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Been working on an ebook about how I use texture in my paintings and photographs, so I'm remembering to paint on more layers rather than one or two and flattening them. When I was first learning Photoshop, I used a lot of layers and I saved the psd files, but due to a hard drive crash I lost those so now I have this great excuse to paint...hehe.

I feel like saying the bloggers act of contrition...Bless me readers for I have lapsed. It's been about a month since my last blog.

Been doing a lot of networking on social avenues, and re-connecting with some old groups and friends from ebay. I don't know how some people keep up with all this. I can only seem to tackle one thing at a time. All the multi-tasking takes place in my mind but doesn't translate too well to the physical world. But hey, you can catch me at times on G+ and FB, definitely on Pinterest, Linkedin, and jeanmooreart.blogspot.com (different material on this blog). =)

Here is my latest newsletter that include links to hi-res textures for you to download free. Did you know that 99% of the free textures I offer in my newsletter are exclusive to my email list. Want access to future listings? be sure to hit the link to join my email list. You will have to use the Facebook link to see the QR code which will give you access to the newsletter.

While you are on my FB page, be sure to like my page. I will randomly pick from new likes I receive between now and Wed. the 24th to send a greeting card to with the image displayed here.

Scan the QR code for access to the latest info and textures.

I and another designer/illustrator have watched the amazing Scott Robinson video where he uses Mac's Photo Booth to take snap shots of various items using the mirror filter to come up with interesting alien faces. I had told this other designer I use a similar method and he asked me to explain. So this is a work in progress now that I have responded. The formula I use i simple. I paint a really abstract blob in photoshop, then I use the warp tool to create another shape. I may do this several times to get something really interesting. Once I have that unique shape I will mirror the shape. Sometimes I will combined two mirrored shapes into another. This is what I have done here. Once there is enough information that my mind picks up on, the painting begins.

To be uploaded.

It has been wonderful, fun, nerve-racking, wonderful again, etc. the last week and a half. Since the last post, there has been sibling and friend's birthdays, a birth making me a great aunt for the first time =), and working out glitches in the set up of my new texture business. All of it puts a smile on my face as this is life and I enjoy it. I hope you do too.

The update on the texture site is that I had some issues with getting the delivery site set up. I'm still hoping to launch on Saturday. The 25% discount will last for 5-10. I hope you will check out the quick video of the textures in the last post, if you haven't already.

And because this is supposed to be my sketchbook, here is a warm-up sketch I did just before Christmas. It is a tiny digital sketch because I tried to record my screen while doing it to see if a smaller size would record without the lag but no such luck. I am pleased with the texture that shows up in this sketch. The digital brush I made in photoshop is working out quite well.

Firstly, I've been blown away by your praise of my textures. I want to say thanks to all those who have participated in my survey and you are truly welcome for the free textures. I can't wait to see how you apply them to your own work.

Secondly, I am busily at work in my studio getting the website ready to launch to the general public on March 1. I have to make a few tweaks to the texture's titles as wonderfully suggested, and decide which e-commerce site will work best. I really want those who purchase the textures to have a smooth experience.

Here is a quick video I did that shows most of the textures that will be in this instant download package.

One from the sketchbook, that I never got around to developing further but I still enjoy looking at these two just the way they are.

I was working on painting some more textures and making custom brushes in Photoshop when I found myself thinking of the wild wild west and how I could make this into a Wanted poster, but decided I better get to working on my marketing. But then I read in a thread:

"Today there are many new art forms, many of them digital, but they're often not as well recognized as fine arts."

I don't think this will be the case in 30 years.

Renamed my AW: Fine Art Digitals

Some works I'm selling on eBay

My painter essential brushes began working again, have no idea why, and it is intermittent so while I had the use of them I decided to just get some easy paint texture and backgrounds down. Did five or six before the program crashed again. I didn't have anything specific in mind, just get the paint down on the paper and save it out to Photoshop as quickly as possible. I had the use for about 40 min. Here is one I decided to pursue.








I also painted another background of clouds...



Éthat works like fog when overlaid to the background.



Still needs some brightening but then my imagination roams and I think, "Oh some deer might be nice."



And this is where I think I need to go get some reference material of a Buck. Stay tune.

We'll see where this goes.

Be sure you watch this in HD, it will be much clearer to see. Change by clicking on cog wheel (setting link) and choose 720HD.

In this snippet of a tutorial I'll show you how to go about developing a truly unique painting from your mind. I use Photoshop CS4 but any program that allows you to use layers will work. No computer? No worries, this method works with markers, pens, or pencils on tracing paper too.

A word of warning and caution, this technique in highly addictive and it works best when you are proficient in drawing fundamentals. That said have fun.

First create a rather abstract shape. I use a tweaked round brush so I can take advantage of the pen pressure settings to use with my Wacom.

Duplicate (command + J) this shape on another layer then flip it horizontally (edit menuÑtransformÑflip horizontally) so it is mirrored on the other side. Depending on how dark the image is I will either set the mirrored shape to darken or multiply blend mode located at the top of the layers panel and left of opacity settings. Play around with moving the shape until you get it to where you are satisfied with the placement.



I played around with a few placements including warping the shape (command + TÑwarp) a bit and combining different warped shapes before settling on one that I found interesting enough to me to develop further. You may find something sooner or play quite a bit before choosing one or more shapes to develop into finished painting.












This technique works for developing photorealistic paintings or loose abstract paintings. You can see how I used this method for a recent abstract painting here.

Leave a comment to let me know if this post was helpful, interesting, or if you would like to see more posts like this.

Hello texture enthusiasts!
I am offering 5 free fine art textures HERE.

Hope you find these useful. No attributes needed. Feedback most welcomed. Share, Tweet, FB the link.

a page from my sketchbook.

I've spent the last year experimenting with making my own texture brushes in photoshop. I hated all of them because they didn't do the job. And besides if I really wanted brush texture I could paint my piece in my Painter Essentials 4 program. Then, a couple of months ago, I upgraded my Macbook pro to apple's Mountain Lion. Woo-hoo, I gained 12 gb of space on my computer...and lost Painter Essentials. No problem, Corel will do a patch upgrade like they have in the past. I called to find out when it would come out. It's not..WHAT! I was told they do not intend to upgrade the program and I would need to purchase the $349 Painter 12.

Amazing what necessity will do for your motivation. It took me only a month to have a breakthrough. I created a thick paint texture brush, I lovingly named "My Monet Brush." I have since created a few more texture brushes over the summer. Tonight I created another and tested it out.

Usually I just paint a sheet, no subject, just get some paint on the canvas and check the teeth of the strokes. Here is the page I did before tweaking the brush a bit more.



I had read in the forms about painting photo realistically...a thread about how important composition is to realistic painting. It had been awhile since I had done any realistic portraiture so as I tested my tweaked brush and it started to look more like an eye I decided to take it to a painterly realistic state. This digital sketch is about the brush work and not composition...

Ah, well, I took some time trying to decide what to pull from the old sketchbookÉso many possibilities, most dealing with thumbnails, silhouettes, clouds, rockÉand on and on. I've settled on posting a couple of my land/cityscape thumbnails.

I get comments all the time that I am so creative or asked how I come up with so many different ideas. You will often find in art forms where someone will ask the community "How do you keep your ideas fresh?" or "How do you overcome artist's block?" Well it may just be that you need a break. Artists and people in general need to do something else in order for their mind to gather new information and make new connections even if they are familiar ones.

But at other times it is not that easy, sometimes you have to just push on through. It may be that you have a deadline to meet or your free weekend is coming to a close and you must return to your day job on Monday Morning; and dog gone it you haven't accomplished anything. How do you overcome these?

The easiest way to do that is to sketch on a regular basis if not daily. These could just be the scribbles you do while on the phone. Or you could take another approach used by many Fine and Commercial artistsÑdo many, many thumbnails. Thumbnails can be really planned outÑthe house is on the right, pond 3/4 of the way downÉhowever, if you do it from an abstract approach you can pull out those same thumbnails a year from when you did them and see something totally different than what you saw when you created them. Your sketchbook(s) become instant reference and inspiration.

The idea here is not to plan anything. It is to put down strokes and tones and go back later and (or sometimes right then) look for the tiny scenes and refine three or four with the most promise. Then from there you can decide to take one or all of them to a finished piece. Here are a couple of sheets from my sketchbook. What do you see?

Working on a few personal pieces that involve perspective. This one will be a birthday gift for my youngest nephew. He is a big sci-fi and fantasy fan.

Some people ask why I still sketch everyday. After all I've long graduated with my BFA. I am semi-retired, why do it? Yes picking up a pencil or stylus in most cases these days is like riding a bike, the muscle-memory is there at a moments notice if I have a painting I want to doÑthat landscape or portrait, or design of a logo. The steps are all deeply ingrained. I do it for practice, for play and learning new techniques, as an archive to look up what might work in a new piece, and lastly to keep my mind active and engaged.

Why practice, I thought you said the techniques were ingrained? Well, as much as I know about doing portraits, I have always struggled with how the neck and chin come together in extreme views, from the bottom looking up. Luckily, doing portraits, you are pretty much on the same level as the subject. I just didn't have to learn how that worked in order to start my art career. And there are quite a few things like that. So now I do study those things that I have gotten by without having to know.

I also sketch because it is just fun to do. It is play time. No one has to see my sketches if I don't want them to, so as a result I am free to play to my heart's content. And playing is especially useful in learning deeper parts of a photoshop. What would happen if I used the warp tool to do this? Sometimes the play actually leads to a finished salable piece.

Past sketches will allow me to go back and find new or different inspirations from a sketch. To use that sketch as a new piece or in a new piece of artwork. And again, keeping a sketchbook keeps my mind active and engaged in creating new works.

Would you go into battle with one of these? I had a lot of fun coming up with completely different designs for a battle shield. Can you imagine a Viking dressed up in Steampunk fashion his shield crest clockwork gears? How about Pirates who I don't think use shields, not according to Captain Jack (Johnny Depp). Still I thought, if they did, their crests would probably be their Jolly Rogers, but how already over done. So why not the Pirate's Face. Hehehe. And then on a more serious note a tribal shield.

Well, here is the full version of where this silhouette started and ended. If I were to develop one I would choose 8 or 14. Which would you choose?

Well, its time to do some traditional Mech designing. Helps me think outside the box and get some practice in line work within the painted silhouettes.

The Facebook group Team Awesome is dedicated to WIPs and Critiques. This is a cool concept
figure that I took and did a quick draw over that showed some of the character flaws. Grant it, my figure is still off but it is enough for Luka to progress his figure drawing skills. Plus I was not the only one critiquing his work.
















The first thing I did was draw an eight heads high skeletal figure next to the original in order to get the proportions correct.


Next I drew the skeletal figure in position over Luka's character in blue. The green line points out how to draw from the belly button through the nipples to get where the shoulder placement should go.


This is without Luka's figure in the background.

Awhile back there was a thread where someone asked the FAA members if they did art on a daily basis. The answers varied, yes, no, and at least art related. I began wondering what some of the artist's sketchbooks might look like. Mine is now a digital sketchbook. And I do do art everyday in it.

Rather than overlap the same content that I have in my blogger blog I've decided to make this my sketchbook blog. I will post works from my sketchbook. Some of these will make it to a finished salable state and many more will not. Most will remain unfinished indefinitely. You will see a lot of silhouettes here as I have picked up doing these in the last year not only for illustration and graphic design work, but also for fine art as well. Which is where we will start today.

These are three quick thumbnail landscapes I did one evening. I just started painting in shapes being in a landscape mood. If you cannot see the image please go to my sketchbook gallery the password is sketches. There is one size available if you really feel you have to have this rough. It is only really there because FAA requires a price on any work posted.

It is a new year and I've started a new painting. I am a lover of texture in artwork even when it is digital. I was cropping some photos yesterday and found this one photo texture I had taken of some paint on the street, pretty soon I had dropped cropping the photo to playing with textures, then as a form developed I knew this was going to be painting I want to develop further. Shown here is the work in so far. I don't have a formal title yet, just a working titleÑSnow MaidenÑso I can find it in my files. Hope you enjoy it.

Whoo-hoo, my 500 gig Western Digital arrived and I've been busy cleaning off my system, backing up. What a relief. My computer is getting older and I was afraid it was going to crash before I could get artwork backed up somewhere. I'm going to have to take it in and see if I can't get the fan and cd/dvd looked at. It's getting too hot at times and the fan has started whining in spite of having an external fan and ice pack under the board the laptop sits on. I could use a newer macbook pro with larger hard drive (mine is a 160 g) but that will have to wait.

Well back to backup. =)

Okay, after some input I have made a longer version of the breakdown video THUNDER IN THE DISTANCE. Feel free to leave comments here. =)

Okay first blog post, I'll keep it short. This is a quick breakdown of the following artwork. Enjoy!