Author Archives: Artful me

Another Success

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What a look of concentration.

Our seminar with Kathie George was full of learning, experimenting, creating, and socializing. We met new friends and welcomed old ones, all wonderfully open and sharing.  Kathie’s teaching helped us to challenge ourselves and the paintings created were wonderful and definitely stretched our creativity.

We played with awesomely colorful dragonflies on Yupo paper. Definitely a new experience. No two paintings turned out even similar.  I’ll have to do some more experimenting with this exciting technique using inks and acrylic paints.

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We’re already talking about next year. You’ll most like see more batik back on our schedule plus more exciting mixed media. Kathie is always coming up with something new.

DSC_0684You find more seminar photos on Kathie’s seminar page on our web site.  Be sure to notice all the huge smiles.

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Spiffed Up and A Fresh Look

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Did you received our latest news letter, Creatively Speaking, this week end? Yes, great. No? Then you can subscribe in the right hand column here on our blog.

I’ve had such a difficult time trying to get emails out this fall. Some of the email providers just won’t deliver emails from me.  Called me spam, imagine that. I’m still working on getting the email problem worked out, but, I have switched the news letter to a different format, using Mad Mimi. Don’t you love the name. So you should be able to receive our news that I’ll send out about once a month.  Watch for upcoming events, workshops, and juicy tips and techniques from my blog.

Chick-a-dee

Chick-a-dee A Lydia Steeves design

Meanwhile we’re finishing up our paintings for this year and making plans for 2015.  We’ve adjusted the schedule so be sure to look for the updates.

You’re may be finishing up ornaments so here is a finishing tip that I like to use.  I paint the edges of my ornaments with a Krylon Leafing Pen. This gives me a beautiful finish.  I can even create a border on the edge of my ornament if I like.  I’ve used the Krylon Pen to finish the edge of the chickadees.

To finish the Pheasant below I wiped the edges with DecoArt Metallic Lustre, Iced Espresso in this case. This add just the right touch for a finished look. This is especially nice if you have an embossed surface.

Pheasant painted by Liz Miller original by Veda Parsley

Pheasant painted by Liz Miller
original by Veda Parsley

Be sure to mark your calendar for our Welcome Back to Painting in 2015 party, Jan 4, 1p-4p. I’ll have more information for you a little later.

Liz

Just a last note:  You are on our email list because you requested to be there.  I don’t solicit emails from anywhere.   If you don’t want to receive our newsletter you can unsubscribe on the newsletter. When you mark something as spam you stop everyone on that email provider from receiving the emails, and they might want to be able to receive emails from me. So just unsubscribe. If you are getting emails from me that you don’t want to receive, let me know and I’ll be glad to remove you from the list. Thanks much.  Liz

 

On the Easel

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Our Cary group has been having fun painting from old photos. Here’s the latest upcoming project, stage one of White Tulips.  Check back to see my progress on our sample.

White Tulips Stage 1 Liz Miller CDA

White Tulips Stage 1
Liz Miller CDA

Here’s Mountain Dog!

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This sweet dog was laying in the mountain back road we were exploring on vacation and he was nice enough to let Rick take his photo.  You can just see him ask what we were doing on his road.web-8.5-x-8

In our Pet Portrait class I began painting the mountain dog as my sample. Here’s my progress so far. Starting with the focal area, always eyes and nose.

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It Was A Dog Day

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Mostly dogs, thought a couple of cats showed up for our pet portrait class yesterday. And what fun we had. A terrific group of painters from Kernersville NC visited the studio yesterday, joined by some of our lovely local painters, to paint pets. Long hair, short hair, fluffy and sleek we painted pets.

web-20141023_135110 Are here is some of the terrific paintings from our students. And what a fun day.

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I’ll have photos to show of my painting in my next post so come back to see my progress.

Face Book Not For You?

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I’ve heard that a lot from my painting students. They just are not into the social media thing, too much else to do, don’t want their private information out there….

Consider again in terms of our art and painting.

  • Since Paint Works is no longer being published and the Decorative Painter, journal of the SDP, is our only hard cover decorative painting magazine, on line options are our other source of decorative painting inspiration, except classes and local chapters of course.
  • If you have a face book account you can join various art groups to see what others are creating and to share your own paintings.  Look for groups with lots of members posting subject matter that you enjoy. Then when you go to your face book account you’ll have inspiration from fellow artists around the world.
  • There are certain artists on face book who post wonderful art tips and others that just inspire you with their artwork. Consider friending them.
  • You’ll find out about on line classes, supplies, techniques, …
  • You don’t have to accept friends unless you want to, you don’t have to play games, and you only have to check your face book page when you want.  It is nice to keep up with family members to share photos and activities, though.

One last idea is that there are some pages on face book that you can see without an account. Like my Artful Endeavors page.  You can still keep up with what’s happening on your favorite pages.

Maybe Face Book is not for you, but then, maybe it’s worth considering again.

 

A Little Tab Photo Artistry

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Some of you know that I’m working my way through Sebastian Michaels Photoshop Artistry Online course and thoroughly enjoying it.  I’ve had fun learning to create art using my own photos, usually the photos that are not the best, and making something special from them.

web-George-11-24-04_edited-2I use Photoshop Elements for my photo artistry and have learned so much from the course. Love using the layers and collecting my own grunge textures to use for my creations.  I’ve also used photos of some of my paintings as a starting point.web-cow_edited-1

Using my smart phone or tablet with the already installed photo editing program seemed quite limited with possibilities, so I’ve searched for a photo editing program that had multiple artistic options in one app.  I found the PicsArt app and am enjoying it on my phone and tablet.  We found out that it is available for I Pad also and I have Maggie enjoying it too. Now I can be photo-artistic on the go.

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Paint Tech

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I’m always a little behind in the tech world but I finally purchased a tablet this summer. Yeah me!  I can now view my photos in awesome color and clarity since of course I had to have the latest in graphics, Tab-S impressive.  And face book is just that much more exciting!/?

I can see face book on my pc and my smart phone.  I didn’t need a tablet to do that… but my students were using their tablets and I-pads in class, taking step-by-step photos and it seemed to be a useful idea.  And they could enlarge the photo to see specific areas for detail!   Terrific!.  I used it for this very purpose in the seminar with Susan Crouch that Maggie and I attended in Charlotte.  It worked nicely and I have all those photos saved for future reference.

Here are the step-by-step photos that I took for my pumpkin painting and could view on my tablet during class.  Besides letting the students see the painting develop it helps me remember what I did the first time I painted.

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So, I’ve been trying to find ways to utilize my tab-S more and better for my painting and teaching.  One idea that I stole from Nancy Couick in Charlotte who hosted Susan, was hooking the tab up to her TV monitor to view Susan’s photos and notes. Well I can do that now! Exciting! I can take step-by-step photos of my class samples as they progress and show them to you on my monitor,…. or reference photos, or something on the web, or watch an online painting video, or… I’m sure there’s much more.

Tab and monitor

Tab and monitor

And I’m getting more excited about using my tab S the more uses I discover.

Let me know if you have more good painting related ideas for using a tablet.  I’ve discovered a photo editing app that I like, but more about that later.