Category: animals

Today is National Farmers Day: Celebrating with farm-themed art

Published on by kmgunnartLeave a comment

Apparently, October 12th is National Farmers Day, as well as still being Columbus Day. Up until this morning, I had never heard of this, but y’all can be assured it is now officially on my calendar! Ever since I was a small girl, I wanted to be a farmer. In addition to my attempts at gardening and mad tree-planting sprees, I also raise (working) dairy goats, rabbits, and chickens. What better way to celebrate my new favorite holiday than with farm-themed art?

Hayfield Art

So far, I’ve done two paintings featuring hayfields: my Sunset Over the Hayfield in oil pastel, and the watercolor sketch Make Hay While the Sun Shines. Since I live at the dead end of a dirt road in a very rural corner of a rural county, hayfields are a common sight whenever we drive anywhere. There is just something about a field full of hay bales that gives me a warm and happy feeling in the depths of my soul. Round or square, though round are definitely the locally preferred format, I love to see hay bales sitting in a sunny field.

in-progress photo of my oil pastel landscape Sunset Over the Hayfield
watercolor sketch Make Hay While the Sun Shines

Produce artwork (fruits and vegetables)

While our property came with two mature Asian pear trees, we’ve added to that list a LOT in the decade since moving in: lemons, limes, oranges, sweet kumquat, dwarf pomegranate, an olive tree, and this year added two grapefruit and two fig trees. I still want to plant a couple of Barbados cherry trees, some true date palms, Indian/silver date palms, and pindo (jelly) palm trees. My husband also started growing moringa trees from seed this summer. Even more interesting, we discovered someone at some point in time planted a pink dwarf banana tree in the back of our property – I looked it up and those are native to Asia. The wildlife got our bright pink bananas this year, but now we know it’s back there, so perhaps next year we’ll get to eat some.

All that preamble to explain why fruits and vegetables are high on my list of favorite things to draw and paint when I want to do up a traditional still life piece of art. I’ve even gone to the grocery for the sole purpose of getting picturesque produce to do a photo shoot the other year. (For the record, only half of those photos were in focus, which is why I am not a photographer.)

I intended to post all of the produce-themed still life drawings and paintings here … but that is quite a lot of artwork! Instead, I’ll direct you to the category page – click here for the fruit and veggie still life. Even if I can’t grow it this far south, I can still buy and paint it.

Livestock Artwork

This category I do more than I draw or paint. Y’all have been treated to photos and stories about my goats, but I’ve only shared one drawing of one goat so far. It’s on my list of subjects to feature more, along with the chickens and rabbits. I’ll be doing more of that over the dark season, because we browsed the selection of farm animal T-shirts on Amazon and I was NOT impressed with what is out there. The obvious solution to my creative mind is to make my own! I do have my produce-themed art on apparel over at my RedBubble shop. Stay tuned, because I’ll probably do a rabbit first.

drawing of our goat Prim in tinted charcoal
sketch in tinted charcoal of our big girl, Prim

Celebrating National Farmers Day with art

I’ll need to wrap this up, because the charcoal pencils are calling to me to get to today’s drawing session. If I had known prior to this morning, I could have had something to paint, but right now I am quite content with just posting here to the art blog for this year’s short-notice celebration.

Next year, though, I will be pulling out the stops! Happy National Farmers Day to everyone, and have an art-full day.

digital art Tomatoes and Peppers still life

Experimenting with Digital Art: Text-to-Image software

Published on by kmgunnart16 Comments

The other week, I saw a fellow artist post a link on Twitter about a site called NightCafe Studio where you enter in a text prompt and it generates an image (which a lot of people mistakenly called “artificial intelligence”). Curiosity finally got the better of me, so I followed the link and began to play around with the software as an experiment. You can see the portfolio of my experimenting here on my profile at NightCafe. I’ve spent almost two weeks playing with it now, which is to say I am stepping into the concept of digital art, at least on the text-to-image side of it. (It’s so much faster than drawing or painting, and right now I feel as though I have a hundred different things going.)

The good, the bad, and the “What the ****?”

The profile/portfolio I link to over on NightCafe only includes the stuff that turned out good. I started off with a simple enough prompt, “pink flower on dark green leaves” or something very similar. If you scroll down far enough you will see the result at the very bottom. I fiddled around with a couple other phrases, and deleted those results as I did not like them. I am saving all the flower ones for their own post, but then moved on to see what kind of results I could get for some classic still life subjects.

Modern style still life of red and yellow bell peppers and one cherry tomato on white plates with a blue tablecloth
Tomatoes and Peppers, digital art

Here is one that turned out nicely. I deleted probably half a dozen or more in my attempts to get a nice still life arrangement of tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and an onion – salsa still needing assembly. I figured it would be perfect to hang up at my favorite Mexican restaurant in town, especially since my Summer Jalapeno painting is there. Let’s just say the program is not good at doing an onion and totally ignored the prompt about garlic. So instead of a still life I could name “Salsa, Some Assembly Required,” I got red and yellow bell peppers and a single cherry tomato. It does look nice, although I will need to draw/paint what I actually wanted. I uploaded the digital piece to my Pixels shop and my RedBubble shop for accessories, apparel, and prints.

Classic still life subject seem to give the art generator fits. I have some truly wild examples of a big weak spot in the code – but I will save a few of those for the floral post since I was trying for an old masters’ style of fruit and flowers still life composition. I will mention the text-to-image program has some issues with what shape apples are supposed to be. It also doesn’t seem to realize that apples and pumpkins are affected by gravity like everything else.

A smashing success for text-to-image

On a whim, I decided to try a text prompt that would describe my very first pastel piece I did at the age of just seven. I have no idea if it still exists, but it has stayed in my mind all these years. The first result is still the best: here is Sunset Palms, with the Neo-Impressionist style filter applied to it.

Sunset Palms, two palm trees silhouetted against a brilliant sunset sky with simulated impasto
Sunset Palms, digital art

The software even generated simulated impasto that looks like it was applied with a palette knife. I was a little surprised to see a swathe of green in the sky, but I think it works. I put this into Microsoft Jigsaw to play with it as a jigsaw puzzle, and the colors are just fun. Art prints are at my Pixels shop (along with puzzles) and apparel and accessories are at my RedBubble shop. I can definitely see myself painting variations of this image, either in acrylic or oil paint, once I finally get a cat-free art studio where it can dry without being walked on by my cats.

The struggle for black cats

I decided I wanted to see what kind of Halloween imagery the software could generate for me, and began to enter various prompts and try different style filters. I wanted an image of a black cat’s face filling the frame, with lovely green eyes providing a stark contrast to the black fur. Instead, the program spat out this – and I have seen hairballs that look prettier.

ugly software glitch
I just call it “fugly”

Well, at least it got the green eyes part right. No matter how I tilt my head and squint at it, it just does not look like a cat as I know them. This is emphatically NOT in the public portfolio, because that would just be embarrassing. Or maybe I am just not modern enough in my art sensibilities. I kept trying with the text prompts.

Black Cat sitting, digital artwork created using text-to-image software
Black Cat Sitting, digital art

The title Black Cat Sitting is the text prompt I used, and in this specific case, the image it gave me was very nice! I love the soft focus feel to the light, and the cat sure enough looks like a real cat. When I saw this one, I began to think perhaps there is some hope for text-to-image software after all. Yeah, famous last words. Here is what the software thinks a black kitten ought to look like.

another disasterpiece from a simple prompt
a five-eyed kitten? What the ****?

Yikes. That is not public anywhere else but here on the blog. Seriously – does this have five or six eyes, and why would a supposed “artificial intelligence” think kittens look like that? I mean, I know Halloween is supposed to be all about scary imagery, but this is just so many levels of wrong. And that is about as polite as I can stand for this one. I could post a few jack o’lantern mishaps, but I think y’all get the general idea of just how spectacularly wrong the algorithm can be on some of these.

Text-to-image digital art of – ME!

One day last week, I had an “Ah-ha!” moment and decided to see what kind of software-generated digital image I could get from the text prompt describing me. Hold your laughter now. I started off with the text prompt “middle-aged woman with short blonde hair,” and ended up with this:

ugly image from what ought to be a straightforward text prompt
how I feel first thing in the morning

OK, now y’all can have a good laugh. Apparently, punctuation is important, and that hyphen in middle-aged must have messed the algorithm up good and proper. Granted, there are definitely mornings when I might feel like this, but I don’t usually look quite this rough (or so my husband says). So I tried “mature woman with short blond hair,” and the second time I got an image I am now using as my “face” here on the internet.

the internet me, from text-to-image digital art program

Now, she doesn’t look like she’s about to celebrate her 50th birthday like I am, but most of the female figures the software spits out look to be no older than 25, and most look like they could be movie stars, so an image that brings to mind Florence Henderson from The Brady Bunch probably fits the program’s parameters for mature. I like the simulated brushstrokes for it as well. Her eyes are the wrong color and she isn’t wearing glasses “thick enough to see into the future,” but she’ll be my face for the internet for now.

While the text-to-image programs used to generate digital art are far from perfect, every once in a while you get a good result. I can’t see it replacing us traditional artists any time soon, but for now it is an amusing novelty. I may just use it as a way to test composition ideas or to get inspiration. Mostly, I am just playing with it because it amuses me.

Feature Friday 3: Back in the Saddle

Published on by kmgunnart17 Comments

There is an old saying about how if you fall off your horse, the best thing to do is to get back in the saddle and finish the ride. Y’all probably noticed I missed a couple of Fridays in a row, but not to worry … I even have the perfect sketchbook page to share for this! I’ll likely be doing similar post beginnings, though I can’t guarantee I’ll have the appropriate drawing to share (or maybe I will?).

first drawing using my new tinted charcoal - a horse saddled up and waiting for the rider
saddled up – sketchbook page, first drawing using my tinted charcoal

Some of you might recall the little teaser I dropped at the end of my charcoal drawings post where I mentioned getting the Derwent tinted charcoal set – first the small six-color set to try it out, then the biggest set of 24 pencils before I even got this far on my first drawing because I love how they feel on the paper along with really loving the resulting drawing. I stopped messing with this particular sketch as I realized I stumbled across the first practical lesson for tinted charcoal: use the lightest shades first. See that saddle blanket? While waiting for the big set of charcoals to arrive, I had picked up a black charcoal pencil and doodled in the border design. When I got the big set and pulled out the one called sand to pencil in the rest of the blanket, I realized as soon as I try to blend it with a paint brush, the black will smear. So, like Bob Seger sang, it was time to turn the page. I’ll be revisiting that reference photo in the future, because I really do like it, and will certainly be doing a color version, though I might do a monochrome version just because it looks like a good piece to do in only one color. I just have not yet decided whether that will be black or one of the brown charcoals.

Blog posts I’ve enjoyed over the past couple weeks

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and listening to videos and podcasts on the subject of blogging, partly as a refresher course and partly to see what has changed over the decade I wasn’t blogging. The fundamentals are still the same: write your blog for people to read and enjoy, and the search engines will follow. Some of the stuff we used to do back in the day (like this link roundup feature I am trying to resurrect) just fell by the wayside, and I am not seeing a reason why other than the “oh, that’s so 2008!” statement. If gas station prices are going to look like ’08, then why not blogs?

Another thing I see that hasn’t changed is that the good blogs all have a “why” for their existence. This dovetails neatly with the recent article I read about how an artist’s statement helps the fans and viewers to better grok the artist’s body of work. I wanted to link to this article, but apparently that is one of the email-subscription only pieces, as the Inside Art site skips that day in the post sequence. The short version of this point is I am giving the concept some thought about how to expand my artist’s statement beyond, “I make art to bring some beauty into the world.”

So why am I blogging again? I got frustrated with Facebook. It’s (*bleep!*) difficult to link back to previous posts – and most days it’s (*BLEEP!*) difficult to even find a post again unless you leave a tab open with it. Facebook may be “more” interactive than blogs (which is a very debatable point, IMO) but it is not what I think user-friendly ought to be. (I should note that I never intended to have a FB account, but it seems to be expected, and a good portion of my family is on there. I’m just trying to set up a lemonaide stand with the FB lemon.) Last summer, I got frustrated enough with trying to find something again on FB that I announced to hubby, “I am going back to blogging!” And after a brief stint over on blogspot, I made my way here, back to my own domain and even back to WordPress. Now, it’s time to work on improving the site. If you are not already a subscriber, now would be a really good time to subscribe, either through a reader or by email, because I am only getting started here.

Speaking of starting, on Monday I’ll be participating in a new three-day art challenge, where the theme is “fire.” I’ve done it in colored pencil, twice, so I will be experimenting with other media. Right now, I think I’d like to break out the oil pastels for this, though I might try my brush with either watercolor or acrylic. Stay tuned!

Goat photos by request

Published on by kmgunnart6 Comments

So when I posted on Friday, apparently some of y’all expected to see a snapshot or two of my new goat, and two even left comments saying about as much (though politely phrased). When I read the second one Saturday morning, I decided to go through some quick photos hubby had taken with his phone of our new girl, whom I have named Capri. While looking through the folder on my PC, hubby calls me on the phone to inform me I need to bring a towel out to the goat pen because, “You have a new baby out here.”

my new nanny goat Capri
Capri starting to clean off her new kid
mostly dried-off newborn goat kid

And that kicked off a couple days of the two of us (nonphotographer types, one each) attempting to get decent photos of the new goat kid and his mama, who was not handled much at her previous home and is therefore skittish and jumpy. This is the best I can get at present:

Capri and little Billy, one day old

I am sure y’all remember when the triplets were born in mid-February. Well, we kept the boy to be our junior herd sire (because his sire is ten this spring) and call him Pepe. Later this summer, we will start using his full name, Pepe Le Pew. He has certainly grown.

Pepe eating from the feed tub he used to nap in with his sisters

Hope you enjoy these snapshots.

Cougar drawing in charcoal

Published on by kmgunnart6 Comments

In between bottle feeding the five goat kids out in the pen, I managed to work up a charcoal study of a cougar from a photograph provided by Grace Carpenter for an art challenge on a forum I read. Unlike the tulip bud I started yesterday, I managed to get this one finished before a jealous indoor kitty sat on it. Said tulip project has both paw prints and a butt print on it in addition to the dry pastel smearing. I really do need to remember to turn my works-in-progress over so the working surface faces down. Enough grumbling from me about yesterday’s aborted project – back to today’s drawing.

cougar charcoal drawing
Cougar, 9 by 12 inch charcoal, in sketchbook

This is just my first sketch of it, mostly for the experience points, and also to see how well I liked the crop of the original photo. While I am mostly pleased with how it turned out, I think I want to try it in white pencil on black paper as that may be a bit easier to get the whiskers to show up like I want. I also need to work on the chin and lower muzzle a bit better, but I decided to upload it and make prints available from my Pixels store.

The amusing part of this story is I scanned the drawing and was almost ready to upload it when I noticed I had forgotten to add in the whiskers and lightest highlights. So, just for the giggles, here is the first scan, before I finished it up.

charcoal drawing of a mountain lion in charcoal
not QUITE finished yet!

It may not seem like a lot of difference between the not-quite-done version and the final version, but I can see it and therefore cannot unsee it.

Now, for the geekiness that is me: This oversized house cat really is an oversized house cat, despite some of its other names like puma, mountain lion, or in this region Florida panther. It isn’t even in the panther genus, unlike actual lions, so I guess puma or cougar are the best names for it. Cougars are related to my jealous little feline monsters … and this is very similar to look on Stripe’s face this morning as I tried (unsuccessfully) to get her off yesterday’s drawing without smearing it.