Spring

My latest spring vectors available on iStockphoto. I love doing these almost realistic gradient mesh drawings.

The wire frame of a few of the flowers:

Hand Painted Backdrops

Do you have some artist paints and palette knives collecting dust in a drawer ? Why not make some fun hand painted backdrops to use in your shoots. I’m planning to make lots of different colors and sizes. Here’s how I made this one in case anyone is interested:

Canvas: it’s way cheaper if you buy it at the fabric store for $6 or $7 a yard than at an art supply store. Or better yet head to the paint department at Home Depot and get one of those really big painters canvas drop cloths for under $20.00. they’re about 8′ x 11′.

This one is smallish (about 30″ x 40″) so I was able to work on my kitchen table after taping down some plastic. Tape down the canvas too on top of the plastic so it stays in place. If you can leave it taped down until it’s dry it will stay nice and flat but it’s not imperative.

Paints: Acrylics are best. They clean up easily and stay fairly flexible when dry so you can roll these backdrops onto fat cardboard tubes for storage We have lots of acrylics around the house but I went to Walmart & picked up a big tube of student grade white (cost me $6.99) and some bottles of the craft acrylics (it’s thinner ) for about $1 or $2 each. If you can find the student grade acrylics you’ll save a lot of money but they will help thicken those thinner bottled paints. You can also mix in some regular acrylic wall paints as well as long as it doesn’t get too thin. I also used some gesso to make my mixes thicker.

My Palette and Painting Knives

If you look at the paints on the palette you can see how much thinner the purple is (bottled) and the white is already mixed with some gesso to give it some extra body. Here’s my palette. Any flat surface can be a palette…even a piece of tinfoil covered cardboard. Walmart sells cheap plastic palette knives if you want to try them. You could also use those cheap plastic drywall knives they sell at Home Depot.

I worked directly on the unprepared canvas. Unless you’re making a very dark background you’ll want more white than any other color. Use your knife to drag some of the colors into the white. Palette knives work best when you hold them on an angle and scrape using the flat edge of one side. There is no secret method. The best way to start is to just start apply some of the colors in bold big flat sections as shown below:

Applying paint

The idea is just to cover as much area as you can while the paint is wet and easily worked. Acrylics don’t dry so fast that you need to hurry though. I tend to like working both vertically and horizontally but you might like the way angles knife-work looks. Be creative and have fun. You’ll notice that I don’t try to thoroughly mix my paint, I just drag colors through each other and let them mix a little on the canvas. It has a more organic look to it.

Cover a large area quickly

I try to fill a large area quickly so that I can make adjustments after I fill the canvas. The idea is just to get it covered then play with the texture a bit. This looks fairly thick bt it’s really not. I want it to remain flexible so it has texture but it’s not very thick.

Adding some extra color and texture

Once you have a base coat of paint down on the canvas, you can take your time and play with the colors and texture until you’re happy with it. The way you hold the palette knife against the surface will change the way the texture comes through. Try lightly pulling it across flat, then on a sharp angle etc. You can get lots of variation. I wouldn’t suggest starting off with an 8 foot backdrop if you’re new to painting. Start with something on the small side like I did here. Even after the paints have dried you can go back and add another layer of color or texture. Acrylica will let you do that. I still want to ad another layer to this one to add more light texture – similar to the light stuff at the lower right.

Not finished here but almost

Here’s how mine looks so far. Not bad for an hour’s work. I’ll try to finish this one tomorrow and post an update.

I’m also planning to make some rigid texture backgrounds using other mediums. If anyone’s interested I’ll post some step-by-steps.

Food As Art

I’ve been spending more time getting to know my camera better. Last year I was determined to get a decent stock image on a white background. I love good food photography no matter what the style, but now I want to explore something more artistic, have more fun and be more creative. So I’ve decided to start a new series: “Food as Art”

I plan to make several knife painted backgrounds. I’m hoping to create some kind of Old World Art look eventually but today I just managed this look, which was a lot of fun too.

Onions and Old Toaster

Tomatoes on Green

Onions and Old Toaster

On Édouard Manet

"Berthe Morisot with Violets" By Édouard Manet

A while back I signed up for an art exhibition at our local gallery celebrating the life of Édouard Manet. The show will open January 23. The work can be anything, any media, even written pieces. I’ve been working digitally for so long that I couldn’t decide what medium to do my piece in. I started off with a photograph that sort of mimicked the colors in Manet’s “Berthe Morisot with Violets” painting,which I printed on fabric to include in an art quilt.

So I  somehow ended up with these. I liked the photo but the fabric piece was boring me. But I really wanted to get my hands into something messy and really creative so I scrapped that quilt and started again with the fabric photo and ended up making a mixed media collage.I’m really happy with it now and I enjoyed it so much that I think I’m going to create some simpler collages to use as backdrops for some of my photography.

But I really wanted to get my hands into something messy and really creative so I scrapped that quilt and started again with the fabric photo and ended up making a mixed media collage.I’m really happy with it now and I enjoyed it so much that I think I’m going to create some simpler collages to use as backdrops for some of my photography.

Mixed Media Collage

“Black Is Not A Color”

This is my final piece for the Manet show. I painted the canvas with palette knives before adding fabric, digital and traditional illustration, photography, feathers, beads, twine, hemp, wire, bronze powder and just about everything else I could lay my hands on.