I forgot to say how the fire station art show went. It was good to see my paintings hanging up on the walls with others, and it's amazing how much of a difference a good frame makes as well. It was a good experience, but unfortunately I didn't sell anything. There's always next year :)
Apparantly not many paintings sold at this year's art show - only 19 out of around 300 sold. Still, the fire station managed to raise around $15,000 dollars, which isn't bad! The paintings that sold must have had large price tags on them :)
Monday, June 23, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Local Exhibition
I've framed three of my paintings, and am entering them in a local exhibition/art competition. It's going to be on the long weekend of the 7th, 8th and 9th of June, at the Belgrave Firestation. It's a fundraising art competition they have each year, with a commission taken from any paintings that get sold, to help them maintain their equipment, buy new firefighting equipment, and that sort of thing.
I'm always amazed at how much better paintings look when they have matting and framing around them. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. I'm entering the Kookaburra, a Twelve Apostles painting, and the painting of the paddlesteamer, which I touched up and made more changes to.
It will be great seeing them hanging on walls with all the other paintings. I might even make a sale! Anyway, I'll mention how it turned out after the date.
I'm always amazed at how much better paintings look when they have matting and framing around them. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. I'm entering the Kookaburra, a Twelve Apostles painting, and the painting of the paddlesteamer, which I touched up and made more changes to.
It will be great seeing them hanging on walls with all the other paintings. I might even make a sale! Anyway, I'll mention how it turned out after the date.
Monday, April 28, 2008
My second blog
Hi everyone. I've started a second blog, dealing with my journey into the world of making digital art, painting, drawings, etc, using a graphics tablet, digital pen, and my computer. You can view it by going to my profile, and a list of my blogs should be shown. Now I have two ways to make art!
Monday, April 21, 2008
Short Break
Well, I've been looking through photo albums for more painterly scene insperation, and haven't found much. I've done a bit of sketching, but no painting. I've been a bit annoyed, because the Digital Pen Tablet I ordered through ebay hasn't arrived yet, and after reading the comments left for the shop I bought it from, I found a lot of people complained that it took up to a week before their items were even posted! So I guess I could be waiting for my tablet...
My parents are returning from a holiday to Tasmania later in the week, and I'll be looking through their photos to see if I can find some more pictures that say "paint me". I should probably go out somewhere myself, set up my paper and easel, and try some plein air painting, but it's cold and cloudly out there, and I've got heating in here :) So, I think I'll take a painting break. I think there's a Subscribe button at the bottom of the page, that notifies people when new posts are written in blogs, so if you want, you can click down there, and the next time I paint something, it should announce it :)
I'm hoping to get a few good paintings done in the next month or so, because there's a local art exhibition coming up in June I think, and I might get one of my paintings framed and enter it!
My parents are returning from a holiday to Tasmania later in the week, and I'll be looking through their photos to see if I can find some more pictures that say "paint me". I should probably go out somewhere myself, set up my paper and easel, and try some plein air painting, but it's cold and cloudly out there, and I've got heating in here :) So, I think I'll take a painting break. I think there's a Subscribe button at the bottom of the page, that notifies people when new posts are written in blogs, so if you want, you can click down there, and the next time I paint something, it should announce it :)
I'm hoping to get a few good paintings done in the next month or so, because there's a local art exhibition coming up in June I think, and I might get one of my paintings framed and enter it!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
graphics tablet
Hi guys. I haven't been up to much, art wise, today. I looked over some of my previous paintings with a 'fresh eye' and made some touch-ups, minor corrections, and that sort of thing. I'll try to remember to update the photos of paintings on this blog so they show the current images (my camera's batteries are flat at the moment and I've got to charge them).
On another note, I do a lot of computer graphics stuff, and I toyed with digital art for a while, but a mouse just doesn't cut it when trying to draw and paint on a computer. So, I've ordered a graphics tablet. It's like a flat mouse pad, and you have a special pen, and when you 'draw' on the tablet with the pen, you draw on your computer screen. It's supposed to work great with Corel Graphics Suite X3 (which is what I own) and I've read reviews by other artists, and watched some vids on youtube, and graphics tablets look pretty great!
What's better, is that I couldn't afford a $569 6"x8" Wacom Intuos 3 tablet (the leading brand) but I found a tablet that is almost identical, on sale at half price, for $85. I compared the specs on the two tablets, and they both can detect 1,024 levels of pen pressure, so you can draw softly or hard, they can both detect the tilt of the pen (like using a pencil, you can angle it down to shade, or point it down from above for fine lines).
The expensive Wacom Intuos 3 tablet has 8 programmable buttons on the tablet. My Manhattan 174459 tablet has an icon bar around the outside of the working area, with 42 hot-key icons on it, 16 of which are programmable to any combination of keys. The other icons are like icons on a computer program, for save, load, launching frequently used applications, etc, all just by tapping them with the pen. The Manhattan tablet can also detect the pen up to 15mm above the surface of the tablet, while the expensive Wacom only detects up to 6mm. About the only difference is that the Wacom tablet is battery-free using special technology, while the Manhattan requires a AAA battery.
So, while I need to use batteries, I get extra buttons for hot-key functions in my programs, artist reviews say it works great in Corel PhotoPaint X3 (my main graphics program), and a couple professional artist reviews said they actually stopped using their Wacom tablets, and now use a cheaper Manhattan for their tasks. (though a couple said they gave up on tablets, and went straight to expensive touch-screens.)
So, I can't wait to get it (hopefully arrives tomorrow) and see what digital artistry I can come up with. No breathing in pastel dust, no washing hands, no running out of paper or pastels... And if you make mistakes, just press CTRL-Z and the mistake goes away! It might not be physical art (unless it's printed, but prints aren't the same as original art anyway) but it's still art.
If it works well, I want to save up for a fancy Wacom Cintiq 21ux Tablet - which is a 21" touch screen the size of a large sketch pad that can be drawn onto using their digital pen - so creating digital art would be even easier, as you actually draw 'onto' the screen directly without having to use a tablet! However, buying that would be a long way off for me.
I'm thinking I'll start a second blog, and keep this one just for Fine Art, and the other just for Digital Art - as I want to keep this blog focussed on my journey with Dry Pastels.
On another note, I do a lot of computer graphics stuff, and I toyed with digital art for a while, but a mouse just doesn't cut it when trying to draw and paint on a computer. So, I've ordered a graphics tablet. It's like a flat mouse pad, and you have a special pen, and when you 'draw' on the tablet with the pen, you draw on your computer screen. It's supposed to work great with Corel Graphics Suite X3 (which is what I own) and I've read reviews by other artists, and watched some vids on youtube, and graphics tablets look pretty great!
What's better, is that I couldn't afford a $569 6"x8" Wacom Intuos 3 tablet (the leading brand) but I found a tablet that is almost identical, on sale at half price, for $85. I compared the specs on the two tablets, and they both can detect 1,024 levels of pen pressure, so you can draw softly or hard, they can both detect the tilt of the pen (like using a pencil, you can angle it down to shade, or point it down from above for fine lines).
The expensive Wacom Intuos 3 tablet has 8 programmable buttons on the tablet. My Manhattan 174459 tablet has an icon bar around the outside of the working area, with 42 hot-key icons on it, 16 of which are programmable to any combination of keys. The other icons are like icons on a computer program, for save, load, launching frequently used applications, etc, all just by tapping them with the pen. The Manhattan tablet can also detect the pen up to 15mm above the surface of the tablet, while the expensive Wacom only detects up to 6mm. About the only difference is that the Wacom tablet is battery-free using special technology, while the Manhattan requires a AAA battery.
So, while I need to use batteries, I get extra buttons for hot-key functions in my programs, artist reviews say it works great in Corel PhotoPaint X3 (my main graphics program), and a couple professional artist reviews said they actually stopped using their Wacom tablets, and now use a cheaper Manhattan for their tasks. (though a couple said they gave up on tablets, and went straight to expensive touch-screens.)
So, I can't wait to get it (hopefully arrives tomorrow) and see what digital artistry I can come up with. No breathing in pastel dust, no washing hands, no running out of paper or pastels... And if you make mistakes, just press CTRL-Z and the mistake goes away! It might not be physical art (unless it's printed, but prints aren't the same as original art anyway) but it's still art.
If it works well, I want to save up for a fancy Wacom Cintiq 21ux Tablet - which is a 21" touch screen the size of a large sketch pad that can be drawn onto using their digital pen - so creating digital art would be even easier, as you actually draw 'onto' the screen directly without having to use a tablet! However, buying that would be a long way off for me.
I'm thinking I'll start a second blog, and keep this one just for Fine Art, and the other just for Digital Art - as I want to keep this blog focussed on my journey with Dry Pastels.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Cumberoona
"Cumberoona"(c)2008 Paul J. Turner
Soft Pastels on Sand Coloured Paper
This morning I thought I'd paint a small, quick one - an old paddle steamer going along the Murray River in northern Victoria (Australia). This is one of the smallest paintings I've done, being about 1 1/2 A4 sheets of paper in size (not quite A3).
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Spam / Virus Warning
Someone's started spamming comments in my blog. So far the username I've been seeing is Fenridal - posting links to some virus thing. I looked at his profile, and it says he has a "Mario" blog. Clicking on his blog brought up the virus thing as well. He has a habit of posting "Please see here!" with a link to the virus thing. This is against Blogger terms of service, but I haven't worked out how to send Google info so they can ban the user. It brings up a yes/no window, and you're probably stuffed up regardless of what you click, so it's best to press CTRL-ALT-DLT and end the internet explorer application, so that it exits to the desktop without making any choices and getting who-know's-what stuff put onto your harddrive.
In the meantime, don't click on links in the comments on my blog, becuase the guy keeps sticking links in there. I'll delete them when I notice them, or any comments left that sound similar and link off of this site.
*UPDATE 16th April 08: The guy's changing his name now and still posting virus spam. I found the Report Abuse section in Help for these blogs, so now I'm reporting him every time he posts comments on here. I wish there was a Ban User button!
In the meantime, don't click on links in the comments on my blog, becuase the guy keeps sticking links in there. I'll delete them when I notice them, or any comments left that sound similar and link off of this site.
*UPDATE 16th April 08: The guy's changing his name now and still posting virus spam. I found the Report Abuse section in Help for these blogs, so now I'm reporting him every time he posts comments on here. I wish there was a Ban User button!
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