Magnolia Blossom acrylic portrait magnolia flowers

phone varnished untouched

Phone untouched

Camera

GIMP

Scanned

Well this is Lesson 5, and it was something I would have never tried or even thought of.  This is done on a birch wood panel.  Ok have tried painting on them, but not successfully, so that is why I had some.  First was stain it with diluted acrylic inks.  These start out looking pretty dark and gradually lighten as the paint sinks into the wood.   I tried several colors as I knew I wanted green and pinks in the background and also wanted to see how transparent the colors were.  Then it's painted over it with color pencils, used both prismacolor and polys. so both wax and oil base work.  Yes, it does show the grain and yes the grain definitely affects the way the pencil goes on.   You would have seen more grain in the background if I would have had the stain darker and didn't cover with pencil.  You can erase pretty easily, even the stain comes off somewhat.   But you really can't get a smooth blend.

Sheila, ok, girl, decided to test all the things we were talking about.   Hmmmm, think you got your work cut out for you cause I have so much to learn.   So scanned/worked it in photos program, camera shot/worked in photos program, camera/worked in GIMP, liked the phone shot so much I didn't even have to rework it, and last shot is phone shot, once I have added varnish which is supposed to bring out the colors even more.   What do you think?  Which one do you pick?

I think, getting into the real phone age is huge because hands down the phone's camera takes such great pictures and offers lots of options which I didn't take time to look at.  My camera is probably 8-10 years old, so no doubt technology has greatly improved.  It also went right into my photos program without having to do anything to get it there.   Wow, next I will have to figure out how to get it off the phone but not kill it from my library - guess that will be another challenge - oh there are so many!!     

Of course I have much to learn with these GIMP and just dabbed a bit with all the color options/curves and what not.  So probably I could really take these photos and do a lot more with them than I actually did.  But have many videos to look at (Sheila, thank you again for vetting these to get me to the best of the best)

Thanks for taking a look at this long post but thought it was an interesting comparison.