Lightbox Phrenology

I couldn't resist this ceramic Phrenology Head. I went shopping for a chair to sit at my bar height counter yesterday and finally decided on one. It's awesome to finally have a seat. While I was there I found the head. ;) It's about 10" tall and is right at home in my art studio.

I used my light box again to take these shots. The first one I added a faux tin tile in the background and the next couple are with the canvas that my light-box is draped in.

And in this final shot I pulled back so you can see my set up. For those that may not have seen my previous post about this, it's a wing chair with rigid plastic walls cut to fit and draped with canvas. Really simple but works great.

More JP's

"Dynamic Man"

More portrait practice done with watercolours.

These next images are journal pages in my small Moleskine.

Background is masking tape with acrylic paint and my photo of Buddha edited in Photoshop.

Horse sketched with a Pentel Brush Pen and tinted with Pan Pastels.

New fun printed tape framing "Beth" mounted on graph paper. I love walnut ink it makes everything look 100 years old.

Sense of sight, sense of smell. Wax pocket holding essential oils for the Brow Chakra. Patchouli, Myrrh and Frankincense. Also more tape. :)

Painting with string, Pan pastel, acrylics, Stencil, tape cut out hands, flower and fairy to create a pop out effect.

More string painting and Pan pastels.

Found this wee Oak branch on my driveway after a stormy night covered in beautiful Lichens and fungus. This is a close up with my macro lens and the section of branch is about 2 inches long. I took all these shots in my new light box. I will have to take a picture of the light box to show you my set up.

We have snow in Victoria! Not much thank goodness and it doesn't happen too often here. It is supposed to get even colder going down to -8 C. Eeek! I may not be riding my bike to work on Monday. :(

Red Green Journals

"Flashdance"

I picked up some new journals yesterday and tried 2 of them out last night. The two I tried are called Hand Books and have drawing paper pages but they take wet media not too bad. "Flashdance" is done in watercolours with no preliminary pencil sketch. I am quite happy with it. The nice thing about stitched books is you can easily painted over the gutter.

"Requiem for a V"

This ephemera (ballet image) is from the local newspaper of a ballet called "Requiem for a Vampire" the backbground is done with acrylics and I have the see thru pocket holding an face on the right that I did on my iPad.

Here is the two new journals sporting some new embellishments. They have nice fabric covers with earthy colours. So far I am pretty impressed.

Lightbox and more Faces

"Martin" (when open 11 x 8")

Ingredients: Acrylic paint, masking tape eyebrows, gel pen, sequence waste.

Working intuitively with paint from a rough sketch.

These are all journal pages from different size journals taken in my studio in my newly created lightbox. I made it out of things I already had. I used a wing chair some rigid plastic board, medium weight canvas and my standing lamp with the natural spectrum bulb. I like that you can see the texture of the canvas in the background. I took me less than an hour to set it up and take these first 3 pictures. I am very pleased how natural the lighting is in these shots.

"Strut" (open is 18 x 11")

Ingredients: Acrylic paint, wine label, Pan Pastels, oil pastel, rake shaped palette knife, sand paper, decorative paper,

"LUV" (Moleskine open 7 x 5 1/2)

Ingredients: Letters used as mask, decorative tape, acrylic paint, Pentel color brush (red), sketched with Pentel Brush Pen, Pan Pastels, Dragonfly punch

My old scanner doesn't work with my new Mac so I need to get a new one sometime. But now at least I can take pictures of my art even in the dark with nice lighting. Hopefully this will help me get more regular posts up on my blog. :)

My Back Yard

This first one is natural

This one is edited in iPhoto

The rest in Photoshop. This is a radial blur

Trying for a painterly look

Poster Edge filter

It was a dull day last weekend when I took this shot of my horse Gizelle at the back of the barn from the field. I have had my horses in this barn since 1975. Lots of great memories. :)