Happy Halloween

Every year all the teachers that work in my hallway at school dress up with a theme and we have a ball doing it, one year we all dressed up as laundry baskets.  Here is a visual for you... I'm an art teacher and I spend my day moving around my classroom helping children who are messy and using a variety of media.  My classroom for an art room is fairly small and my tables are fairly large with relatively large classes of kids from Kindergarten to 8th grade.  Needless to say there isn't a lot of room and the laundry basket just wasn't cuttin' the mustard for me.  I put the costume on when each class came into my room and then quickly got out of it because it was driving me crazy.  Luckily all I had to do was step out of it and remove the suspenders,  The following year I decided that I needed an easier dressing up idea and came up with the idea to paint a men's long sleeved t-shirt to wear as a tunic.  That year our theme was candy and I painted candy corn on my shirt.  I was comfortable and received so many compliments during the day that I knew I had a hit. 

I used Deco Art So Soft Paints to paint the candy corn on the front of the shirt and the pumpkins on the back .  So Soft Paints are a wonderful fabric paint and really are soft when you have completed the painting.  They also wash wonderfully.  I also added glitter detail on each of these pieces but glitter doesn't photograph particularly well. 

A few years later our hallway theme was witches and I decided to paint a huge witches face on a black shirt.  This witch is not completely my own design, I knew that I had an old Diana Marcum book somewhere in my stash that had a great witches face in it and I also remembered a Holly Hanley witch design that I had somewhere and combined the two and added some of my own detail and again painted them with the Deco Art So Soft Paints.

Background Papers 2012

Happy Halloween! 

As many of you know I enjoy painting my own background papers to use in collage, scrapbooking, cardmaking, or just for the fun of painting these crazy papers.  How could you not love doing these, the creative freedom that you experience is so liberating.  It is such a wonderful right brained activity, many of you enjoy Zentangle and I do too, however I find this to be just as creatively stimulating as many of you do with the "Zen" of Zentangle.  In fact I often allow my students to "play" with paint when we are exploring color or just have some free painting time.  They love it and do not even realize that in their "play" they are learning such valuable color theory lessons. 

These two orange papers remind me of Halloween and I plan to use them as a background papers for a few new Whimsy Stamps www.whimsystamps.com that I just received.  I love the play of yellow, orange, white, red, and a little turquoise thrown in to add a little compliment to the layers. 

Christmas Train

I just want to say that my heart goes out to everyone in the east dealing with hurricane Sandy.  I wish you all the best and know that we are all thinking of you. 

This project is the second in a series of resin train projects that I've painted for Artists Club www.artistsclub.com, they are amazing and darling and are sure to be a keeper.  I have my Halloween Train out at the moment and as soon as I put it away will pull out the Christmas Train that you see in this photo.  Artist Club always has surfaces that are right on trend and sell out quickly.  The instructions for this project are available as a free download and the surface is still available but I'm not sure how many are left.  This is my photo of the project but if you hop over to Artists Club you can see their outstanding photography and download the project instructions for FREE!!!  That is a price that you can't beat. 

I just sent in my Easter Train project that will come out after the 1st of the year and is darling.  If I must say so myself. 

I just wanted to say thanks to all of my friends who have been adding their great comments!  I've enjoyed corresponding with you. 

 

I'm finally ready to post the finished wedding box and as I stated in an earlier post rarely does a piece come together easily and without having to repaint parts or pieces as was the case with this box.  The center landscape went together really well and I was optimistic that the remainder of the piece would, I was happy with the mountains, the trees and the foreground.  I emailed a copy of the photo to my daughter and had her look it over with her "scientific" eye to make sure that I had stayed true to the look of the location.  She was thrilled and felt that I had really captured the essence of the area.  This is an actual location just outside of Yellowstone Park between Cooke City and the Beartooth Highway.  Fortunately I had been able to spend some time in the area the previous summer and was able to get quite a few great photos that I could use as reference.  I also knew that I wanted to show an Aspen Tree and her flowers for the wedding were going to be sunflowers and I knew that I wanted to paint those as well.  Both my daughter and her fiance are outdoor type of people, they love to hike, backpack, and camp and I really wanted to represent an area that they loved recreating in.  I began painting the Aspen Tree and when I emailed a photo to my daughter with the comment "there is something wrong with this tree" she responded that it looked like a Birch Tree so back to the drawing board I went.  I went up into the mountains and took a look at Aspen Trees to try to figure out what I needed to change, repainted it and emailed another copy to my daughter to look at.  Fortunately I live in an area where I can view the trees.  My daughter has a natural resources degree which is a science based program and I often use her as my "go to gal" for her opinions and suggestions for my paintings, she is an invaluable resource.  This time we were both happy with the result and I moved on to the sunflowers. 

 

Today I was talking to a friend who had asked how the wedding went and I mentioned that it was an amazing, emotional, and exhausting experience that both my husband and myself were grateful to be able to celebrate with our daughter and new son.  For us this was one of those amazing events in your children's lives where you reflect on their lives up to this point during the course of the planning and the ceremony.  We both kept asking each other where the years went, it seemed just like yesterday that she was playing Cinderella in her dress up clothes and now she was a young woman embarking on her new life with her spouse.  I have to admit that I was teary through the entire ceremony and then enjoyed the reception completely.  Below you can see the box on the gift table during the reception.  The day was lovely and the happy couple are starting an amazing journey of their own.

 

This card box will soon be available on my website as a pattern and if you choose to paint it I hope that you are able to paint it for someone that you love as I did. 

 

Design Process

I spent the day shopping with my daughter today, we were shopping for new clothes for her to wear to a new job that she begins this next week.  We had a lovely day doing something that we haven't been able to do for a number of years as she recently moved back to the area, both she and her husband to start new phases in their careers.  As we discussed some of her goals and plans for the future I was reminded how the design for the wedding box visually illustrated many of those goals that she and I were discussing during the course of the day. 

 

Sometimes designing is all about an emotional journey, as was this box and because it was for someone that I loved it became a very personal journey.  Because of that I was even more critical and apprehensive at the same time.  A huge part of the journey also involved my comfort level and my need to visually represent the landscape in a way that I knew my daughter and her husband would find pleasing. 

 

When I began to design the Wedding Box I knew that I wanted pine trees to take up the bulk of the space in the foreground.  I also knew that I hadn't painted pine trees in some time and I needed to practice so that I felt comfortable and capable with my ability to represent the trees.  This is just one of the many practice sheets that painted when I was trying to decide how to paint the trees and which color scheme I wanted to use.  I also had to decide which paint brush seemed to work for me.  I ended up using the Loew Cornell 1/4" Angular Bristle and really felt that it worked beautifully for me.  It had just the right amount of play in the bristles to allow me the control that seemed to work.  I used it both dry and wet and found that I was able to control the paint and was delighted with the end product. 

 

I am happy to report that the final product did represent the trees and I was satisfied but more importantly my daughter and her husband were also happy with the result.  As I looked at the pine trees on the finished box naturally there were some flaws but isn't that the great thing about nature, nothing in nature is ever perfect.   In that way I decided I had something in common with the natural world.   

I love to get comments and am hoping to hear your thoughts on my past few posts.  It is pretty easy to post comments and certainly helps me when I begin to plan for new posts.  Give it a shot.  I'd love to hear from you.  Also consider becoming a follower of my blog, I'm really trying to blog more often this year and hope that encourages all of you to follow me.  It certainly gives my blog more credibility.

Using Stencils in Your Design

The photo you see above is the backview of the Wedding Box that I have been describing in the last few posts.  I wanted the front of the box to be the focal point of the design and the sides and back to not detract, I also wanted the design to flow into the front.  I was concerned that this might be a difficult task until I happened to be surfing the net and saw the most amazing stencils from a company called Nature's Vignettes. www.naturesvignettes.com  I had already decided that a diamond pattern stencil might be the way to go but had only been able to find stencils in a small size and this box is not small, consequently repeating that design might take a lot of time and effort.  Now I have to admit that I really prefer to make my painting job go as seamlessly as any creative project can go and didn't want to have to repeat a stencil as many times as using a small one would take.  Then I happened upon the Harlequin stencil that you see above #305 Classic Harlequin.  The repeat was super easy and it all went together seamlessly which was a good thing because the front proved to be somewhat problematic. But that is a story for a later post.   

Watching the Design Process Unfold in Young Learners

If you work with children you know that they are fearless when it comes to their artwork and I rarely hear from my students that they don't believe they are good artists.  Why is that?  Maybe it is the fact that they are more concerned about themselves than the world around them, I also believe that a child's world is centered on the here and now. 

This is a project that I call Movement Bodies and the published version of this project can be found and downloaded free of charge at

http://www.enasco.com/pdfs/Arts_Crafts/artworks/volume63_NP088_10.pdf 

For any of you who are interested Nasco as well as most of the online art suppliers have lesson plans available for your free download.  Many of them are provided by art teachers from around the country and have been kid tested and teacher approved. 

 

This is a project that I often use with my students and am doing so again this year, I provide each student the preprinted template for the body, the students determine the movement for the body and then put the template pieces together to simulate the movement.  My students transfer the body to a clean piece of paper and then design a different line/shape pattern for each section of the body.  They develop a background, and use watercolor pencils to complete the project.  The goal of this project is to understand the use of line/pattern/shape/rhythm in their artwork.  I often have my students outline their designs with black markers as this helps them focus in on the design/pattern when coloring as well as makes for a bold presentation. 

 

Watching children design is a fascinating process and is so different for an adult.  We as adults could learn alot from children in their fearless approach to art and design. 

 

 

Design Process

I love the design process as much as I enjoy the painting process.  I love the possibilities that designing brings with it, the ideas that float around in my head that eventually end up on paper is such an exciting process.  Then to transfer that design to a surface adds to the potential of a project.  I began the Wedding Box project thinking about how I would lay out the design and decided on a circular design.  I struggled with that for quite a while until one morning in the shower the idea of a circular design came to me.  The shower seems to be that quiet spot where my mind can just free float and I often solve design problems in the shower.  It seems to be my quiet place.  LOL.  Once I decided on that the rest became a matter of which trees to use and the mountains that the soon to be happy couple wanted.  From start to finish this project took me 6 months to design and get down on paper.   I don't usually take this long to design a project but I really wanted this one to be special for one of the most important days in my daughter's life.  I also worked on it in between other projects,  it isn't like I worked on it steadily for 6 months.  Once I had the design worked out it was time to find the box and fortunately my friends at Ideal Wood Products had a perfectly lovely box that I ordered.  The next obstacle became what to do with the remainder of the box that the design wouldn't cover.  LOL.  That will be for my next post.

Not too long ago I did a series of blog posts where I suggested other options for projects but I thought that for this series I might talk a little about the design process.  To me it is such a personal journey to design a project.  You as an artist are trying to appeal to the masses while staying true to your inner vision.  That can be difficult when you are trying to balance the two.  I have often felt like it was similar to when you have young children at home and you are trying to be wife, mom, career person, and artist.  That is a particularly difficult balancing act, while you can't compare your need to share yourself artistically to raising your family it still can be a difficult struggle and for those of us who love the arts it is the food for the soul.  My solution is to make sure that I have some time each week to paint or draw for myself. 

I recently designed a wedding box for my daughter's wedding and it was a labor of love.  Not only was it for an important person in my life but it was for one of the most important events in her life.   She had definite ideas about what she wanted the box to look like, I don't know why we would be surprised about that as we raised both of our children to be strong individuals.   She wanted a scene that reflected her and her soon to be husband's life and much of that revolves around the out of doors.  They love to hike and backpack. This design was to be the focus on their wedding invitations as well.  No pressure, right?  I was a little worried and hoped that I could pull it off for her.  Needless to say I got started designing and had three different versions by the time that I was finished.  I did all of these in pen and ink before ever starting to paint.

I knew that they wanted the mountains Pilot and Index which are down by Yellowstone Park and they wanted an Aspen Tree and Sunflowers somewhere on the design.  I started out with a rough sketch that just lined out the basic design and the format for the design and had my daughter look at it and naturally she had ideas using her "scientific eye" as she calls it.  Her college degree is a science based degree and she has often been called on to help me with designs when I needed an unbiased scientific view.  I then went back to the drawing board and made the changes that they wanted. This was another process and it took a couple of tries before we had worked out the details and   I think this was almost a year in the making but I felt that the process and the finished product were all worth it.  You can see the sketch below and of course once the sketch was finished it was time to start painting which is another story.  LOL. 

The box turned out beautifully and the day was perfect for the happy couple.  I'm happy to report that they are married now and working on starting this new phase of their lives together and we couldn't be happier. 

Watercolor Pencils Sunflower Tutorial

Have you every used Watercolor Pencils?  They are fantastic and so easy to use, my favorite brand is the Faber Castell brand although there are so many great brands available on the market.  I've done a quick tutorial showing how to use them.  The first two photos that you see above are steps 1 and 2.  I like to work light to dark and have roughed in the sunflower using a creme colored pencil in the first photo and then darkened it in using a golden yellow.  You can see where I've darkened in my shaded areas and have begun to layer colors over the top to slowly build up the cast shadows of the sunflower.  In the second photo I began to develop the colors in the center of the sunflower and have further deepened the shadows by using a Burnt Sienna colored pencil. 

 

In step 3 I darkened the shadows of the sunflower using a dark brown.  In step 4 you can see that I have activated the paint with clean water and further added detail by lightly adding a small amount of black.  It is not necessary to activate your paint and may just use them as colored pencils as well.  They are a very versatile medium and I would like to encourage you to give them a try.  

 

End of the Day Ornaments

I'm so thrilled that these ornaments have been published in the Paintworks 2012 Ornament issue.  These ornaments are so fun and EASY to paint, these are painted on porcelain ornaments from Bows Plus Bisque but can be painted on absolutely any ornament that is dimensional from paper mache, glass, tin, and wood.  The technique is so incredibly easy and to prove how easy it is I decided to video my first You Tube Video showing how to paint these ornaments.  I hope that you will watch the video and paint these up for your next show or for gifts for friends and family.  I hope that you will enjoy the video. 

New Patterns Available

When Art Mimics Life

Blooming Beauties

Coral Reef

Chicken Little

PET-O'-WEEN

Spellbinder Witch

I have a number of new patterns available this week.  Phew, finally got them ready to go.  LOL.  All of these designs will be available at HOOT in the Ideal Wood Products Inc. booth, this company recently took over the Turns in Time company and will continue to produce top quality wood products which are all made in the USA.  Their products are fantastic and such a delight to paint on.  I look at so many of these and they just make me smile.  I think that these patterns are really cute and I had a blast painting them.  Take a look and let me know what you think.  All of these are available on my website www.chartmandesigns.com

Trifecta Brush Tutorial

Here are the instructions for the Shooting Star color worksheet that is in the following blog post.  This project uses the Deco Art So Soft Paints but your could easily substitute the corresponding Americana paint color. 




Shooting Star

Leather Coaster

Christy Hartman

C. Hartman Designs                                                                       

www.chartmandesigns.com

info@chartmandesigns.com

Palette:  Deco Art So Soft Paint      

Sweet Melon DSS71

Dark Burgundy DSS50

Fuchsia DSS52

Cadmium Yellow DSS3

Hauser Dark Green DSS46

Olive Green DSS98

Bright Avocado DSS99

Lamp Black DSS24

Brushes:  Dynasty Black Gold

Trifecta #4,6

Series 206 Script Liner: #0

 Lets Paint Wildflowers: 

 Load the #6 Trifecta brush with Fuchsia, dip the heel of the brush into Dark Burgundy and dip the tip of the brush into Sweet Melon.  Paint the two outer petals first to form a “butterfly.”  Paint the two center petals last.  Reload the brush with the same triple load and paint the buds.  Load the #0 SL with Cadmium Yellow and line the triangle point of the flower, using short strokes add the upper portion of the yellow tip.  Reload this brush with Lamp Black and gently tap in the area under the strokework on the upper portion and add black lines to the point of the triangle. 

Load the #4 Trifecta brush with Olive Green, dip the brush heel into Hauser Dark Green and the tip into Bright Avocado.  Paint the leaves around the buds, stems and leaves. 

© Christy Hartman

Trifecta Brush Tutorial Shooting Stars

Above you can see the Shooting Star Wildflower which was painted using the Trifecta Brushes found on my website www.chartmandesigns.com

Small Angle Butterfly Brush Tutorial

I did this tutuorial in Wichita in 2011 using the Dynasty Small Angle Butterfly Brush and thought that you might be interested in viewing it. 

Copic Demonstration

 Good Morning,

I seem to be on a Copic theme these days, don't worry I am still painting like crazy trying to get ready for my patterns to be at HOOT in August.  But what a fun way to spend my time when I'm not painting.  I'm going to share with you a few other stamped images that I have colored using my Copic Markers that were fun to color and used a technique that you can actually find on the Stampavie Blog that is excellent and I'm providing you the link.  http://www.stampavie.com/dt/2009/02/28/sarah-kay-coloring-tutorial-limited-copic-markers  I used this technique to color the hats and hair on this stamp.  The tutorial is excellent and shows step by step how to achieve the subtle shaded areas.  There are so many great tutorials out there on the web that you just need to do a Google search of Copic Tutorials and you will find a wealth of videos and blog posts about using these great markers.  Give it a try and get started using Copic Markers.  The markers are expensive but worth the extra cost in my opinion but you don't have to shell out a lot of money to learn the techniques as there is a wealth of educational material on the web and that is all free.  The stamps that I colored are Sarah Kay Designs stamp and is available at http://www.stampavie.com/. 

As you can see I've used a variety of marker colors and as I've stated in the past I do not always use the marker colors in the way that Copic has set up and I don't think that you have you.  Be as creative with these markers as you are with your other art media that you use.

Here is the same stamp only with a different color combination.

I love the color that I used on the boy's pants, I think that it isn't necessarily traditional but is certainly a color combination that I would have used if I had been painting.  Keep in mind that using Copic Markers is similiar to painting in that you can work light to dark and achieve great results very quickly. 

And the last color combination.  I'm not sure that I ever finished coloring the boy but you can see all of the combinations that I chose to experiment with. 

I'd love to hear about your Copic experiences or any other markers that you've tried and felt successful with. 

Copic Marker Tutorial

As many of you know I'm a huge fan of Copic Markers and have been using them for a few years now.  I've never taken a class instead have just taught myself how to use them by viewing online videos, a DVD that I purchased from Copic, magazine articles, and a variety of books but the other night I had a chance to take my first Copic class from Wendy Jordan and had a good time.  It was good to be able to know that I was on the right track and to share my love of Copic Markers with other enthusiasts.  I took the class through my favorite local scrapping/stamping store Memory Lane www.missoulamemorylane.com/.  I love this store as it isn't just for the scrapper but for stampers and paper enthusiasts of all kinds. They usually carry the newest and greatest products and the owners are two amazing woman who welcome everyone into their world.  They greet most customers at the door and even for those of us who only come in once in a while feel like we are old friends.  We colored a darling stamp that is called Tutu Cute from www.sarahkaystamps.com. 

On one of my online painting groups I was asked for more information about Copic Markers and thought that I would post a step by step using this stamp for any of you who are interested in learning more about these amazing markers.  I usually use them for coloring my own designs but like many of you, enjoy using darling stamps from other artists as well.  At a later date I will post additional photos of some of my designs that I've colored using my Copics and you can search through my older blog posts to see other posts about Copic Markers. 

For those of you who don't know a lot about Copic Markers they are an alcohol ink marker that is used by Anime Artists, graphic artists, used in illustration work, altered art designs, just to name a few.  I can see how they would be easy to use in Decorative Painting as these markers can be blended just like you would blend your paints.  In my opinion that is the beauty of Copic Markers as well as the fact that they are refillable, so once you purchase your markers in theory you will never need to purchase another and many of the retail stores that sell them also allow you to refill your markers for a cost as well as replacing the nibs when they wear out.  Copics are designed to make your coloring experience easy for anyone to use, the number on each pen represents the color family, the color tone, and the color value for example BG05 tells you that it is from the Blue Green color family, the 0 is the tonal color, and the 5 tells you that this is a midtone value.  This helps you choose your colors to use to get the fantastic blends that Copics are know for.  If you go to www.copic.com you can learn more about Copic Markers. 

I will be honest when I say that I do try to use the system that Copic has developed but frequently find myself using my own color combinations and because of Copic's amazing ability to blend colors find that my own color combinations are as easy to blend however when I took the class the other night Wendy used her markers as they are designed to be used and the colors were spectacular so I may need to rethink that.  LOL.  Probably not 100% of the time though.  I will admit that I have quite a few markers but do not have them all and because of that use different color combinations.  These markers are an investment and because of that have collected my set slowly but once you get the Copic fever you might find yourself collecting quite a few of these amazing markers and then as is the case for many of us then you need something to carry them in and purchase the bags and wallets as well as an interest in their other products.  LOL. 

Hand Cut Stamps Using Kwik Cut

I just stamped my most recent hand cut stamps using the Kwik Cut Product available from Nasco.  I know that I am repeating myself but it is an amazing product and so easy to use.  I used the Colorbox stamp pads to quickly ink each of these three stamps shown above, my favorite is the sun and think that this stamp will be something that I can use often.  The birds are just ok in my opinion and did not stamp up as easily with this stamping pad and want to try them with the black stamp pad, shown below, and the result was still not quite as good as I would have hoped.  I'd say that this stamp needs additional work and I may consider cutting more out of the center so that I have just the bird outline instead which will allow me the opportunity to color each bird.  I'd say that this process is meant to have good results with the not so good and that makes it a learning process.  I really liked the sun though and can see that I will have many opportunities to use this stamp.  Give it a try and see what you think. 

I have a new pattern available on my website that I just love.  The photo doesn't show how vibrant the color is on this piece or how adorable the frogs and the character is.  It is painted on a small photo album but could easily be painted on a variety of surfaces including a canvas covered sketchbook for someone you care about.  Wouldn't that make a wonderful keepsake to give.  I hope you enjoy the newest patterns that I will be releasing this summer.