Hawaiian Clouds
This is another pastel I did for my pastel class. I’m really having a lot of fun exploring pastels and landscapes.
This is the view from the lanai where we stayed in Maui last year. Actually this was a sunrise, but I turned it into a sunset.
I’m feeling like I need to paint an abstract. These landscapes stretch me and challenge me. That is fine and good. But I love to paint abstracts.
Pastel Sky
I’m taking a pastel sunset class at the Digital Art Academy. It was started by Karen Bonaker, who has an incredible knowledge of Painter. Not only that, but she makes the most wonderful brushes for each class.
I totally don’t know what I’m doing drawing these landscapes. I’ve never really done landscapes before. I’m an abstract artist. Before that, I did textiles. Last month I took a landscape class at the DAA given by Aaron Rutten, who is an incredible teacher. Aaron, has 180 videos on You Tube. Most of them about Painter.
So, it was with trepidation that I entered the pastel sunset class.
This is my first attempt at a sunset. I posted it in class, and got positive comments. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll post it on my Twitter account. OMG, it got a bunch of retweets and favorites. I think more than any of my other paintings.
But, I have to say that this pastel bugged me a bit. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
That is where my good friend, Eva Macie came in. Eva is a wonderful artist. She supported herself and her children with her art. Truly an artists dream to be self-supporting with their art. Eva paints digitally as well as with acrylics and just about anything else. She is a multi-faceted and multi-media artist. Check out her blog here. She just posted a pastel of an orange that is fabulous.
You can also see Eva’s art at Fine Art America. Eva has exquisite taste in art and is always seeking to learn more about digital art. Check her out at You Tube to see the great videos she watches. I wish she’d start doing her own videos.
Eva told me she liked my first pastel. But she too had a problem with it. She took my pastel and turned the trees into bushes. She pointed out that the trees I had placed were all the same size (how could I have done that?) and that they acted as a curtain. Yes, that was it, that’s what was bugging me about this piece. So, here is Eva’s redo of my picture.
Pastel Sky-2
I feel very lucky to have an artist like Eva to give me advice. I like Eva because she calls it as she sees it. She could have told me how wonderful this piece was. But instead, I learned a very valuable lesson from her.
Pattern Pens
This is another painting I did using pattern pens in Painter X3.
The patterns are made from my own paintings. Look at my last post for details.
I just started a pastel class that is focusing on sunsets. So I’ll be trying to do that for the next four weeks. I haven’t ever really painted realistically, so I’m kind of bumbling around trying to figure out how to paint skies and clouds and the other things that go into a landscape.
I’m taking the class at the DAA, the Digital Art Academy, run by Karen Bonaker.
If you are interested in learning Painter X3, this is THE place to go. Karen and the other instructors are wonderful. Karen has put so much time and energy into this particular class. She made over 30 pastel brushes for us to use. She provided paper textures and other goodies as she calls them.
Best of all, the classes are very reasonable. $42 for a four-week class with live webinars.
Pattern Pens w-Effects
This is a piece I just finished.
I took several of my abstracts and put them in a plugin that makes seamless tiles. What this app did was make tiles with designs of my abstracts. It makes the tiles in various sizes.
The importance of seamless is that all four edges line up. Ultimately, I am painting with these tiles, so I don’t want any break in the design. I want it to flow seamlessly.
Then I took the seamless tiles and brought them into Painter X3. I made patterns out of them.
Once I had patterns, that means I can do several things with them. I chose a brush that would let me adjust the size of how the pattern looks when I paint. I can choose a large image of the pattern and paint an area with a large part of the pattern. Or, I can downsize the pattern, and then smaller designs show up as I paint.
I made some adjustments to the brush. I made it so that it painted very lightly, which you can see on the right in the green shape with stripes. I also changed it so that it made a bunch of interesting lines of the design.
I also had a brush that did an emboss of patterns. You can see that on the right side in the middle on the white paint.
After getting all that ready, I proceeded to paint with my paintings.
This was so much fun that I plan to do more.
Abstract-09c
Wow, I just got a notification from Word Press that I’ve been blogging one year. My memory is that it has been a much shorter time.
I want to thank everyone who has followed me during this exploration.
I thought my blog would be about living with Lyme disease and fibromyalgia. But now, my blog seems to be about art.
I think my art is my life.
When I was unable to do much of anything in art, I felt as if there was a hole in my soul. Since starting to paint on Painter in September of 2012, a large part of who I am has been returned to me.
Last night, my brother-in-law, complimented me on my paintings. This blew me away, because I didn’t think he was at all interested.
Again, a big thank you to all who are reading this and following me.
I wonder where I’ll be a year from now?
The art for this post is a crop of another painting.
This is a digital painting I just finished.
I took some older abstracts, and made seamless patterns out of them. Then I brought them into Painter X3, and made patterns of them. Then I painted with the patterns. So I was painting with my paintings. What fun.
You have to look closely to see where the patterns are, they rather got lost in the paint.
Then I took a picture of a stone face, brought it into Painter and brought out the texture.
This painting was a new road of exploration for me.
I only started painting digitally in September, 2012. Looking at my progress amazes me.
Hearts for Warren
I send lots of love to all of you who are reading my blog today.
This is a piece I did for Valentine’s day.
For those of you familiar with Painter, the app I use, I painted with pattern pens to make the hearts. Then I used overlays to get the texture that shows. I outlined with pattern pens.
In the smaller hearts, I used surface effects on patterns.
The background is made from pastels.
This was a lot of fun to make.
Kerry C. Mitchell's Adventures 