Monthly Archives: July 2010

Painting Turtles

TURT

My grandson, Eric, has always had a terrific sense of design.  Here’s just one of his masterpieces.  When he was barely able to manage putting stickers on a page, I was startled by how well his sticker art held together visually.  There was always some movement, shape and a place for the eye to rest.  Can you see in his picture above why it’s a good design?

When I asked Eric about Turt, here’s what he wrote to me:

Basically I drew it with markers. I got the idea because I love turtles.

Love,

Eric

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Anybody have turtles to share that you’ve painted or that have been created by your kids and grandkids?  Send them to me and I’ll post them.

The Dancer

This figure has been drawn, painted, scratched and generally imprinted in my brain for many weeks, now. My friend Diana Prevot, a wonderful landscape artist, advised me to draw a figure so many times that I could do it in my sleep. She said that pretty soon it would become organic and take on a life of its own.

Finally I have a design for the minimalist painting for my architect friend in Minneapolis. His hi-rise condo is very structured and angular with concrete floors, visible duct work and lots of corners on the gorgeous furniture which he crafted himself. I wanted to give him two things: An oval rug for the living room, and a painting for his bedroom that had movement and curves.  He’ll get the painting.

What you see here is a small piece, but matted and framed is 16 x 20.  I am going to do several more of these with different backgrounds and different angles and posture, maybe superimpose some over the other to indicate movement.  This might become a series, who knows?  Enjoy!

Addendum:  I was playing around, trying learn the incredibly difficult Adobe PhotoShop Elements and thought these three versions looked pretty neat.  What do you think?

Used the "distort" feature which lets you decide on the wave action

Added a "diffuse glow" - love the darkness of this one

Added some ink lines for interest without distracting

Inventing with the Mundane

Something else you can play with that’s really fun, is to take photos of household items and then spiff them up to make great photo gifts.  Here’s one I took of the inside of my washer.

Photo or the inside of my washer, digitally enhanced

Originally I took the photo because this new washer had a rust spot, and I wanted to document it before I emailed the store manager for a replacement.  A couple of months ago I was looking through my photos and thought this one was intriguing.  So I did some color enhancement and added a texture called “ink” and now it looks like waterdrops.  The piece is appropriately named Whirlpool.