Below are Eight lists posts from some of our bloggers around the Arts and Design channel here at b5media of things they found interesting or have gleaned from experience.

Enjoy.

1. 10 Quilting Sites & Blogs That Excite Me: Check out some of the quilting web sites and blogs Mary Emma finds interesting and inspiring.
2. It’s a list of 25 DIY Jewelry Sites by Tammy over at Jewelry and Beading.
3. Chloe lists 20 reasons why having your own workspace is great.
4. Also, Chloe has a few (more like 30) needs in her new studio that you might identify with in creating your own studio workspace.
5. For my own entry here on Artist Hideout, I listed 25 art forms and artists who already use them.
6. Noreen over at hankering for yarn is passionate about small loom weaving and has made a short list of a few reasons why.
7. Christine over at Mad Cropper gives you her Top 10 favorite posts in her blog. Wanna know more? Read on!
8. Noreen,  also at hankeringforyarn, has been enchanted by a very special doll that has taken on a life of her own: Tottie Tomato.  Tottie Tomato is on a journey, and Noreen has been posting about it….. read all about it in the Chronicles of Tottie Tomato (and yes, Tottie  REALLY is a Tomato…..)

Post from: Artist Hideout

But I failed to mention color schemes in the process. 

I have found the following to be a pretty good standard for colors.  If the colors appear together in nature, then they will work visually for your project.  Granted, this is a pretty loose judgement, but it seems to work for me.

The color scheme above is entitled Fire Flower, based off of the colors of the following image I took while on vacation earlier this year.

I haven’t worked out how to pull these types of color values out using free software yet such as gimp, but I have found a website that will do it for you. 

By the way, this is the flower I used for that really, really annoying post.

Post from: Artist Hideout

Here’s what I would try (to do more of anyway).

Sculpting.

Sculpting is messy work. 

There is a reason I shy away from sculpting.  It’s expensive, it’s really time consuming, it takes up a lot of space and well…. it’s messy.

Not that I wouldn’t do more if I had the resources, I think I would.  Or at least I like to think that I would. 

But here’s why I would do it.  Sculptures seem to reach out into our three dimensional space and pull us bodily into the work. 

So, what would you try?

Post from: Artist Hideout

So I’ve started a list of Art Forms and Artists who use them.

My list is now at 25, but I’d love to feature you and your unique art form too if you have something different from what is listed.

These are in no particular order, but have fun exploring each and checking out each artists work.

1. Conte – Aaron Saaco
2. Inkwash – David Hayward (flickr)
3. Acrylic painting – Nancy Standlee
4. Oil painting – Michael Story
5. Charcoal – Erin Fostel
6. soft pastel – Casey Klahn
7. oil pastel – Tonya Bond
8. fumage – Me (sometimes)
9. henna – Khadija Dawn Carryl
10. glass etching – Christine Masters
11. Pen and Ink – Hugh MacLeod
12. Encaustic painting – Brad Ellis
13. Airbrush – Mike Learn
14. scratchboard – Greg Murray
15. watercolor – Ryan Petrow
16. colored pencils – Gayle Mason
17. pencil drawing – J.D. Hillberry
18. assemblage – Deborah Hayner
19. Screen printing – Kristy (craftgrrl)
20. Stamping – Katelyn Thomas
21. Digital Illustration – Bryan Ballinger
22. Digital Animation – Channel Frederator
23. Enamel Paint – Jackson Pollock
24. clay – Viki Hardin
25. collage – Collage Artists of America

Post from: Artist Hideout

After reading probably at least half of the 91 reviews of the Intuos3 Wacom pen tablet and seeing the amazing amount of great feedback that this product is generating, I am taking the plunge.

With the average feedback being four and a half stars out of five with 91 reviews, I am feeling pretty confident about my purchase.

But, I will be using this day in and out maybe sometime next week. I will be putting it to the test in a very real way.

I am going to pack up my mouse and disable the little touch pad on my laptop and see how well I function going back to pen-based input.

Post from: Artist Hideout

So my most recent painting, (and why I’ve been silent the last few days has been an assemblage project that will also be using the abstract form in it’s later stages. You must pardon the cell phone image below (I really must get a better camera than that), but here is where I am with this particular painting.

Using rags and some old computer parts (including a hard drive and an old security camera, a sea shell, these were first glued to the canvas. The rags were glued very loosely so to still give the impression of movement around a protrusion of the security camera lens attached to the hard drive.

I guess the idea behind this is that art is watching us as much as we are watching it. Where we are the true art and the conduit that what we call “art” comes into being.

Or maybe the fumes are just getting to me?

seen here on it’s side, all in black… hoping it is dry soon for the next layer of paint.

Post from: Artist Hideout

So, I have contracted out this little task to a great friend of mine who I help him with his blog on occasion, Claude Barclay has agreed to be my personal photographer for my artwork.

Claude is a professional photographer here in the central Ohio area and has been doing photography for… well, more years than I’ve been alive. He knows his stuff, and has the equipment to pull it off.

So let’s skip to the finished product, and then we’ll come back to what the process was to get there.

This is an abstract painting I completed awhile ago that is as of yet untitled still.

The dimensions are 24″x48″

Medium: Latex Enamels

The challenge: This is a very reflective painting as it was painted in enamels, so many of my personal attempts at photographing it resulted in weird glares and distorted lighting. I decided I needed a more controlled studio lighting environment for this painting to really be seen correctly.

Here was the first photograph that was taken using a softbox flash unit and a reflective umbrella unit.

One was positioned about 45 degrees above, and the other was an umbrella flash about 15 degrees in front of the painting to the right.

Both glared. But this gave us an idea of what we could and couldn’t do to get this particular painting to really show itself off.

Next, we decided to go a little more simple and just used one softbox at about a 15 degree angle about 3 feet above the painting. This brought out a lot more color, but that stupid glare still showed up.

So, as with most things that glare, changing the angle is usually the best way to accomplish getting rid of it. Here I am holding it at an odd angle to minimize the glare. (saves us time in moving lights to test it out this way). This worked, but the angle was wrong and I don’t want myself in the picture of course.

almost there…

We also decided that we needed to brighten things up more.

Lighting is like so. One softbox unit is almost directly over the painting (it’s not far enough back yet to get the glare off, but it’s closer)

A second softbox was bounced off the rear wall of the studio to give the painting more of a foreground look rather than just blending into the background. (which by the way is a black background paper and an easel covered with a black cloth)

This second softbox really helped out the overall look tremendously. The umbrella flash is no longer being used at this point either.

Here is the final image. Colors are vibrant, image is centered, glare is minimized.

We moved the top softbox directly over the painting minimizing glare and bounced the other softbox off the back wall. This gave us the gallery look we were going for.

Update: if anyone is interested in buying this painting, contact me at william@b5media.com

Post from: Artist Hideout

Post from: Artist Hideout

Okay, so I learned a lesson with Acrylics and Masking tape on my cubic abstract project.

They don’t work well together.

Maybe if I had rolled paint onto the canvas this would have worked, but I used a brush.

The paint migrated underneath the tape causing weird runs.

Not really what I was intending here.

The funny thing about a technique that doesn’t work is well, now you know.

Post from: Artist Hideout

I’ve been getting into Picasso’s work a lot more lately, and decided that I need to make it my own and work with the cubic form just a little more.

So, starting off this painting is a whole lot of masking tape.

I have cuts on the inside of my hand where I was pulling the tape off the roll and it would spin.

Part of this is that I wanted to mimic glass breaking out toward the viewer.

This is more planning than I usually put into a work, but I seem to already see the finished product in my head.

One final question: Can you mix acrylic and charcoal?

Post from: Artist Hideout