Taylor's Falls, Autumn 2012

I've had a chance to spend a little time painting from some of the images I took last week at Taylors Falls.  It's so beautiful this time of year, and I hope to get down to the Lake Pepin area next weekend, if the wind doesn't blow all the leaves off the trees.

Week 2, Open Studio at Digital Art Academy

The second week was a continuation of working in impressionism, again using many textures, overlays and papers.  I had a lot of problems with my program, Corel Painter, in that it kept crashing, so I had to finish in Photoshop.  This painting is from an image of my granddaughter at her birthday party.  Here she is.

Hope you had a great weekend.

Man and his Fish

I've been away from the blog world for a awhile.  My hard drive crashed and had to be replaced.  Getting my computer back up and running was and still is a gruesome task.  Shortly before the mishap, however, I finished a painting for my husband of his fishing buddy, which will be given to him at the next fishing trip.

Have a nice day.

Bayfield, Wisconsin Fishing Boat

Time to get back to watercolors.  This is a fishing boat we saw in Bayfield, Wisconsin. A sweet little coastal town right on Lake Superior.  You can take the ferry over to Madeleine Island, which is where all the rich people go--similar to the Hamptons.  Anyway, here's the result.

Have a wonderful, peaceful evening.

Commissioned Painting of a Lake Home

I'm feeling fortunate.  My third commissioned piece in two weeks. Client wanted me to paint her parents lake home--the before--as it has now been renovated.  She asked for some color, but not too much (which is hard for me as I love to add the color.)  Anyway, here's the before and after.

Have a great day!

Painting of a Little Boy Golfer

I've finally completed the second part of a commissioned project--it's printed and mailed.  Received this order via my Etsy shop.  This is the photo selected to paint providing I could change the club head from a putter to an iron.

This is my painting of this little cutie golfer.

Here's a closeup.

Have a wonderful day!

Wedding Painting

I've been busy.  I just finished a commissioned Wedding Painting.  Here's the result.  The customer actually preferred the full length image, but I actually like the cropped painting better.  So, I've decided to send her both.

They both printed out nicely.  However, I did have some issues with the printer at first which had me in a panic.  But, I was able to correct the problem.  I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Floral Watercolors

Love this time of year. Things are starting to bloom.

Have a great day!

Pretty Bird: New Watercolor Painting

I'm continuing with the Bird Theme.  This is a painting of a photo from another Public Domain Site, BestPhotos.us.  I used Pre and Post processing in Photoshop CS5 as well as blending 3 different DAP runs.

Another cloudy, rainy day.  Have a great day!

Watercolor Painting of a Blue Bird

It's so nice to hear the birds singing again.  It's almost time to start planting again as well.  I'm continuing my bird series and hope to have enough to print soon.

I hope everyone has a beautiful day!

More Watercolors and a Question

I received an email about migrating my blogs to a Legacy Blogger Account.  Don't know about anyone else, but it won't let me sign in.  I've tried everything.  Any suggestions?

Still trying to perfect the watercolor look.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Two Cute Kids

My co-workers children.

Before and after.

I hope everyone has an awesome day!

A Bird and a Trailer

Continuing with the bird theme.

A little while ago, the hubs sent me a photo he'd taken while traveling.  Apparently there was this dilapidated trailer just sitting not far from the side of the road and he thought that this is just the kind of photo that I like to paint.  He was right!

Have and wonderful day!

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggidy Jig

We've been home a few day now from our vacation in Florida and came home to beautiful weather.  It's not going to last long as we are expecting cold, rainy weather over Easter weekend.  The hubs was able to get two rounds of golf in, however.

I've been working on birds.  One of the forums I belong to has an artist who is working through painting birds with the use of DAP, Photoshop and many plug-ins, textures, and papers  I thought I would try this out as well.  I have a long way to go, but I'm learning something new.

In addition, one of the artists that participated in the Open Studio; Street Scenes class I recently attended, let us use some of her photos to play with.  This was a food cart that she snapped while on a recent trip to NYCity.

For those of you who celebrate Easter, I hope you have a nice one.  Have a great weekend!

Our Last Day in Sunny Florida

Boo Hoo.  We leave tomorrow to go back to Minnesota, well rested but sad to leave just the same.  I thought I would post the last two paintings I did for the Open Studio class I was taking.  I'm also posting a photo I took of Joe Mauer during warm up, Minnesota Twins Catcher, that I took when we went to a spring training game on Wednesday.  I haven't had a chance to paint any of them yet, but I did clean this one up.

New Watercolors

The hubs just got home from a Golf trip--a well deserved trip--in Palm Desert California. He didn't take many, but there were a few images that he snapped that I thought would work well painted in watercolor. 

I got some good news in that I sold a print in the Art Shoppe.  For those of you who are local, it's located in the old Sears Building on Lake Street and Eliot Av, now called the Global Market. 

We are having wonderful spring weather here--up to 67 degrees today and the snow is melting.  Hope everyone is having a wonderful day.

Today's Painting

We are coming out of a snow storm.  More snow in the last two weeks than all winter.  It's a very pretty snow.  The kind that coats and sticks to all the tree branches.  Looks like a winter wonderland out there. Luckily, I didn't have to drive anywhere and spent the day making prints for an upcoming boutique. 

I hear snow plows as I'm writing this. Have a nice day!

Commissioned Portrait Painting

I wanted to share my recent portrait painting and how I went about creating it.  A previous client contacted me and asked if I could paint a portrait of her best friend, her fiance and their dog.  This was a very special assignment as her friends fiance has terminal cancer, so I wanted to make sure I did the very best I could.  She sent me several images, some tiny and very pixelated, but out of all the images she sent, these are the ones I selected to create the portrait.

I went about extracting the subjects and tried different positions and finally came up with one that I could work with.  After making several adjustments in photoshop, I opened the image in Corel Painter 11 and began to paint.  This is the result.

The client was very happy with the the way it turned out.  I hope everyone is having a wonderful afternoon.

Watercolor of a Sail Boat on the St. Croix

I awoke this morning with the stomach flu, but at this posting, I'm feeling much better.  I had some time to visit my forums today and I received some great advice about my post headings.   It seems that having titles like Busy, Busy, Busy are not good for the key word seeking bots on Google.  That, in fact, my titles need to be descriptive of what people out in the webworld might ask about.  I'm not completely clear on all this and will probably need to tweak it as I go, but the correct title of what I need to be doing is called SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  If anyone understands and would like to give me a pointer or two, I'm an eager student.  Anyway, here's my painting for today.

And another one.

This second one is an image from the PublicDomainPicture.net.  I hope everyone has a wonderful evening and weekend.

Watercolor Challenge

Watercolor Challenge at Painter Talk using Karen Bonaker's Image.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!