Blog Find of the Week

Painting by Daily Painter Justin Clayton

My blog find of the week is Lines and Colors a blog by Charley Parker about anything and everything drawing and painting.  I'm not sure how this one got past my radar!  It is chock full of great information and artist reviews.  This painting was in a review of daily painter Justin Clayton.

Here is a fun little diddy I found on the side bar courtesy of Lines and Colors.  Monster Doodle Book is a fun idea with half-finished drawings that you (or a gift recipient) finish.  I did something like this with my great nieces for a drawing project.  I took a photo and using my photo program used the cartoonize feature to reduce the photo to coloring book type lines.  Then I adjusted the effect so that only about 30% of the lines remained.  I was amazed at how my nieces were able to jump right in and finish the drawing.  Their mom was so impressed with the outcome that she used the girls' art for their Christmas cards last year.

Here is a cute video of the Monster Book



I just wanted to add one more tidbit to this post.  I am learning the value of using thumbnail sketches in designing my paintings.  They are helpful in so many ways: value, composition, and color.  This week my pea brain had an idea.  Why not buy graph paper to do the thumbnail sketches on.  I was finding that random canvas shapes are not helpful for thumbnail sketches.  i.e., a 5 X 7 canvas is a very different shape than an 8 X 10.  So I found that by using graph paper ( I bought white) I could be very precise about the canvas size and shape and then less precise about what I drew inside the shape.  The paper I bought at Office Depot only cost $2.89 for 80 double sided sheets.  And the sheets had one size of graph squares on one side and smaller squares on the other side, which I thought might work well for larger paintings.

So that's it for this week.  Have a good one!