Tag: purple

Going Bananas: New 3 day still life art challenge

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I could not resist jumping in on a quick three-day art challenge over on Fine Art America’s artist discussion board. Like most of the art challenges over there, this one has a theme: banana(s). I have thought about doing a series of banana-themed fruit still life like my Apples and Oranges series for a while, so I figured this was my cue to just do it. Just to be cute, I am calling this short series “Going bananas!” and intend to execute it in classic still life format as I see it.

graphic collage of the reference photo of bananas I used for my still life watercolor painting for the short art challenge
reference photo of bananas I used to make my still life watercolor painting

(I should note that I have not abandoned the 100 faces challenge. I am only taking a quick side-quest, as the DnDers would say. I’ll also say that I successfully completed the challenge, and just need to get caught up on blogging it.)

Finding paintable reference photos

I’ve probably mentioned before that what makes for a good painting reference is not always what makes a good photograph. Hunting up some reference photos to use proved that – most have softer lighting so the subject can be seen as well as a two-dimensional image can allow. A good painting, on the other hand, works best with dramatic lighting, with a single light source ideally. Dramatic lighting produces dramatic shadows, which a lot of photographers seem to avoid. I did manage to find three photos with a more or less classic still life arrangement … and one that is more of a wild card that I may do as a bonus.

Setting some clear objectives

I wanted to do this short (and fun) art challenge with some pre-defined objectives, which is military for goals. (The cranky old Army sergeant in me still rises to the surface from time to time.) I knew I wanted to do somewhat traditional fruit still life paintings, so that cried out for a mostly-traditional medium. Since I hadn’t used my watercolor paints in quite a while, this seemed the perfect excuse to work in watercolor. I did choose to use more modern pigments, and am happy with the results.

Since only one of my reference photos had anywhere near the level of drama in its lighting, another objective was to see if I could adjust for that on my paper.

My final objective was to utilize complementary colors: the obvious yellow/purple, but also some red/green where I could.

Painting the bananas in my still life

With my objectives in mind, I went to work. This first painting simply FLOWED from first my pencil, then my paintbrush. It was one of those days when every step went smooth as silk. In fact, I started the sketch at approximately 1030 and was waiting for the paint to dry so I could scan it before 1530! Only five hours from start to finish, including drying time, is a quick and easy watercolor painting for me.

graphic of my watercolor still life painting simply titled Bananas, in the square format sites like Instagram love so much
square graphic of my watercolor still life I simply call Bananas

Hubby says he loves how the green looks on the bananas, with the comment that this small bunch looks exactly like what I search for in the grocery store – still a touch green. To contrast with the green, I chose to paint the plate as a reddish wood, instead of the really light color in the photo.

Overall, I am VERY pleased with how this one turned out. I feel I nailed both the color and the lighting, though I should probably at some point practice painting wood grain, as that is the only part that I think needs improvement. It scanned even better than it looks in person (to my eye; hubby disagrees) which is unusual for my work. Personally, I think my painting is better than the photo I used for reference.

All in all, a good start to this new art challenge.

How to purchase!

If you have the right space for the 9 by 12 inch original painting, then click over to the listing at Daily Paintworks to handle the transaction. It’s likely quicker than trying to hunt me down when I am in a mood to be unplugged.

Need a bigger and bolder version? I have art prints available through my Pixels shop ranging from as small as 8 by 6 inches to as large as 60 by 45 inches, so that should cover most walls quite nicely. You can also get jigsaw puzzles through this link.

Want to wear my art, like my mother and sister prefer? Click through to see the options at my RedBubble shop. There are also some home accessories – and yes, my favorite is still the analog clock.

February Virtual Art Walk with baby goats

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I scheduled this month’s virtual art walk to happen this weekend, serenely convinced my nanny goats would not kid until next week at the soonest. And my goaty girls laughed at my hubris. So I thought I might sit this month out, but Jim Hughes applied a bit of arm-twisting on Facebook … so here I am scrambling to catch up on the art walk idea before the end of the weekend. There will be plenty of images for this post, because I am now up to four goat kids out back as the art walk group has grown to six this month.

New art walk participant Steve Estvanik

Another photographer named Steve joins our merry band of art bloggers with a fun post about dragons from around the world. I love some folklore, and find dragons fascinating. Also, I’ve long believed dragons to be a fanciful imagining of dinosaur fossils. This hypothesis just makes sense to me. No matter what you believe dragons were meant to be, they are a part of most cultures – except for ones from the African continent.

dragons from imperial China, symbolizing the power of the emporer
dragons from imperial China, photo by Steve Estvanik

Photographer and arm-twister Jim Hughes

Y’all ought to know Jim Hughes by now – he’s participated in all the virtual art walks to date and when I was going to sit this one out, he cajoled me to just use a previous blog post and toss it all together. This month he takes a look at … bricks. One of the themes in art is to call attention to things people might not see as art. The only thing he missed in his post was a reference to the old song Brick House by the Commodores. He even refrained from the obvious Pink Floyd reference. I also learned photographers love a brick wall to check their lenses for any distortion.

color photograph of bricks in a wall
Jim Hughes’ Bricks in color

Baby goat interlude 1: Capri’s first set of twins

Wednesdays I usually go up to Palatka, either for an appointment or for the new art group my friend Keashia has put together. This past week was an art group get-together … and I didn’t make it up there because Capri looked to be in labor. Francis was giving her plenty of space, and she was taking it. Around lunchtime, as the rest of the group was starting, I remarked to hubby that she’ll likely wait until after I would have been back home just to be a goat. That’s exactly how it happened. The first kid was born a little bit before hubby came out to feed the critters and put up chickens for the evening. The second was born as he was finishing up the evening feeding. One girl and one boy, with the girl looking just like her mother and the boy looking almost exactly like his sire, but with blue eyes.

Capri’s twins, girl on left and boy on right. Also, Pepe’s first kids

Sharon Popek photographs Chicago

Sharon Popek took a tour of Chicago at sunset, and captured some very nice cityscape images. The last time I was in Chicago was 2017 for my son’s wedding, and the thing I remember most was it was COLD coming up from Florida in mid-March. It was also cloudy the entire weekend, so I did not get to see anything quite as nice as Sharon’s photos.

collage of Chicago skyline at sunset from Lake Michigan
Chicago from Lake Michigan as the sun sets, photos by Sharon Popek

Dorothy Berry-Lound features purple

This month Dorothy Berry-Lound spotlights some of her artwork that incorporates the color purple, which is one of her favorite colors (as well as mine!). She even touches on not only the history of the color, but the associations in psychology and spirituality. Being the absolute geek that I am, I knew these, but apparently not everyone is as nerdy as I have always been. It’s a lovely collection of purple in art.

painting of Chinese girl holding musical instrument hanging on a dark wall
an example of Dorothy Berry-Lound’s art hanging on the wall

Francis has twin boys

After agreeing to just toss in a link on Friday, I went out yesterday to milk Capri in between thunderstorms. To my surprise, Francis did not come running up to greet me, even when I went over the electronet with the bucket of hay pellets they love so much. Hubby remarked, “I bet I know why …” and I was thinking the same. We walked up just after the first kid was born, and hubby went back inside the house to grab some old towels. If course Francis was on the far side of the pasture. We managed to move both Mama and newborn to the grassy spot of the kids’ pen as the thunder started rumbling again. After the second kid was born and both dried off, then it was time to bottle them. The firstborn boy, with the flashy white markings, immediately understood the bottle. The mostly-black boy wanted a better delivery system, but decided he could handle drinking his milk from a bottle. Both of these boys are larger than normal newborns, so it’s a good thing Francis didn’t have triplets again.

Francis and her newborn boys on the grass
Francis and her newborn twin boys. Yes, we really do have green grass this time of year in Florida!

Steve Heap’s photos of West Virginia and Hawai’i

Steve Heap is a familiar name for our virtual art walks, and once again he spotlights his artistic photography that has sold since the last time. His fans seem to divided between buying photos of West Virginia and photos of Hawaii. Funny but true: my mom called me the day before Capri kidded from her cruise of the Hawai’ian islands that she is on for her birthday. She called for one reason, to ask if I had baby goats yet. She did tell me a little about how much she is enjoying her trip, but mostly wanted to know if I had baby goats yet. My pick for this month’s image to feature from Steve is this panoramic image of Tunnels Beach on the island of Kauai.

panoramic aerial view of Tunnels Beach on the Hawai’ian island of Kauai by photographer Steve Heap

My watercolor Red Rose 2

Finally, the post I put in for this month’s virtual art walk is my watercolor Red Rose 2, where I used my line drawing as the basis for a line and wash. This is actually my first time using ink with my watercolor, and people on various sites seem to like it. Also, if you like the line drawing, sign up for my email list, as it is my free gift to subscribers this month. I will change the line drawing on the 15th of the each month for the entire year, to go along with the theme of 2023 being “A year for art.”

Previous virtual art walks

That wraps things up for this month! Since I am bottle feeding baby goats for the next eight weeks, I recommend subscribing to the email list. Not only will you get line drawings you can print out and color at home, but you’ll have new posts emailed to you when I publish them. With my usual springtime activities, I won’t be able to keep any kind of schedule until all the kids are weaned and chicks have hatched.

Yellow Roses in Purple Vase

Published on by kmgunnart6 Comments

First, believe it or not, this is a computer-generated image. I’ve been working for a while on trying to get some classic floral still life style images from the text-to-image software I’ve been playing around with, and after exhausting a certain look, I decided to try some different modifiers to the same basic text prompt.

I’ll cover this other style on Friday, but this particular image gets its own post for the simple fact I will be working on doing it by hand in the next week. Even more inspiring to me than the Sunset Palms image, this is a simple but elegant floral still life composition of a bouquet of yellow roses in a purple vase, sitting on a wood table. It is the complementary colors that make this idea pop.

Inspiring digital artwork

Picture of woman holding framed art print Yellow Roses in Purple Vase
Yellow Roses in Purple Vase, digital artwork available as an art print

But first, the important links for print products to buy. I have it on most products at my Pixels store as well as art prints. It doesn’t looks right on objects where the printing is horizontal in orientation. I recommend getting art prints from there because Pixels is owned by Fine Art America, who are big in the art print world. For those who enjoy wearing artwork, I recommend my RedBubble shop. My sister and mother both recommend them and are repeat customers.

The search for a good rose image

No surprise to long-time blog followers here, but I personally love yellow roses. I’ve been trying to paint or draw the “perfect” yellow rose piece since the day after I picked my art back up, and I have a couple watercolor paintings I did one to two years ago – Electric Yellow Rose and Yellow Rose. (If you buy the originals, you can rename them. I don’t try to be cute with what I name my artwork.) While I’ve played around with the idea in pastel and colored pencil, I have not accomplished anything I want to share. I think part of that is a matter of finding a good reference photo for it, because buying a nice bouquet of roses in a pretty vase each time I want to paint or draw would get rather expensive.

Enter the text-to-image digital artwork idea

So, what does an artist who lives on her veterans’ disability pay do in this situation? Well, I gave in to curiosity about the whole text-to-image software that so many people misname “artificial intelligence.” It is not intelligent. It just generates images based on your text prompt plus a style filter and any modifiers you use from the lists of phrases that will get you certain looks.

First, I tried the basic text prompt “bouquet of yellow roses” without any modifiers, and got a bunch of images that more-or-less fit that. The biggest variation is in that hard-to-define quality of composition. One was good, while the rest were mediocre at best. Here is the one I liked best.

bouquet of yellow roses
bouquet of yellow roses

Using modifiers in the text prompts

Not completely satisfied with this, I began to experiment with different modifiers to see what kind of image style I could get from which modifier. Some modifiers are specific art movements; some are specific artists’ names (and some of those are still alive and still painting), and others are descriptions like “dynamic lighting,” which is one of my favorites. No “chiaroscuro” or Edgar Degas, though my favorites are romanticism and Thomas Kincade, a combination that makes some very pretty images that don’t have much variation.

romantic yellow roses in vase on table
Romantic yellow roses in glass vase on table

Another style modifier I tried was Renaissance painting, which certainly has that feel to it, and I may experiment with that style further, but first I wanted to see how well (or how poorly) the software handled the idea of simulated pastels. These are soft pastels, not oil pastels, and I was disappointed to not find any famous pastellists in the artist list like Edgar Degas or Mary Cassat. Fellow Impressionist powerhouse Claude Monet was on the list, so on a whim I used his name along with pastels as the “medium” used and Impressionism as the style. I also specified the color scheme as yellow and purple. Here is the four-pack of images generated:

four computer-generated images using my text prompt
four computer-generated images using the text prompt “bouquet of yellow roses in fancy vase on table dynamic lighting yellow and purple pastels impressionism Claude Monet”

A bit of variation here, and while the first image is nice enough, it’s the second one (top right) that has captured my imagination. It is so close to being good! I think it is just missing that tiny little bit – perhaps toning down the background colors to make the focal point more attention-grabbing. I’ll also be tweaking that table, perhaps more of a tan than yellow, so it looks more like oak (like the image above).

Bouquet of Yellow Roses in a Purple Vase

So that is the development of a vague idea, “bouquet of yellow roses,” into a piece of digital artwork that you can purchase and I can use as a springboard to create my next work of art in pastel. I am thinking of giving my soft pastel set a proper workout for this, with details added in with pastel pencils. Until then, have a pleasant Thanksgiving week, and watch this space for a new Feature Friday.

Three Dragonflies acrylic sketch

Published on by kmgunnart1 Comment

We started a new art challenge yesterday. It is a short duration one, only three days, with the theme of “three.” Separate from this, but hosted by the same moderator, is an “Edit This” challenge where we are given a photo to edit, draw, or paint in whatever way we please, as long as the hosting moderator can tell you’ve started with the given photo. Inspiration struck first with the ET photo (that sounds funny to me!), then quickly blossomed into an idea where I can do both, plus get the first day of the November 30 day challenge which has the theme of “red.” First, the sacrificial photo:

photo of a purple mushroom for the Edit This art challenge
Edit This #54 photo

It’s cute, and painting mushrooms seems to be a thing right now, so first I thought butterflies around the mushroom, but then I thought dragonflies, or maybe even fireflies … or better yet, dragonflies around the mushroom by day (on white paper to start) and then fireflies around it by night, which would give me the perfect excuse to try out my black gesso on white oil and acrylic paper to see if that stuff is as strong as it looks (spoiler alert: it certainly is!). And so that brings us to day one of the 3-day “three” challenge and the first of my entries into the Edit This challenge: Three Dragonflies.

acrylic sketch Three Dragonflies
Three Dragonflies, 9 by 12 inch acrylic on paper, available, $80 USD for original

It turned out cute, a bit on the whimsical side, mostly simple in layering and color, and overall I like it. I listed the original on Daily Paintworks last night, as well as uploading the high resolution scan to my Pixels site for prints. This morning I uploaded said hi-res scan to my shop at RedBubble for the apparel and accessories, positioning the image just right for the clock. At some point, I will get myself one of those clocks … once I decide which artwork to have on it. I doubt I have enough wallspace for all the ones that look nice on that clock face, not to mention the amount of batteries I’d need to keep them all on the right time.

I started the firefly version, as alluded to above, by first testing the black gesso. It’s almost dry enough to start painting now!

Electric Yellow Rose watercolor painting

Published on by kmgunnart7 Comments

I finished up this close-up watercolor painting of a yellow rose this evening. When it was dry enough, I showed it to hubby who immediately commented, “Wow, electric!”  That’s where the electric part of this painting’s name comes from.  Hubby says the combination of yellow with purple (or violet, if you prefer) just pops in a beautiful way.

watercolor painting Electric Yellow Rose
Electric Yellow Rose, 12 by 9 inch watercolor painting on paper, original available

Original is 12 by 9 inch watercolor, sealed with Dorland’s wax, and I will take it to El Amigo Restaurant in Crescent City for display locally, ands also listed for sale at Daily Paintworks for those outside the local area..  Prints in larger and smaller sizes are available at my Pixels store, and accessories at my RedBubble store.

I should mention that I saved the contour sketch for future artwork, probably in different media just because I am very pleased with how well the simple line drawing captured the shape and layout of the petals.

Another reaction to the painting

Along with my husband’s reaction to it as soon as it was dry, Elizabeth at El Amigo was amazed when I told her I painted it with watercolor.

“Wait, THAT is watercolor?! It’s so bright!” was her remark.

I told her I found a brand of paint from South Korea (Mijello Mission Gold, for those curious) that had wonderfully vibrant colors. Apparently, the general perception is that watercolor paintings have delicate, light color. Or perhaps people think of those student sets that have low pigment and really terrible brushes. Either way, I love bold and vivid colors most of the time, and will work to achieve them in whichever media I use.

(Update: she had about the same reaction when I brought in my Flapping Flamingo watercolor painting later. Also, she was surprised at the vibrancy of color in my oil pastel Blooming Pink Rose, because of the confusion about what the word pastel actually means.)