Playing with photoshop again

The other day, I opened a few photos of mine, then played around with them in photoshop, layering them with different textures to create the images you now see below. If you'd like to see more detail on a photo, right click & open in another tab or window. That should enlarge them for easier viewing.

Signed,
Jana, texture addict....

Painting on a cloudy day

About 2 weeks ago we painted at Takena Landing, on the west side of Albany, near the 2 bridges that cross the Willamette river. I was lucky to find a location that ended up under one of the bridges - lucky, because of the threat of rain. I don't think it actually rained while I was painting, but we ended up cutting our lunch - critique - time short when fat drops began to fall!

Here's the view I painted:


I was attracted by that yellow tree across the river. When the sun came out for a minute, the tree blazed and was reflected in the river slightly.

Here's the scene with my easel & painting close to finished:



And here's just the painting:


It's pastel on canvas - a fun 4"x12" size I've also painted a few horizontal paintings with. Almost finished...

Art Show and Reception

If you're able, it would be great to see you tonight at the reception. If you can't come tonight, please stop by sometime this month to see the show---there are a lot of great paintings, including 2 of mine!

Analogue

This drawing is my entry into a contest Michael Nobbs is holding over on his blog. You too can enter if you'd like! I enjoyed the challenge of thinking of something analog to draw---that we had around our house. Once I saw our electric coffee grinder, I knew just what to do! Thanks Michael for the drawing nudge! I used a pretty fat ink brush pen to do most of the drawing, then pulled out a thin Pigma Micron to add a bit of shading.

By the way, come visit my etsy shop!

Macro photos from Henna day

While waiting for the henna artist (see post before this one) to arrive, I played around with the close-up setting on my little olympus camera again. This little point and shoot is truly a little macro wonder! See for yourself:








If anyone knows what this little piece is above, please let me know... it puzzles me!

Fabulous Photo Session

Last Friday I was invited to photograph a friend getting her back henna tattooed. Henna is used for temporary tattoos and is applied in a paste form. Once the paste dries and after it's been on for several hours it is scraped off and the tattoo will appear brownish red. Here are some of the photos showing the process.




Once the henna paste has been drawn on, and after it's dry, a mix of lemon juice and sugar water is dabbed on with a cotton ball. This helps keep the paste on the skin longer so the henna will be better absorbed.



Of course, now I want to get some henna and play too!

Latest painting experiment & Illustration Friday: Impatience

Well, after painting on smoothly primed canvas with pastel for a while now, I decided to see how this smooth canvas would work with watercolor. I put one of our homegrown tomatoes on my paint rag in my studio to draw up & paint a "quick" study. Of course I forgot that working in watercolor (for me anyway) is anything but quick! Ha! Even though the canvas was a small 4"x4" it still took me a couple of days to finish this little gem. The joys of waiting for watercolor to dry! Since I have been working with dry, soft pastels I only have to wait for something to dry when I've covered the surface completely with pastel---then I spray with my diluted PVA size & sit back to evaluate where the painting is going while it dries. When I work in watercolor I have to wait for different areas next to one another to dry before proceeding if I don't want the color to bleed into a still wet spot. When working as small as I was, that seemed to occur a lot! The good thing is it gave me a chance to paint another pastel while this one dried. I'll share it later---since I'm waiting for the acrylic painted "frame" to dry. Actually in the time it took to paint this little watercolor, I started & am almost finished with a 2nd pastel.

This painting also fits this week's Illustration Friday theme: Impatience. You see, when I'm growing tomatoes, I have very little patience waiting for them to get all the way red---I often pick them while still on the very orange side of red (ripe). The nice benefit of this though is that if I want to paint one of my tomatoes, I don't have to worry about being real speedy---they can slowly ripen while I paint!

Here's the watercolor painting, and a couple of the side views to show how the painting extends around all 4 edges of the gallery wrapped canvas. I think I'll call this one "Homegrown", however since I feel a series coming on, it might change to "Homegrown 1".




I've been attracted to the texture of watercolor lately, how the colors change & mix when water is added, or subtracted, or how when the paint is allowed to drip or bloom it creates new color shapes & values. Something I encouraged with this little painting! It's been sprayed with an acrylic uv matte clear finish to protect the surface - which made me a bit nervous since I wasn't sure if the painting would change once sprayed. Happily, it changed not a whit! Yay!

Workshop with Ned Mueller

It has been a busy couple of weeks and things don't seem to be slowing down much---yet! In July, I enjoyed a 3 day workshop with artist Ned Mueller, our instructor. Each day he gave a painting demonstration, then set us off to paint 'til 3:00 critique time. Luckily for us, it was the week before we had the over 100º temps! Here are some photos of Ned in action the first day along with my drawn canvas & then my almost finished pastel painting.



I had just started painting the sky when I remembered I wanted a photo of the drawing.


I need to study the painting and figure out what still bugs me! What do you think?

Painting plein aire

A couple of weeks ago our local plein aire group went to a private home to paint for the morning. It had some amazing garden areas that were just fun to discover! Here are some of my favorite photos from this outing, along with what I chose to paint & the preliminary drawing. The choice of what & where to paint was dictated by the amount of shade available to sit in since it was predicted to be a very hot day. You can right click on any photo & open it in a new window or tab to view it larger if you'd like.

This was the driveway gate:


Just inside the gate was this lovely garden!


I'm always drawn to Canna Lilies...



Notice---shady location!


I'll share a photo of the completed painting as soon as I finish.

OCF Sign Painting crew

Last weekend we enjoyed an insiders view of the Oregon Country Fair as part of the Sign Painting crew. The preparation that goes into this 3 day weekend event is phenomenal! We were just 3 volunteers out of hundreds, working behind the scenes to create this unique festival. We camped for 2 days and were fed some amazing meals while we helped out---there were probably over 300 people just at Saturday's dinner---and the preparation has been going on all spring, & even earlier! A lot of the property is underwater during the winter months, but once the water recedes the work begins to clean up, prune back & repair the fair area and the fields & forests encompassing the acreage. We stayed near the "Cow Palace" which is sign painting headquarters and worked with 3 other painters and one supervisor. Here are some of my favorite pics from last weekend---if you right click on a photo, you can open it larger in another tab or window if you'd like to see it closer.

This was a floral arrangement that caught my eye at the area we had our meals. Love that spiral!

As we were leaving the meal area after breakfast our first morning there, this lovely lady was perched all by herself on this post near the entrance. Eliza was standing nearby, waiting for us, totally unaware of the presence of this beautiful bird. As I walked up I asked Eliza who her friend was, & at that moment she noticed the bird with a startled jolt of surprise!

Working at the Cow Palace:

New booth "address" signs we painted in preparation for new painted numbers. A fairly simple job I volunteered to help with.


Once the backgrounds were dry 3 of us went to work on the list of booth numbers---now that was a challenge! I'm not a letterer (or numberer either!) so my first attempts were pretty lame. The last two I really liked though! Initially I was just lightly penciling in the placement of the numbers with a stabilo pencil then hoping I'd be able to use the paint & brush to make the number "pretty", like one using a calligraphy pen would do. Nope, no luck! After a few poor examples I then started drawing the whole number in with the stabilo pencil which turned out some way better finished pieces!! Amazing how a bit more planning = success! Eliza jumped in to paint a few numbers too.

We took a walk through the abandoned fair grounds where the skeletons of booths were overgrown & waiting to be cleared & cleaned up. After the fair is over the booth owners remove boards that might prevent rain & sunlight from reaching the ground to enable the area to continue to grow during the off season. It's interesting to see everything as a shell of sorts, although everything is still pretty recognizable and artsy!



This little fella was munching a mushroom near where we were painting:

Brad & Eliza re-painting one of the fair signs---

Some of the signs all ready to go, painted by crews earlier this year.


The meal area, and one of the "little" salad bowls!

Meanwhile, back at Cow Palace...

Finishing up a couple of my favorite numbers...

The sign crew for this particular weekend:

The Oregon Country Fair is July 10th, 11th, & 12th, just 13 miles west of Eugene.