Category: pastel

acrylics, art, best effort, brushes, digital art, Painter, paintings, pastel

A Landscape

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Something different for you today. I am mainly an abstract artist. But here is a fun little landscape. I like to try these just to see where they can go.

I did this in Painter by Corel. I love the many things that Painter can do. For instance, it has a perspective tool I used to make sure my path was correct in relation to the horizon.

I used pastels and acrylics to do this piece.

It looked a bit empty when I got done, so I added the guy walking on the path.

I love to do skies that are very colorful. I could sit and paint beautiful sunset or sunrise skies all day.

While I was painting this my goal was to allude to the landscape in the way the impressionists did. They gave an illusion of leaves and let the eye fill in the details.

art, best effort, brushes, digital art, Painter, pastel

Warren’s Sunset

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I’m showing a lot of trust and blogging on my iPhone. Word Press has done major work on the iPhone app.

This is from a photo my husband took. It was taken at the end of our street.

I initially did this digital pastel about a year ago. I decided it needed work. The clouds were looking very odd and the mountains had no contrast.

I recently joined a group on Facebook. People there are actually willing to tell you what’s wrong with a piece.   Don’t get me wrong, I love all the likes. But sometimes I just really need a helping hand.

I have never gone back to a piece and reworked it. I have learned so much so fast in painting. I try to do some kind of art every day. Going back to a piece feels uncomfortable. I have changed. My art skills have changed.

Going back and reworking this proved very difficult. My strokes were very small and tight.

This was done digitally. I had all kinds of layers and digitally, it was a mess.

I think I should have just done a new one. That’s what I’ll do next time.

The clouds in this piece had always bugged me. They were so stiff. I also wanted to honor my husband’s photo with a better pastel.

It took me three days of futzing around, but I finally got it.

Mary over at oilpastelsbymary.com is a fabulous pastel artist.  She had been a huge inspiration to me

I hope you enjoy this.

art, donations, paintings, pastel

Auction Again

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Artists Give Back

Artists Give Back

 

I am donating two pieces of art to an on-line auction to raise funds for a group in Kenya.  You can see these pieces here.

I did this once before, donated art to an on-line auction.  See my post here.

Jessica Sporn is organizing this again.  Check out her blog.  She is an incredibly talented artist, and a very giving, caring person.

This time we are donating the proceeds to an organization called Pastoralist Child Foundation.  It is in Kenya.  I have a special place in my heart for Kenya.  I’ve never been there.  I just know that it is one of the most beautiful places on earth to look at.  The trees, especially sing to my soul. 

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art, brushes, digital art, donations, Painter, pastel

Morning Thistles

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Morning Thistles

Morning Thistles

Morning Thistles 2

Morning Thistles 2

These are two versions of the same digital pastel. Most mornings I have started doing quick warm-up art.  Nothing special, just warm myself up.

The other morning, I did the first one, I liked it and kept it.  Then I looked at it that evening on my iPhone.  I thought it didn’t have enough “pop.”  I am obsessed with getting my work to pop with lights and darks.

So, on the iPhone, I took the pastel into an app called Diana.  I layered this pastel with another abstract of mine.  I used several filters provided in Diana and came up with some very interesting results.

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art, brushes, digital art, Painter, paintings, pastel

Brushstrokes from Painter

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Brushstrokes 1

Brushstrokes 1

Brushstrokes 2

Brushstrokes 2

Brushstrokes 3

Brushstrokes 3

These are three crops from a larger piece. I am working on brush strokes in Painter.  I want my work to have more textures in it.  That is something that makes a painting interesting and gets the viewer’s interest.

Painter has a few ways to show textures.  One way is using papers.  If you use a textured paper, then you have to make adjustments to the brush to get it to show the paper. So in addition to understanding how the papers work, one must also understand the brushes and their grain settings.

Painter comes with many papers.  I can also take any paper texture I like and scan it into the computer and bring it into Painter.  Once it is in Painter, then the paper has to be adjust for lightness, darkness, etc. so the brushes work with it.

I digress, back to brush strokes.

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art, brushes, Maui, Painter, paintings, pastel

Take Ten

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Take 10

Take 10

I have been in Maui for five weeks.  It was heaven.

While there, I took an ecourse from Tracy Verdugo.  I’ll talk more about this wonderful class in a future post.  It is an amazing painting/mixed media ecourse.  It is absolutely overflowing with wonderful creative material for any kind of artist, including a digital painter like me.  Check out Tracy and future courses here.  Tracy has written a great book entitled Paint Mojo.  That’s what the course was all about, getting on our creative Mojo.  It did.

Tracy not only took us through an entire painting, but gave us an incredible amount of other material.  Each week she gave us several projects to do to rev up our creative juices.  The class was just six weeks, but it will take me many more weeks to finish going through all she offered.

This piece is one exercise from one of the weeks.  We drew a grid and then chose a shape or object to draw.  We were to draw in each box in a different way.  I did a slightly different take on it.

Painter, the app I use to paint with, comes with over 700 brushes in various media.  I have added several hundred more brushes and media.  I have all kinds of media at my hands, not just paint.  Painter will mimic acrylic, oils, pens, pencils, crayon, conté, charcoal, gouache, watercolor, pastels (my favorite at this time), markers, and the list goes on.  It shows strokes in 3D.

I can use any kind of paper texture that I can scan in on my computer.  The brushes will show/interact with the textures of the papers.

There is way more that it can do.  I’ll save that for another post.

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art, brushes, digital art, Painter, paintings, pastel

What A Ride

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What A Ride

What A Ride

This is a digital pastel I did in Painter 2015.

I finally have done a piece I’m happy with.  I have struggled with my art lately.  I know what I want, but I can’t get the message from my brain to the paper.

I am trying to keep my work much looser.  This, I think, is crucial to getting good results.

I used my pastel brushes that I made in Painter 2015 for this pastel.  I am trying to get the effect of dry pastels.

Best of all, I had a lot of fun doing this pastel.

 

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