Acrylic blending medium is a substance that slows the drying time of acrylic paint, letting you blend colors easier. This painting has a lot of that type of blending. I like it.
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
I really like this rose painting
This is a magnet made from an acrylic on paper painting I did in 2010. Back when I was selling original painting, these rose paintings were my go-to. They always sold, and they were easy to paint. I'm looking at this painting now and I wish I still had the original. I guess I'll have to order one. I like the way the light works in this. It is probably my best painting in this style.
Monday, September 28, 2020
Art History Day
This painting is old - I think from around 1999. It's when my painting skills were not that great! But it has a naive charm I don't think I could duplicate today. I'd like to remake this in illustrator and see how it turns out.
Sunday, September 27, 2020
Happy Blue Cat magnet
This is another painting of mine, turned into a magnet. It features a happy blue cat on a bright red background.
I've had cats pretty much my whole life, and they are my favorite thing to paint.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Witch Assassin - Forest Poisoner
Just making up characters!
How did Joshua Trees get their name?
People who settled in the area during the period of western expansion named them that because their branches reminded them of the biblical Joshua raising his hands towards the heavens.
I learned that as a child because we used to go camping in the desert a lot, and the rangers would have educational walks where they would lead us on a little hike and tell us stories about the history, plants and animals of the desert.
When I grew up, I spent three years living in a very isolated part of the Mojave desert, and I did a lot of paintings there. This is one of them! The original is acrylic on canvas, and you can see the brush strokes.
Friday, September 25, 2020
The Golden Owl of Athena and Minerva
This is digital art I started a couple of months ago.
That was when I first learned how to do gradients. They are so fun to experiment with that I have to stop myself from overusing them.
Athena and Minerva are basically the greek and roman versions of the goddesses of wisdom. Their symbol is the golden owl of wisdom.
Digital art makes it possible to endlessly tinker with things. This is both a blessing and a curse. I can go back and change things when I see I have made a mistake or I think of a better way to do it. But it is an endless process, unlike when I was using acrylics and watercolors. With physical painting, I would finish a painting and then move on.
I hadn't thought of making any changes to this before I just happened to see it and thought it would make a good blog post. There's nothing like thinking about what other people will think about my art to make me look at it with an even more critical eye.
Oh yes, I should also put some texture or shading on the branch. I will post this picture and the next version next to each other in a later post.
Another cactus magnet and a secret
Here is another cactus magnet. This one is a saguaro cactus in front of the mountains, and there's a sunset. It is from an acrylic painting on canvas, and you can see the brush strokes. I lived in the desert for several years and did a lot of painting there.
So what is the secret? I'm writing you from the past! Well, all blog posts are from the past as soon as you stop writing them. But I can schedule posts ahead of time, and I spent this morning putting these magnets on Zazzle and writing individual blog posts for them, one per day.
That's really not much of a secret, Melsky!
Yes, I know. But I have written about magnets and cactuses and paintings so much today that brain is tired.
Who are you talking to anyway?
Uhh, I don't know but here's the magnet:
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Christmas in the Desert
I painted this when I lived in the Mojave desert. I've always been inspired by the desert, even before I lived there I went camping there a lot.
This magnet features a cat looking out the window at a Joshua tree. You can only tell it is the winter holiday season because there is a Christmas tree in the house and Christmas lights, so the magnet will look fine on the fridge year-round.
Now that I think of it, having Christmas magnets would be kind of a fun tradition. They could be kept with the holiday stuff, and once a year I would have fun refrigerator magnets. (I don't have magnets on the fridge because they add clutter, and I want the outside of my fridge to be the only uncluttered thing in my house :)
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Today's magnet of the day - abstract floral plus whimsical
Describing a lot of my paintings is hard. Are they abstract? Sort of, but almost all of them have some sort of identifiable flower or object. They are not what I'd consider pop art. They are just weird and wonderful colorful paintings with details of animals, flowers, objects, so much stuff. Art Brut is probably the most accurate description, but most people don't know what that is, and I don't think that people use that as a search term. It means art that is just painted without really planning beforehand.
It is much easier to have a straightforward painting, where I could just say Blue Cat painting, or whatever it is.
Anyway, here is today's magnet, a gem from 2007 in rare landscape format :)
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Roses and daisies bright floral magnet
Monday, September 21, 2020
Abstract floral, I love it
Another bright, vivid, vibrant abstract floral painting that has now become available in magnet form. It is not as abstract as most of my flower paintings.
The original of this one is acrylic on wood, and I have it hanging in my hallway upstairs.
Sunday, September 20, 2020
The Ghost, The Cat and the Tiger Lilies
This is one of my favorite paintings I have done. The original hangs in my house today, but you can buy it in magnet form.
Actually, you can buy this image on a lot of products. The way Zazzle works is that you can take an image from any product and put it on any other product (if the artist has marked that option for their products). It just really isn't practical to spend the time putting every one of my images on everything they have.
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Abstract Floral Painting
This original painting is acrylic on paper and from around 2008 I think. Looking at this now, I want to do a series of paintings in this style.
Friday, September 18, 2020
Vintage Melsky Art - a problem and a solution
What to do with my older paintings?
Most of my older paintings don't really lend themselves to products very well, but I still want to offer them in my store. Most of the paintings are sold and I don't have large enough file sizes to put on most items. (A lot of my art is from a time period where it wasn't possible to get the large file sizes on the equipment I had at the time.)
I decided to basically put everything I have onto magnets, both old and new. Magnets are small enough so I can use the files I have. They are a fun small gift item that you can put in an envelope with a card, or give instead of a card, as they are only slightly more expensive, but they stay around much longer than a card. With magnets, you don't have the kind of practical issues that you might have with other products. Pretty much everyone has a magnetic surface somewhere in their life to stick things on, right? If you give someone a card, they might stick it somewhere they can look at it for a while and then it either gets tossed or it ends up in a pile or file somewhere.
This is the first one:
I did this painting while living in Toronto, probably around 2005. It was inspired by the street I lived on, which had a coffee and donuts sign, a dj bar, brick buildings, lots of music venues and cats. It might have had ghosts too, but I never saw one. It was incredible to be in Toronto after living by myself in the Mojave desert. I wish I still lived there.
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Making some new things
This is a cat called Psycho Kitty I have been drawing for years. I started drawing it when I was in high school, like at the corners of my notes and stuff. Actually, I probably drew it instead of taking notes. I have been observing cats for a long time. This is the impish, kittenish look that cats get when they play. There are so many leaves in the air the cat does not know which to attack first.
And something else very similar. Unlike the cat, I don't know what the fox is thinking. I don't have years of experience interpreting the facial expressions of foxes the way I do with cats.
I put crows in the leafless trees, and some more flowers and grasses. I also hid a tiny fox somewhere!
And the same fox on a shirt, but with a tree and a spiral design. I think I should have put this on a black shirt so the spirals would show up better.
This is a card I made using as much stuff as possible. I want to make one like this that is only traditional Christmas stuff. But while I was planning it out I thought I would see how it looked using what I had on hand, some of which is sort of christmas-like, but mostly not. It's kind of like an art junk-drawer.
Monday, September 14, 2020
Folk art bird Christmas Cards
This is the first Christmas card I've designed in a long time. It feels good to be designing cards again.
These are vintage-inspired (or in other words, I tried to make them look old fashioned)
The birds remind me of retro felt folk art ornaments.
Saturday, September 12, 2020
My first fox
I have trouble drawing things in 3/4 perspective, and I am intimidated by drawing foxes. So when I finally decided to try and draw a fox in my new style, I'm not sure why I did it in 3/4 view.
This is going to be a Christmas card. The background will still be trees and mountains and snow, but better versions.
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| Fox Christmas Card |
This is going to be a Christmas card. The background will still be trees and mountains and snow, but better versions.
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