Scarlet Macaw celebrates

Above is a postcard postmarked 1909, it's a photo of M. Z. Norton's store in Sawyer, Michigan. Below is the building today which houses the Scarlet Macaw Community Art Center. Last weekend they decided to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the building.




The Executive Director, Nifodora Krumrie, really got into the swing of things with her old hat and dress as well as playing ancient records.


Here's her husband David with a Macaw perched on his shoulder, not a scarlet one but pretty colorful.


Another shot of David with the Macaw. Boy, these birds can really be loud !


I've designed a number of posters for the gallery, here's one of them.



These are a couple of posters for an exhibition that I had at the gallery a few years ago. The exhibit consisted of some of my paintings, wood carvings as well as my digital art.

Cropping photos

Using the computer and Photoshop anyone can recrop or add more area to their photographs. Here are a few examples of what can be done.


While this photo is an interesting scene I felt it could make two interesting photos if it were recropped.


I decided to create one photo of the section with just the people.


Then I cropped the photo showing only the trees for the other version.



This photo of the interior of a Mexican hotel lobby became more interesting when I added more dark area to the lower section.




Here is a shot of Gloria on the beach, I made a vertical composition by tightly cropping the photo which I though was more interesting. With Photoshop you also have a certain amount of control over the color and tone values in your photos.

A new promotion brochure

On my October 3 post I showed some of my promo brochures. The Craig Smith Gallery in Harbert, Michigan is having an opening today and I decided to do a promotion brochure featuring my new paintings. Whether you are in the fine arts or commercial field it is important for an artist to promote oneself.
Below is the poster that I designed for Craig's opening.



I felt that I should design a brochure for the opening since my new paintings would be featured, something for the guests to take home with them. These very rough idea sketches were enough to get me started. I visualized a large brush on the cover with very strong typography and a simple interior and back cover.



I took a photo of one of my brushes, outlined it on the computer and then added the type.


I kept the interior rather simple with a just couple of blocks of bold type.


On the rear cover I showed four more of the paintings as well as a group of computer sketches that will be used for future paintings.


I also printed up a number of my cards promoting my website and blogs. These would be placed near the brochures for people to pick up.

Progression of my latest painting

On my September 29th post I began a new painting based on my computer sketches. Here are the various stages that I went through before completing it.


I last showed the painting with the first overall color background painted in. Through the paint I can still see the drawing that I did originally.


There's Laura off to the side watching me at work.


I start to add color and fill in the various shapes.


I continue to add and change colors as the painting starts to come together.


The finished painting is titled NUDE THINKING ABOUT GETTING DRESSED. I went through many changes of colors and values before the painting was finished. I don't just copy my computer sketches when painting these images, but only use them as a starting point. This is the ninth painting in this series.

Cartoons about the fine art business

Here are a few more cartoons from my book ART THERAPY. These were all created on a Mac G4 using the program Photoshop 5.0. I first did the basic drawings with a marker on layout paper and scanned them into the computer where I added the type and color. The computer is a fabulous medium which I have been experimenting with for several years and the possibilities it offers artists continue to amaze me.

Some of my promotion brochures

The computer is not only a great art medium, it enables you to have your very own print shop for creating promotional brochures and other related material.


Above are a few of the brochures that I send out promoting my sculpture.


This is one of the brochures promoting my new painting series. I send these out and also leave a stack of them at Craig's gallery. Most everyone that visits the gallery takes one with them. I also leave them at other art centers, it's very important to promote yourself. Recently I received a call from the new director of an art center in a nearby city. She was cleaning out some drawers and found a few of my promotion brochures and decided to call me. She wanted to come over to see my work and this resulted in her offering me an exhibition. The date hasn't been set as yet, but I will be showing my new acrylic paintings which are based on computer sketches.

Digital prints of masks

I have carved a series of wooden masks, below are examples of a few. On September 16th I posted a lot of them on my other blog in case you'd like to see more.




Above is one of the acrylic painting done based on the masks. My intention was to exhibit the carvings and paintings together.


I do a lot of experimentation on the computer and decided to create a few masks digitally.










It was a fun project as I am always amazed at what can be created using this amazing medium. If you'd like to see more of my acrylic mask paintings they will be posted on my other blog tomorrow.