This Week's Featured Image - Week 4

Last week's featured image is one I took a good while back with my Canon RebelX. I lost that camera in a move and I miss it terribly. I have to confess that the flower was not growing in between the rocks. I plucked it and set the stem inbetween the rocks because I thought it would make a good picture. The only alteration I did to this image was to remove the color from the rocks and leave the flower yellow. I have a print of this picture hanging on my living room wall.

I hope everyone has a great week!

This Week's Featured Image - Week 2 (and 3)

I got a little busy the past couple of weeks and I apologize for just now getting around to putting up a new Featured Image. Something I did not do for the post with the first week's image, but would like to do is give a description of the photo that I used.

This image was taken with my phone at a farm that belonged to some of Kevin's family. I loved how the old tractor looked with the tree nearly growing out of it. It seemed to give the place a real history. The picture was taken in color and is was daytime. The moon and sepia tones were added using my photo altering program PhotoImpact. Here is the original image.

I hope you enjoy this week's image. Have a great day!

How To: Turn a Piece of Wood Into a Piece of Art Part 3

The final installment is here. I wish I could get better pictures than from my phone, but until I can get my hands on a working camera, my phone photos will have to suffice. Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you have not already seen them. After posting last time, I moved on to the sword in my image and here is a before detail and after detail shot of it.

I tried to get a closer shot of the sword detail but had no luck with my phone. After the sword was finished I moved on the the face and hair. I am not at all pleased with how the face turned out.

There was only one thing left for me to do after this, the background. It was actually the simplest part of the whole piece. So here is the finished product. I still need to put a clear coat on it to protect it, but there will be no more painting. Hopefully I can start and finish the one for my daughter and with any luck, get it done before she returns home tomorrow.

I hope that those of you who have read this enjoyed watching my project from start to finish. I always love to watch the piece progress and having photos of the changes is really fun for me. It's almost like watching you child grow up. You see the start, a blank piece of wood, and then slowly see it take shape into what you are creating. Have a great day everyone and hope to see you back soon.

How To: Turn a Piece of Wood Into a Piece of Art Part 2

First off let me start by saying Happy New Year! 2009 has been an off and on year for me. I did not create a recap of the year like so many others because it seemed pointless. I have done a lot and accomplished a lot and at the same time, I feel like I have done and accomplished nothing. Moving on...if you missed Part 1 of this How To, then please take a moment to go to it and take a look at it first. Today, I began work on the armor in the image. The original picture shows it to be purple and since that is my son's favorite color, I decided to keep it purple. I do not, however, have purple paint. I used to, until my daughter started using my paints and a lot of stuff from my sewing/craft room got moved. This is not a big problem though, I can easily make purple. Most people know that red and blue mixed will make purple. I used pink and blue though, as I find that using red makes a very dark purple that then has to be lightened and is very hard to get the right shade.

I mixed the pink and just a little bit of blue to come up with a very nice shade of purple. I then used white to lighten the same purple for the metal pieces of the armor. As with the ice, lay down your main colors first, then go back and do the detailing.

Once you have the main colors laid down, you will need to darken and lighten the purple for shading using black or white. Again, as we did with the ice, follow the template of the original image if you do not know where to put highlights and shadows. As before, I also used my fingers as painting tools to blend the paint and give it a smooth look.

As you can see, once again, a little bit of light and dark makes all the difference. Sometimes you will need to use straight black and straight  white to get enough contrast. One of the main things to keep in mind is not to be afraid to try something out. Most of the time, if you make a mistake, it can be painted over or fixed in another way. Now that the purple is done, I moved on to the brown sections. I used the brown straight out of the bottle to start with on the furry boots, and darkened it just a bit with black for the cape.

After laying down the base color, I went back with darker and lighter browns, as well as black and white to add the detailing to the brown portions of the armor. This is where I will be stopping for the night. I would love to keep working, but alas, my vacation is over and I must return to work in the morning. 4:30 am comes early to people like me who HATE mornings. I will continue tomorrow after I get home from work and possibly get this finished then. Until then, have a great day and keep painting!

How To: Turn a Piece of Wood Into a Piece of Art Part 1

I put some pictures up earlier this week of the woodburning/paintings I did for my family for Christmas. Those of you who saw the post and commented seemed to like what I had done, and those, honestly, were not the best ones I've done. I didn't have enough time to put as much detail work into them as I wished. So now I am working on a new woodburning/painting for my son for a belated Christmas gift. (I will also be making one for my daughter.) I figured I'd put up a tutorial of sorts for anyone interested in seeing the process in a step-by-step way. Forgive the pictures, our good digital camera decided to be a p.o.s. (piece of shit) and is not working right now so all the photos were taken on my phone.

First, find a starter image. If you can draw, unlike me, then you can create your own starter image. If you are like me, and can't draw well enough to use for a project like this, then search the internet for your starting image. To my knowledge, so long as you do not try to pass the art off as original and do not intend to make a profit off it there should be no copyright infringement. My son is very much into World of Warcraft, so this is my starting image for his picture.

You will, of course, need a piece of wood the size you want the picture to be. I printed this image on standard paper so I have a piece of wood 8 1/2" X 11". I am using 1/4 inch paneling, because it was FREE. I know the owner of a cabinet shop here in town and he gives me scrap wood at no charge.

Once you print the image to the size you want, you will need carbon paper and a ball point pen. Tape the carbon paper and printed image to your piece of wood (after sanding, if needed) and trace the main outline and details of the image. What you end up with should look something like this.

After tracing your image, you can then move on to woodburning the outline and details that you traced. This is not required if you want to just paint it, but it's what I do so bear with me. Most wood-burners come with multiple tips. I only use one, it is thin enough to make fine lines and I can also shade with it. It is the one that's shape most resembles a pen.

Take your time and wood burn the outline you created. You can add as much or as little shading as you desire. I have found that the acrylic paints I use don't stick well to the burned wood areas so I have started doing less detailing with the burner. I basically just outline and do the areas that are solid black.

Depending on how you wish your image to look, you can do more shading and detail with the wood burner and leave it unpainted. I like painting because I can add so much more detail. To start with I will be painting the Ice Throne. I will be using a combination of 4 paint colors for the ice and snow. Plain White, Metallic Pearl White, Metallic Blue Sapphire, and Metallic Sequin Black. I love metallic paints, especially for things that are supposed to be shiny/sparkly. For those of you who don't have a tote full of paint sitting around at home, don't go running to the store and buy every single color there is. I keep a few basic colors and mix most of my colors on a butter bowl lid. This works very well for me and uses little paint.

Once you have chosen your colors to start with, paint your main colors in the correct areas. Keep your printed copy of the image handy for reference, or on the computer. This part is the tedious part, as well as time consuming. Make sure you have a small tip paint brush for getting into the tiny areas.

This is what I have after putting down the main colors. The blue areas indicating ice and the white areas indicating snow. Now to add some depth. You will need to use the same colors to add highlighting and shadow. The blue area in my painting is not straight out of the bottle. If you look at the starter image, you will see that it is a grey blue in color. I mixed the metallic blue, metallic black, and a touch of white to get the desired color. I also use a little water to thin the paint and help it reamain spreadable. This is one advantage to working with acrylics, that can be reconstitured to some extent with water, yet they dry quickly for impatient people like me that don't want to wait hours to move on to the next part of the project. Use your starter image as a guide if you are not much of a painter. It will show you exactly where to put the lights and darks to get the depth you need. Don't be afraid to use your fingers to 'blend' your paint. I do a lot. My fingers tend to get more paint on them then the brush sometimes. After addint the shading and highlighting your image should look something like this.

This is the point that I am stopping at for the night. It is almost 2:00 am and I need sleep. I will be working on this more tomorrow and will continue the tutorial then. I hope that this helps anyone interested in creating some beautiful art to learn something new. Good luck, and if you are doing something similar, please let me know. I love to share art!

This Week's Featured Image - Week 1

Here you see the featured image I put up a week ago. I thought it would be something interesting for those of you who read my blog, something to look forward to as you continue to visit my site. I also thought that I should keep a 'log' of the featured images so that people can come back and look at the different images I have displayed. So here it is, week 1's Featured Image. Thanks for reading everyone!

*New content added 1/3/10*
I did not put up any description of the image for this post and I would like to be sure and include that with future images. I also thought that anyone who came back to this post from later ones might like some info on this image.
The tree is one in my local park. For a very small town we actually have a pretty decent park here and some gorgeous trees. The image was taken with Kevin's digital camera, an HP Photosmart (that has since bit the bullet). It was altered in my photo altering program PhotoImpact. I adjusted brightness, contrast, and saturation. Here is the original image.