Well, the Art du Jour really went in a different direction today.  I love to read my zines and I was reading in the current of Cloth paper Scissors issue that is a great article called Photo, Paint, Stitch by Kelli Nina Perkins. I love this process of taking a still life picture and sketching the outline and adding your own paint colors. Love that book she made too.  So Mattie Lou muse and I decided to try it so I took a picture of a still life I threw together then used Photoshop to turn it into a line drawing then painted it in watercolor---twice. It was fun.  Really fun. Surprisingly...fun! But I just realized by looking at the pic again that one pear was green--oh well, artistic license as Kelli says to do in the article.

If any one is interested in how to do turn photos into a line drawing in Photoshop let me know and I will post it.

Painted Photos

I have been playing around with some painted photos. I really enjoy painting the prints of the photos that Marc, our son- in- law, takes of the birds in their back yard feeder. He is a very good photographer and gets some really great shots. I tried it with two different backgrounds.  I used acrylic and add some mat medium first to make the paper less absorbent although I am not sure if that really makes much difference. I think it's a fun thing to do!

Crossroads Store

Well, I have to confess, I am a DJ Pettitt wannabe. I have never met her and have never seen how she does all of her beautiful, to-die-for art, but one thing that really intrigues me is how she does her altered photographs--among lots of other art she creates. Does she paint directly over the art....just what does she do? Hopefully one day I will find out but in the meantime I think I will try altering the photographs by painting directly over the printed photo. This was a trial run and I think that next time I will put mat medium on first---I don't really know why---I just like to use acrylic over mat medium. And maybe I will make the next one a bit more painterly.

This is a little store that is just outside of West Point, GA, my old stomping grounds, on Hwy 18 on the way to Callaway Gardens. It is like stepping into the 19th century when you go in and it has probably been there that long. They are still open for business in the middle of no-where land and the neatest antiquities you have ever seen. The people who work there are antiquities also with the most southern of southern accents ---actually-- probably just like mine.

Above is the altered after photo that I painted and below is the real before photograph I took several years ago. I think I started with a rather difficult one but it was really fun. I think I will do some more! Next time---maybe a bird.