Digital Paintings – Pink Sweet-pea Summer

Which is a good way to use my photographs, many which I took to be inspiration for craft and art works.

For this one I took a number of photos of Sweet-peas growing at the beach, spliced them together, manipulated the photos to create a denser grouping of flowers than was occurring naturally.This is basically a collage which I put my artwork of photos  into a wonderful painting program and got this impressionistic painting of Sweet.peas.When you look at it close up you can see brushstrokes.I uploaded it to Society6 where you can buy it in various forms, from a canvas print to blank greeting cards.I am really enjoying this process at the moment even though one painting can take several days of work.

Photographic inspiration

Early summer at Kapiti Beach, New Zealand has rambling displays of sweet pea flowers pink and luscious clambering over any other plant in their path. In my minds eye the green is thickly covered with a waving carpet of green, undulating up and down over high and low plants.

When I come to take a photograph of said perfect pink blossoms, I get less blossoms in the lens than in my mind.

To create a painting that had the same density of flowers that it looks like in my mind I took a few photos and trimmed out a flower grouping here and another there. Changed the size and orientation of the groups and pasted them together in Photoshop. then I spent time on the edges of the groupings so the edges blended with the edges of the grouping next to it. This required more cutting out of bits from photos here and there and placing to create a cohesive whole looking image.This image was then digitally painted in a couple of styles and the style I liked best chosen.

Society6

Society 6 is a place where independent artists can post their work and Society6 takes on the task of making up the products. The artists gets a slice of the profit they make on the sales. That is if it sold for $50 and cost $45 for them to make and post out to you then the artist and Society6 each get a bit of the $5 profit. You know that the artist is getting the smaller chunk of the $5, but it is an easy way to make a large of range of products available to patrons of the artist to buy.The list of possible products is long. The art work posted may not be the right size for some of the products. For example a square piece like the one above is not suitable for a rectangle shaped product like a yoga mat or table or blanket.If I want to make a particular product and the artwork is the wrong shape or size I need to do more work. That may mean tiling the art or taking a segment of it in the right shape, or even making a background to set the artwork upon. This can take quite a bit of time as there are many shapes/sizes to account for it I wanted the full range of products.Society6 list of products (as at Feb 2019)