Testing the Ping.fm dashboard
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Photographing Paintings
Hum….I don’t like this photographing of long or tall skinny paintings. Out here at our new location, it is even worse since I don’t have a set place to photograph. SO, call on your husband to hold them…thank goodness no more slides on felt and they can be cropped.
Well…I spoke too soon on that one as my program kept wanting to crop off the top of one of the panels when I applied the filter to straighten. I think I finally got it okay. However, a 12 x 72″ diptych is not easily seen when you have to get back far enough to take it’s photo. SO, I took a full length and separate ones of each panel.
I decided to title this diptych, Familiar-Unfamiliar. I started this painting some time ago. I kept staring at it …just like the previous painting until I just couldn’t stand it any longer. Fix it or cover it all up. It was 98% done or it would have to be re-painted. I was fortunate that it worked. My mantra again……..Just DO it.
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A wonderful new product!
I sat down to watch the weather since we finally have a little thunder and lightning in the area. Instead I found another one of those endless infomercials for “whatever” can make for a better life, more energy, and of course, not least…lose weight, and especially your tummy…or yeah, and throw in get rid of cellulite and wrinkles.
SO, I hit on a fabulous new way to make some money……Paint a painting, sculpt a new sculpture, etc that promises if you buy it and look at it every day in the morning, noon and night, you are guaranteed within 15 days to lose that middle, get more energy and have a wonderful, successful life. And this is free, all except you have to pay your small shipping and handling charge…oh yeah, it (new small paintings/artwork) will be automatically be sent to you quarterly so you can renew all this wonderful effect on your mind and body.
Anyone want to help me develop this wonderful new product?
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Finished painting
Little Pieces of Land 31
acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas, 48 x 36″
I finally got the painting photographed outside today. Here is the finished painting from the demo of the past few days.
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Painting demo without video continued………
Okay…….so I went up to the studio. This time I just eyed that darn video cam and left it alone. I started working on the painting again ’cause as anyone familiar with acrylic knows, it can ‘die’ on you overnight even if you thought you were so brilliant the day before.
Before more paint……..
I decided the part above what could be called the horizon line needed more paint, something. So I set to work and quickly added some more.
Oops….not the right feeling here…off in color. I am not sure about all that gray in the bottom left either. There is more here and there throughout the painting, but from a distance something may be needed. I have to guard against getting things TOO balanced though. Anyway…this layer is not right. What to do, what to do!
The only thing you can, just DO IT. If it’s wrong, do it again until something looks better. You can always paint over it. Layers only add to the feeling of good paint quality with this kind of work.
SO……….this is what I ended up with….for now…the gray stays although there are some subtle changes not too noticeable in this picture. Looks like another “Little Pieces of Land” painting to me. Nothing wrong with them, but I have done quite a few (31) and none of them small. Maybe it’s time for a good talk with myself about where I’m going from here.
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Painting and stuff!
So much for stretching my brain cells. I bought the little Flip video camera thinking I could take short clips of me working to post on the blog. HOWEVER, no one wants to see me just standing there mixing paint out of sight for all this time in between putting the paint on the canvas. It is supposed to be SO easy to clip out little parts but for the life of me I can’t get it to do it. and still leave the parts I want to leave. The videos are too long for Utube unless they are 10 minutes or less. I’d planned on having several 10 minute ones. Oh well…the best laid plans don’t always work out. Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 has me completely overwhelmed. Too much time has been devoted to trying to cut/edit and figure out how to do all this stuff. I could have painted two large paintings.
There are several things to think of when you video…..or for me anyway. I talk to myself, I sing and hum and dance around when I’m in a good mood painting. I listen to music. Now how can a person do all this for a video cam I ask you?? SO, on the first one I talked some but you can’t really hear me well. On this one, I didn’t talk but turned up my stereo….can’t really hear that either in the other room on the video. The powers that be would sue me if I put any of the music I listen to on my video since it is copyrighted. What’s a person to do and still make the whole thing authentic?
Oh yeah…and my friend Pat said she didn’t want to hear music anyway, she wanted to know what I was thinking. SO, must I tell everyone, that the best painting days, you don’t really ‘think’ consciously, you paint and you ‘know’ what you are doing or you stumble upon the answer as you go along? Now I’m not saying I can’t tell you what I’m doing some of the time….that’s what all that talking to myself is all about. I tell myself when it’s working or not working so to speak.
So much of my grumbling. Here are a couple of pictures……. one of my palette. This is about what it usually looks like except sometimes I have special mixtures for some paintings…or also a couple of these palettes and little dishes of large neutral colors when working on especially large paintings. This one is only 40 x 30″.
I can’t show the beginning since it’s on the video..I cut a still but can’t get it out of the program :>(. But, it was a textured canvas that I slopped a lot of leftover paint on as I was leaving Colony some months ago and didn’t get back to. It had a basic feel of a landscape though but the colors didn’t work…….so I used it for my tone.
Step 1 (that I can show you)….. Now that I look at it, except for that pinky color…not too bad. First though I drew in some lines with willow charcoal to give me a starting place.
I just kept adding paint…acrylic dries fast.
This is a picture of the top of the painting made yesterday…………..this might actually be the best for the whole thing but I can’t cut the canvas down like a piece of paper.
This might be all I can get in one post so I will post the changes made today………….tomorrow unless something keeps me from it.
To be continued……HUMMM, does anyone know how big a video file Blogger will allow?
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Meltdown Exhibit
With the kind of weather we have been having here in Texas, this show’s title is certainly appropriate. If you get a chance, come by the opening or closing receptions of this show by members of TX WAX-Dallas at the Art Hotel Gallery.
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More waxing
I bought a little FLIP Ultra video cam last week. I don’t really have a clue how to work it yet. The first video I made I turned it sideways to get in more field of vision but then had the devil of a time figuring out in a program how to turn it vertical again. Finally, I figured it was just taking too much time for now learning how to cut and edit so much of it for YouTube. So you can’t see the first part of the demo of working on the paintings I showed you in the previous post. SO, I made two little short ones from another angle and left as much of ME out of it as I could. I have no idea who that old fat woman is in the video. (smile) Anyway, it was hot in my studio kitchen…good place for hot wax, huh! I’m also uploading the two 12 x 12″ panels that I’m titling They Paved Paradise 1 & 2 since I got some of my inspiration from that old song, Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YlRpOZ3J_M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5CdF_nmY5Q
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Waxing Day
It wasn’t too long a day in the studio. However, the time spent was fruitful…although it got hot with all the wax medium making and the palettes heated up. Almost 100 degree heat and hot palettes…yow!
I started working on two small panels for the Global Swarming show the other day and just had to wing it on what I was going to do next.
Months ago I was driving down the road and I heard the old Joni Mitchell song…”Big Yellow Taxi”. It hit me like a ton of bricks..maybe I could use some of the lyrics as a part of my work for the Global Swarming show. I DON’T DO THEMES….I keep saying. Anyway…I have to for this show. So last week some of us worked on a couple of collaboration pieces but I still had to do a few of my individual pieces.
These pictures are about a 1/3 – 1/2 of the way into the process probably. …maybe more.
I used collage papers and some of the lyrics…. “Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples ..But LEAVE me the birds and the bees, Please!” along with others like… “Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘Til it’s gone. They paved paradise And put up a parking lot.”
Okay…….so it’s cheesy…but that’s all the ideas I have on themes. I just do what I do with paint and collage and hope it will work out.
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Collaboration pictures
Carolyn sent me a couple of snipped pics from the video of all three of us working on our Collaboration for the Global Swarming show.
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Learnng curve…again!
More learning curves. Learn Corel Video Studio to go along with my new PSP program.
Monday was a great day……doing something I’ve never done before, Collaboration with other artists on a project.
We have a big encaustic show coming up and opening the first of September for TexasWax-Dallas. The showed is titled, “Global Swarming” (of course take off on global warming and bees swarming, etc.) and it will be the first show for the renovated Discovery Gardens building gallery at the TX State Fairgrounds. These old Art Deco buildings are wonderful and it’s great that they are being renovated.
I haven’t started my individual pieces for that show yet……..BUT, we are also having small groups of us collaborating on a couple of larger pieces. Three of us live about 130 miles away in north eastern TX, so we decided to get together at one studio and work on them. Carolyn Fox-Hearne and Larry Kitchen (both instructors at Kilgore College) and I got these pieces going in Carolyn’s studio. We even made a small video with Carolyn’s new little Flip Video of the last hour. Only problem….back to my learning curve. I don’t know yet how to get a still or two out of the video file. I’m gonna learn though. AND, we don’t want to share our pieces yet either. I’ll post them just as the show opens or around that time anyway.
So sorry, no pics/videos…I did want to put in one still but I haven’t figured it all out yet……..along with loading and unloading old and new fridge and g-kids today.
Later.
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New painting
Gorgeous day to be outside……….BUT, I did get back upstairs to the studio to check to see if my efforts to finish a new painting worked or died. I think it works, so I’m posting a addition to the Little Pieces of Land series……#30
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