Wednesday, August 31, 2011

First Day of Kindergarten

Well, it's been a good two weeks since I've done any art. I just had a hard time getting into anything. The other night I did a sketch and then took it into Photoshop Elements. . The bird in the corner is a "brush" that I made from one of my paintings. I've used it on a couple of other digital pieces, "Man in the Moon" and "Lady In the Sun". The bubble wrap "brush" was given to me by one of my classmates in my Digital Dreams class.


I had a bit of trouble with her mouth and had to redo her teeth, but I think they came out ok. Anyway, she's all ready for her first day of school.




Sunday, August 28, 2011

Digital Art! Love it!!!

Well, I've always been a computer nerd of sorts, love computers since I was selling them way back in 1984 when the first Macintosh computer was born. I've always loved working with graphics, doing newsletters, cards, brochures, etc. and when Tam over at Willowing announced a Digital Art class, I signed up right away. The name of the class is "Digital Dreams".  I absolutely loved that class. Here are some of the pieces that I have created with my computer. Some of them are "mixed media" in the sense that they contain my original hand made art and some of them were created solely on the computer.

These first two were from Lesson One. The first one was an introduction to different tools in the software. I have created all of these using Photoshop Elements 9 on my Apple Computer. The second one has one of my "hand made" pieces incorporated into it. The little chicken was made with the help of my daughter, Tammy and the "butterfly brushes" were made from a piece of my art.


The next three pieces were from Week 2, working with more tools and incorporating our own "hand made" art.





Then came Week Three where we started drawing on the computer.



And FInally Week Four where we drew a girl on the computer. What a fun class!!!




Our Final Week Five and Finished Project


Well, that's it for this weekend. Had a lot of catching up to do.  See you soon!

Roses on My Table

One of my friends at Little Glimpses, Laurie, told me about this site. It is run by Cristina Zinnia Galliher. I haven't had that much time to learn more about her site, but know that she is also a very caring and talented mixed media artist. I watched one of her videos, "Art Journal with Zinnia" and I couldn't wait to try her technique. I created this girl on the cardboard backing of my watercolor tablet and used oil pastels. I'd never used them before and like them very much.


Well, I'm just about caught up with what's been going on in my life as far as my art classes are concerned. One more post and that should do it.

Hands and Heart

From Willowing's Class, I believe it was that class, I learned about Monica at Hands and Heart. She is an amazing artist, singer, musician, you name it! I've joined 12 of her groups and have taken two of her classes. She paints the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen. She lives in Mexico City. These pieces were inspired by her groups and classes. I'm still working on one of the classes, it had 30 videos!

I made these ATCs from one of her classes.



The ATC below was from a video on her website about making an ATC with Cracked Glass using UTEE. I used a photo of my Grandparents.


The pieces below are from her other videos and classes that I have taken.





This piece reminds me of my cousin, Jordan. It was inspired by Monica's video "Winter" It is acrylic paint and Modeling Paste. 


I call this next piece "Twisted Sister" as her neck is totally unrealistic, I'm still learning...



This is my first real watercolor piece. I am learning how to work with watercolor in Monica's "Inspire Me Workshop Mixed Media Class"



Strathmore Art Journal Workshop

This summer, I took some free workshops offered by Strathmore Artist Papers. They make wonderful art journals and the classes were another great experience. I created a few pages and then got involved in another project. Sometimes I have too many things going on!

The first two pieces were made with previous drawings (paintings) and other pieces of collage. These classes all help when having a rough time trying to create something different.



For the piece below, I made a tiny rubber stamp for the leaves on the tree. The teenager on the left represents my oldest Granddaughter and the painting (sketch) on the right was done from a photo of my Daughter on her 40th Birthday. The words in the second paragraph were taken from a picture that our Daughter gave us when she moved away from home.


Art Heart & Healing

Through my travels, I learned about a free class being offered by Tam over at Willowing, "Art Heart & Healing".  It was a wonderful class and I met some more friends and found another great teacher. I've enjoyed my art so much. Going to be 69 this coming month and just wish I had started this journey many years ago. But there's no time like the present, right? I made my journal out of an old Address Book that I bought at a Thrift Store. I can't believe someone gave it away with all their phone numbers in it, but it has made a great altered book for journaling.


This piece was done in a little cloth covered journal that I had and never used. It works great for my art too.


With a large family like mine, I have lots of people to send cards to and have been making my own for years with PrintShop and more recently with a Cuttlebug machine and rubber stamps, etc. Now I can use all of these pieces that I have created. So I needed a logo for the back of my cards and I did a sketch from the same picture in the journal above. That was fun and makes my cards a little more personal.


My Niece, Christmas Gifts and My Granddaughter

I decided to try and paint my Niece from a picture my sister sent to me. I painted her on one of those disposable coasters.

It was getting close to Christmas and I used those coasters to make a Christmas Gift for my brothers and sisters. I took a picture of my Mom and Dad when they were very young and painted them into Angels. Now we all have them to put on our trees at Christmas.

I painted a picture of my middle Granddaughter taken by me when she was visiting my Mom shortly before she passed away. I loved being able to paint these four pictures. 








Gut Art Class

I took Myste's Gut Art Class over at Little Glimpses Studio. While waiting for that class, I also took her Playtime No. 1 and Story Telling Basics #1 classes. Along the way, I have also met some wonderful girls and one great guy. That's what I love so much about these classes is all the interaction with the students. These are some of the pieces that were inspired from those classes.