And the winner of the photo contest is......
Artsy with her photo of her cat, Puckett! Gee, I'm assuming it's her cat, maybe it's a loaner. I chose this photo because I like the odd perspective and the colors around the cat and it should be fun to work up into a painting and make into something that is uniquely my own. If you're not familiar with Artsy, she has a shop on Etsy at Artsy.etsy.com full of these amazing assemblages and jewelry she makes. Almost as eye popping as the items for sale in her shop are the images of them, and I've learned to comfort myself and my substandard camera by believing that she simply has a camera with super powers, maybe even a small cape.
The second place goes to Hurdler4eva with this view of waterfront living. I really love this image, but I don't know if I could make something unique from it, it's pretty unique on it's own. What I mean is, because this is unusual, I'll be worried about viewers being able to read it visually so I'll fall into the trap of trying to paint it very realistically and then you'll have a painting that is not too different, if not inferior to the photo.
The third place goes to akhitt, or Amanda with this shot of Wilbur. Now here, I really love the subject matter, and I can tell this fellow has personality but this composition would be hard to work with. I thought about enlarging just one section of the image but I think that would be bending the rules a bit. With the submission Amanda told me that this guy is at a sanctuary where she works, and I'm really intrigued by that, trying to imagine if it is a pig sanctuary or a monastery with some very muddy patches.
I'd like to thank everyone again for all their submissions, it's been really fun to get these images and see a bit through other people's eyes. I'd like to do this contest again, but I need to think of how to advertise it a little better to get the word out and to get more entries. Feel free to comment here with ideas or convo to me on the Etsy site about that. Advertising problems aside I think I can do it again in a month or two, so I hope those of you that didn't make the cut will submit again, tell your friends ect. As it is I have a lot of new projects I'm working on.
Right now I'm working on a series of monster portraits where I'm painting on the glass of old photo frames. And I still have the denim series that's coming along pretty well, though it's frustrating that our camera is temporarily missing and I'm unable to post them in the shop yet.
Funny story about that. I use the camera all the time to take shots that I might work into paintings. Eric recently graduated from his volunteer firefighting program and took the camera with him down to the firehouse, which is where he lost/misplaced the camera. There must be nearly a hundred pics on that thing, you know the usual stuff of the kids, animals from the farm, and some of what seemed like a neat idea at the time of myself in the shower. You see I'm really interested in finding odd perspectives and I was thinking a shot of a woman shaving her armpits from the perspective of the shaver would be really interesting, you know, the sharp lines of the razor and the blurring lines of the figure going down to the feet with the curve of the tub in the distance. I'm not thinking it's so clever now. As it was, the images were so disturbing to see I deleted most of them right off. I mean I've had three kids and I just look better with clothes on. But a few of them were probably still on the camera when Eric lost it. Yeah. Funny story. See you on the internet!
Artsy with her photo of her cat, Puckett! Gee, I'm assuming it's her cat, maybe it's a loaner. I chose this photo because I like the odd perspective and the colors around the cat and it should be fun to work up into a painting and make into something that is uniquely my own. If you're not familiar with Artsy, she has a shop on Etsy at Artsy.etsy.com full of these amazing assemblages and jewelry she makes. Almost as eye popping as the items for sale in her shop are the images of them, and I've learned to comfort myself and my substandard camera by believing that she simply has a camera with super powers, maybe even a small cape.
The second place goes to Hurdler4eva with this view of waterfront living. I really love this image, but I don't know if I could make something unique from it, it's pretty unique on it's own. What I mean is, because this is unusual, I'll be worried about viewers being able to read it visually so I'll fall into the trap of trying to paint it very realistically and then you'll have a painting that is not too different, if not inferior to the photo.
The third place goes to akhitt, or Amanda with this shot of Wilbur. Now here, I really love the subject matter, and I can tell this fellow has personality but this composition would be hard to work with. I thought about enlarging just one section of the image but I think that would be bending the rules a bit. With the submission Amanda told me that this guy is at a sanctuary where she works, and I'm really intrigued by that, trying to imagine if it is a pig sanctuary or a monastery with some very muddy patches.
I'd like to thank everyone again for all their submissions, it's been really fun to get these images and see a bit through other people's eyes. I'd like to do this contest again, but I need to think of how to advertise it a little better to get the word out and to get more entries. Feel free to comment here with ideas or convo to me on the Etsy site about that. Advertising problems aside I think I can do it again in a month or two, so I hope those of you that didn't make the cut will submit again, tell your friends ect. As it is I have a lot of new projects I'm working on.Right now I'm working on a series of monster portraits where I'm painting on the glass of old photo frames. And I still have the denim series that's coming along pretty well, though it's frustrating that our camera is temporarily missing and I'm unable to post them in the shop yet.
Funny story about that. I use the camera all the time to take shots that I might work into paintings. Eric recently graduated from his volunteer firefighting program and took the camera with him down to the firehouse, which is where he lost/misplaced the camera. There must be nearly a hundred pics on that thing, you know the usual stuff of the kids, animals from the farm, and some of what seemed like a neat idea at the time of myself in the shower. You see I'm really interested in finding odd perspectives and I was thinking a shot of a woman shaving her armpits from the perspective of the shaver would be really interesting, you know, the sharp lines of the razor and the blurring lines of the figure going down to the feet with the curve of the tub in the distance. I'm not thinking it's so clever now. As it was, the images were so disturbing to see I deleted most of them right off. I mean I've had three kids and I just look better with clothes on. But a few of them were probably still on the camera when Eric lost it. Yeah. Funny story. See you on the internet!
