Mother & Daughter

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I have been working on a few art pieces for an exhibition at an amateur theatre this fall. I am using a multitude of mediums, including acrylic and watercolour paint, oil pastels, polymer & air dry clays, different-sized canvases, and watercolour paper. A few of the pieces involve using different types of clay and acrylic paint on canvas, all surrounded by a wood three-dimensional frame.

For this particular project, I used only two colours, blue and white. It is called Mother and Daughter. They are seated having their special tea time.

I used polymer clay for the figures, an 8″ x 8″ canvas, acrylic paint, 2 3/4″ x 3/4″ wood for the frame and 1 1/4″ wide moulding for the front to finish it off.

Famlaer – The real faeryland, another sneak-peak.

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Famlaer is a book about faeries. It’s mainly introducing the community and how they are created. It is more description than story at this point. My next book will be more story-like but still lots of introduction and descriptions of faeries not mentioned in the first book.   

In the meantime, I’d like you to meet Naldoow, the forest keeper. He is one of my favourite drawings. I thought it would be fun to make a faery look like an old hippy rocker. He is just one of many fun and unusual characters in Famlaer – The real faeryland.

This little fellow is the oldest looking of all the faeries. They are always male, they live to be 98 years old, and there are at least five around at all times. They live in the trees, making them the highest flyers of the whole of Faeryland. They fly to the tops of the tallest trees, acting a little like a scout watching for problems. The forest keeper has an overly humungous head but sports a small body, hands and feet. Quite out of proportion. Although he looks old, he’s actually one of the most energetic faeries. They always have a scowl on their face but have a wonderful sense of humour and for the most part, are quite happy. He resembles what we call a hippy from the sixties.

 

Famlaer paperback is available on Amazon.com for $9.95 US, $13.20 CA as well as UK, DE, FR, ES, IT AND JP. If you would rather read a digital copy it’s available for $4.98 US on all the same as above plus NL, CA, MX, AU AND IN. (the digital version is not available in mobi or epub, but can be read on your phone, tablet or computer using free readers that can be downloaded through Amazon or your mobile market)

Happy reading everyone.

To friends, family and followers, please share this link or search my book on Amazon and of course buying and giving it a favourable review would help tremendously. I would like to thank you all in advance for your support. It is most appreciated.

Backyard Nature

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Nature Photography
by robin hindle

Today was a cool cloudy day and in spite of that I decided to have coffee on the deck. As I sat there I noticed how beautiful everything looked. There were birds, squirrels, green grass and beautiful flowers. So I took my camera and started taking pictures. I used my Nikon D5100 with the AF Nikor 80-200 zoom lens. Everywhere I looked was like magic. So serene and peaceful and yet activity all around with wood peckers, blue jays, humming birds, nuthatch and squirrels. Well just one squirrel of whom is named Earl. Yes I name all the animals that come into my yard. Earl the squirrel, jay the blue jay, woody the wood pecker although there are two different wood peckers, one is a downy and the other a hairy. Also the northern flicker (Flick for short) is also of the wood pecker family. One of which came for a visit but I didn’t get a photo. Hummy the humming bird, and last but not least the Nuthatch of which I have yet to think of a name. Most of the photos are taken from my deck except for the flowers. The lilacs are finally in full bloom after such a cool spring and the lupin are just coming into bloom now.

So here are a few pictures of my backyard nature. Some of the photos are a tad blurry but lovely creatures just the same. If you want to see the info on each photo press the “i” at the bottom of the image. Enjoy.

On another note, I am thinking of once again featuring artists and photographers. Preferably Canadian or local Nova Scotian. If you know of anyone whose art you would like to see promoted let me know and I’ll contact them and get the ball rolling. I will feature one artist and one photographer a month. So please send me your picks on who you would like to see for my next feature.

Illustrator/Photoshop Art

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For this post I’m going to show you what can be created working between Illustrator & Photoshop. This all started with opening Illustrator and realizing how much I don’t know about certain tools provided in Illustrator CS6.  I decided to play with the Mesh Tool. Below is a bit of an explanation of what this tool is and what you can do with it.

[A mesh object is a multicolored object on which colors can flow in different directions and transition smoothly from one point to another. When you create a mesh object, multiple lines called mesh lines crisscross the object and provide a way to easily manipulate color transitions on the object. By moving and editing points on the mesh lines, you can change the intensity of a color shift, or change the extent of a colored area on the object], from Illustrator Help / Meshes web page. I don’t want to bore you by having the entire explanation in this post so for more information go to (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/meshes.html). It’s worth reading the whole thing if you want to use this tool.

For the first project I started by drawing a rectangle with, what else but the rectangle tool, choosing a very vibrant pink fill. From there I just started adding points of colour and manoeuvring some of the points around until suddenly it looked like a bird with its beak facing towards the ground.  I decided to add an eye by drawing an oval with the ellipse tool, adding points with the mesh tool for the shading and highlighting, then added another oval for the eye-ball. Next I exported it as a PSD (although in this case it probably wasn’t necessary because I only used 1 layer whereas in future endeavours I used more than one layer and was able to work on each layer individually in Photoshop).  Next I played with a few filters in   Photoshop and finally decided on the Alien Skin Snap Art filter – Impasto paint. I quite like this paint filter and used it for a few other projects in this post. And there you have it, a Photoshop image that looks like a painting of a bird, or maybe you see something else. Let me know what you think it looks like.

I will give a short description of each project with the pictures I add. Enjoy.

This next project started the same as last with a simple rectangle. Then I decided to build a cluster of daisy like flowers in a variety of sizes. Exported it into Photoshop as a PSD then applied the Impasto paint filter.

For the next project I had an idea of producing something with what looks like a face. I wanted vibrant colours in the vein of Mexican or Latin American style art. I started with a rectangle then added an oval on top to give it a framed look. And once again I used the Impasto paint filter. I just love the effects of that paint filter. I’m not sure if I totally achieved the effect I was trying for but I liked what I ended up with.

For this project I started with a square. I started using the mesh tool working from the edges mainly and started to see an image. For me it started looking like some kind of butterfly or alike. I tried to use really bright cheerful colours. This time instead of using the Impasto filter I used the Snap Art –  Watercolour filter adding a little saturation and brightness (which is in the controls of this filter). This is one of my favourites.

These last few projects I’m just going to let you enjoy them without explanation.