Thursday, July 31, 2014

Just the Bling

Here is the same subject with just the jewelry.  It takes a long time to get deep or bold color into a hand painted photo.  The color is added a layer at a time, wiped and then after some time has gone by added again.  You follow this process until you get the color you want. 
The oils I used were special oils made just for this process.  You also need special additives to mix with the paint and seal it.  All the color is added with cotton swabs, not the ones you buy like Q-tips, but ones you make yourself from pure puffed cotton you can buy in a drug store.  You then wrap the cotton loosely around long slender sticks you can send for. 
I just love the colors on this one.
Donna Vines

Just the Bling

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Shells and Bling

Another favorite subject of mine to hand paint were everyday indoor scenes. Everyday objects next to each other or that seemed very different but belonged together. I like this one because it has the soft shells in it and some razzle dazzle. Both are beautiful in their own way.
Donna Vines

Shells and Bling

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Good Harbor Beach

Looking at some more hand painted photos I thought it would be interesting to post some New England scenes. This is Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester, MA. It is one of the most popular beaches in Glouceste, especially with the locals.
One one side you have to walk over a bridge from the road to get to the beach and the bridge goes over a natural inlet that the kids love. It is a shallow, safe place for the little ones to play and the water is not as cold.
You can see the creek on the right in this photo.

Good Harbor Beach

Saturday, July 12, 2014

I am going to Massachusetts for a visit in a week or so. One of my goals when I am up there besides visiting family and friends and eating all those local treats is to take lots of photos. I love going on photo shoots when I am there. It is a great excuse to just drive around and re-acquaint myself with the ocean, marshes and rugged coast line.
Years ago one of my favorite things to paint was black and white photos. I loved the old post cards and portraits from the turn of the century that were hand painted. They had such a wonderful hazy glow to them. They always looked liked they were someones dream of how a place should look. I still have a few of the ones I did. This one is in Rockport, MA. These cottages overlook the ocean and as we used to say, "Next stop England".


Rockport

Friday, July 4, 2014

Experiment I

 I have been experimenting again with abstracts. I found a wonderful workbook at the Library called The Artist Unique: Discovering Your Creative Signature by Carmen Torbus. I liked it so much that I check Amazon to see if I could buy a used copy and they had it for free if you have a Kindle!! That is a great deal. Happily I did upload it.
This is one of the exercises from the workbook. I used gesso, gel, texturing tools
(aka a plastic fork and credit card), some old sheet music and acrylic paints. Once I collaged the sheet music on I decided to stick with black and white. The enjoyment of this piece is seeing how the paint reacts to the surface. It run, puddles and settles in all the nooks and crannies. This was a fun exercise that made me want to try again with different textures and colors.