Wednesday, July 17, 2013

More Doggy Portraits

"Lucy the Cow Dog"
© rebecca collins / artpaw.com
The pup above is Lucy. This project is for a terrific repeat client from Australia. I love this girl's sweet smile in her original photo and those pretty eyes. I enjoy doing work for this client, she always gives me great pics to play with. She also orders rolled, which is really convenient when shipping overseas.

"Wiggle & Izzy"
© rebecca collins / artpaw.com

"Wiggle & Izzy"
© rebecca collins / artpaw.com
 
I adore bulldogs and so I was very excited to get to create a large 34 x 54 inch canvas of these two big headed pups. I am still in the proofing stage on this project and will be tweaking the first round of proofs with a few minor changes. If you notice the image above this one you will see a mock up of this proof in the client's living room. When folks send me a shot of the wall where the art will hang I can easily do a quick photoshop mock up of the work in home ... it is never 100% to scale, but close enough to get the general idea.

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Lola is coming in today and we are shipping out all approved projects. It is going to be a busy ship day. On Saturday I will be leaving for an Alaskan cruise. I have 2 different sets of pet sitters staying at the house, and Lola will be coming in on her regular days to hold down the fort her at Art Paw. E-mail may be spotty so I will be setting up an auto-responder, and trusting that if there are any pet portrait emergencies, Lola will be able to handle it.

Friday, July 12, 2013

More Custom Pet Portraits

I have had a busy couple of weeks. Lots of kitties and pups to work on this month. I will post a few recent projects below. Summer time is the best time to order a pet portrait for Christmas gift giving. If you order a portrait in the summer you know you are getting my very best unhurried creative energy.

"Ripley"
© Rebecca Collins / artpaw.com

"Howie and Flowie"
© Rebecca Collins / artpaw.com

"Owen"
© Rebecca Collins / artpaw.com

"Ruby"
© Rebecca Collins / artpaw.com



Monday, July 08, 2013

Mosaic Monday/ Robot Totems

"Purple Robot Totem ( detail)"
© Rebecca Collins
I am still working on a series of mosaic robot totems. I am having fun with these projects and I want to fill a room with them. I have a  long way to go. I worked up an artist statement for this series. I am lucky to have a writer for a husband and he tweaked my statement for me. I always create the main content and then he polishes it for me, making it stronger and often more confident. He understands my work and by the time I want to write about it we have usually had many conversations about what is going on with the work.  I will paste my statement below the images.

"Purple Robot Totem "
© Rebecca Collins
4.5"x8.25"
"Green Robot Totem"
© Rebecca Collins
5"x18"
"Green Robot Totem ( detail)"
© Rebecca Collins
"Pink Robot Totem "
© Rebecca Collins
5"x18"
"Pink Robot Totem ( detail)"
© Rebecca Collins

Rebecca Collins / Artist Statement:

Totem: a being, object, or symbol representing an animal or plant that serves as an emblem of a group of people such as a family, clan group, lineage, or tribe reminding them of their ancestry (or mythic past).”

Concept: This last year I have found myself exploring an evolving theme of Robot Totems. Robots today occupy a space between pop culture romance, emerging science, and economic powerhouse. To deny them artistic consideration is to be ignorant of their impact on our changing cultural identity. On one level, I’m just having a lot of fun carving out their little clay heads and combining them with found objects, and techniques such as Photoshop collage and mosaic. On another level, I think of “robot” as a larger metaphor for the growing intelligence of the machines in our lives. I am seriously considering the powerful implications that “robot” is bringing to the forefront of what it means to be a 21st century human. In these works I define the idea of robot in many ways at once. I hope that the viewer sees them in archeological terms as well as recognizing their contemporary presence. To me they are at once religious, irreverent, post-apocalyptic and full of creative promise.

Process: Like most of my work, these pieces are about experimentation and the intersection of artistic technique. By working in series I am able to push my skills and my ability to combine a wide variety of disciplines. One day I may be carving clay robot heads and then the next day I may be shooting them so I can drag them into Photoshop to manipulate them on the computer. I am having a grand time combining my ceramic work with digital collage, hand drawing, painting and mosaic. I want the viewer to be drawn in by the rich materials and then hopefully crack a smile as they sort out the conceptual constructs. I also want them to create their own stories, thus adding new layers to the complexity of these works.

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Photoshop Student Work

Last weekend I gave a 2 day workshop that was an intensive 12 hour intro to Photoshop and the Wacom drawing tablet. It was a small class, and I am glad because just 3 students really had me hopping with lots of questions. We had a really great time and everybody finished a pet portrait.

The first day I spent the morning with a little demo work and then after lunch everyone isolated their subject, erasing the background on their photos and then spent the afternoon smudging almost every pixel on their digital canvas using the smudge tool.

Pinky & Oscar
By Linda Clemens
Rascal
By Dallas Gorman
Buddy
By Dawn Oberst

On day two I did a little demo work in the morning using regular people photos to show what types of fun Photoshop fixes you can do on humans. I use Photoshop for painting, but I wanted my students to understand some of the great tools PS offers for enhancing our regular snapshots.  Then my students got busy finalizing their portraits by adding color with the finger painting tool and we played around a little with filters. Each student had different challenges and different approaches. Dallas seemed to struggle the most with understanding layers and yet her portrait of Rascal turned out so very cool and so very painterly.  She wanted a Van Gogh feeling with sunflowers and I think she totally achieved it. Linda was very good at the smudging and I think where she really excelled was in creating a very original and dynamic background for her painting that had little shapes representing kitty dreams. Everyone did great on their background choices, Dawn used a red leather texture she shot at home for Buddy's ground and Dallas had a great pic of Sunflowers she shot for Rascal.  Dawn seemed to pick up the tools the quickest and she was able to knock out a second portrait of her pup Lucy.

All of my students really did great work and I was reminded just how hard Photoshop is. We barley skimmed the surface of all that this program has to offer. I kept our focus very narrow and we learned about the paint brush tool, the smudge tool and the finger painting tool. We learned that "command Z" is our friend, and we learned that layers are tough at first, but the most powerful aspect to working in Photoshop.

Lucy
By Dawn Oberst
I really enjoyed teaching this class. My students were great and insisted on buying me lunch both days. That was really sweet. I brought bagels on Sunday and we snacked and played on the computers all weekend. If you are interested in taking a class with me you can follow me on my fine art portfolio site to learn about upcoming workshops. My next workshop is in October.