3D resin art

I've just discovered Riusuke Fukahori's 3D resin goldfish paintings. They're AMAZING!
Apart from the inspired and laborious technique involved in creating a piece, what I love the most is his delicacy of touch when creating these artworks. I can see these being copied by mass market suppliers, but I don't think they will be able to capture Fukahori's artistic interpretation of the subject.
These are my favourites;

Photos courtesy Joshua Liner Gallery

Joshua Liner Gallery web site

Free 2014 Calendars

I made these calendars earlier using a couple of paintings I did in the NPtR App on Dave's ipad mini. It's running the most up to date version which has taken me a bit of getting used to with it's new menu layout, but with the extra features it provides is well worth it. My only problem is prising the ipad mini out of Dave's hands!

So, for Tizzy Roses I imported one of the photos I took in october of a bunch of roses from our garden. Here in Spain we have a second spring where all the roses come back with a flourish after the hot summer. Anyway, once in NPtR using the skull brush I swipped across the screen quickly to get large and expressive strokes then I started working into the roses with slower strokes and a two finger swipe. This allowed me to pick up a lot of detail. Once I was happy with this background I imported a photo of Tizzy, our youngest cat, and used the slow, two finger swipe method to pick up her face, concentrating on the eyes and nose areas. Y voila!

I used the same method for the "Dark Angel" painting except I used a combination of the chinese character and the single dot brushes, plus there was a third photo of a wing.

Even if this App wasn't designed and written by Dave's brother I would still love it. It's a fast and fun way to create paintings using your own photography. I take a lot of photos as reference for my art but sometimes it's nice to play with the actual photos making them into paintings in their own right. Give it a go here.

The calendar part of the calendar came from www.timeanddate.com where you can make your own customized calendars - brilliant!

My calendars come as jpgs and can be printed onto A4 paper or card then trimmed to size. They show the moon phases and national holidays for the uk (Tizzy Roses) or Spain/Andalucia (Dark Angel).

If you'd like one for FREE click here to email me (tell me which one you want in the message area), you will automatically be subscribed to my newsletter and I'll email you the jpg.

My first design job for 2014

A very dear friend is celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary this year with a blessing, renewal of vows and party afterwards. She asked me to look at an invitation for the event.

The pictures show the design featuring one of my favourite artists - Gustav Klimt. His The Kiss is such a beautiful painting and so, erm, Golden, it's perfect!

Josephine will print the invitation double sided onto A4 to be folded into an A5 card. The patterned panels are made up of a couple of dress sections from The Kiss pasted together in Photoshop, I used the rubber tool to soften the edges of the join. The hearts are also made in Photoshop using the lasso tool to create the heart shape which a section of The Kiss was pasted into - they look a bit like butterflies to me.

Josephine asked for the very beautiful poem by Kahlil Gibran "On Marriage" to be included if there was room. It fits perfectly on the back with the full image of Gustav Klimt's The Kiss which finishes this Golden Wedding Invitation card off very nicely I think. The only other thing I did was tweak some of the photos in Photoshop to improve quality, a little bit of tonal balance fiddling and taking out dust and scratches.

As a thank you Josephine is giving me some of her home grown, organic and very delicious olive oil - yum!

Party Invitations available on Zazzle

The job above was done for a friend and is specially designed for her. But I do have a range of invitations for weddings, engagements, anniversaries, birthdays and general parties featuring my own artworks. These can be customized to suit your own requirements and even have a selection of custom postage for America. The wedding invitations generally have a full range of wedding stationery available as well, from save the date postcards to table plans. Check out my Zazzle store.

Choose one word...

So, another year begins and I've been reviewing my art and deciding what I'm going to develop this year. After reading a refreshing article on New Years Resolutions and how yet more lists are just so complicating to life, it suggested choosing just one word to describe what your aims are for the year. At first I thought that one word couldn't do it, but now I've chosen my word I realise how elegantly simple it is. No lists, no pressure, I just remind myself of my word whenever I start to lose direction. So, what's my word? Soul.

But anyone who knows me, knows that I couldn't just choose one word. Not that I like to complicate my life or anyfink (ha, ha). It's just that another word would be good for back-up, call it a way to expand on my first word. So, my back-up word? Loosen.

I'm going to apply these words to all areas of my art and life and see what happens!