Art History Day

Still life painting with wine and window magnet
by MelskyArt

 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.

Photoshopping

I got Adobe creative suite and I like it for the most part. It is hard to switch programs. Illustrator is pretty easy to pick up because it's similar to Inkscape. Photoshop is not easy for me, and designing products on it is not as intuitive as I hoped it would be. But I like the program and the editing features. They are a lot more sophisticated than the free programs I've been using as far as being able to select parts of images and move them around, which will help with some of the art I have planned.

 I also have a new computer to handle the increasing amount of graphics and it has been a lot of work figuring out how to get everything set up. The worst thing is going through my old computer and trying to decide what to do with all the image files. I had that computer for nine years!

The card below was the last thing I made and put in my store. I started writing this blog entry a few days ago and I stopped. I have a tendency to be too intense and burn out. So I took one full day off and played video games with some really nice people and I think that was good for me.

You're Awesome! Thank you so much star Card
by MelskyArt

How I switched from black outlined art to a no outline style

When I was painting a lot of art in the physical realm (as opposed to digital art :) my go-to method was:

1. Rough outline in pencil
2. Color in with paint
3. Outline with a black pen or black paint

When I first started learning Inkscape, I sought to duplicate this method. I tried a bunch of different methods to do this. I would scan in line art and then modify it and attempt to color it in. I tried drawing on my tablet and saving the line art as a .png. That didn't really have the effect I was going for.

Long story short, I started thinking in a different way.  I started thinking in chunks of color instead of sketch/color/outline.

That took my art in a new direction. I had a renewal of creativity and productivity. Now I feel excited about making artwork again. I can create my own world and it is as fun as playing video games or watching any type of media.

The old style outlined art

The new style - will be available soon!

Cat Fish City Before and After

I finished this one today, painting it with watercolor and then outlining in black ink. I think it turned out pretty well. Pastel colored paintings like this don't show up as well online as the bright colored ones.

Sleepy Spiral Cat before and after

It's amazing how much it changes after the watercolor and ink additions. I used acrylic paint for the moon and stars, and then outlined with ink.

Catching Up

I've been painting more, and also doing some digital art. I'm drawing on my Wacom tablet. It's very awkward to draw on it still, but I'm getting better. I plan on doing a line of greeting cards and other products such as magnets, t-shirts, etc.

Otherwise, I'm selling real estate. Yes, this takes up a lot of my time! I'm doing well though. I'm selling mostly to investors and first time buyers.

I am involved with cat rescue- I'm on the board of SANS - Spay And Neuter Syracuse. It's a clinic that provides spay/neuter services for homeless animals and people who can't afford full cost services at vets. Last winter I worked on Pawcasso, an art auction fundraiser.

I am going to post on this blog when I finish paintings. Besides the digital, I've been doing a lot of watercolor/ink/watercolor crayon. Watercolor is easier to do when you don't have much time. Though I like acrylic better, I can take a half hour in the morning and get quite a bit done on watercolors. With the acrylic, I have to use a lot of time for setup and cleanup.

This is one of my more recent paintings, itwas done with watercolor and resist. You paint the foreground first - the cat and fish. Then I covered them with a rubber-like substance and painted the backgrounds. When it dried, I rubbed off the resist. It was hard to get the resist just right, it took several coats. I like the way it turned out. I have cards and products with this image for sale in my Zazzle store.

Cat and Fish Resist by MelskyArt
Create a Post card with zazzle.com

A mistake and how I fixed it

This is an 8x10 painting on watercolor paper. I started it the way I do most of my watercolor paintings - a pencil sketch and then working quickly to color in the painting, letting it dry between layers.

But the orange paint of the cat got away from me, I wet the paper more than usual and his ear got smudged. Orange paint made a big lump on his head.

So I finished the rest of the painting and then did the background with dioxazine purple acrylic paint. That's a very dark color and it looks almost black.

I like the way it came out. It has a bit of an Eastern European look to it, with the dark background and bright colors.

It's difficult to scan paintings with acrylic. The type of acrylic paint I use is glossy, and it looks great in real life but it picks up glare in scans and photos.

I'm happy I was able to save this painting! I may do some more with this technique.

New painting!

11x14 on canvas Psycho Kitty painting. This one is sold, it was part of an auction to support a cat shelter.

Raw Roses

This is the raw scan of the roses painting. I left the border up! I'm working on another modification of this image. I'd like to make a set of greeting cards with my floral paintings and another with my cat paintings, another with desert paintings and a some holiday cards too. I'm looking at the best online places to order cards. Then I will sell them on Etsy. I think it might be nice to do a series of thank you cards too.

Yesterday I spent all day painting ! Six hours. I was painting a house though, one of the rental properties we manage. I like painting houses though, and the money is good. I like to see how much better the places look after they are painted.

The way I got started painting houses is that I am a rental agent for a property management company. I would go to places that were newly painted and there would be paint on the floor, in the carpet, they would get paint on the woodwork. Switch plates and light covers would be either taken off and they wouldn't bother to put them back on, or they would be covered with paint blocking the outlet holes! The paint jobs don't have to be fancy or perfect, we are dealing with places on a very low budget usually. But it doesn't take much more effort to do a decent job, wiping up paint spills, using drop cloths etc.

Having a good paint job also helps me as a rental agent, it just makes the place look better.

Yesterday was a lovely spring day. Not to say that we probably wont get another snowstorm or too but it's nice to be out. Anymore snow we get will be heavy wet spring snow that pretty much disappears quickly.

Bright Roses

Bright Roses, originally uploaded by Melsky.

New painting! This is acrylic and digital. I painted with acrylic on paper, scanned it, and then added highlights and changed the background.

I think I will try doing this more often. I want to try the technique with watercolors too.

I have a very nice Wacom tablet - where you can use a pen to draw in paint programs on the computer. I tried doing some paintings just on the computer but I found it very hard and they didn't look so good! But I am finding I enjoy modifying paintings I do offline.

When I paint with acrylics, the black I use to outline comes out with reflections on it when I scan it. I actually went through this one and colored all lines flat black. I deepened the colors and changed the background color to orange instead of yellow. I also added highlights. I'll have to put the original up for comparison.

I like painting with watercolors, mostly because they fit in with my busy schedule! That is, it's easy to start and stop watercolors, you don't need to worry about the paint drying on the brush and you only need a watercolor palette, water and brushes. Also, it's not that big of a deal if you get paint on your skin or clothes, it washes out.

I don't like the washed out colors though! But if I do watercolors and modify them I can get whatever colors I want.

I'm having an art show!

Roses and Fish, originally uploaded by Melsky.

I decided to have an art show. My show is called September Stream of Consciousness and it will be an online show. The art will all be 8x10 watercolor paintings with pencil and ink. The show will open this Friday, September 20. Artwork will be for sale in my etsy store.

The paintings all will start out as pencil drawings. They will then be colored in with watercolor, and finished off with black ink pen outlining.

This painting, Fish and Roses, is the first one. The rest will be unveiled at the show opening.

I'm having a good time creating the paintings. It's very good to have a deadline to work under. It's fun to create a series of paintings in similar style and materials.

I hope you will join me on Friday.

I'm living in a swamp

Little Paintings, originally uploaded by Melsky.

It's 93 degrees and very humid. Yuck. Can we have winter back now, please?

I bought a chaise lounge so I can go in the basement where it is cool and read. We don't have air conditioning. Our windows won't fit an air conditioner!

This morning I went to yoga and now I have been busy painting all day. These are indoor/outdoor paintings on wood. They have a protective varnish on them. I think they would be fun on a porch, especially the welcome sign ones of course. But since I am doing the Art on the Porches festival next weekend I think these are very appropriate.

Summer Night Sky Cat

Summer Night Sky Cat, originally uploaded by Melsky.

I've finished a new painting. I decided to paint with acrylics today and see what happened. This is the result and I'm very happy with it.

This one is 8x10 on watercolor paper.

Summer Night Sky Cat painting for sale

I'm going to be doing the Art on the Porches festival on June 14th. It's really exciting to be doing a festival again, I have not done one in a long time. I hope the weather is good.

That's one thing I miss about California, the certainty that it would not rain on festival days. It doesn't rain in the Summer in most of California. I do like that it rains in the summer here in New York, it's just that I would like to be able to choose the days!

Summer Day

Summer Day, originally uploaded by Melsky.

A new painting. This one is a watercolor and ink, but with brighter colors.

I've listed it on etsy:

Summer Day Watercolor Painting for sale

I've been working a lot with my Wacom tablet. That's a method of using a pen to draw digitally on a big tablet so you can do drawings that will show up in an illustration program. It's hard to get used to drawing and painting with it but I am getting better.

I plan on starting a new watercolor soon, something with a cityscape theme I think.

I also went horseback riding last weekend which I enjoyed a lot, and to a picnic.

I did some gardening, mostly pulling up weeds. I'm not sure if I'm going to have any sunflowers in my garden though. I found a lot of sunflower hulls where I had planted them. In related news the birds and squirrels around here are looking fat and happy. Maybe I should try again and bury them deeper.

Something Old

This is an assemblage collage multimedia piece that I did in the early 90s when I lived in San Francisco. My ex boyfriend has it and took a few photos of it for me. It's interesting to look at it now that I'm doing some other collages.

Crown Martini on Wood

Crown Martini, originally uploaded by Melsky.

This is a new painting in my Etsy Store, Crown Martini.

I'm still having my Melsky art 2008 New Years Sale

I just sold two paintings privately, both fish paintings to a very nice person who lives in England but went to my same high school, but different years.

I took a break from listing stuff on Etsy while I thought about where I was going artistically. I had though about not selling any more of the smaller paintings, to possibly do nothing smaller than an 8x10 on canvas. I was thinking about just doing larger, more expensive paintings and selling mainly prints in my etsy store. But I've decided not to do that, at least for the time being. I'm going to start doing larger, more complex expensive works and make prints from that. But I will also keep doing my smaller, simpler paintings of fish, cats, martinis and those sort of things. When I get ready to sell prints more complexly I may get a seperate etsy store for them, like Melsky Fine Art, so I will have a craft painting division and a fine art division.

I'm having a sale!

Mornings at the Money Laundromat, originally uploaded by Tom Q.

I marked down some things in my Etsy store, some by as much as 50 percent. Since it's the new year, I want to get some old stuff out and get new stuff in. I do have a lot of new paintings to put in and those should be going in over the next couple of days. I listed that red cat one today.

Sale will be going on at least until the end of the month.

Visit the SALE at MELSKY ART STORE

Heart and Olives

Heart and Olives, originally uploaded by Melsky.

This is a multi media painting on a wooden block. The other side is painted too. I'm not sure whether to attatch a hanger in such a manner that it could be hung up with either side showing, or leave it as it is, a freestanding piece. I have a bunch of these that were started over a year ago. I have been looking for them for a while now, and it turns out they were in with my Christmas stuff. So I'll be finishing up a series of ten or so of these.

I'm planning on having a big sale in my Etsy store starting on Monday. Time to clear out a lot of stuff and put in new stuff.

Happy New Year

Three Fish square, originally uploaded by Melsky.

This is my first painting of the new year. I haven't put it up on Etsy yet. I'm not sure if I'm going to. I may stop selling the smaller works of art online and just sell larger paintings and then prints or greeting cards of them. I'm not sure where I'm going.

Cosmic Cafe Sign

Cosmic Cafe Sign, originally uploaded by Melsky.

I've started doing a series of signs on wood.

In the early 90s I used to make a lot of signs and sell them in a store on Haight Street when I lived in San Francisco.

I love painting on wood. Once I mentioned this to someone and they launched into this long series of instructions for how to paint on wood: first, sand the hell out of it. Then put on many, many coats of gesso until it is totally smooth.

But that's not painting on wood, that's painting on gesso! I like painting on naked wood, so that the grain shows through. Sometimes I use transparent colored glazes on it so the wood shows through even more.

A lot of what I like is the way the paint absorbs into the wood very fast. If you gesso the wood, you don't get that beautiful absorption.

Anyway, here's my Cosmic Cafe sign on etsy