Category Archives: Techniques and How-To

On choosing a hosting platform and why I shouldn’t build a house

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Oh y’all! I wrote to you ages ago saying I was going to share my journey into the business side of the art world. And I still am, really! It’s just taking me a minute. When I left off I was in the process of trying to create a WordPress.org site. In case you missed that part, here’s a link to the post. In short, WordPress.org is actually a plug-in that you use on a website hosted by a hosting platform (more on that in a minute), WordPress.com (where we are right now) is like it’s own little world. So, it’s sorta like building your own house based on designs by a contractor named WordPress (.org) or living in a apartment building where you can decorate how you like, but you can’t paint the walls and changing the furniture is pretty much where your control ends (.com).

It’s a good thing I’m not building an actual house, because if so, we’d be sitting in the rain while I tried to choose a floor plan. First off, I had to settle on a hosting site. This just means the company with the powerful computers that gets your site out there on the internet and keeps it running. I started off with Siteground, based on someone’s recommendation. However, despite everyone else RAVING about their customer service, I found some things lacking. They were very nice, but I had problems like never receiving a callback, though I had scheduled one, etc. Also, I felt like they had a slight lack of understanding just HOW little I knew. So, then I went with GoDaddy. Their customer service is incredible. I never feel dumb talking to them. However, I’m also always aware of just HOW good their sales team is. I found out that I have to pay extra (on top of the already substantial amount I was paying) to get a security certificate, which rumor has it Google is going to start requiring. If you don’t have one (which I hear is really not a big deal) you get that little tag on the search bar that says “site not secure” or something similar. So, I switched again (I’m probably starting to develop a bit of a reputation in the hosting world). Finally, I went to Bluehost just because WordPress endorses them. Honestly that process exhausted me so much that’s the last thing I’ve done. I can’t even tell you if Bluehost is working out for me because I just had to step away from all that for a bit.

I did transfer all my posts, pictures, etc. from here to the new (not yet live) site. Now THAT was a thing that was a problem I worked out on my own (GooooO me!). I’ll tell y’all about that next time and we’ll continue this (longer than I anticipated) journey.

In the meantime, keep painting and I’ll see you soon.

Hands hands hands

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I love to paint hands. Love them. All the joints and angles and fat parts and skinny parts and knobby parts… are your palms sweating just thinking about it?  I, too, used to cringe when I got to hands- all the joints and angles make them a bit of a challenge. Make the fat parts too fat and you get sausage fingers. Too skinny and you get E.T. But get those angles right and… ah, satisfaction. Now, they’re my favorites. So, for practice(and for fun):

Since I’m working on a mid-value background, I layout the general shape, then establish my darks.
Keeping the greenish middle value in mind for the greener areas of my skin, next I lay down the lighter areas
I travel back and forth between dark and light, and really try to capture the color temperature as well
Typically I work with an easel, but in this case I had my panel laying flat so that I could view it from approximately the same angle as the model… by which I mean my hand.
To avoid getting too detailed too soon, I lay my shapes in broadly, with the intention of smoothing and blending later.
By laying the paint down broadly, I can get a feel for the form.
I’m careful about the amount of blending I do. I want the painting to look finished, but I don’t want it to lose its shape.
Almost there.
Finishing touch.

Click on the images above for more details on my process.

Oh, and here’s my palette. Because that’s fun too!

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Look at all the pretty colors… and not one of them labeled as a flesh tone. Reality lies between the lines.

If I was painting someone with a darker skin tone, I would likely use many of these same colors. However, I’d spend more time up top, at the darker end of my color strings. And, of course, the opposite holds true for fair-skinned folk, whose skin tones lie in the lower third of my palette.

So, go out and paint something that scares you. Maybe next I’ll tackle feet… or profiles. Eeek…