Alice in Wonderland

A few years back when I was working as a Graphic Designer in Colorado, our department took a trip to Pier 1 Imports to find items to decorate our drab cubicles. I came back with this fantastically fun flower vase which reminds me of Alice in Wonderland and is still one of my favorite things. I snapped this photo when I was washing it in the sink Monday.

Cleaning Day—Alice in Wonderland Vase

Here are some other photos which I've taken recently. I do particularly love capturing cardinals, males in particular with their vibrant red coloring.

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White Horse WIP

The last of the under-paintings which I started this week is this white horse. I had hoped to get another horse started as well but I have company coming and I've run out of time. Here's a very poor photo taken in low-light with my phone.

I planted some lettuce in containers on the deck a few weeks back and something kept digging in the pots. I finally decided to move them up to the area directly outside the french doors in the family room where I was hoping the dogs would keep the animals at bay. Well...not so much...

Brave little guy getting a drink with a foot in one of the pots of lettuce sprouts.
The dogs were completely unaware on the other side of the window. Hmmmm...

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Hawk WIP

Yesterday morning while i was peacefully eating my breakfast and getting ready to start my day there was a big BOOM and the street went dark! With the computer out and no way to work I had a cleaning day! All of the normal cleaning was done so it was time for the nooks and crannies, those things you don't always do like baseboards, windows, etc. I made a list and started marking things off, at the bottom of my list, I had "PAINT"!

Here are some photos of the first two stages of a hawk I'm painting. A couple weeks ago I stumbled across a photo I'd taken of this guy and knew I just had to paint him! I had hoped to work on him some more yesterday but as luck would have it the power came back on right as I was about to head for the easel.

Hawk WIP—Sketch

Hawk WIP—Underpainting

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Baby Girl Underpainting

Here is the first of a few under-paintings which I did over the past few days and are drying right now.

This sweet little girl is calling me, I can't wait for the underpainting to dry so I can work on her some more! In the meantime I have three more masonite panels to gesso so I can get my other ideas sketched out and started.

I'm planning on going to Dick Blick to pick up some clay later this week. I have had the urge to dig my hands into clay lately and I have a few ideas I'd like to try out! I wasn't sure about it at first as I don't have, or know anyone else who does have, a kiln. I thought about going the Sculpey route but clay is so much less expensive that it just doesn't make sense to get Sculpey unless I was only doing one or two small items. It turns out that there are places around which allow you to rent a shelf of a kiln so that's what I'm going to do! Crossing my fingers that I can remember enough about clay from high school and college that my items don't explode!

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Exciting Stuff!

This month's Alpha Arts Guild meeting was last night and I learned a lot! Phil Garrett came to speak to us, he is one of Golden's working artists. Phil spoke about the variety of Golden products and what you can do with them and I was amazed! I didn't have any the number of the products they make and the variety of fun things you can do with them. I used to use acrylics but I've been painting primarily with oils for the past several years, after last night I am tempted to try acrylics again!

Here are some of things which I heard about last night!

• A virtual paint mixer! Golden has this available on their web site! 
• Molding paste. What can I say? He past a pile of it around to play with and it just made me smile! 

Molding Paste

• Digital Grounds! You can coat a surface with this and so long as it's thin enough to run through an inkjet printer you can print right on a wide variety of things including aluminum foil and acrylic skins.
• Acrylic or gel skins! By painting on surfaces which the paint wont adhere to you can create skins which will peel up once dry. Once they are peeled off the surface they were painted on you can print on them using digital grounds, use them in paintings, as window decals, for a surface to transfer onto, etc. Incredible!

Acrylic/Gel Skins

• My personal favorite discovery of last night was when he pulled out the Princeton Catalyst Blades and Wedges! My heart skipped a beat! I must get some of these! I may never use a brush or palette knife again!

Princeton Catalyst Blade

Princeton Catalyst Wedge

On a different note, my seasonal painting is beginning. Once spring hits I tend to put my paint brushes down and get outside. This summer I ran my first 5k (YAY!) and did three organized bike rides a 20 mile, 23 mile, and 43 mile ride. This last one (the 43 mile) was the most challenging and the most rewarding as it was the Young Survival Coalition's (YSC) Tour de Pink Atlanta, a ride for breast cancer. Now that the rides are over and the temperature has dropped I find myself itching to paint. I have one painting on the easel and one board gessoed and sketched out, and two blank gessoed boards with ideas ready and waiting to go! I'm hoping to have something to show here in the next week or two.

YSC Mini Cooper - some very lucky person won this!

Team Bendt Design Polo Shirts for the Tour de Pink!
Bendt Design is my graphic design business, I had these perfectly purple shirts done up for the ride!

I've also added another digital illustration to my etsy shop! Well, it's the same one as in my last post accept with a black cat. I'm also hoping to have more of those up soon!

Black Cat
5x5 print in 8x8 frame
Click here for the Etsy listing

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Cat Illustration

Recently I've been sketching some cute animal characters. I decided to scan them in and turn them into digital illustrations. Here is the first one of a sweet white cat with a pink flower and a colorful butterfly.

I'm excited to have added a print of this little guy to my shop over on etsy!

White Cat
5x5 print in 8x8 frame
https://www.etsy.com/listing/111321908/white-cat-with-flower-and-butterfly-5x5

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Praying Mantis

'Praying Mantis'. Copyright 2012 Darlene Twitchell

Sadly, though it's harder to tell sometimes here in Georgia, the summer appears to be about over. The above photo is my favorite shot from the last few months. This little guy was watching me do yard work one steamy hot day. I'm guessing he was praying that I'd get him a teensy glass of lemonade.



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Creativity, Life Would be So Boring Without it!

A friend of mine posted this video this morning on facebook. The video is of Ken Robinson speaking about creativity and the need for it. I found the video quite entertaining, well worth watching!




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The Dog Park

We have a fantastic dog park here in town! We had two great danes visiting us this weekend so we took them to play. I had a lot of fun watching the dogs and taking photos of them running around, splashing in the water.

I absolutely fell head over heels for this puppy!

What I've been up to these days...

365 Photo Project

I posted a while back about getting a new camera for taking shots for photo reference, of family events, for fun, etc. I've been working at taking better photos with my camera because I want to, it's fun, and it gives me another skill and we can all use those, especially in these hard economic times right? In order to help me focus on that I decided to commit to doing a project 365 for photography. I started back in November and have been pretty good (until the last couple weeks anyway). I've added some of the photos to my etsy shop and a couple of them have even been put into treasury lists, yay!

Here are a few of my favorites:

Ominous Crow
I have learned a lot about crows over the past year or so. The more I learn, the more I respect them. Great and intelligent animals!

I have grown to LOVE squirrels. Due in no small part to this little guy who visits me frequently. (S)he hangs out on the tree outside my office window.

Isn't he the cutest!?

I both want to hug this guy and run away at the same time. He looks HUNGRY!!!
Taken at Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain GA. I love this place!

Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain GA

The Fungi Convention at Wills Park

This guy flew straight at me the moment I got my camera ready!

The next four images are some of my attempts at HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. I've been seeing HDR images around and have fallen in love with them. Being a graphic designer/illustrator, as well as a fine artist, HDR seems to be a natural direction for me. I love the illustrative quality of HDR photos with their saturated color and wide range of value. I'm having fun learning about it am trying to get better at it. I've has some horrible results but am pretty happy with how the ones below turned out.

Mushrooms

Horse Stables at Wills Park Equestrian Center

Creek at Wills Park

My Riley. It's quite challenging, I've found, to do living beings in HDR. To get the full value range, you take 3 shots (some people take more) then merge the photos together. If the subject moves the HDR comes out blurry. This is the reason for the not-so-ideal expression I captured here, it was the only pose he was still in for all three shots.

Sophie

The portrait of Sophie has gone home! The painting finally dried enough to scan and package up to send off.

Clubs/Networking

A few years back I was looking for an artist group where people would get together to paint and socialize. It happened that one was starting up at about the same time I was looking so I checked it out. It turned out that the group was more about how artists could sell their work, or at least that was my interpretation at the time. While that is a fantastic thing to get together and help each other with, I just wasn't "there" at that point. My goals have changed a lot over the years so I recently decided to give the group another try and I now think it's going to be a perfect fit. Also, they were talking about adding some group events such as plein air painting around town, etc. which sounds incredibly exciting to me! I plan on joining and I look forward to being a part of this group's future.




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