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Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Watercoloring Birds

My artist friend Joe is staying with us, and artist energy around you is always a good thing. So when he sat down at the kitchen table to draw last night, I got my pencils and paints and the excellent John Muir Laws Drawing Birds book I got for Christmas and painted in my watercolor sketchbook from a photo I took a couple of years ago. 



And just like that, Art is calling me again. Yay!

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Playing With Photos

I thought I'd play with one of my photos for today's Wacom/Photoshop/Digital painting experiment.  Here is the result.




This is my horse Abbey and her pasture mate, Jewel.  Every so often I get a chance to take a picture of them running (NOT Abbey's favorite activity!).  I played with the background a bit to make it abstract..  nothing terribly fancy, but I learned a bit in the process.

Friday, January 1, 2016

Going Digital

I have kicked around the idea of doing 30 paintings in 30 days again.  I think I'm in.  I got a Wacom tablet for Christmas and I bought access to Photoshop for my photography, so I thought this month I'd try some digital painting (although I may do other things too).  I'm still learning to use the Wacom, and also learning to use Photoshop for anything other than adjusting things in photos.  It's a steep learning curve but I think this is a good first attempt after not much other than some doodles to get used to the disconnect between looking at the result of your painting on a screen while your hand is elsewhere.


 I'm not entirely happy with it... but I did it pretty much without reference, so that's bonus (I don't generally work well without references).  And the wonderful thing about daily painting is, you can chalk any individual piece to practice, because you'll be back tomorrow.

And so I will.