I get a lot of questions about faces and how to shade them what colors to use, wher are the darkest areas etc. I've got plans to do a video, but I suspect that my weird and kind of realistic style is not what people are looking for. I found this 2 part video by YouTuber MyCreativeBliss that details shading and coloring one of those faces with overly large eyes. She uses several shades of peach, cream and ochres to color the face and then Glazing medium to blend and melt the colored pencils together. It's an interesting technique that I'm going to have to test out, not on a big eyed girl face but somethign a little darker and creepy, because I'm like that. Anyway check out these 2 videos, if you are interested in big eyed girls you'll like them.

Part 1:

Part 2

Trial by Fire
Originally uploaded by lessherger

In this image I'm working on 140lb Stonehenge fawn colored paper. It's very absorbent and nice for a lot of acrylic work. It's very sturdy. I sealed the page with gesso.

After I sealed the page and it had fully dried I lightly sanded it smooth with an extra fine sanding block. I then used a stencil of flames and layered it over itself several times to get the flames. I used yellow, orange and red to give the flames some shape and interest. After I had stenciled that I dried the image with my heat gun. After that was fully dry I mixed some blue paint with gloss gell medium and mixed it well on my palette. Using a coarse brush I put in several layers of the blue around the fireball. I left a lot of brush strokes visible purposefully. Brush strokes add a little more interest to the image.

After the blue dried fully I mixed some burnt sienna with some glaze medium and brushed that around the fire ball to darken the edges. I used a soft rag to blend the paint into the edges of the fire ball.

After that was dry I was considering the image of the fire. It was off somehow.So I decided to add some black outline to it. Using an Elmer's paint pen, in extra fine black I quickly doodled in some flame detail.

After everything had dried I added the lettering in white Elmer's paint pen with a calligraphy tip.

Originally uploaded by ms. stephanie brown

Love everything this lady does, in this image a woman eats cherries. Slightly creepy but very cool.

Hands, Faces
Originally uploaded by robobop

I had friends in college who used to fill their sketchbooks like this. Me I preferred to work on clean pages, how could I tell what went with which sketch? Or is that the point?

To name a fear is the beginning of power over it
Originally uploaded by pageofbats

HOLY CRAP I love this person's work. Head over to their flickr page and look at everything, so very awesome.

Social media is no joke especially for artists. I have seen
artists create HUGE online presence for themselves through twitter, facebook, youtube
and ning. 2 artists who stand out beyond most others are Gary Reef and Jared Knight,
add to this mix a variety of mixed media artists like Suzi Blu, Tam “willowing”,
and the Moores and suddenly you have 
opened the doors to artists who have learned how to use blogs, youtube,
facebook, twitter and ning to create massive audiences for their art.

Through these social media sites these artists sell online
classes, in person workshops, have regular chats, hell I think Jared Knight
posts more TwitVids of anyone I’ve EVER followed combined, link to Etsy shops.
Think Jessica Doyle who sells prints of her original works, does a large amount
of illustration work and sells her originals via Etsy and blogs and buzzes on a
regular basis.

Artists can’t stick their head in the sand about social
media it’s here and it can make a HUGE presence for the artist, boost sales and
make sales in ways you may never have thought of before. When I leave the
workforce in 2011 to pursue my Grad School dream I hope that at least partially
I’ll support myself via my social networking sites and Ning.

Why am I on this rant? Earlier today I posited the question
MassArt VS RISD for my grad school. I posted this via FB and Twitter. When I
posted it to FB I had a group of RISD grads chanting RISD! RISD! RISD! While,
one lone MassArt undergrad said she loved it there. (She was also my former
student whom I sent to MassArt and continue to be friends with.) Now with FB
you could say it’s biased by my friends list, I have more RISD grads on my list
than MassArt grads. Thinking of this I posted the same thing to twitter. This
is where it gets interesting.

Within minutes of the posting I had a host of interesting
answers from several people across the country. Some of my regular twitter
friends* commented and of them, every single one said the same thing RISD.
Within a half hour I had a faculty member tweet at me RISD. I made a tongue in
cheek comment and he tweeted back at me. (you see this is how TWITTER works.**)
By the time I got home a former RISD student had tweeted at me. Get this: not
one comment from MassArt, period.

So I searched for MassArt while posting the question, is
MassArt on twitter, do they check for the tweets that mention them? I found
MassArt and followed them. A couple hours later they responded, asking me what
I was looking for. I wanted to tweet back at them; you kind of missed the point
and the boat.

My thought for the day is that if an artist isn’t on social media
pimping their work they are MISSING the boat and the point just like MassArt
did today. If an artist doesn’t blog, facebook or tweet they should. The same
for institutions like colleges and universities. Every institution SHOULD have
a social media person checking FB, twitter, etc every couple hours for people
like me positing questions to the masses. Then they should interact.***

Continue reading →

motivation
Originally uploaded by alshepmcr

I've asked this of myself and others, but if you read the description on flickr you'll understand what the image is really about. I lvoe that this has more meaning than just the first read.

heal
Originally uploaded by petalthrow

Lovely art journal entry in pastels, which I don't normally like much, but in this image they work quite well.

ArtisticBiker AKA Johnathan Manning puts together a weekly UStream show that you can watch live and chat with other viewers and him on Thursday nights. You can see it here.

After the show he puts together a video and puts it up on Youtube. It's like a condensed version of his hour long show. You miss out on all the great chatter but you still get to see him make art, which is always great stuff!

One of the great things about Johnathan is that he experiments with his materials. He uses cheap acrylic paints, cheap brushes and a variety of sketchbooks to make his art. He dabbles with spray paints and adds a lot of passion. Throughout all of his videos and UStreams you can see that he loves and is passionate about art.

This video demonstrates his experimental nature and it's great! 

2005
Originally uploaded by lessherger

In this image I'm working on 5x7inch 140lb Strathmore coldpressed watercolor paper. On the left side I peeled a label off a Maine root bottle and glued it in. I then scribbled on it with a permanent marker; probably a sharpie or sharpie clone.

I wrote on the page about how my parents are up at the crack of dawn and how my partner and I are on "city time" meaning we like to stay up until 1 am and sleep until 9, my parents like to say that the day is half over by the time we get out of bed. I used a permanent ink to write the entry. On the left side I used some watercolor. I also glued in a pocket that flips down and holds some more journaling on loose paper.

On the right side I used watercolor crayons to get the intense colors. I put them down very thick and used a waterbrush to blend them.