CONSUMING [nichole] Today

Partly inspired by my tinkering with the computer painting program, ArtRage, and partly a need to do something different and creative; I decided to get away from the Internet and computers and try Oil Painting.Boy was I in for a surprise. I never knew there was so many kinds of brushes! Oh and we were told to only get red, yellow, blue, and white paint. Apparently, every other color can be made from those. Who knew!

After the class was over all the students were invited to display 2 paintings with other local artists in an art show at the county visitor center. Very cool.

I had started several paintings, but had really only “finished” two. So those were the two that went. The first I did on the first night of class with borrowed paint, canvas, brushes etc. Not knowing what I needed, I came to class pretty unprepared. I don’t know what to say about the second painting, other than that was how I was feeling at the time. 2 Points to whoever knows the source image that provided the inspiration for it though!

#1 - Phoenix Flower
11×14, Oil on Canvas

#2 - Crushed
20×16, Oil on Canvas

Here are a few other pics I snapped of the exhibit, including a few of my favorites. (Most are for sale - not mine - so if any pique your interest I can get you in touch with the appropriate person.) Many of the students/artists have been painting for awhile and I hope I can paint as well as them someday. Now that I have all the supplies I plan to keep it up.

I just realized that after I showed you my awesome tracing abilities with ArtRage I never uploaded my colored in version.

So here it is, I call it the Wolf Within!

Discovered you can “trace” in ArtRage. Pretty neat.

I’ve always wanted to try painting.

But then there’s all those supplies you have to buy and trying to figure out where to store everything when not in use. In my case, that would most likely mean the basement which might as well be own personal oubliette for projects.

Then a friend showed me ArtRage, an unbelievably easy to use and free piece of software from Ambient Design.

There’s a pay version of the software that I haven’t tried yet. It’s only 25 bucks so I might in the future. For now, I am trying the free version which isn’t limited to the point of frustrating unusability.

Here’s my first doodle:

Grass

Artist Arnd Drossel walks along a country road in a sphere made of over 200 lbs of steel wire. The artist is making a 300 kilometre journey across Germany to draw attention to the many people who according to Drossel are “out of balance” and in need of “social psychiatric” help.

Despite not knowing German and being unable to read Drossel’s Inner Balance site or understand the video he has posted I feel that the recent tragic happenings at VT seem to underscore this walking social statement.

Think about it.