Saturday 27 October 2012

Halloween Goodies 2012

I do seem to be rather inward looking on these blogs, always posting my own art - well that was the original purpose but perhaps I should take a step back once in a while. Like now! My wife is very creative in her own field -cooking; and when she showed me a batch of cakes I thought, "Wow, I just gotta take a picture of these".

Enjoy:-





And believe me they taste as good as they look. Now you will have to excuse me as I go for a cup of tea and a piece of cake. Do you remember Wurzel Gummidge and John Pertwee in the TV production. A favourite of mine as a young teenager, of course most kids of that age now would find it definitely uncool.


Tuesday 16 October 2012

Free Images And Collage Sheets For Your Art

Just a quick post to drop a new link, Kim Newberg (AKA imagesbykim) has posted a collection of free stuff on her website, including images arranged by theme, collage sheets, tutorials and products.

Most are high resolution and very large images.

A quick peek at some of the images/collage sheets to whet your appetite is given here:-






Just click here to see more and from there click on your chosen image to see a very large (in some cases) high resolyion images.


Wednesday 10 October 2012

Getting Smaller, Inchies - another format

Inchies are not new, having been around quite a time but although I love working on a small scale I have never really gotten around to creating many. I made half a dozen for a challenge once upon a time. It was actually a challenge to create an ATC on the theme of squares and It seemed to me at the time that a set of inchies would just do the job if arranged on the ATC.



So what is an inchie. The answer is so simple and of course most of my readers will already know the answer. For those of you who are not really aquainted with the format, because that's what it is, I will explain. An inchie is simply made to an art format which is one inch square. Simples!

Usually they are a mixed media creation but not necessarily.

The reason for this posting is in fact another challenge and I thought I would do a quick search for examples and other mentions on the internet. It may give me some ideas and it would help anyone who has yet to come across them.

I came across this video on making inchie panels, or in other words sets of inchies which will fit together to make a larger image, which is then glued down to form a card similar to the one I show above.



The one issue I have with this sort of tutorial is that it is about selling a specific product, even the white pen is an INKTENSE white pen. I am quite capable as should any artist, of using the correct item without needing to know a trade mark. Of course advertising is acceptable in its place, but this sort of advert seems to say that if you want to make /create this you need this specific product. A step too far.

The web site on which I discovered this video is Inchies, which also has many other links which are relevant.
Find a Flickr group specifically for inchies here.
A great way to make inchies with lots of examples
More examples in a blog post from 2008
These are so very easy and anything goes that tutorial are over the top, but examples abound and there are some details on this link.

Well, I hope this gives you some ideas, if the format is new to you, maybe you will be having a go. I will come back with my own inchie adventures very soon.


This set of inchies is by Jean R Roman and was used on PDA group, Get your Art On which Jean moderates, to show potential traders what an inchie is. Note the inchies made with three-D embellishmenst which many of the earlier links do not include.


Tuesday 2 October 2012

Artist Trading Cards on a theme of Africa

Still having issues with real life which are preventing me getting back to regular crafting but it is starting to ease off. These cards were created for a challenge/swap on PDA with a theme of Africa. It led to a number of very different interpretations as you can see on the PDA ATC blog.

I found most of the images on a Flickr group, Images FOR Africa, dedicated to providing images licenced by creative commons.

They both are collages rather than mixed media and have a humerous interpretation/title.

Stanley had an audience wherever he went.


Anything you can do .............!




Both very simple designs, but at least I am starting to make art after such a long hiatus due to personal issues. The former uses an image of Stanley shaking hands with africans and is overlayed by an image of a giraffe and two versions of the same painting of an african woman. I reversed it and altered the hue for contrast. The top right hand sports an image of a Mauritanian postage stamp.
The second has a background of orange tissue with a stamping on white card in the centre. After seeing the image of the painted warrior and comparing it with a zebra, I had to put them together.

More artwork soon - I hope.