Help An Animal Find a Forever Home...

My sweet Sadie went to sleep forever on 11/11/11 and since she was a rescue dog, I've decided to honor her by supporting Safe Animal Shelter. I got her when she was a year and a half, and she left me when she was 15. I still look to see if she's awake when I get up in the morning. She brought unconditional love and many blessings into my life.

So my deal is I pick a dog each week, do a digital painting and showcase it on my blog, my website and Facebook. 10% of all my art sales will be donated to the shelter - and while that's not much right now, hopefully it will increase.

The first dog I picked was Harlequin. I love his mask and he's a very sweet dog.

My second dog is Zena. I picked her after reading about the difficulty in placing black dogs. Her pictures show a dog with a lot of spirit and energy!

Whoever adopts one of these dogs will get an 8x10 portrait to take home with them. Please think about adopting before going to a pet store. There are so many dogs put to sleep each year for no reason except no one wants them. How sad to have to be euthanizied because no one wants you! And remember - "euthanized" is just a gentler way of saying "killed."

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." C.S. Lewis

Sunday was yet another new beginning for me. With pencil and paper in front of me I began trying to get a grip. For quite a while I’ve felt completely lost in every area of my life, so I thought maybe a picture really could be worth a thousand words! The plan was supposed to be related to my art business. But as you’ll see, it took a different direction
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My dog, Sadie, has had a serious cough for the past year, due to a collapsing trachea, and all we could do was try to make her comfortable. I adopted her in 1997 when she was a little over a year old and she has been such a wonderful companion.

About the same time, I began seeing the doctor for constant pain and fatigue. I thought the pain was due to arthritis and the cause of the fatigue. Add clinical depression, a blood platelet disorder, heart problems, an abdominal aortic aneurysm - and all I could think was - “What the hell?”  It was like I went to sleep one nigh only to wake up in someone else’s body. And it was a wreck!

During all this I was trying to continue my art and figure out how to make money with it. I knew this shell I’m living in couldn’t hold down a real job. Then an amazing thing happened – I met the Word Chef. And let me tell you, she’s my hero! I will expand on my admiration for her and her project later, but I’m trying to keep this story fairly cohesive.

The Word Chef, Tea ((pronounced Tay'ah) Silvestre started an online marketing class and I was fortunate enough to be selected for the first one. And I was lost from the very beginning. I couldn’t stay up past 8:30 or 9:00 at night, and needed a 2 or 3 hour nap everyday. I tried to do some of the homework, and worried the whole time that I would be dropped from the class. But I kept plugging away, refusing to give up for fear that if I gave up on the class, I might as well give up, period.

Finally, after a lot of research, my doctor and I decided I have fibromyalgia. That explains the pain, fatigue, depression, absent-mindedness, difficulty focusing, etc. Actually, it was a relief to finally be able to put a name to it.

Then, came the final hurt – Sadie was so sick, I finally decided to put her to sleep. 14 years of absolutely unconditional love on both sides made it a very painful decision, but the best one for her. Although it was a sweet, peaceful process with a beautiful burial spot next to my best friend’s dog, my heart broke. I will never forget that sweet loving face, but on Friday, November 11, 2011, she crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

I think I will continue the new beginning on the next blog. Thanks to everyone who helped me through this painful time in my life. And I know better things are ahead.

The Dee-vine Miss M, Pet Artist

OK - It's official - the Dee-vine Miss M, Pet Artist! Commissioned pet paintings from photos. The Grand Opening presents... Hurley, the world's coolest chee-wah-wah! Here's our "before and after..."

My biggest problem with marketing my art has been that I'm all over the place - lighthouses, flowers, airplanes, cars and motorcycles, sea gulls, tugboats.... so after much thinking, and an incredible amount of coaching, nudging, and more than I can even describe from my marvelous teacher/marketing guru Tea Silvestre,  The Word Chef, and everyone in the Test Kitchen group, I've decided pets are the way to go.

So, currently I am trying to put together a plan that will include a new website, blog, and a special Facebook Page for my sweet Sadie. (But that's another story!)

For now, I just wanted to introduce the new direction for the Dee-vine Miss M. Keep an eye out for more... and e-mail me for more info if you'd like a personalized pet portrait!

My Art Is Going To The Dogs.

September's Art Walk theme is "Pet Walk" so, instead of lighthouses, flowers and birds, I'm working on dogs right now.TodayI worked on Hurley's picture. Hurley is my daughter's Chihuahua and we all absolutely adore him. I'd already done one picture but wanted more. Also, for some reason I cropped it square, so I needed to fix it so it would fit a frame. Well, I made a huge discovery - when I say "original, one-of-a-kind digital painting" I'm not kidding. And here's the proof -

Painting 1 (square)

So I opened the Original photo to see if I could add more image to the painting.

After cropping, I began trying to replicate the first painting and here's what I got.

Painting 2 -

I really like this one, but it's a little too dark. So back to the cropped original, tweak the brightness/contrast...

Painting 3.

This does not look finished although it has a painterly effect. But I just wanted to share the experience. Totally different results each time, therefore each painting will be an original! I'm not through with this guy - perhaps he will star in more than one painting! I love you Hurley!!!

Love Them Red High-Heeled Shoes!

I got a new Red High Heel Shoe yesterday. Besides being part of the Deevine Miss M's logo, my inner being wears red stilleto shoes always. And - I had a bad tattoo (someone's initials) I needed to get rid of. So I did - I stomped on it!

(And yes, I photoshopped around the edges to get rid of the redness and swelling! If ya got the tools, use 'em!)  :P

My love of shoes is strong, but on the Today show this morning they interviewed a woman who makes me look like an amateur. Professional poker player Beth Shak  owns 1,200 pairs of shoes. Everytime she wins, she goes shopping for a new pair! They are valued at close to $500 million. WOW!

Here's a picture of just one of her three closets - however, instead of envy, I find myself thinking about having to pack all those shoes if I decided to go back to Tulsa! Not to mention, I don't think my seester would let me store them in her shed - she's funny likie that!

So, for the time being I'm content with my one new RED SHOE!

There are not enough seconds in the minutes, or minutes in the hours....

Here's a picture that's been waiting a week for me to finish it, but I've been busy learning how to Tweet! Before that, I converted a novel into an e-book, and it works all most readers! (Proud of that accomplishment)!

And it's only17 days till the next First Wednesday Artwalk. I want to have several Navy paintings since this is a Navy town.

I'm thinking of a new way to set up my booth this time so I can show more stuff. Here's my first one with my fabulous assistant! I absolutely could have not done this without him!!!

I need a larger table to display brochures, business cards, smaller prints, notecards and all that stuff. But it all has to fit in the back seat of my PT Cruiser with the top down. Last time, I spent 75% of my time looking in the rear view mirror to see if anything was flying through the air.





And then there are the frequent distractions of the various and assorted visitors who only come by to drive Stanley crazy! These two live across the street and they actually came up on my front porch. I shoo'd them away, so the stopped and chewed a few weedsout of my front walk. I'm thinking about borrowing them occasionally. (It's easier than bending over.)

 Stanley's other BFF is a gopher tortoise who lives down the hill. He likes to walk back and forth along the back fence, all the while pretending Stanley does not exist. And Stanley's begging me to let him out to play. But since they're a protected species, we can't do that!

Never a dull moment - I've still got pix in the camera of the hummingbird outside my kitchen window. He's about 3 feet away and I love to watch him when I'm supposed to be working... like now! I gotta go... TTYL!

"IS IT ART?" - (Final installment on this rant!)

How 'bout a pretty picture before I get started? The original photo is at the bottom of the page.

Now for the ending to the post I began on June 24th about whether or not digital art is "art" or "whatever." I did think of another analogy - If all the tools, the supplies, the land, and a blueprint were provided, could just anyone walk out there and build a house? Probably not. It would take a person with the skills and the talent to build a house to be proud of. Same with art - the tools don't make the art, the artist does. So:

There is an art site that invited me to be one of their original members. I was also invited to be co-moderator for a yet-to-be-established group for Digital Art.

"Wow," thought I to myself! "I'm a real artist!" And I began uploading various pieces I've created and received lovely, re-affirming comments such as:

·         Comment by (name deleted) 1 day ago This is an excellent piece of digital art. I like the painterly effect you have achieved and strength of colours.

·         Comment by (name deleted) 1 day ago Pretty colors - so luscious and vibrant!

·         Comment by myself on May 24, 2011 at 8:53am Thank you. All of my digital paintings start out as a photograph I take. Then comes the fun part, where I can play with it in Photoshop and Painter.

·         Comment by (name deleted) on May 23, 2011 at 1:57pm Amazing. I thought it was a photo

·         Comment by (name deleted) on May 23, 2011 at 9:09pm This is beautiful. How did you do it?

·         (name deleted) replied to Margie Hudson's discussion 'Digital Painting Group' Thank you so much for partnering with me to do this. Your work is such an inspiration to me and i am sure it will be the same for others! I will find out how to add you as co-leader!

Now, really! I felt like an artist! And then came the hammer....

As we get ready to roll out live with The Art Colony we are making some revisons to our site and I wanted to talk with you about the changes we have made to the gudielines for Digital Art.
Our intention is to get this genre defined before we go live so we are not confusing anyone. I am so sorry that we didn't have this taken care of before you joined.
After much careful consideration we feel it is critical that we keep to our no photos policy and have called this out in the Digital Art guidelines. (name deleted) created a link to help distinguish between work that is photo editing and work that is digital art.
Look at this post for guidelines on digital art pieces for The Art Colony galleries: http://community.art-is-fun.com/notes/Digital_Art_vs_Photo_Editing

I know this is a difficult topic and do not want to hurt your feelings. What I am hoping is that you will look at the guidelines and determine if there is any of your work that does not meet the guidelines and remove the work that is more like an editied photo than digital art.
If you feel uncomfortable removing work and feel that The Art Colony is not the right place to be, please let me know.

Guidelines excerpt:

The Art Colony accepts digital art but not photography. [...]
Our goal is to promote and discuss ideas about artistic processes created by hand, and for that reason we make this distinction between digital art and digital photo editing:

Digital art = Computer-generated art that is created by hand (i.e. using a tablet, stencil etc), either from scratch or from a reference source.

Digital photo editing = running a photograph through Photoshop filters, making adjustments, adding and subtracting elements to enhance certain qualities of the photo.

While digital photo editing is a creative process that can result in some beautifully artistic images, the end result is still essentially an edited photograph. Edited photographs belong on a photography site, not a fine art site like The Art Colony - just as a photograph printed onto canvas and then painted over with acrylics belongs on an art site, and not a photography site.

So! If I print out my photograph and then paint over it with acrylics it's art! Well, who knew? Gee, that takes a lot of talent, doesn't it?

So, thanks for listening to me, whoever you are (if you are out there!) Most of us have to struggle with that little voice inside that says "That sucks!" So, why shouldn't we, as artists, do everything we can to uplift others rather than tear them down? I've seen art that made me shake my head, but I wouldn't dream of telling an artist "That sucks!"

The picture at the top was painted, using both Painter and Photoshop, using my original photo, taken at an air show in Virginia in 2007.