Finished the Modigliani's lady

And here she is....
As close a replica as I can do. The challenge for me is to do a similar painting, since I am so bad at following instructions, or replicate styles.

To see past WIP posts click HERE and HERE

tip: Do you want to watermark your photos? Download the awesome program picture shark! I was missing it so bad when I lost all my computer stuff, now I have it back ♥

When I finish this challenge I will be having a giveaway so keep an eye open :o)

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More of my 3rd painting

It took me a while to come close to the original colors for this Modigliani painting. At the end I decided to make my own adjustments, because i want the hair to pop more. You will see that part later when I actually paint it.
So far I have this and I'm happy the way it's turning out so far. To see the post and the original see HERE

I am VERY tempted to "personalize" all these paintings of the challenge, which would involve a happy messy over-paint in some areas, add texture and make them my style....
OR
Perhaps have a giveaway for the "almost 500" followers...with one painting for the gift??
Maybe  BOTH:
Decorate, over-paint/texture a little and have the giveaway??
Let me know what you think!
Thanks for visiting and happy PPF

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Modigliani number 3

I finally was able to work in my Mo last night, and just now was able to scan it. This is just part of it, the canvas is larger than my scanner but you get the idea. With any luck I will be painting tonight.
I spent all day running around town and sometimes there's just not enough hours in the day, I'm sure you feel the same.

See you soon!
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Knock on wood!

For someone that hates software updates, and site updates, constant changes and updates, etc... This past weeks have been dramatic, frustrating "updatey" and plain annoying.
The hard drive died as you know (after all I have only said it like 50 times ha!), my husband rescued it. The new thing died. agh! He saved all my info and documents. Bought a Mac. I got totally lost, to the hilarious point where I couldn't even find the internet, or even turn it off. I can laugh about it today.

Yes, the Mac is a beautiful thing, I saw the demos and a nice display at the store. I know it is more for artsy stuff that anything else. It's just not for me at this time.
I didn't even go to the photo and video programs, for being so lost into the system. Made me feel like a cave woman! And I ended up turning my mind and efforts to cleaning the place... do you know what THAT does to the self esteem?? \( ಠ益ಠ)/ (furious face)


Also, I was not aware of being such a "mouse rubber" but with that slick button-less  Mac mouse all the pages kept shifting, changing, flipping... just because I can't get my fingers still. I learned that about myself....  Not to mention I hold it in a funny sideways angle, and that mouse reacts like the touch screens... (my up-and-down is its side-to-side motion!) Just imagine all the screens flipping and pirouetting on you. That was me LOL

So, here I am again in a pc. :o)

Unfortunately my Photo Editor doesn't want to open the pictures from the disc in Windows 7, but still works -after HOURS of poor DH working on it- if I upload them from another place.
I'm still at the "reload all the junk" stage, (and update more stuff) but I am on the path to less stress. Or at least stress about something else (just not politics, please!)

For a good while I will be busy with this project, like a cat with a toilette paper. lol

So, knock on wood and I will be back on track with the Modigliani challenge, hopefully tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by! ♥

Well I knew, but....

Every monitor, every browser, will show you a different version of a website or blog page.
Your own screen resolution will make things different for you. Not to mention the color of images.
So after carefully arranging my blog this way and that, I knew that it looked different in the laptop than my regular pc. So i tried to do something that would fit the general audience, or at least something in between.

Well, after all the intense drama of losing my dear hard drive (who would've known that I would grow so attached to a little metal box!) we have new guts, otherwise known as OS. aka "now I'm a Mac user"
But guess what? I am totally lost. Worse than in the laptop.
Yes I am whining, hear me across the country, and well into Tierra del Fuego and echoing in New Zealand.

I know everyone loves Macs. And believe me, I like to try new things.... but this was unexpected, uncalled for and not even in my list of "things I want to do for my art".
Just now I finally learned how to make the font larger so I can see what I'm doing. Changing the resolution was not the answer, I tried.
And that brings me to the topic of this post (after I drove you nuts complaining): My blog looks so different! I am using the same monitor, but the blog is all different.

I will change it so it will be very simple and closer to what I mean, not whatever the browsers happen to show.
But that will be after I finish getting applications and programs. So far I can't see a bunch of stuff due to that, even if we were told it had it, even by the browser freshly downloaded.

Thanks for visiting. I will turn off the sad background violin music now :o)

Hopefully by the time I come to post again i will have pictures here to show you. I will be painting, see you soon!

Second Mo painting

My hard drive is gone. A new one was installed which was not compatible with my old programs so.... I am still not able to do my usual thing and at this point DH wants to get a Mac. I am thinking, if I'm going to be lost in a new machine, may as well be all together a different OS and all. But it is so stressing!
Anyway, besides that calamity, I have a painting to show. (you have to know that to do this I have to email the images to myself, because the apps don't want to grab my disc... so much fun... not!)

Here is the finished piece . I know the photo is kind of lousy, the backround is looking darker that what it is?? But I took like 300 zillion pics and this was the best :oP Please ignore the flash...

This is the Modigliany:
Just to discover the colors took me a few days, and still have them only "close" to the original. I think the eyes are very pretty much the same... the rest is kind of near by.

Here's the wip: 

And I sent 2 pieces to Norway, for the second twitter art exhibit! I will write more about it in the next post.

I hope your week is going much better than mine ♥ and happy PPF

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Music and useful links

I love music! Sometimes I find one song that captures my attention for weeks and this is one of them:



While you listen to Kimbra, I also wanted to talk about what seems to be a constant interest in creative people: The copyrights and the expiration dates. On art, not on milk :oP
If you like to use vintage ephemera, or reproduce the old masters, you will be happy to read than anything made before January 1923 is public domain (unless a legal right is still being updated and kept current), but basically you are free to use the image.
In the case of the challenge I'm currently working on, Modigliani, his work is borderline that time. That means you won't be braking any law if you paint and sell your work even if you made it so close to the original that is hard to tell which is which ;o)
I am far from that case hehehe but nevertheless being the year of creation 1917 or so... I could list it with no problem. Read more about it :

http://inventors.about.com/od/copyrights/a/expiration.htm
Also here: http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/copyright-expiration.html
And a bit more HERE about the use of the copyright sign.

I am mentioning it, because of some comments discussed previously and that link was not quite explanatory. These are a bit more clear.

There are some artist that do not like the copyright, and feel ok to have their work used or copied by others. (Just saw a video in youtube about it)
It has happened to me 3 times through the years and I did not like it. First I felt puzzled, then I felt cranky. They didn't even take the time to copy the painting by painting it but simply took the image and used it with no credit. (Well, one gave semi-credit but never asked to use it; it was an accident I bumped into it)

That's it for now. I am listing in my Etsy shop today so I better get to it!
I will be back with more art tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by ♥

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Working on it

I have another Modigliani painting, but I need a good picture of it. The lighting is horrible at the moment, and the painting is too big for my scanner, ugh! :o)
But, I do have another painting to show you....
Remember the last WIP I posted for the 29 faces challenge? See it HERE It turned into a boy:

Frankly, it surprised me, because I was expecting a girl ;oD I guess with enough painting it could still happen, but the eyes and the lack of hair told me to stop there. It just needed a strong color and after trying a few, the only one that convinced me was this Cadmium red:

He has very thoughtful eyes, my daughter said he's a bit creepy :oP
The Frida in the chair is done too, and the one with the gourd as well. I need to scan and also list in my Etsy shop

First Mo painting WIP

My computer's hard drive broke. Again! :o( Something was wrong with it, and now I am working in a very different and weird set of programs. So I have not been able to use, crop and upload pictures my normal way. So stressing! But anyway, I have been painting and here's the first of my four "it's all about Mo" challenge. First the WIP when I had only painted part of it:

And this other picture is missing just a few touches and the last protective coat. I made it as close as possible, just to see if I could. It was very difficult! I discovered so many other hidden colors that I didn't notice the first time, and I learned that his brush strokes are very rough and short. His canvas had a very rough feeling, so i added a bit of texture to my paper. Yes, I had the great idea to work on paper, let me tell you, it is the pits to add texture to it :oP
14 x 17 vellum bristol

Hopefully I can go back to my computer soon, I miss my little programs and applications like my old shoes. Thanks for visiting!
PS Congrats to PPF in their first year!!!!! ♥
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Planned vs Unplanned

As I select the Modigliani paintings I want to work on, I am planning and prepping. That made me think of his unplanned style. I am sure there was a sketch under the layers of painting, (Remember I posted a picture of one of his pencil drawings?) but every brush stroke feels very free and accidentally unplanned.
That is very hard to reproduce. And I have never been good at reproducing faithfully any art. I'm not great at following instructions either but that's another story ;o)

When I go totally without a plan in a painting, it is a scary path for me. It is less so than years ago, when I would freeze in front of a canvas, but now I know I can keep going at it till I like it, and if nothing else it can be a discovery of things I don't like hehehe
But at the same time, I do not like to have every aspect, shape and color totally planned because then I know I irremediably will obsess into details, and I have been trying to have a loose brush stroke and step away from realism. At least total realism.

Interesting link about copyright expiration HERE

This are the paintings I will be working on:

 
UPDATE: you can post a copy of your Modigliani post link in the button (top right) called "Modigliani". I will leave that button/tab for the challenge.
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WIP angel and another challenge!

Here's the finished little angel. I was going to make it like my little statue, looking like rough stone, but I didn't like it, so I gave it more human skin tones. I love the background color! It's fluid acrylic and medium, so it is really slippery and translucent. The scanner can't quite capture the look of it.

This month, I will be working on Modigliany.  
It's All About Mo  Not "me", mo!

Want to play with me? Here's the plan:
*You will select 4 paintings of Modigliany.  See some HERE It doesn't matter that 15 people do the same, and only one does another. Each person picks the four they like best.
*You will work each week in ONE painting, so you have 7 days to sketch, layer, paint, repaint... and finish.
*Based on his work, with your twist. Or if you want to go as close as you can, that's fine too.
*Post at the end of the week, which by now will be less than 7 days, but let's say every weekend. Easy piece lemon peasy.

Modigliani has beautiful complicated but simple backgrounds. Many of his portraits have long necks and show eyes with no definition of iris and ball.... so frustrating for an obsessive eye-person like me, but so mysterious!

No one is asking for perfection... just have fun and discover something new in you. Make it yours, the challenge is to enjoy it. 
UPDATE It is perfectly fine to copy the masters as an exercise, to improve or technique or to practice. But It is not ok to copy any image to sell, that is infringement of copyright as we all know, but I wanted to  take note here :o)

Come grab the challenge button if you want it, in the side of the blog. (Copy text, paste in a html/java gadget)
Let's see where our brushes take us!