More New Paintings

At last the latest 10 x 8 inch oil color on canvas paintings of my Grandchildren were dry enough for me to scan them. These are "Kevin 2007" and "Diane 2007."

I will be giving them to their other grandmother tomorrow when we get together for Thanksgiving. I have made full size prints on paper for their parents and ourselves.

They will be soon posted to my website and to my Imagekind art print website.

Catching up once again

Time goes by so fast. I had not realized that more than a week has gone past since I last blogged.

I have been painting regularly each morning. But somehow in the afternoons, when I have been doing my blogging, I have family tasks to do, and have not been thinking too much about painting. Still, I now come to the task with a fresh mind.

I am continuing to work on the last five small (10 x 8 inch) portraits of my grandchildren. They are all to be Christmas presents for their respective Grandmothers. I have to finish the paintings of the two youngest, Diane and Kevin, by this coming Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. There is our usual family gathering for Thanksgiving, and their other Grandparents will be visiting us that morning, and we will not see them again before the holidays.

Actually the these two paintings are finished, except for labeling and scanning for my records (and reproduction). Diane's portrait has been finished for about a week. Kevin's I coated with medium last night and am waiting for it to harden enough to handle for the final labeling and scanning. It should be OK by Wednesday.

The other three portraits, Sara, Megan, and Dana, are progressing somewhat in parallel. Sara's will require another few days of work. The others will take a little longer. These can wait, for we will see their other Grandparents at Christmas.

Last Wednesday I was sitting once again at Gallery 113. Before arriving at the gallery, I stopped by Scott Mclaine, my photographer, to drop off recently finished the "Marty & Diane" portrait for photographing. It is too big for my scanning.

Scott was telling me about his task of photographing the items at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Chinese Clothing exhibit I blogged about last week. He is their official photographer. Many of these items had never been out of storage before and had not been documented. He said that it took almost two months.

The show at Gallery-113 was very big. It was hung Salon Style from floor to ceiling. My piece was in a good place, high up near the door, and well lit. But there had been very few sales. There was very little traffic that day, even though it was a nice outside.

I have decided to discontinue my small advertisement in the local weekly CASA Magazine. Though it has given me a lot of recognition amongst the local art community, it has not brought any sales. It costs $65/month, cheap as advertising goes. But I think it is time for a change.

For some time I have been thinking about publishing a book of my single person portraits. Self publishing with online print on demand has become very inexpensive. I have all the software and digital images to do the job. So I will give it some more thought, and study the situation for a while.

Documenting New Paintings

Today I completed the final step in finish up a series of paintings of three of my Grandsons. I am fortunate to have eight grandchildren and hope to complete paintings of all of them over the next few months.

These today are small oil paintings on 10 x 8 inch canvases and were completed last month. But after completion of all my paintings, the next step is to document them by photographing each.

Usually I have them professional photographed. For years I had my paintings recorded as 35 mm color slides. Also, in addition, the very best work I had shot on to 4 x 5 inch color film.

Recently I have them photographed digitally with a 10 mega pixel camera. I use a professional photographer, because no matter how hard I try, I cannot light the canvas as evenly and as well as my professional friend.


Smaller work I scan on my recent acquisition, a professional flat bed scanner. The bed will take a up to 8-1/2 x 14 inch material, both reflective and transparent. With a resolution up to 6,400 dpi, even slides may be scanned in to digital files. The scanner has elaborate calibration procedures allowing both reflective and transparent material to be accurately scanned.

Even with the calibration, I find it necessary to tweak the file for the on screen image to match the original art. Of course also I have to calibrate the screen. To ensure that the color display of the image is correct, I use a Panatone Huey light compensation tool.

The Huey sensor sits beside the computer display and measures the room light falling on the screen. It automatically adjusts the displayed image to compensate for the changing light level in my studio.