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!

Watercolor Painting of A Beautiful Lake Home

Busy day today. Watched the grand kids play soccer and had lunch at Noodles.  I'm reorganizing all my small delica beads so I can catch up on some bead weaving projects. And making more prints for an upcoming boutique.  Had a chance to do a little painting, too.

The only bothersome thing is that I woke up this morning with a very painful crick in my neck. Ouch!  Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Watercolor Painting of a House On The Lake

Three inches of snow over night.  It took out our Direct TV for 4 hours!  Of course, the problem is not that I didn't have TV, it's that last year we had over 60 inches of snow and didn't have a problem.  This year we've hardly any this year and we lose reception.  No help from customer service, sorry out of luck, just have to wait til is melts a little.  Can't climb up there myself!  It makes me think...what if there is severe weather and we need to stay on top of it....hmmmmm, no TV and by the way, too bad!  May have to call Comcast again.  Anyway, wishing I was on the lake right now gazing at this lovely home.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day....and that you have TV.

Watercolor Paintings

I've been invited to consign in another small shop, The Art Shoppe, which is located in the Global Market here in Minneapolis.  Just a few paintings to start, but I'm now in two shops and I'm also going to participate in the Northwoods Boutique coming up the end of March as well.  Keeping those fingers crossed that my networking pays off.

Beautiful days here in Minnesota.  Praying for an early spring.  Hope all is well with everyone.

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.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I haven't posted in a little bit, although I've been painting.  I recently got a commission to paint from 6 different photos and I'm in the proof stages.  I also spent yesterday training at the new store I have my prints in.  Although it's owned by one person, it will be operated by 60+ local artists.  The store is in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood and is called "Something New In The Park".  The address is 2301 Como Ave. Suite 101, St. Paul, Minnesota 55112.  The hours are  Monday - Saturday 10:00 - 2:00, Sunday 12:00 - 4:00.  I would love for those who live locally to stop by.  We have some exceptional artwork available.

Still trying to perfect those watercolors.

Love being able to reuse photos!  I hope everyone had an awesome week.

Watercolor Challenge

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

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Still Learning

Wanted to make sure that you knew of a couple classes coming up...some you may be interested in these.  Karen Bonaker at The Digital Art Academy is having an Open Studio Session coming up in March on Painting Street Scenes.  You can get information HERE.  Also, Scott Deardorff has a new teaching DVD out, his second in a series, "Portrait Painting Techniques in Photoshop".  This artist creates the most beautiful portraits and he does it exclusively in Photoshop.  You can read about both of his DVD's HERE.

Here's a few pieces I've been working on.  Still working on watercolor techniques using Photoshop, Topaz Adjust and Simplify.

This is what I love about digital art.  You can reuse your photographs over and over and over and over.......Have a great day!

Practice, Practice, Practice

I've been spending a lot of time recently on trying to perfect my digital watercolors, using older images to play with.  I'm getting very antsy not being able to get out and take pictures of anything.  Not really enough snow to take any decent winter shots. Mind you, I'm not complaining after last year's record snow falls. But I'm restless and need some new images to work with.

Three totally different treatments here, but watercolors none the less.
I hope every is having a beautiful weekend.

Tweaking the Watercolors

I've been working on improving my watercolors by seeking tutorials on some of the forums I belong to.  I'd like to thank Kai and Piker for all their help and the wonderful tuts they have been so generous in giving out.  Here is one that I finished this morning and submitted to a watercolor challenge I participated in recently.

Thanks to Karen Bonaker for the use of her image.  I hope everyone is having an awesome day.

More Watercolors

I wanted to post some of the watercolors I've been working on.  I think I'm starting to understand the concepts much better, while not losing my style of saturating with color. I'll will be test printing some to see how they work out.  Hope you enjoy!

I do love doors and windows and fences and trees!

And stairs and bushes!

And awnings!  Have a wonderful day!

New Prints

I've added a few more paintings to my Etsy Shop.  I'm also putting together another presentation to have my art prints added to a new shop opening up in St. Anthony Park.  I'm pretty excited about this.  Some will be framed and some will be mounted and stored in a canvas rack.

This was from a photograph I took while down in Louisiana last summer.  There were a lot of these sweet little pathways with trees overhanging. 

This painting is also from this past fall.

My feet are so cold today and I can't seem to get them to warm up.  My sister who lives in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, sent me a video of her walking on the beach.  I'm not happy with her at all!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful (and warm) day.

In The Deep Freeze

In my last post I was boasting about the 50 degree weather.  Now, however, we are now officially in the deep freeze. Hopefully the lakes will get good and frozen because the hubs is on his way up north to go ice fishing this weekend.

I'm just posting the one this time.  I will be traveling to Northfield, MN this weekend to take some of my prints to a shop there to test them out. I'm hoping there will be a desire for them.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I hope everyone has an awesome weekend.

It's Spring In Minnesota

Believe it or not, we are having temps in the 40's and 50's...it feels positively balmy.  We actually had a golf tournament in the area today.  Last year at this time we were smothered in the white stuff.

I've prepared a few more to print.

I wish these images were indicative of what it's like outside now.  It's always such a drought for picture taking this time of year--despite the warm temps.

Here's hoping that those who stop by today are having a blessed day.

Watercolors

I have to admit that watercolors have always scared me, especially trying to achieve them digitally. I happen to belong to a forum that is sharing information on how to achieve such, and so I've been experimenting a little.  I've come to the conclusion that not all images lend themselves to watercolor treatments, so I'll need to do a lot more research.

Off to watch the grandchildren at soccer this morning and then off to Cabela's so the hubs can spend his gift certificates.  He needs a new fish finder!

I hope everyone has an awesome weekend.

First Post of the New Year 2012

I'm hoping that those who visit today had a happy and safe New Year's.  The hubs and I are quiet people and not much for the parties.  As a matter of fact, I think we were in bed asleep by 9pm New Year's Eve! However, we are morning people and are usually up and moving about between 5 and 6.  I've always been able to get a lot more done in the morning, and have spent many blissful hours already printing away on my new Epson and packaging with matting and backing boards.  I'll soon be contacting area independent shops in the hopes that they might like to carry my work as well as researching upcoming arts and crafts fairs.  Exciting time ahead.  I hope!

Anyway, here's a painting that I just finished printing and I'm so happy with the way it came out.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

The Day Before the Eve of the New Year

Today is a day of resting the ole' body after 4 days of work where I spent the entire time on my feet.  That's OK though, because I'm taking the time to focus on getting my Etsy Shops together.  Oddly enough, I've already had a sale as a result of seeing my work on Etsy.  So, let's hope I can keep the momentum going.

We anticipate a quiet New Year's weekend... haven't been partying in years, but hope to spend some time with the grand kids maybe have brunch out with the hubs on Sunday. I'm sure there's football in my future as well, whether I like it or not.

Here's a new painting posted recently in the shop.

I hope everyone has a very safe, but lovely New Year's weekend.  Happy New Year's.

Well, I'm hoping everyone survived the Holiday's and had a wonderful time with family and friends. It's been a little bit since I've posted, so I figured I should get on the ball here.  I've decided to open a second Etsy shop as well as create a separate blog where, if someone so desired, they could purchase a print of the work I've posted. You can see my Etsy Shop HERE as well as by clicking on the button above.  This is also where you will find the button for my blogger store.  You can find it HERE.  Thanks to Geri Centonze for her tutorial on how to open a blogger store.  

I've actually started printing on my new printer and I have to say that I'm super pleased.  I still have a lot to learn, but the ease with which this printer works just astounds me.  So, here is a painting that I've just recently posted on my blog and Etsy.

This was an image from our cemetery tour a few months ago.  Can you believe it's the end of December and we have no snow on the ground?  Last year at this time we had 3 feet of snow.  Don't know whether to be happy about this or not, but I have to say, it's a lot nicer getting to work and back every day.
I truly hope every one is having a grand holiday season and I bid you safe travels over the New Year's weekend.

The Granddaughters

It's been a little bit since my last post, but I haven't been idle.  I received my long awaited printer yesterday and it's taken pretty much a whole day just to get her going.  I need to order a lot of large format papers and canvas so I can get going opening my store page on this blog.  Will probably add another store on Etsy as well. I have been printing smaller pieces on the ample amount of fine art papers that came with the printer, and I have to say I'm so pleased with the outcome.  The colors are brilliant and so true to the way it looks on my monitor.  I'm a very happy camper. 

In the meantime, my granddaughter is turning 4 and she's had a whirlwind of parties, plus she also had her Holiday program at church.  This is an image I took at her party, of Myah, the birthday girl, and her little sister, Mari. It was nice to get back to painting portraits, plus these two are sooooo photogenic.

I so hope everyone is having a wonderful Holiday Season.  Peace and Joy to everyone.