NELVIA'SART.COM

Winter's Day Well have to thank both Sheila and Diane for nominating me to do black and white photos because it got me back to Blogger which has changed since I was last using it.

Public Face As you, my friends know, I have been on a journey for a while to try to connect with my inner creativity.   That has bubbled up an old desire that I would like to write.   But about what and how?   "How-to" books and videos on painting/drawing abound.  But I've always wondered where picture concepts and ideas come from?   Looking at Hubpages there are a lot of articles on art, but not necessarily the thought process of developing a specific story and painting process painting by painting.  Thinking one person's thoughts might be a niche and of interest to other beginners and intermediates.  There is an exercise that many writers do, they take a picture and write a story or character profile around it.   So that is what I did for this painting and this is a first draft for a potential Hubpage article to test the waters for interest level. THE STORY:   First question I had was why the mirror covered the eyes, easily the most expressive part of o

Alluring I have to admit that while I have dabbled in it, I haven't been such a huge fan of charcoal.  Know a lot of the lessons I have combine paints and charcoal, and I have approached cautiously.  I just don't like the dirty look, or the mud that you can easily get.  Heck, I don't have any problem doing that with my paints. This week we had Robert Kelley as our instructor.  This guy is a master manipulator of charcoal.  He is a master.  It was wonderful to watch his several hours worth of video and listen to his thought process. Of course I always seem to have to deviate.  I thought I was going to try to do the straight lessons this year.  But Again I have finally decided to maybe use the same reference, or not, but let "my style" try to shine through.  I am not real sure what it is, but I am trying to give it free rein.  So I decided to use charcoal, but also add some color.  We have had nothing but days and days of rain and gray skies.  Where

Seems that Blogger was having some hiccups and I stopped posting here.  Then guess I got lazy and just didn't check until now if they were back in business.  But in the meanwhile, February has come and gone and ended up being busy working with Figurary and trying to stay on top of my lessons.  Great outlet with lots of wonderful, inspirational artists was posting daily with 30 Day Creative Challenge.  This challenge group was designed to replace Leslie Saeta's as she has moved on to other endeavors close to her heart.

Shades of Pink This is kind of a culmination of lots of things I have been working on for the last couple of  months.  It started with a photo I liked, putting it into GIMP I wanted to put it into color dropper and see what colors/tones were coming up.  They weren't quite striking enough so I then went to adjusting the color curves.   Came up with several options that I really liked.   Thought it might be a great fun way to better learn how to mix colors and do a little mini series as well.  Going to call it Shades of.... Then it was back into oils.   I kind of am addicted to them now that I got through the first painting.   I do really like how they blend.   Currently am using a styrofoam meat tray as my palette so I can just toss it when it is to messy to clean.  However this was more complex or something and I wasn't able to get it finished in just one sitting.  So I needed to utilize some of the painting medium for my oil mixables.  First of course I had to get the c

China Doll Well this was a real slug fest.  I almost quit her 3-4 times but decided I had invested so much time and energy I was going to add some collage, some facial paint and let it go as it was.  This is for a challenge with the word prompt steam punk.   I have seen steam punk photos, (this is from Michael Cain) but really didn't get it.  But it has conventions with a pretty big following and lots of people really enjoy it, so ... It started out as a trial because I used some paper from the company that used to make Kitty Wallace paper (that was supposed to be the best paper).  It is sanded and while I have tried it before, I didn't like it then, so thought I'd try it again.   Still don't like it.  But started going forward with my pan pastels and was doing pretty well and realized I made her nose way toooooo long.   But I was pretty well down the path so lengthened some more things and moved onward.  Got most of the face in and after messing around with it s