe they don't necessarily like them in real life!

So I created Dream Girl.
The name is significant for a few reasons.
The first is that the idea for the painting came to me in a dream. The background was the same as this, bright and simple, but the spider was black and white, and was showing its belly rather than its back. The position of the spider was the same as the other spider drawing I did, and I wanted this to be different. As I researched some spiders, I discovered these and thought they were so beautiful that I had to paint one. It most closely resembles a Wasp Spider- not exactly as I took some creative liberties, but close.

The other reason for the name was that I was trying to make a spider that was beautiful and appealing, so I wanted it to have a name that fit that description.
Part of that name came from a funny song by "The Lonely Island" called "Dreamgirl." It's about a Dream Girl who isn't much of a dream girl by most standards... sort of like Spiders to most people.
I invite you to have a listen here:
♫ http://blip.fm/~fodxi

Hope you enjoy, and this artwork will be for sale soon- still need to get an image capture and seal the painting. :)

Passion Flowers Painting Complete!

"Passion Flowers"
36"x24"
Acrylic on Canvas

Just finished this painting a few minutes ago!... what a load off! It's been on my easel way too long. (I say that far too often.) And unfortunately it's a very dark, cloudy day (the weather is giving me a little preview of winter I guess, ugh!), so I just couldn't get the lighting to work for this picture without using the flash... hence a little bit of a glare on this. But I am impatient and wanted to get a picture of the painting and didn't have time to look for my tripod.

Now the dilemma... I bought a frame for this a while back, and it's a silvery-champagne color. I think this painting looks nice without a frame though- I could just paint the sides a dark green. But I hate to waste the frame that I bought! So later today, I'll bring the frame upstairs from the storage area and see how it looks. I can't attach it yet anyway, since I need to take the painting to get the image capture from my usual wonderful experts at American Art in Annapolis.

I've already started my next painting, which is much smaller than this one, at just 11"x14". A few nights ago I dreamed of this spider painting and woke up feeling like I MUST create it. I know I just recently completed a spider drawing, but the idea behind that one was to be gross and scary and creepy on purpose since I created it specifically for the Halloween show at Gallerie 13. I guess I had the spiders on my mind, but the new spider painting is a more cheerful one- a spring time atmosphere with pastel yellows and greens in the background and a big mostly black spider in the foreground. I think I'll paint a wasp spider... they're pretty cool looking!

Passion Flowers Progress...

Back in May, I was finishing my grapes paintings and trying to decide what to paint next. Passion Flowers were high up on the list, but I was afraid that after painting grapes- consisting mostly of greens and purples- I would be tired of that color combination.

I went ahead with this painting anyway, and as of now I'm almost done with all of the leaves! And not tired of it at all, since painting these leaves is a completely different process than the grape leaves, and the flowers will be a completely different way of painting, too.
I used this photo (I took the original photo at Nature's Paradise B&B on St. Lucia) as a basis for the composition, but changed a few things to make it a little more aesthetically pleasing. I also adjusted the composition with the idea that this painting can be hung either vertically or horizontally.


Here are pictures of the progress so far:

Background blocked in.

Background shading done (can't see it very well in this pic),
base coats of leaves started.

Detail added to some of the leaves and vines. woody vines finished.

More detail added to leaves,
some of the darker background leaves have been finished.

Progress as of midnight last night: Foreground leaves' basecoats complete, and shading added to the foreground leaves on upper left and lower right. Leaf on upper right corner needs just a couple more detail coats.

I also created an artist page on Facebook to offer special deals or promotions to my fans :) I regularly upload pictures of art progress or other fun stuff- like the billboard in town that currently has my art on it. If you'd like to check out the page (or even better, become a fan!) here's the link!
http://www.artist.to/samanthasartstudio
Or you can get to it by clicking the "Become a Fan on Facebook" button above.

Grapes II.... Complete!

I actually finished this painting about a month ago, but kept putting off the inevitable scanning process. I spent the entire morning today scanning it in, then brought it outside to spray it. The frames arrived a couple of days ago, and it kills me a little to have them just sitting there in the box without the paintings in them.

This is the 2nd painting of grapes that I created, both being 15" x 30". I ordered identical frames for them because, while not technically a diptych, they do look nice side by side. I'll be sure to get a picture of them together after I attach the frames.

Also spending today getting ready for the Lititz Art Show this weekend. It's such a shame that there aren't any stores around here that offer the Hahnemuhle (I can actually spell that now without having to look it up somewhere!) Sugar Cane paper I'm using, nor the inks for my Epson. That means I always have to order those and of course, it takes at least a few days for them to get here. No such luck running a quick errand for emergency supplies!

Caterpillars in the Garden!

I can't believe it's already mid summer!
Where is 2009 going!?

Upon my return from Alaska, I see all the gardens and landscapes in the area are in full bloom! It makes me miss gardening a little bit.

Particularly I miss all the bugs. Part of why I loved gardening so much was seeing the many butterflies, moths, caterpillars, bees, beetles, millipedes, potato bugs....
(At least I am volunteering some time at the Hershey Butterfly House this summer so I will get my fix!)

This bug here is a Swallowtail Butterfly caterpillar that I painted a few years ago. The original painting is 20" wide by 16" tall. Looking at the painting of him always makes me happy because it's so bright and SO much larger than life!
The original painting is currently framed and hanging (for sale) at Gallerie 13 in Mechanicsburg, PA. I've also got prints of him available in my Etsy shop.

Here is one of the reference shots I snapped in my garden which inspired him:


He's chomping on some dill that's going to seed. Dill is one of the host plants for Swallowtail butterflies- meaning that it's a plant they want to lay their eggs on because the caterpillars eat dill. When the eggs hatch there is an instant food supply ready and available! Apparently these guys also REALLY like parsely, so if you want butterflies in your garden but you also enjoy raising parsley, I suggest you plant a lot of extra to share with these guys! :)

What a productive weekend!

I started my Saturday morning FINALLY making use of some of the packing supplies I've been hoarding since we moved (old sheets, towels, pieces of fabric, bubble wrap, paper wrap, huge plastic bags, the vinyl tablecloth from this post) and making a few Art Bags. I created them for transportation but they can (and will) be used for storage as well. Now that I'm doing 4 (or 5? I forget) art festivals this summer, I know my paintings and frames are going to take a beating in transport. And I hate that. I'm not going to buy a chinsy frame in case it might get damaged in transport, but when you spend a lot of money on a nice frame, you're constantly fretting over the fact that every time you go drive over a bump in the road, it might get hurt! Yikes!

Previously, I would wrap my art in bubble wrap and then some sort of fabric, but when packing up at the end of a show, you just want to hurry up and get everything taken down and loaded up and head home. And when it's raining you're trying to do it even faster. Bubble wrap just gets thrown around, a blanket or towel wrapped sloppily around the painting and then maybe an exposed corner sticking out by the time you've got them all loaded into the car. Not good.

For my transporting bags, I cut a section of vinyl tablecloth that would fit around the whole painting with enough room for a flap to hang down over the top, to protect it from rain and water. On the inside is a pocket of sorts, with padding in the front to protect the painting or glass. I sewed up the sides by hand because I wanted to roll them up and then use a very large stitch around the seams to try and keep it closed. I was able to make 3 small bags from one tablecloth and some shoe laces are currently keeping them shut. In the future I might add velco, but I am currently investigating other more ecofriendly options.

Next to my art bag in the picture above, is one of my small tulip tree studies. I finally got those all framed up, too. (Now they just need to have their bags made!)

I also finished up the green grapes in my 2nd grapes painting and on Sunday I gave the purple ones a 2nd coat. They'll need a few more, and I didn't finish that painting last week like I wanted, but I did get those other things out of the way that aren't a big deal but were definitely time consuming and on my "to do" list.

Since I probably won't continue to offer small prints (5"x7") as standard sizes at art shows (but will create them upon custom request), I printed, matted, and framed some small prints, too. I've got a lot of 5" x 7" frames around that are just sitting there empty, begging to be filled with some art. I framed one small one in a bright blue picture frame and was happy with the result, so I might paint some of the other frames I've got laying around here in bright colors and put a print in them. It will be great to bring them to shows this summer and see people's reactions to them- buying something already framed is obviously one less step for anyone to have to do, so people might like that! (I would!)


Since I'm almost done with my grapes painting, it's time to figure out what's next. And.... I currently have no idea. Or too many ideas? Tropical flowers are my favorite things to paint, but I like to highlight local things too. I've got a canvas that is 24" x 36" and this picture of passion flowers is just the right proportions for it. I'm not sure if this will be what I paint next, as I'm getting a little tired of looking at green and purple.

And lastly, I finally listed a print of the first grapes into my Etsy store.... Took long enough!


Let's hope that my next blog post is a picture of the finished 2nd grapes painting!!

Rise up this mornin, Smiled at the risin sun, Three little paintings...

Well, in reality, there is NO sun to speak of today as it's completely overcast and disgusting outside. But the bright and filtered light coming in through the windows actually makes for perfect lighting conditions for painting, so paint, I did.

I've got the backgrounds on all 3 of them done, and the leaves on the top two are finished as well- they may need a little bit of tweaking and cleaning up. The leaves on the bottom piece need a few more coats.

These are 3 small canvases, 8"x10" each, and are studies I did from the three tulip tree photos I posted here. My original intent was just to do one big painting with focus on the flower, but before I tackled that, I thought studies might be a fun way to play with the colors and really get a feel for how I want the final big piece to look.

I added a lot more blue than in the reference photo to the top left painting, since the sky blue against bright green leaves is such a pleasing combination (thanks, Nature) and with an orangey-yellow flower in the middle, this color combo might be my favorite.

I saturated the browns a little more in the background of the bottom piece, as that photo was taken pointing directly into the woods, and I thought such dark colors might make the lightness of the flower pop more. The flower- the focal point of the painting- has a lot of orange in it, and I wanted to see how it looked to use a color in the same color family (time to get out your color wheels), rather than the complimentary color (blue), in the background.

In the top right painting, I used both the blues and the forest browns (and greens) to give the viewer a look at both sky and woods, which is what one would see when looking at low-hanging tree branches. The greens mixed in with the background are also a good indication of the time of year you can find these fabulous blooms- the end of spring, when the leaves on all of the trees have finally fully released themselves from their tiny little buds and everything is lush and vibrant, and the hazy intense heat of late summer is still months away.

I'm still not sure which background I'll go with for the final piece, as each has benefits. The blue background gives the piece a summery and almost tropical feel, and how could that ever be a bad thing!? But the view of the flower with the deep woods and sky in the background gives such an accurate representation of the environment in which these trees grow.

PS-
Don't forget about Earth Hour tonight!
Are you ready?
(I have no idea how people "get ready" to switch off electronics, but maybe there are some who have to have massive preparations in place to play Amish for an hour?)
but over on twitter everyone's "getting ready" so.... I better go make sure I'm ready, I guess.