Revving My Artistic Engine....!!!!

I think I'm more excited about New Year's arrival than I was about Christmas. I've spent the last month preparing for the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge that runs Jan 1-30. (It's free and it's not too late to sign up.)

To prepare, I collected, curated, photographed and chosen shells from my beachcombing to serve as the theme for this challenge. (About halfway through, I'm adding a bit of a twist, which I hope to be moving and well-received.)

I've even taken the last few days of 2015 to paint ahead. This will hopefully enable me to post each day without staying up to the wee hours to get THAT DAY'S painting done as I have other times that I've done the challenge. I have also chosen a few complex compositions that I want to tackle and I hope to paint a little on each of those on days that go quickly.

The collage at the top of this post shows nine of my sketches, captured from photos of my shells. I'm hoping to work a bit on losing edges in the darkness and using hard edges to make the shells pop or glow on the paper. I'm sure every day will not be a success, but I'm really happy with the first three that I've done.

(IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE FIRST THREE PAINTINGS FOR THIS CHALLENGE, THEY ARE IN MY NEWSLETTER, WHICH I PLAN TO SEND OUT TODAY. SIGN UP HERE.)

All original paintings will be available for purchase. Sizes and prices will vary. The smallest will be 4" X 6." The largest will be somewhere around 16" X 20." Once a painting sells, the "click here to purchase" link will be removed.

Once the challenge is complete, I will make reproductions available of my favorites and/or those that are most enthusiastically received. I will also do a notecard set.

My daily painting will be posted here on my blog, which will also be posted on my Facebook page. I also plan to post on Instagram. If you would like to follow other artists on this journey, you can do that on the Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days webpage.

Wish me luck! And, Happy New Year!

Preparing for the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge

I am making every effort to set myself up for success. I'm very excited and motivated right now and can't wait to start painting, but it will be much easier if I am duly prepared.

It was suggested that a theme be chosen for the paintings you intend to do. In January, when I did the challenge for the first time, my subject matter was all over the place. I didn't mind that, but perhaps it wouldn't hurt to rein it in a bit. I have decided to call my paintings,

"On My Walk..."

I suppose this could have a variety of connotations, including a religious one, but I'm using it in a more literal sense. In good weather, I like to walk. Sometimes, I walk for fitness. Sometimes, the fitness aspect is just a nice benefit of the activity itself. I usually walk by myself. I like to stop a LOT to take photos when I am walking, as evidenced by the number of times my Nike+ app says "pausing workout." I digress...

The subject matter of my paintings will be many flowers, plants, and a few animals that I have run across as I walk along. The majority of the photos are from walks here in Virginia, but a few from other places have been included. I won't share the photos at this point, but they have all been put into a folder:

(As you can see, the folder includes 33 images. My thought is that some of the images that I have chosen my fail to move me on the day that I get to them, so I will have a few extra to choose from.)

Each day, I will paint a 4" X 6" watercolor. I will post it here on my blog and add it to my website, where it will be available for purchase for $50, which includes tax and shipping. I have a surprise planned at the end of the month for one lucky person who follows my progress. I will reveal the details in a few weeks on Facebook and here on my blog. If you are too curious and would like to know the details sooner, be sure you have signed up for my monthly newsletter, because those loyal fans will find out how it is going to work before anyone else. If you are not yet signed up, do so before midnight on August 31st to receive the September issue! CLICK HERE

Wish me luck! I hope you have fun watching me paint!

From Photo to Watercolor: A Foray into Video & How I Did It

Facebook has made a lot of changes lately, one of which being that videos play while you scroll. This development makes video more eye-catching than a mere photo, so I thought I would try to make a video from my watercolor paintings.

Since I have a Macbook and all of my photos are already in iPhoto, I decided to see what my options were there. It was surprisingly easy to create a slideshow and then drag the photos into that slideshow. I was able to drag them into the desired order. It turned out that I could not get the title slide to look the way that I wanted it to, so I decided not to include the title via the iPhoto option. I went to Photoshop Elements and made a title slide and the other slides that have just words on them. You could also do this in a word processing program as long as you save it as an image file instead of a .doc file.

I imported these slides that I made into iPhoto and the slideshow. When you play the slideshow in iPhoto and hover over it, the settings button appears. I chose a song from my iTunes playlist and selected the option to have the length each slide is viewed to fit the length of the song. Then, I clicked "Export" on the bottom bar. (This process takes quite a while if you choose the larger files.) I uploaded the mobile version to my Facebook art page because many people were likely to view it on their phone. I uploaded the Medium version here.

I am sure that I will make more of these type of "videos" in the future. I think you should give it a try too!