Art for sale!!

I have just joined a great website called red bubble. I upload my pictures/paintings and they sell them as wall art or greeting cards or T-shirts! they do the printing and the shipping and I get the commission what whatever I sell. They also make sure that everything is of the highest quality possible so now I can stop my seemingly fruitless search for a giclee printer and leave it all up to them!

I found out about it from Christina, a fellow Irish Arts Blogger and this is her page on Red Bubble.  Thanks christina!

I just need a higher resolution camera. The photos I took with my mums camera in Ireland are large enough for small/medium prints but the one here I am using in mexico just isn’t big enough. Soon! This is the one I think I want!

Tomorrow is final day for the one world one heart giveaway and then its draw the name time! I am actually quite excited to see if I win anything.

Ok, have a great wednesday ya’ll! hope all your dreams come true!

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oil painting

I love oil paints.. have I said that before? probably a few times, I love the smell of them, they make me feel like a real artist, but also the depth of the colours you can achieve with them and the lustre of the paint and the malleability and also the fact that they take a whole heap of time to dry so I can take my time with textures and details.

Watercolours are like a zen meditation.. brush poised.. hold it… take a deep breath.. now go! and don’t stop until you finish!

Oils are more like the progression of a turtle.. ambling happily on the journey, pause, admire the flowers, ponder on significance of this, take the wrong turn, get it right, oh look we have arrived and just in time for tea!

I use washes under colours, deep blue under light blue, light blue under deep, yellow ochre under anything green so I can use a prussian blue wash to get the most incredible green.

I scratch into the paint before it dries, using the colour underneath to be the contrast.

Here is the next stage of the two paintings I am working on at the mo.

new favourite!

I see new artists all the time now, on etsy and outside through others blogs. Some I like, some I don’t really have a connection with, some are really sweet, some I know I like because they remind me of my style and some I look at with a critical eye and would love to give them a few tips or ideas on pushing the edge of where they are. A very few I love, because they inspire me or because they make me happy or I connect with the person who is making the art on some level or just something abstract that art critics have been trying to define for centuries. ‘Why do you like a particular piece of art and not another?’

But! very very rarely I see someone elses art and it just makes me stop. Makes me come to a halt and almost get jealous, (well, ok, leave out the almost) for a second or two. Can’t compare! I have my own paintings to paint!

this is the shop I found the other day ‘obsoleteworld‘

They make me sad and lonesome and draw me into the little worlds that are in each picture. I showed them to Paul and another artist friend later that night and we ooohed and ahhed and ‘this one is my favourite’ and ‘no, this one is I think’! Read her profile too..

Well, time to return to my personal world and keep on with the two paintings I started. I have taken pictures of them and am going to post as they progress! Happy days when my hands are covered in prussian blue and my head aches slightly from the smell of white spirit. Have to move onto linseed oil but I find if I use oil for the earlier layers of a painting it becomes to glossy and washes won’t stick. I actually know nothing about oil painting, I just love the medium and am discovering tricks as I go.

Here is the first stage of the paintings..

cameras

I want to buy a new camera. I want a digital camera with high mega pixels to take pictures that can be reproduced as prints. I will probably get a 10 mp or above to get enough information to print. Pixels are little packets of information and basically the more of them you have the bigger your picture can be without getting grainy or losing any details. I have read that to get enough information for a giclee print I need at least 50mp or over. Out of my budget I think, and into the realm of professional photographers. Maybe in the future it would be a good investment to get one or two of my pieces cataloged this way but for now 10mp or 12mp should suffice.

I have just joined photo.net

Its a website/forum for photographers. You can ask questions or find the answers to questions, galleries of photos by members, reviews of cameras. The link above is to a question about taking fine art prints. Good information.

If anyone has any ideas let me know!

fine art pens

I love them, I was given the first one as a gift from someone who didn’t want it and it was the finest point you could get. I fell in love at first scratch and have had one ever since.

At the moment I have a staedtler 0.25 with a point .13 nib. Rotring are good too. The fine lines on good paper are wonderful. Just don’t let anyone try to write with it! I did that recently and what usually happens is they pick it up, scratch it back and forth a few times, give it back to saying ‘this doesn’t work’ and hey presto! it won’t! the nib will be bent.

I did the above drawing in a friends house in sligo, and it was good to get back to it. I have been making bags for so long I really miss painting. I will bring my oils back with me to mexico and get back to it. mmmm…. the smell of oil paint…..

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