More Art Contests

I have been entering contests lately for fun and to try and get some recognition. I am limiting to myself to what I consider the reasonably priced ones. Some of them can be pretty expensive! Of course those are the ones that usually offer the best prizes, so it's a catch 22.

Here are a couple I found that look interesting:

FALL 2008 ART CONTEST - "PORTRAITS"

INTERNATIONAL ARTIST MAGAZINE'S ART COMPETITIONS

WORKS OF CONTEMPORARY DRAWING AND WRITING ABOUT DRAWING ANNUAL 2008

These are just a couple that fit my areas of art work. There is a huge list of contest you can sift through on Artshow.com.

Red Bubble Promotion

To celebrate selling 100,000 items, Red Bubble.com is offering free shipping. The coupon code is ‘100000masterpieces’ – just enter this during the checkout process to receive the free shipping offer. Hurry! This expires at midnight (GMT) on Oct 30, 2008.

So now is a great time to buy cards or prints of my art and photography!

Some New Works and a New Gallery Site

I have completed a couple things recently, one just today in fact.






I had been working on this one for a long time off and on. I would get bored and did something else, but I finally finished it up, and am quite pleased with the results.






This one was just for fun, and gave me a chance to play with Pastel Chalk pencils. Those pencils are quickly becoming a favorite.

I have also found another fabulous site for selling prints of my work. It is called Red Bubble.com. It is free to sign up, and they offer tons of features to artists. It is extremely easy to navigate as well. I highly recommend Red Bubble if you are looking for an easy way to get your work out there. I now have much of work on my Bubble Site, in addition to my gallery on Fine Art America.






One site I was disappointed in is Artist Rising. It took 2 weeks for my gallery to even become active. I had to try consistently to get works to upload properly, and then it took several days for them to display because of their approval process. I found the whole thing frustrating. While I am sure many have had success with it, I would not recommend it.

As a side note, the portrait contest winners haven't been announced yet. I am still hoping for honorable mention!

Art Contests

I found an interesting art community website called A Singular Creation. One thing I like is that they run free art contests every month. The Art Showdown Contests all have different themes, and there is small prizes, normally $50 for the winner. The winner is featured with a small statement form the artist, but 4 pieces also receive honorable mention. Each artist can enter 3 pieces. See the Art Showdown Contest Rules and Guidelines.

This months art contest hit me right in the middle since the subject was portraits. I entered 2 celebrity pencil portraits, Tony Shalhoub and Elizabeth Taylor. I also entered my graphite portrait of the sweet little boy, Deaven. I was extremely pleased, and surprise, when, out of 299 entries, Deaven was chosen as one of the 16 finalists. The finalists are currently open for public vote, and will remain so until Oct. 6. the it goes to the final vote of the judges, and the winner will be announced Oct 10th. I hope you will check out all the finalists and casts votes for your favorites. There are some really nice pieces.

I honestly don't expect to win, but am hopeful for honorable mention. That would be a big enough boost for my ego. :)

This months contest is black and white, again another nice match for me. I plane to enter a couple original pieces, one of which I am trying to get done before the Oct 14 deadline. Check out the contest themes and deadlines.

Time Slipped Away!

Wow! I can't believe it has been so long since I posted. It has been a busy summer with work and vacations, so that is my excuse!

I have recently been experimenting with pastel chalk. I really like working with these. General's makes some in pencil form, and there are also pastel chalk sticks. They lay down very soft colors that blend easily. I have used paer towels and q-tips to blend them. I also like how they erase easily too! I have been using them on greay pastel paper, and the colors really stand out. Only thing is, there is no balck, so I have been mixing them with carbon or graphite.

"Daydreams" is the first work I created with pastel chalk pencils on white paper. I used a thin tip black pen for her eyelashes. For her skin tones, I applied the pastel challk to a paper towel and then to the paper.

I will be posting some other pasterl chalk works shortly in my gallery on Fine Art America. I recently added some high res images of some of my graphite portraits to my gallery there. they have a wonderful high res preview featrue that really lets you see the detail in a piece.

So, if you want to get into to color, but want something that blends easily, and don't like the waxy look of colored pencils, give these a try. Especially on colored paper!

New Artwork

I added my new art work "Sasha" to my Fine Art America gallery several days ago.




Sasha is the name of my recently adopted cat. I found out the name means "moon" in Hindu, and a cat with the moon seemed to be a perfect fit! I really wanted the moon to have some detail, so I based it on a royalty free high res picture of the moon. It was neat to be able to see all the craters on it's surface.

I added a little color to her blue eyes with some pastel chalk.

I also added some high res pictures of some of my older portraits and celebrity art to my gallery. Clicking on them in the gallery brings up a detailed high res preview of the pictures.

I am still trying to recreate my collection of digital files from my art, which were lost in the hard drive crash a few months ago. All the images I just added had to be photographed and loaded again.

Back Again!

Well, my blog has suffered again because I was on vacation. I had a fantastic time with my family. Unfortunately, it seems to be my routine to go out of town and come back sick!

Enough about that though! On to drawing news. I am working on an original, that is really coming along quite nicely. Sometimes pieces surprise me and wind up being easier than I expected. I am going to be very vague, so everyone can venture some guesses. It has an animal with unique eyes. It is set at night, with the moon at its back. I plan to render everything in graphite, except the eyes that will be in color. I think it will be a nice look.

I had a fun time drawing with one of my nephew while I was away. That has been our tradition in recent years, to draw together from the same picture. This time it was R2-D2 from Star Wars. Droids are a challenging subject! However, I kind of enjoying doing something with sharp angles and hard lines. It is totally different from portraits of people, that is lots of soft edges and flowing lines.

Well, that's all the news for now. Watch for a post about my finished original soon, and see if you guessed right. :)

New Page on Squidoo About Powdered Graphite

I was inspired recently after working with powdered graphite to create a Squidoo lens about it. it really is a great useful product, but I think many artists shy away from it because pencils are the old standard. On this lens you will find tips on working with it. I hope you'll check it out!


General's Powdered Graphite is my favorite to work with.

Busy, Busy

Well, I see I have neglected this blog for awhile, so thought I better show it some attention! So, here is my recent news.

I am working on 2 new original pieces. One is about half way finished and the other I just started. Both are in graphite, although I plan to incorporate some chalk pastel into one of them. I normally keep my hands in 2 or 3 projects at once. That way if I get bored or frustrated with one, I just move on to something different.

I am still searching for the perfect picture of Sean Connery. When drawing celebrities I try to find poses that are not common. I just don't like drawing from a picture that has been seen 1 million time in a publicity campaign. Although, there are always exceptions! Anyway, here is the picture I am leaning towards . . .

Most of my time recently has been tied up with web design. One project will be published within the next few days, and another close to the end of the month. The wedding business is also busy this time of year!

That's all for now, must get back to work!

New Original Graphite Work

I have posted an original entitled "Cover Girl" in my Fine Art America Gallery. I was hoping to capture the look of a vintage magazine, with maybe a little old Hollywood thrown in. It was a lot of fun to do, though I have to admit it didn't turn out like I wanted. I guess we are always our own worst critics though. :) However, I do like the contrast the carbon borders created with graphite drawing.