Gregory was hired by the college to work with their computers and security system. It will count toward his internship. The position will pay between $7 and $8. Pretty good for a first job.

I have been babysitting since December and I think I may finally be getting used to the schedule. He is dropped off at 3am, I get him to school at 7:45 am, and pick him up in the afternoon, then he gets picked up at about 5:30pm. I was getting pretty tired there for a while until my body got used to the sleep disruption. Now I feel like I am up to my normal energy level again. Zachary has enjoyed having his good friend here each day.

Tim has had a few bouts with virus so he is having to play catch up a bit at the moment. But, he is abouty there now.

Melody has continued to enjoy making photos and movies with her new camera. She put her movies in an online competition. She didn't win, but did surprisingly well considering how new she is to movie making.

The family gave me a software program called Paintshop Pro 8 for my birthday last week. They know how much I love computers and painting and this mixes both together. Yesterday I played around with using it to create a portrait. It also comes with an animation program which lets you make avi or gif animations. I saved pictures of the digital painting at different stages and used these to make an animation of how it developed. Here is the animation and portrait. I hope it plays like I expect it too. :0) It will play through once. If you want to see it again, just refresh the page to restart it.

Here is the current progress on Zachary's portrait.

The first WIP (Work In Progress) was a photo; this one is a scan. The photo is weaker in color than the original and this one is a bit dark in the shadows and a bit harsh in the skin tones. We have had a scanner change in just the last few days (printer portion of our last scanner/printer died) and I am trying to learn the new software. I got so lost in it that I ended up using Melody's computer to access our old scanner to do this one. LOL. I will dig in tomorrow and try to get that new software mastered at least well enough to use it for a quick WIP scan.

For those who are intrigued with watercolor technique, the painting is done by individual layers (washes) of color straight from the tube with lots of water added to dilute it. The colors are mixed optically on the paper as opposed to in the pan. My favorite colors for fleshtones are:

reds -

** cool red: alizarin crimson. A lovely color that makes excellent washes. Use this where skintones look pinkish or purplish

** warm red: cadmium red. You have to be careful with the cadmiums because they are sedimentary in nature. The slight graininess of their textures will build up with many glazes and reduce the amount of light that bounces back off of the paper surface from under the paint. In other words - go too heavy and your painting will lose its luminosity. Use this where the skin tones lean to the true reds.

 

Shadow colors:

For the shadows of the face, I usually use glazes of ultramarine blue that is very diluted with water. You can also use burnt umber is the shadows seem to be a warmer than blue. These glazes are in addition to layers identical to the mid-tones of the face.

 

This particular painting - limitted use:

I don't generally use cadmium orange much because it is sedimentary, but I did use it some in this painting because the midtones on the side away from the sun is filled with a very warm reflected light that the cad orange was terrific in capturing. Typically I would have used Winsor yellow and alizarin crimson to get a very nice mid-saturation orange. I also used some burnt sienna. I love the warm, rich brown of burnt sienna.

 

The blue jean overalls:

The painting is at the phase where I am using just pure color glazes - Winsor blue alone. The scan shows a very intense blue at the moment. I will continue adding glazes of Winsor blue until the value is nearly there, then work to desaturate the intensity of the blue a bit by bringing in a few glazes of a compliment to blue such as burnt sienna. Dark shadows will need the addition of ultramarine blue and burnt umber becuase Winsor doesn't have a deep enough value range. I plan on bringing in a few subtle hints of purple in among the blue just to give the material a tad more 'interestingness'. The effect may not show up in a photo or scan, but will be visible when looked at directly.

 

I will post more soon on this painting and on the pencil that I am working on.

I had to give up my art table again for a few days because there was no better place for the Christmas tree than the foyer, but it is back in place again. For my birthday John and the kids gave me Prismacolor pencils, more RAM for my PC, and Paintshop Pro software. We were all surprised to discover that all the RAM I had before was 128MB. Now I have 640MB. Now my PC doesn't get so bogged down. That is good because Paintshop Pro really consumes system resources, but I can sure see that it will be a terrific tool for homeschool, art, and family photography.

Here are the two portrait projects I have going at the moment.

I am continuing to work on Zachary's portrait. This is the one I started 3 years ago before my art table got tied up with computer duty. Now I am able to get back to work on it. Currently it is about 1/2 of the way done with tons yet to go on the overalls and a good bit more to go on the face and hair. This picture doesn't show the whole painting. It is a watercolor.

I am also working on Kris Price's (raffle winner) pencil portrait of her two kiddos. Here is a picture of the progress so far. I am almost out of the softest, darkest pencil grades. I will need to get an order in for more before this one is finished or I will run out.

  Click to see it better.

I am modifying the background to make it seem like a heavier snowfall and getting rid of the distraction of the house in the background. I am also opening her daughter's eyes a bit. I tested out the modifications with a rough plan using a photo editing software. Here is the plan.

  Click on the thumbnail to see it larger.

Here is the original reference that Kris sent me:

Kim's (kentuckyjourney) portrait is finished. I have posted three of the progress scans, so you can see how it looked as it progressed.

Kim, I will be sending you a You Send It link to a high resolution download of your portrait. The high resolution should allow you to get a pretty good quality printout from your printer or even a commercial enlargement using your favorite photo processing service. Fell free to print as many as you would like for yourself or as gifts for family. The original pencil drawing is available if you wish to have it at any point in time. :0)

Kris Price is the winner of the next portrait. I will be posting in-progress pictures soon.

Kim (kentuckyjourney) won the first portrait raffle. Here are a few scans showing the portrait in progress. I should be able to finish it by tomorrow. That means I will be drawing another name for a portrait with the possibility that a second one might be finished before Christmas. If you haven't already entered, send in your photo by Monday morning (next raffle drawing date).

If anyone knows how I can post the in-progress pictures as a java script slide show, let me know. I think a slideshow progression would be so cool. :0)

Yet to go: Developing the grass area and some tweaking of the intermediate and dark values especially in the face. I hope to post the finished portrait tomorrow.

I was browsing through Flickr and came across an excellent pencil portrait artist that holds a raffle every two weeks to give away a free pencil portrait of a jpeg you submit. It will be a printable scan of the portrait so you can print it out on your home computer. I guess if you liked it really well, you could buy the original pencil and have it shipped to you.

What a neat idea! I have been thinking about how badly I need the drawing practice after being away from drawing and painting for most of the last 3 or 4 years. Not to mention, those 12 foot tall foyer walls are desperately empty. My original portrait market has bound to have gone cold by now as most of the orders I took before dropping commissions four years ago were from Greenville, SC. That is 780 miles away - we moved from SC to Arkansas in 1997. I doubt that I am going to be doing that kind of traveling any time soon. LOL. So, I am going to try raffles too.

I am going to begin with one free portrait each month and send a printable scan just like this artists is doing. If I find that I can do more than one a month I willl draw a name again. The original can be purchased for $40 (unframed) if you would like. For those that buy an original, that should cover my materials, shipping, and give me a wee bit of money to invest back in to getting my stock of paper, paints, framing, and other assundry tools back up again. For those that don't buy the original, it will give me some art to fill up all the empty space on the foyer wall. :0) How does the idea sound?

Enter both raffles. You have an even better chance of getting a free portrait. Just send a jpeg of the photo you would like to have done as an entry. For me, send it to armoorefam@centurytel.net and then enter at http://www.idraw4you.com/freedraw.htm. The rules at http://www.idraw4you.com/freedraw.htm apply here as well - if I cannot draw from the reference sent, it cannot go into the raffle: The photo must be yours or you have permission to use it, no celebrities, the jpeg must be clear enough that I can see it well enough to draw it. I don't mind if you send multiple submissions. Send them in separate e-mails if the total is over 3 or 4 mb.

I am really looking forward to doing these. :0) Oh, I guess there may be some of you who haven't seen any of my artwork. Here are a few thumbnails. Just click them to see a larger image.