Friday, March 27, 2015

Pie in the eye day

Yesterday was Fay's birthday and she treated us all to pie and coffee at the Sweetie Pie bake shop before group.  When you start the day with pie you know it is going to be a good one.
It was Carmen's turn to lead us into something new and a good exercise it was.  It really gets your thought process flowing and forces you  to see things so they are not how you perceive them.  We all brought drawing materials, sketch pads, some photos and something to measure with.  After  you decided what you wanted to draw you turned the photo upside down and drew that way.  You couldn't just sketch either, you had to measure things in relation to each other.  By turning the photo upside down and eye is not an eye but a shape.

Mary's finished drawing.
 

Friday, March 6, 2015

Black and White Day

Yesterday was a herding cats day for the Pieces.  We had a few members that were away, some members joined in the paint-a-thon protest to save the old Mel High building from being torn down to make way for yet another apartment building and some members could only make a special lunch.  Phillis Holland was down visiting from Georgia and we had a really nice reunion lunch beachside.
It was my turn to present and I thought hand coloring some black and white photos would be fun.  It was just Carmen, Kathy and Kathy's 4 year old granddaughter Josie but what the heck Carmen and I forged ahead anyway.
Neither of us finished our photos but it was a very relaxing way to spend the morning.  For some reason the time flies by and you can really get into the zone when hand painting.  I wanted to share a blow up of an area of the photo I was working on.  It was a picture I had taken in Maine at a friend's house.  All of my photos are really old snapshots I took when I was doing a lot of hand painting.
We used special Marshall oils, cotton and Q-tips for applying.  This photo was a sepia tone.
I just love the colors and tone you can create with this process.  It was so relaxing when my next turn rolls around we are going to do it again.

unfinished hand painted photo