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The Cabbage Art & Scarf
Invitational Be part of the creative process! The Cabbage Art and Scarf Invitational is an interactive art project that features a number of cabbage images competing for the right to become works of art. The viewers and participants act as the force of natural selection by voting on the images tournament style on my website or in person at the opening reception. When I've finished turning the winners into artworks, you choose which to develop into scarf designs. See the Project Here |
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Source Photo
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"Purple lava" pastel painting demo
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Purple Lava Cabbage
Pastel painting demo. |
"Interplay II", pastel on textured board
Detail
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"Interplay II"
I've been working lately with hand made surfaces. Mixing a toothy acrylic medium (usual Art Spectrum clear primer) with an assortment of acrylic or other pigments, it is thinned and applied loosely, leaving a random brushy texture. The pastels are very responsive, and I'm liking it a lot. This 12 X 18 painting is based on "Interplay I" , done a year or so ago. I really like doing painting based on previous images. I'm intrigued by the generations aspect. 
"Interplay I"
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Photograph ancestor.
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I like to do series of quick sketches based on the same concept. The variations tend to flow easily, and it's satisfying to see where it goes. I never feel like I do enough variations, though. I always think the next one will be the best. Quick sketch sessions are the most fun I have as an artist.
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Pastel
For class demo, I talked about developing concepts with small quick sketches. These two, based on "The Thin Red Line" photograph were part of a series of 3-5 minute pastels.
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Pastel
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Pixels
This one, based on the same photograph, was developed in the Brushes App on the iPad for "Painting with Pixels" class demo.
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Painted with ArtRage
Painted with Zen Brush
"Big George" painted with SketchBook Pro on the ipad
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PAINTING with PIXELS
Spring Semester I will be teaching a nine week course April 7th - June2, 7PM, at The Art League School in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. It will cover some excellent apps for painting and drawing. including ArtRage, SketchBook Pro, ArtStudio, PhotoShop Touch, as well as specialists for ink (Zen Brush), graphite/charcoal (Asketch) , and watercolor (Auryn Ink). We will also touch on image processing and other useful apps. This course introduces students to iPad and iPhone apps for fine artists. Besides help with traditional drawing and painting media, participants also draw or paint directly with digital charcoal, ink on paper, watercolor, pastels, or oils. Fun and non-traditional media and special effects apps are also covered. Participants must bring their own Apple iPad or iPhone Contact me with Questions, and check out the APPS for ARTISTS heading. Come see what you can do with this new medium! Nine week course syllabus 1- Intro. Basics of pixel based images. Charcoal. Ink. 2- Using pixels to help traditional media. Fun stuff. 3- Finding and learning new apps. Watercolor. 4- Multiple media apps. The nature of the medium. 5- ArtRage 1 - Traditional media studio. Basics, tools, colors 6- ArtRage 2 - Brush control, layers, blending modes. 7- Art Studio. Selections, filters. 8- Creative image manipulation 1 9- Creative image manipulation 2 |
Great American "Outdoor Assortment" 1/2 stick set
Great American "On the Terrace" 1/2 stick set
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For a little present to myself, I invested in two 60 piece half stick sets of Great American pastels. I'm a big fan of the recent trend toward half stick sets. It saves a lot of time unwrapping and breaking the pastel sticks, and half is plenty for most colors.
Great American pastels are very, very soft, and come in square sticks, which are particularly handy. I had a fair number of them already, but they came out with these new sets with excellent color selections. I surely do not need any more pastels, but it's like getting a brand new set of 64 colors of crayons as a kid. The packaging was about the best I've seen. The bottom part of the boxes are made of something like balsa wood, very sturdy, and there was plenty of foam under, over, and all around. They also included color charts for you to fill in for color identification, very useful. The pictures show the sets with color charts filled in. First the good news. The color selections are indeed luscious, with a full range of hues, values and saturations. The size is actually more than half stick size, more like two-third stick size, which is about right. The bad news, which isn't all that bad, is that a few of the colors were oddly and unpleasantly hard, which was quite unexpected. There were only four of them out of the 120 new sticks though, so maybe they had a bad batch of something. Next step: to integrate them into The Square Set. |
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Skyline Sentinels
Accepted to the PASTELS CHICAGO 2013 Fourth Biennial National Juried Exhibition Pastel painting on Art Spectrum board, from an outing to Shenandoah National Park on a foggy autumn day 
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High Light, October
I've been reworking some of my favorite Camera360 photos from this year, with a higher resolution and layers of controlled effects. Here's a before-and-after pair of a high street lamp back-lighting a spectacular October tree. The original shot, below, uses a Cartoon filter at full strength, saved at low resolution. The final version uses the Cartoon and four other filters as well, mostly with low strength, and saved at full resolution. I liked the first one, but I like the new version much better! |
High Light, October
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Original Image, low-res
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Low-Res detail
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Hi-Res detail
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"Inner Space"
Pastel 16" X 12" This pastel painting just won First Prize in a Capital Hill Art League juried show, and the prize is a solo show in June! Coolest prize ever. The source image was a photo of an antique watercolor hanging in the octagonal dining room of a friend, which was reflecting a window, the sunlight falling across the room, and more art on the other side. Art reflecting art! The multiple levels of reality and space, and the multiple periods of time intrigued me, plus the colors were inviting. To see the step-by-step demo, click here |
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Bottles Behind Bars Series
"100% Black Gold Lagro" Behind every bar, there is a display of bottles in various stages of usage. Mostly they are bottom lit, often in colors. Glass distortions, reflections, refractions, layers of meaning and history - and for me,even more reason to enjoy a pleasant place. This one uses a dream filter, a comic filter, a paint filter, an edge filter, and lots of selective layering and hand work. That's the fun part, for me. Mostly Camera360 and Photoshop. |
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"Double Blue"
Accepted for juried exhibition. This one is a sort of collage of several photos taken of an amazing ornamental cabbage that was still growing despite considerable winter damage. |
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"The Original"
Bottles at bars with lights. Great combo! I've been using Camera360 more and more. I especially like the way it saves the original information, so you can change the filter over and over. "The Original" uses several different filters, combined with Blender. I also used Retouch, Noise Master, Auto Adjust, and I forget what all else. |
"Splash, Reflected" Photo using four Apps
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"Big George" painted with SketchBook Pro on the ipad
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"Virginia Creeper"
Pastel painting 12 X 18" Accepted into the April "Flora and Fauna" juried show at the Art League Gallery in Old Town Alexandria. |
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"Real Speed Painting" - Ten Paintings in Twenty Minutes
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Video Played at 4 times speed.
Pastel Techniques Class Demo - Ten 2-minute paintings done in one sitting. Quick sketches are an excellent way to warm up and to explore an idea or color combination. The time goes so quickly that you can't be fussy or fearful. It's the most fun I have as an artist. The preparation time was WAY longer of course, and being a confident artist is a lifelong pursuit. It's very helpful to have the color palette picked out ahead of time since poking around amongst hundreds of pastels for just the right color is very time consuming. 
Palette
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"Vernal Equinox
March 20, 2013, East Capitol Street, Washington DC" The sun came up at 7:11 a.m. during rush hour on a clear, very cold morning. It shone straight down East Capitol, just like at Stonehenge, but Stonehenge doesn't have rush hour traffic. |
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New Step-by-step Virtual Oil Painting Demo
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Taken on a beautiful clear blue sky day, this is one of an ongoing series of headlights and taillights. It's always a challenge to keep myself out of all the reflections and refractions. Accepted for exhibition. It won an Award of Excellence in a large juried show in Washington DC, juried by Christopher With.
Subject: Mercedes SL 500 headlight Camera: iPhone 4S Apps: a touch of Percolator, lots of photoshop |
"Approaching Light III"
Approaching Light III Subject: Mercedes SL 500 headlight
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