CROW CONTINUES - DARKER COLORS

Added some dark colors over the Shadow Violet underpainting, trying to make it still read as "black" but without using black.  Next the background will need some darks here and there.  You cannot change one thing in a painting without changing something else :)  

CROW BEGINNING

I started this one using a few greens in the background and Shadow Violet in the crow.  I will add color or darkness to it next.  

BLUEJAY ON A POSTCARD

Using a postcard, gouache and colored pencil, I made this little bluejay flying - it's going to be flying to a friend soon.

I started another (I'm now using postcards I've collected and never sent).  One tip:  When putting on colored pencil over gouache, make sure the gouache is dry.  I didn't do that and the colored pencil just lifted the gouache and some of the postcard off :(  Oh, well, start over.

I think it's time to put a little bee on a postcard, don't you?

I WARNED YOU THERE WOULD BE CROWS

No caws for alarm.
Just another crow.

CROW

I reworked the crow by just adding some pigment and water and letting the water move the pigment out...a sense of movement?  


Still working on The Year of the Bird so you'll be seeing many more crows this year...along with every other kind of feathered friend.

LADY BUG = LADYBIRD BEETLE

Painted, using gouache, on the 3rd vintage postcard sent to me for the Val Webb online class.  After the computer crash, I was wary about going on with the online videos so am just using the postcards and what I learned in the class so far.  This little ladybug seemed like a good thing to add to the postcard :)  All using gouache only to paint her there.

No hearts and flowers for Valentine's Day but she's red :)



Do you have any old postcards lying around - or ones you've collected but not used or sent?  Just "age" them with watercolor or tea or coffee staining - and paint something...and then mail them off to a friend!

ICE, ICE, BABY

Had enough ice cover everything the other day/night and cold enough for it to stay on most things for a couple of days.  It is very pretty in the sunlight.  Not so nice when you have to scrape it off your car windows and you're stuck in the driveway because ice has melted and refrozen under your tires :(

FLYING

OK, my laptop died - now my Keurig coffee maker (after just receiving a new box of K-cups).  What next?

Time to fly away.  Perhaps a cabin in the woods.  Or a cottage on the beach.  Or...


Another crow, using only Lunar Black by Daniel Smith.  A great pigment.

Found this beautiful male cardinal on the ground the other day :(  
We still have 3 males and 3 or 4 females coming to the feeders.  I wonder, if they were all mated up, what happens to the lone female?

POSTERIZED AND PAINTED = SPOOKY

When I was on Anna Maria Island last month, I saw a notice for a member's show at the Manatee Art Center in Bradenton.  I didn't go, but liked the image that won first place (and I had seen it in real life in December during a gallery tour in Holmes Beach on the island).  I am 99% sure that the artist took her photo into PhotoShop (or a similar photo program), unsaturated the photo and then used the Posterize tool in the program to get the shapes she painted in after transferring the photo to her watercolor paper.  

I thought I'd try it on one of my Savannah, GA photos of an old building.  It was a bit tedious, since I didn't enlarge the photo much (just an 8 x 11 inch size paper). 

Now, some people will tell you they don't posterize their work to get this look - but they do.  And I learned this technique years ago in a Nick Simmons workshop as one way to "manipulate" your original photo using the PhotoShop tools, and make it more interesting.  Nick spent a day on how to use PhotoShop in this way.  

So this is not new.  It's just that some artists are now saying they've discovered this new technique.  It's interesting that this technique seems to be a big thing right now in some of the juried art shows, so look for some of the posterized and painted watercolors - I bet you see some.  

PUFFIN VINTAGE POSTCARD

Using a photo from Val Webb's online reference photos, I chose one I didn't have - a puffin.  On one of her postcards...I have one more left of the small postcards she sent and will probably put a crow on it!  We'll see.

All of the postcards are painted using gouache first and colored pencil on top of that layer.  A fun technique, but I still love my watercolor the best.

COMPUTER DIED BUT BUTTERFLIES SURVIVED

Well, my sister spent hours and hours and frustrating hours working on my laptop.  She did get my photos and documents off it onto a clean external hard drive, but I think it's dead.  Last resort is to call McAfee and ask them to remote look at it and help me - but I think it's a goner :(  Oh, well.  It was purchased in May 2010 so I guess it was time to start looking for a new one.  

And I want to thank my sister for all her technical help and the hours she put in, and apologize for the stress of it all.  I don't know how she can do this kind of stuff for a living!  

I'll use Sweetie's desktop (sporadically) with posts until I get something new.  But that means learning his photo program to resize and crop photos (which I have to learn slowly and it's a tedious process.  It works, it just takes 5 extra steps so...).  Learning curves....grrrrrr!

But here is a photo I took of my new Prismacolor pencils and the 2 butterfly postcards I made, using the Val Webb info she shared online before I crashed.  I won't be going back to her videos (just in case) to watch the bird ones so...I can take what I learned in the 3 buttefly videos I saw and try them out with the birds - or maybe even little cute ladybugs or something?


I won't be getting a new computer until I do some research so bear with me for another week (hopefully, not more than that).

While I've been gone, I've had another birthday (those things just keep cropping up!), my computer got deadly gremlins, my mother got pneumonia, and it's been a strange few days of warm & sunny and then cold & snowy and back down to 0F weather - and it seems like weeks since I've posted anything or given the blogs more than a glance (sorry).    

A WEEK CAN SEEM LIKE A LONG TIME

It's been just over a week since my last post.  I did not disappear or get lost in vintage postcards.  Instead I started having computer gremlins that, finally, caused me to give up and call my best IT person - my sister - to help me out.  Seems like, from all indications, my Malware program was fighting for control of the computer with my McAfee program and making my computer nonworkable.  So...my laptop (which I normally use for blogging, etc.) has been out for scanning, cleaning, getting back up to speed, etc.  It is almost 8 years old and probably will need to be replaced soon.  The iPad I bought Jerry for his birthday several year's ago, is also becoming slow and stubborn.  Looks like new computers are in the works for 2018.

Until then, I have 2 butterfly postcards done and will share when I can.  (I did think that my laptop problems were caused by the online class, but my sister says that is not the case so I can watch the rest of the videos when I get the computer back).  

It sometimes seems like a week flies by but it's been a week since I was last able to post and it seems like a looooong time!!

Hope you are having a good January.  Did you see the Super Blue Blood Moon???  I saw a fuzzy misty white thing in the lower part of the sky around 6:45 this morning and then it was gone.  Didn't get much of a look of the eclipse from here.  

ONLINE COURSE + PEARS IN MY STILLMAN & BIRN

Before I left for 2 weeks away in AMI, I sent in my money for Val Webb's online course.  This is the second online course I've taken from her and she gives you lots of info.  This time, it's about painting butterflies and birds on vintage postcards, using gouache and colored pencil.  When we picked up the mail today, there were 4 old timey postcards waiting for me from Val (2 blank to test drive and 2 actually used through the mail back in 1966).  So now I have some videos to watch and some materials to gather together.  I'll share what I do when I get things done.  I have a feeling this is going to be fun and educational.

So I may not have my Royal Terns finished right away, but I will get back to them.

I did paint in my Stillman & Birn sketchbook/journal while I was in AMI.  A lady working at a shop I visited every day (for the best cafe con leche on the island) was interested in coming by and having me teach her a few things.  She had the paper, watercolors, and brushes, but turns out she didn't have the time so...the pears I bought became my models and I used them.

And I took a few good photo references of the landscaping plants around in the sun - so more paintings to come.  

But right now:  Butterflies and Birds on Vintage Postcards

MONEY FOR NOTHIN'

I just returned from a 2-week vacation at one of my favorite places:  Anna Maria Island, FL.  Escaped the cold here and the snow.  

While I'm gone, I don't often check all my gmail emails.  So now I have 103 emails in my inbox from nice people wanting to give me a lot of money...so I think 2018 is going to be a very good year!  

Will be catching up soon.  Hope you all are warm, wherever you are!

ROYAL TERNS FOR PHYLLIS - STEP 2

Almost finished - think I need to work on the eyes a bit and then it's done.

This is the smaller version I'll mail to Phyllis when it's finished.

Now to finish the larger version...

ROYAL TERNS FOR PHYLLIS

I started a smaller version of the Royal Terns, using the photo from Phyllis Chandler Grey's book about Anna Maria Island.  This one is on Fabriano Artistico 140# paper (11 x 14 inches).


Need to finish both versions before beginning something else but feeling scattered...

ROYAL TERNS = ELVIS BIRDS

I began this painting - on a half sheet (15 x 22 inches) of Twinrocker 140# coldpress watercolor paper.


This is from a photo by Phyllis Chandler Grey in her book about AMI.  If it turns out well, I'll make her a copy or maybe paint her a smaller one (easy to mail to her).  As she says in her book, during courtship, the male offers a small fish to the female.  If she takes it gently, they then mate.  If she's too aggressive, he goes away and tries another more submissive female.  This couple seems to be working out and the photo was one I really wanted to try first from the book.  So...we'll see how it turns out!

TOO COLD TO PAINT?

This weather is getting to be too much!!  Cold cold cold.  I thought "they" predicted a mild winter, and it looks like no one is having a truly mild winter with snow where there shouldn't be snow and ice and coldly, bitterly awful temperatures for days and days in places where it should be warmer.  OK, that's my rant.  

But it has been too cold to do much beside curl up and read some of the new books I got for Christmas, so that's what I've been doing. 

Which means no painting right now but I'm still on my Year of the Bird challenge to myself to see how many birds I can paint this year.  Off to a pretty good start but stalled out right now (frozen out?).

This book was gifted to me by the author, Phyllis Chandler Grey, whom we met back in December in Anna Maria.  She has these books about AMI for sale around the island and online (Amazon).  They have some beautiful photos inside of birds, beaches, homes, etc. on the island - and she gave me permission to use any of the bird photos for potential paintings!  I will do that and send her a copy or a small painting of one of the photos.  Thanks, Phyllis!!  Hope to see you again soon.

For now, I've begun painting one of the Royal Tern photos she has in the book and I'll show that soon.  These are the birds I call Elvis birds because of their jet black "hair" on their heads.

RED

Even the females are ruddy red but never as bright as the males with their stop-sign red feathers and their cocky way of tilting their heads as if to say, "Yes, I know I'm beautiful!"

JAY

A quizzical bluejay for you.  In spite of the cold, we have 3 bluejays coming to the feeders, along with woodpeckers (red-bellied, hairy and downy ones), cardinals, tufted titmouses (or mice?), juncos, and the usual bunch of goldfinches.  

More birds to come...