Placement and Color in Art Portrait

Let's look at this great portrait of a girl. What caught my eye about this was the colors-red and turquoise. We don't have to do pastels, colored pencils or paint in what colors we think are obvious, we can use different colors from our pallettes. Try it!
Also, check out the measurements. I love doing that. I start with my fingers, my thumb on the portraits chin, my pointer finger on the top of the head, I slide my fingers down to meet, and if the portrait has been done with the eyes in the middle of the head, my fingers will meet right half way down the head.
I am doing an online free drawing class. The teacher actually uses grids and tools to draw portraits so that the drawing is as accurate as possible before any shading is done.

Journal Pages

Here are three videos for you to watch. I watch them over and over again and wrote to Mystele asking her how she sellects her colors. She goes by intuition or the "gut thing" I would call it. I understood when she told me it was what she felt like using. It is still fun to know what others are thinking and what they are doing when you are watching their videos. It inspires!

Welcome to my Photography

On Crystal's Creations-StillWatersgallery, I will share alot of my photography. In fact, most of the photography is done by me. I also take the pictures and videos of my work.

I have a Canon Rebel. Years ago in college, I took a photography class with an SLR Canon camera. I learned to do the developing also but the chemicals were so expensive that I did not have the money to buy them or to replace them when they went bad. When you are a new photographer, things go wrong and your chemicals can go bad too! At that time, I couldn't even afford the film.

Yes, I have always been a poor artist and hopefully that will change someday. My parents bought me the camera for a gift and I was an art major and music major in a college in Boston. So, out of sheer desperation and care, I would try to take as little pictures as I could because I could only afford one role of film. You laugh...yes I do too! One role of film is nothing compared to our world today of taking thousands of pictures in one trip and then trying to decide which ones to keep and the rest to delete. We can delete on our camera and we can delete on our computers when we load up our pictures. We can have our pictures developed from companies online or stores down the street, camera shops or even our homes with our lazer print machines.

We just don't know how we have it made. But you want to know what is funny? I took my memory card to Ritz photo three months ago to bring my sons wedding pictures and still have not picked them up. "Why" you ask? Because I can't afford to pick them up:) Sound familiar?

Anyway, the architecture photos you see on my blog, along with flowers from Arizona were quickly taken because we were on the run. I wanted to remember the images, the colors, the lines, the textures...I want to recreate these sites into my collage or paintings/drawings. You may use my pictures to draw or paint from. Enjoy them and please send me copies of your work!

CHECK OUT THE FLOWERS OF OUR BEAUTIFUL ARIZONA

The purpose of my Arizona photography is to share with you the wonderful colors in our landscapes.

If you look hard enough, you will see loads of color combinations in our very nature. COPY those colors into your art work. Perhaps you don't even have to paint or color a flower, just load your paint brush with a chosen color, apply it to your canvas or paper or cardboard, pick up a new color after you have rinsed your paint brush, and lay that down on the canvas in another spot or next to the first color. Keep on doing this with just two colors or three colors and fill up the canvas. You will see how colors change when they are placed next to a different color. Sometimes grey can appear blue. Check it out!