October 31, 2008
I have always fancied embroidery, with its sophisticated pattern, the person behind the craft must have put in a huge chunk of detail just to finish a piece as attractive and intricately woven as the pieces we now behold in stores.
However, embroidered iron on patches are also utilized by organizations in order to distinguish membership or rank. Thus it is common to see embroidered patches on military uniforms. Moreover, this is also used by other independent groups in order to mark honors.
For others, patches have become a fashion statement in order to endorse their uniqueness or to display art or expressions like what you see on a biker patch.
These embroidered patches can be created by hand or through the use of specialized machines. The modern methods of embroidery take advantage of computer digitization. In most cases, polyester and rayon are used, but hemp and cotton are also used every so often.
Sew-on patches, for its part are attached onto the material through the use of glue or the ever functional thread and needle. Other backings may include magnets, rubber, or Velcro.
The market supports a huge variety of embroidered patches, each one has is its own varying design, shape, color and substance.
One hidden benefit of using patches is that when you have a boring piece of clothing, you can just add this to your ensemble and get a boost of appeal right away! Moreover, if your pants get ripped unexpectedly you can cover the hole using embroidered patches. Very functional indeed!
October 30, 2008
Fundamentals of How to Draw with Pencil – The Form of Objects
In this article we will deal with the most fundamental property of any object in relation to the act of pencil drawing. This fundamental property is the form or structure of the object. Ultimately, it is the drawing of form that is most responsible for the reproduction on your drawing paper of the actual scene.
It is important to possess a simple but complete mental image or memory of the property of form. This mental image is very useful to you as a pencil artist because it will lead you to a simple and systematic way of approaching the drawing of any object under the sun. It will give you the essential tools of the first phase of a drawing.
The idea of dealing with the numerous forms that constitute any real scene involves a visual decomposition of the scene’s forms into a set of basic geometric forms followed by a reconstitution of those forms into a likeness of the original real object.
After analyzing the form of numerous objects, artists of the past came to the following conclusions.
All object forms can be seen as a composition of four basic geometric solids: the brick, the sphere, the cylinder, and the cone.
Of course, the actual forms will almost always deviate somewhat from these perfect geometric forms so that part of the drawing process will consist of adding the variations. But all that is done in a later phase of the drawing process.
Concentrating on those four large geometric forms allows you to much better see the overall structure or composition of the global scene you wish to draw.
The extent of these large forms is fairly easy to discern and the dimensions easily estimated.
Drawing a real scene while constantly thinking of bricks, spheres, cylinders, and cones will automatically give your drawing three-dimensionality and a certain amount of gravitas.
This approach to viewing a scene, i.e., seeing the scene as a composition of basic solid geometric shapes, naturally separates the big picture from the details and gives you an excellent starting-point for tackling any drawing.
Once the large geometric shapes are in place you should already see a good likeness of the scene as a whole. You can then concentrate on the details without having to worry about whether or not all the objects are in the right overall position.
In this article we developed a method which initially views an arbitrary pictorial scene as a composition of four basic geometric shapes: the brick, the sphere, the cone, and the cylinder. This allows us to separate the big picture from the detail.
The task then is to render each basic geometric shape while at the same time reconstituting the overall scene, i.e., putting each geometric form in its correct position.
More about beginners oil painting and tattoo tips published here.
Digital scrap booking is catching on fast. You can create personalized scrapbook pages with your computer. You can remove red eye, crop pictures, touch up colors, brighten, sharpen, and perform other functions with photo editing programs and make your photos beautiful and more fun!
The subject of a photo should suggest the kinds of sayings and decor that would work well on a computer scrapbook page. Using the text tool of your editing program, it is possible to add the date and location of the picture.
If you have birthday pictures you can add a birthday cake with candles and the age of the person having the birthday on the digital scrapbooking pages that you need for your scrapbook. You can accent your pictures with Christmas trees and date them accordingly. You may continue the theme with every holiday occasion since there are so many themes offered online now. Some caps and gowns in the backgrounds of your pictures is a great way to remember your child’s graduating year. You can make your computer scrapbook pages unique through an almost limitless number of special techniques.
The benefit to using the computer for your scrapbooking is that you can produce more than one copy of your page. This is a wonderful way to make albums for friends and family on your Christmas gift list. There is a variety of textures, paper designs and inks that you can use too. You can even print pages 12 inches by 12 inches if the printer you own can print in wide format. However an 8″ x8″ can be handled well by most regular printers. It is very rewarding to take your digital scrapbooking layouts and see them printed out in an album or a coffee table type book.
On doing digital scrapbooking pages there are several other benefits. If you goof up as you lay out a page you just need a simple click to redo it, as often as it takes till it’s done correctly. Digital scrapbooking is also less of a mess. Instead of laboring with scissors and paste, or carefully hand writing the pages, you can simply print out the pages and add personal decoration whenever you choose. All of your pictures can be handily kept on your computer or on a CD-R or DVD-R.
Beginners Oil Painting Tips – Advanced Palette
In this article I will discuss the tube colors belonging to an advanced palette based on a basic 6-color palette. I find these colors the most useful and often necessary to round out a versatile palette.
The 6-color basic palette consists of the following colors:
1. Lemon Yellow
2. Cadmium Yellow
3. Cadmium Red
4. Permanent Rose
5. French Ultramarine
6. Phthalo Blue
To these 6 colors we, of course, add
7. Titanium White
8. Ivory Black
For various reasons, artists tend to add a variety of other colors to their palette. One reason is that tube colors are, by and large, always brighter than mixed colors. Other reasons have to do with the tinting strength or the undertone of certain tube colors. Or, maybe just because a certain tube color looks particular good to the artist and can not easily be mixed.
Here are a number of tube colors I like to work with beyond the ones already mentioned:
Burnt Sienna – Burnt Sienna is a warm, orange-red, and transparent brown. This brown is a medium-to-fast drier and has a medium tinting strength. Mixed with Lemon Yellow it yields a clean orange-brown.
Cerulean Blue – Cerulean Blue is a cool, green leaning, and opaque blue. This blue is a medium-to-fast drier and has a medium-to-low tinting strength. Mixed with Lemon Yellow it yields a spring green.
Cadmium Orange – Cadmium Orange is a warm, red or yellow leaning, and opaque orange. This orange is a slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Mixed with Permanent Rose it yields a sharp hot orange.
Cadmium Yellow Light – Cadmium Yellow Light is a warm/cool, somewhat green leaning, and opaque yellow. This yellow is a medium-to-slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Mixed with Cadmium Red Light it yields a bright orange.
Cadmium Red Light – Cadmium Red Light is a warm, orange leaning, and opaque red. This red is a slow drier and has a high tinting strength. Mixed with Cadmium Yellow Light it yields a bright orange.
Yellow Ochre – Yellow Ochre is a warm, brown leaning, and opaque yellow. This yellow is a medium-to-fast drier and has a medium tinting strength. Mixed with Cadmium Yellow it yields a glowing sandy color.
Burnt Umber – Burnt Umber is a warm, red leaning, and fairly transparent brown. This brown is a fast drier and has a medium-to-high tinting strength. Mixed with Cerulean Blue it yields a series of colors from green-gray to green-brown.
Viridian – Viridian is a cool, blue leaning, and transparent green. This green is a medium drier and has a medium tinting strength. Mixed with Burnt Sienna it yields a nice fall green.
Cobalt Blue – Cobalt Blue is a cool, violet leaning, and semi-transparent blue. This blue is a fast drier and has a low-to-medium tinting strength. Mixed with Permanent Rose it yields a glowing violet.
There are few more colors I use occasionally, such as Dioxazine Purple, Permanent Sap Green, Raw Sienna, and Raw Umber. But the palette here described has more than enough colors in it to paint just about anything as long as you also use mixtures of these colors.
Read more about how to draw with pencil and about tattoo tips.
October 28, 2008
This article offers some practical tips on scrapbooking for beginners.
Photographs
Most scrapbooks will contain photographs. Even the most disinterested reader of your scrapbook will glance at the photographs. Pictures really are worth a thousand words. Therefore, it is important to chooseKeep in mind that scrapbooking is permanent. Therefore, it is probably wise to use copies of your only picture of Great Grandma rather than risk ruining the photograph forever. Simply scan the picture on your computer scanner and print the image on lignin free and acid free paper.
Cutting and Cropping
Often photographs aren’t quite the right shape and size or the photographic image is improperly centered. Having oversized or off centered photographs creates an air of unprofessionalism. Carefully cropped and sized photographs, on the other hand, enhances the overall look and feel of your scrapbook.
There are two methods to solve these issues. The low tech method is to manually crop and shape the photograph using a pair of scissors or an exacto knife. If you are manually cropping and cutting pictures, ensure that you mark the outline you want with chalk (or eye shadow if you don’t have chalk) before you cut. Remember the old saying, measure twice and cut once.
To manually change a distracting or cluttered background simply cut out the background and replace it with a with a new paper background. This allows the eye to focus on the people instead of the clutter behind them.
The high tech solution to your photograph woes is to use modern computer programs such as PhotoElements or Photoshop. Using one of these programs, photos can be magically darkened, brightened, cropped or enlarged without ruining your original photograph. Some programs even allow you to alter the background of the photograph.
Order
There are no specific rules stating that all photographs or mementos must be placed in chronological order. Therefore, it is completely up you the order you wish to place your items and embellishments. You can place your items in a formal chronological order. You can also group items into formal or informal categories such as similar colors, events, activities, individuals, or families. Items can also be placed into random, abstract, or collages.
Each order has its own place in scrapbooking. For instance, chronological order might be preferable for an anniversary scrapbook. Pictures and mementos of the couple’s years together could be placed from the first day they met through the wedding day to the present day with each time period on a different page. This presents a feel of as time goes by.
But, a scrapbook for a parent could just have a collage of pictures and drawings. In this case, a collage lends to a feeling of overwhelmingly being loved.
I’m a great scrapbooking fan and I also love to face paint. On some occasions such as themed birthday partys and holidays such as Halloween I’m able to combine the too.
Kids face painting
Children’s face painting ideas
vampire face painting design
These articles are packed with practical information and tips on learning to face paint. Why not give it a try.
October 27, 2008
Tips for Beginners Oil Painting – Supplies
Of course, before you can start a painting you have to have a number of art supplies. There are hundreds if not thousands of supplies and gadgets related to painting and on top of that many brands to choose from. Here, we will list the most essential tools you need to create an oil painting, that is, at least the way I create such a painting.
Brushes – Again, there are hundreds of kinds of brushes and many different brands. But to start, you really only need a few filbert brushes of fairly good quality.
1. One large no. 10 or 12
2. One or two no. 8′s
3. One or two no. 6′s
4. One small no. 2
The reason I suggest filbert brushes is that they more or less combine the capabilities of a round and a flat brush. Also, the main reason we need two brushes of the same size is that we can then use two colors at the same time. That means, less brush rinsing.
Canvas – A bunch of canvases. At this time I suggest you buy pre-stretched canvases so you can start to paint immediately. Good standard starting sizes are 16″ x 12″ or 18″x24″. You can also use canvas panels which might sometimes be cheaper depending on where you buy them.
Easel – You need an easel to put your canvas on. Try to buy a sturdy easel. In fact, you could even make your own easel out of wood if you are a bit handy.
Palette – I prefer to a paper palette of at least 16″x20″. I actually use an 18″x24″ which gives me even more room. These palette sheets come in pads of 50 sheets and are not very expensive. You use them to mix your paints on.
Paints – Yes, you do need paints! Try to buy tubes containing at least 37 ml of paint. Some brands have tubes of 200 ml and for certain colors (such as white) they may even offer larger containers. The totality of tube colors you use is also called a palette. As a starting palette I suggest the following colors.
1. Lemon Yellow
2. Cadmium Yellow
3. Cadmium Red
4. Permanent Rose
5. French Ultramarine
6. Phthalo Blue (Red Shade)
7. Titanium White
8. Ivory Black
Of course, as you get more experience, you can add some tube colors. However, when you start out it is probably best to use as few colors aspossible. The above colors let you produce very clean secondary colors and all sorts of tertiary ones as well. Secondary colors are colors that are made with two colors and tertiary ones are colors that are made with three colors.
Turpentine – If you use real oil paints then you need at least a quart of turpentine or a substitute. If you use water soluble oil paints then all you need is regular water.
Odds and Ends – If you use real oil paints you need a small container of linseed oil. You could also get a can of retouch varnish spray. And finally, also a few rolls of paper towel.
This is about the minimum you need to start oil painting. As stated before, there are many more tools to be had. I suggest going to a few art stores and see what they have. You can even check out some of the Internet stores and maybe purchase some of the tools that particularly useful to you.
For the tips about how to draw with pencil – read the tips on this site.
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Digital Scrapbook Graphics – To Make Digital Scrapbooks Unique
Digital Scrapbooking has become a new, cost effective way of scrapbooking without the clutter and mess of conventional scrapbooking. With physical scrapbooking problems such as photos eventually turning yellow and the damaging of photos by cutting them to resize them, an alternative is online scrapbooking where you can ensure protection of your photos and make your very own unique online scrapbook pages. Some websites provide countless graphics for digital scrapbooking for the holidays and special occasions. With your home computer and scrapbooking software ready, your digital scrapbooking hobby is set to begin. If you need some tips to get you started, there are many free tutorials and forums online, where you can get useful and inspiring advice. You can find free scrapbooking clipart and digital scrapbooking kits that contain all the basics you’ll need and are ready to incorporate your pictures.
Our newest tool – allows you to cross-compare up to 4 versions of an article for uniqueness in percentage terms compared to all the other articles. Since nothing is glued down, you can fix mistakes easily with your undo button, and since the digital scrapbook supplies are on your computer, you can re-use them over and over! You can get your graphics from different programs and import them into your pages where you need them. Experimenting while creating your digital scrapbook will help you become more experienced and also help you make your digital scrapbook more unique.
If you want to share your digital scrapbooking pages with family and friends you can send them via email or through personal web pages. You can print as many as copies of your layouts as you want to share them with your family and prints. Always be sure to merge your files if you are saving them to be printed, and save a back up copy of your work on an external flash drive or CD, in case your computer crashes. A unique gift idea for special occasions, such as birthdays or for the holidays, is a digital version of your scrapbook burned onto a CD. Scrapbooking has become more popular since almost everybody has access to a computer now, and with the specialized, affordable software available, many people that weren’t interested in conventional scrapbooking have become interesting in digital scrapbooking.
There are all kinds of great freebies online for digital scrapbook design, tutorials on digital scrapbooking, digital scrapbook graphics and scrapbooking clipart, paper designs and more. You can find fun and creative ideas for your digital scrapbook by visiting the blogs of other scrapbook creators. While many people still belong to scrapbooking clubs, and take the annual scrapbooking convention getaway, they can get great ideas year-round through the Internet.
You can customize your digital scrap book – eventually making it more interesting – by adding journal excerpts and poems: just browse one of the many galleries and websited which offer downloads. Digital scrapbooking is a fun and easy way to make personalized, unique projects for any occasion.
October 19, 2008
This article offers some practical advice on scrapbooking.
Theme
Your scrapbook must have a theme It can be as simple or as complex as you wish. The could be a special event such as a graduation, a birthday. Themes can also be personalized to the scrapbook recipient’s special interests. Special interests themes might include favorite colors, sports, favorite television programs, music, the outdoors, or cultural influences.
The answers to the following three questions are all considerations in picking an appropriate theme.
What is the overall purpose for your scrapbook?
Who is the scrapbook about?
Who is the scrapbook for?
For instance, the scrapbook you are giving your son as he graduates from medical school will probably be completely different from the grandparent book you send to your mother. Your son will probably appreciate a scrapbook with photographs, journals, poems, and more masculine embellishments. Maybe, the theme of the scrapbook could be medicine. You could create embellishments that looked like scalpels and tweezers around various pictures of your nephew during his college days.
Your mother, on the other hand, will love a multitude of baby pictures fancifully embellished with flowers, ribbon, and baby fingerprints. The theme of this book will probably be your baby. Photographs could include baby and grandma with the baby. A nice journal about your baby’s day could also add a nice touch.
Title
Don’t forget to create a title for your scrapbook page. Though adding a title might seem to be obvious or unimportant, a title explains the whole basis of your scrapbook. The title instantly tells the viewer what your page is all about. In one word or one short phrase, the title tells the reader the theme and purpose of your scrapbook.
Titles can be as simple as the date of an event, the name of an individual, or a specific event.
Titles can also be more interesting and exciting. They can include quotes, sayings, fillers, or simple phrases. The best places to look for inspiration for titles are in greeting cards, advertisements, and commercials.
Color
Color coordination and contrast will highlight and accent your scrapbook. A well thought out color scheme can help define the theme of a page, focus attention to specific items, or detract away from mistakes. Badly chosen color schemes, on the other hand, can cause your scrapbook page to look mismatched or gaudy.
Background colors can either be matched, coordinated, or contrasted with the colors in your photographs, mementos, or embellishments. Matching colors add to the continuity of the color scheme. Coordinated colors add depth to scrapbook pages. Contrasted colors focus the eye. In this way, color can be used to create the effect you wish.
A great way to see how colors look together is to collect and compare color wheels from your local paint or hardware store. Paint wheels are normally available free for the taking in nearly any paint department.
Face painting is a fun hobby that you can combine with scrapbooking. For a Halloween party I created a face painting design on each of the guests. Then took photographs. The resulting Halloween scrapbook was definitely one of my most eye catching creations – even a little scary too! Well, there were lots of vampires about!
Kids face painting
Face painting designs
vampire face painting design
These articles are packed with tips and advice on face painting. Believe me, learning to face paint is not as difficult as you might think. And you’ll never be short of volunteers to practice on.
October 18, 2008
Beginners Oil Painting – Measuring Oil Painting Brushes
Oil painting brushes come in all different sizes. Sizes are usually given as numbers. For certain brands and certain sets of brushes these numbers can run from 1 to 24, 10 to 100, or 0 to 30, etc.
You will also find size markings such as 00 (or 2/0). A 00 brush is one size smaller than a 0 brush. Similarly, a 000 (or 3/0) brush is one size smaller than a 00 brush or two sizes smaller than a 0 brush.
Note that not all like numbered brushes are the same size. The actual size depends on the manufacturer and has also to do with the fact that some brushes are manufactured using the imperial system of units and others the metric one. However, you can count on the fact that a higher numbered brush will always be larger than a lower numbered brush. Also, the brushes of a particular series or set will generally be properly sized relative to each other.
The best thing you can do is to physically inspect a set either in an art store or on the Internet (if the merchant shows actual size pictures of the brush set).
One system of measuring brushes in actual measuring units such as millimeters or inches that is in fairly widespread use proceeds as follows.
Diameter of Brush Head – In this system the diameter of a round brush head is measured at the top edge of the ferrule. The ferrule is the metal ring that holds the brush hair in place on the handle.
Depth of Brush Head – When you lay a flat brush on the table, then the depth of the brush head is the vertical height of the brush head measured at the top edge of the ferrule.
Width of Brush Head – The width of a flat brush head is the length of the hair at the top edge of the ferrule measured across the hair. For the flat brush on the table you measure the horizontal width at the top edge of the ferrule.
Length of Brush Head – The length of the brush head is the length measured from the top edge of the ferrule to the tip of the hair along the center of the brush head. For a brush on the table you measure the middle line segment that starts at the top edge of the ferrule and ends at the tip of the brush head.
Brushes should always be measured when dry because when they are wet they expand. Also, do not confuse the width of a brush head with the width of the brush stroke. The width of the brush head is fixed once and for all but the width of a brush stroke varies with pressure, the kind of paint used, the angle of the brush head, and the flexibility of the brush hair.
If you liked these tips about oil paintings, then you also might benefit from the how to draw with pencil info.
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Beginners Oil Painting Tips – The Skill of Seeing Color
Color is the central component of painting. It is what makes it a unique art form. Therefore, it is essential that we develop the skill of seeing colors as they really are.
Prejudice – The first step in learning to see color correctly is to get rid of all built-in preconceived notions about color.
We must learn to approach the observation of each color as if we see it for the first time without prejudice.
Local Color – Each object has its own color which is sometimes called the object’s local color. It is the color of the object when seen in normal daylight.
Light – The local color of an object will be affected by the light that shines on it. We must realize that all surfaces are to some degree reflective. In other words, the local color of an object changes when subjected to light and we must be aware of those changes.
For example, let’s we have a perfectly red apple. That is, the local color of the entire apple is red. When a yellowish light shines on this apple sideways we will observe that the lit side takes on an orange undertone and that the side in the side receives a violet bias which is the complement of yellow.
Harmony – A lit scene is naturally harmonized. The light that spreads over the scene has the effect of changing all the local colors in such a way that all colors become harmonized (i.e., simply put, the colors go together).
For example, the colors you observe in an actual landscape will always be in harmony. This is because the light source (the sun) drenches the entire scene. This is not the case when you put together an imagined scene in your studio. Indeed, it takes a bit of color theory knowledge to produce a harmonious painting.
Nomenclature – There is also the matter of nomenclature. People tend to use special names for certain colors such as lemon green, navy blue, etc. This is not the best way to go about describing colors.
A better way is to start with the three primary color names: red, yellow, and blue. Add to these the names of the three secondary colors: orange, green, and violet.
Then, a color that looks like red but has an orange bias is called orange-red. A color that is clearly yellow but has a green undertone is called green-yellow. Or, a green that has more yellow than blue in it is called a yellow-green. And so on.
Tertiary colors often have a clear secondary nature with a bit of a third color added. For example, we can speak of an orange-red with a touch of blue or white.
This way of thinking about color also aids us with color observation. When you see a color you can start by identifying the overall primary color. Then you can try to judge if there is a bias to that primary color. And finally, you can try to gauge if there are touches of additional colors visible in the mix.
At the same time, this approach also gives you a methodical approach to mixing the observed color on your palette.
In the end, as is the case with so much in painting, learning to observe colors correctly is a matter of practice and experience. The above tips, however, should help in this endeavor.
I am also giving useful tips about how to draw with pencil here.
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