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!