Monthly Archives: January 2013

There is a new Showdown competition starting January 8th, 2013 and you can participate.  You will need to create a profile on their website (will give link below) as well as make a statement, bio and upload images of your artwork.

If you need some help or pointers on how to photograph your artwork they have provided a link on their page to help you with that.  Its tricky getting that lighting just right.

Read about the details and how you can participate here:

http://magazine.saatchionline.com/articles/artnews/saatchi-online-news/showdown/preparing-your-showdown-submission

Here is an inside look into the studio of the Bulgaria-based artist, Ignata Vassileva.  Along with some of her artwork is a short interview as well.  She is asked some things like:

• Favorite material to work with?
• what themes do you pursue?
• How many years as an artist?

She obviously loves birds and flowers.  One of the pictures taken in her studio has a table with tons of books, most being of birds.  As you will see in her painting she loves both!

Take a look at some of her beautiful paintings here:

http://magazine.saatchionline.com/articles/artnews/saatchi-online-news/from-the-studio-of-ignata-vassileva

Art Inspires

I love art. I have a huge passion for viewing other artists artwork as well as creating my own canvas artworks.I find it is always helpful and such a big advantage to browse the net or visit art galleries to see other artists work. I get a buzz from it and, find I am often inspired by artworks I adore, like these paintings shown. While researching on Scottish Artists the other day, I stumbled upon this beautiful artwork by Judith I. Brigland. Immediately, I was drawn to them. My eyes felt like they were opened up as full as they had ever been. The use of colour and texture inspired me as did her style. Her application of paint and movement in Judiths artwork is simple yet, absolutely stunning. The sheer beauty of her paintings is astonishing.

Painting a new life

I think to myself "I can paint this so, why not go pull out my acrylics, palette knives and brushes and get a nice large canvas and get painting!". but it is not that simple for me as life right now is focussed on our business and bringing up two young children - both of whom enjoy drawing and painting. However, future plans that we have up our sleeve will guarantee myself and my husband to be creative on canvas on a regular basis working from where we use to have a retail shop selling our art supplies. I am however, starting to slowly ease back into painting again because with so much research that I do each week for our Blog and Facebook page, I am inspired more and more and find myself painting bits here and there on canvas. These particular paintings though, have really helped encourage me to pick up my art supplies and get arty. It is such a wonderful feeling to be back in that art world of mine and expressing my emotions through colour, movement and the subject itself.

Judith here creates marvellous colourful seascapes and landscapes with beauty through use of colour and movement.View http://www.jibridgland.com/gallery.html artwork and also, http://www.duncanmiller.com/pages/artists/128/6879.html

Who made their mark?

Over at "Making A Mark" they took a poll on the Best Picture of 2012 and have now posted the results.  The Categories were:

• Nature
• Person
• Still Life
• Place

Below is a link where you can view all the winning paintings and can even read a little about the authors.  I think we should do something like this for our views and artist here!  What do you think?  Would you like to see a 2013 "Best of" paintings from our viewers?

Here is the link for the poll and winners from the making a mark contest:

http://makingamark.blogspot.com/2012/12/best-picture-of-2012-on-art-blog.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+MakingAMark+%28Making+a+Mark%29

Greeting Card Tutorial

If you enjoy making your own greeting cards, then you might enjoy this post.  The author Kath Stewart posted some of the cards she created this past Christmas holiday season.  Above each card is a link you can click on that will take you to a tutorial she made for that particular card.  Maybe you can get some ideas here or take one of her cards and change it up a bit to create your own.

Enjoy!

http://kath-allthatglitter.blogspot.com/2012/12/2012-in-cards-2.html

Craft Tags

Any of the crafters out there heard of Tim Holtz?  Well I stumbled upon his website today and found some nice projects. He specializes in "tags" and designs some beautiful ones at that.  This particular post is the "12 Tags of 2012" and being January, is the first of the 12.

The goal of his first tag was to create a reminder to ourselves to not only take the time, but think of the impact time has on our lives.

This is an actual tutorial on how to make this tag yourself.  He gives you a complete list of supplies needed and step by step instructions and illustrations on how to do each step.

Just as note, one the page you will also find other projects dating back to 2007.  I might have to look through these and pick out some of the best ones.

Anyways, here is his site.
http://timholtz.com/12-tags-of-2013-january/

Line Art

Just found a new tutorial that was posted on Jan 7th, 2013.  This is  quite a long tutorial. The name of it is "how to create a line art base symmetrical portrait in Adobe Illustrator" and the users are giving it a three out of five star rating. I believe the three out of five stars is due to the fact that this is a very lengthy and advanced tutorial.

The author starts off with the actual photograph of a young lady. He uses that photograph as a background and the base to which he will copy the right side of her face, and then duplicate that side, flip it and then paste the two halves together. The end result is quite amazing.

So if you're into Adobe Illustrator and would like to attempt a more advanced tutorial, then i would recommend giving this one a shot.

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/illustration/how-to-create-a-line-art-based-symmetrical-portrait-in-adobe-illustrator/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+vectortuts+%28Vectortuts+%29

Painting a portrait of the past.

Jonathan Jones talks about how a good landscape painting can be so intriguing and emotional. He talks about for him certain landscapes bring back memories or thoughts of his father. You see those little things displayed paintings that can remind you of someone or something. A painting like that can be worth a lot to a person.

Just recently I was visiting a friend and noticed he had hung a new painting on the wall leading down the hallway.  I stopped and looked at it and asked him where the painting was from (it was a woody area with a small cabin) and he said he had no idea however it reminded him of where he and his dad use to go hunting together.  So that painting had great value to my friend.

If you would like to read Mr. Jones's entire post on "why landscapes are the most emotional artworks" then please visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2013/jan/03/landscapes-artworks-frederic-church

Vintage Postcards

I don't know if you have seen some of my other posts on Vintage Postcards, but here comes some more.  There are a lot of collectors out there that collect these things.  Some are funny and have some great sayings on them and others are beautiful works of arts.  Me, I like the comical ones for some reason.

Since I used to live in Las Vegas, I really like this "Greetings From Nevada" card, pretty much sums up the entire state (well most of it!).

See all the new cards that she just posted here:

http://shellielewis.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/antique-postcards-group-8/

Painting a Watercolour Waterscape

Todays video is "How to Paint a Waterscape with Watercolor" by Leonardo Pereznieto.  Here is a list of materials that he uses for this painting.

• Lead holder with an H lead
• Red otter brushes, sizes 12, 6, 1 and 000 (alternatively one can use synthetic watercolor brushes).
• A large bristle brush
• Watercolor paint set Schmincke (only used Ultramarine blue, Prussian blue and Burnt Sienna.
• Watercolor 100% cotton fine grain Fabriano paper.
• Tissue paper

Hope you enjoy the video as its only just over 6 minutes long.