New Business Cards

I decided to update my business cards and use my photoshop program to do a collage of my paintings on the cards.   I had fun with it and did a vertical design filled with images from several different paintings.

 I found some of the old cards to show how the design has changed over the last few years.  I may go back and do an image on the other side of the new cards like I did last year.  I really liked it and I ended up using that side to price things in several different shows.  So here is last year's design:

(front)

 

(back)

This design was actually one that I used for several years.  The header was on my website pages and promotional materials.  Most of the paintings in the header were created from 2005 to 2008, and all but the birches on the end are sold now.

New Iris Paintings

I have a show coming up in June that I am trying to get some paintings ready for. I have been wanting to use some of the photos I took last April of my irises.  So I finally started on a pair of new 10" x 10" paintings today. Above is the first painting.  I am going to work on it some more tomorrow.  I am not totally happy with the dark purple areas.  I will probably work on the background also.  I don't know if the light green works with this iris' color.

 I worked on it a bit more.  The photo isn't great but you can see the added details a bit.  I brightened the edges and darkened the shadows a little also. I also washed a dark blue over the background.

I worked on the other canvas today.  I found a great photo of my favorite light blue iris.  I like the profile perspective.  It looks nice with the top view of the purple iris.    I am still going to work on the background colors of both to unify them.  Right now the purple one's background is darker because of the blue wash I did.  I am tempted to just go with a dark brown on both.  I love the contrast it gives, but I have done a lot of paintings with dark brown backgrounds and I think I want to experiment with something new.  The blue iris still needs some definition but it's mostly done.

 Well, I decided to go light blue on the background of the pink iris.  I ordered more canvases of this size and will be doing at least two more for this series.  I will most likely sell them together as a set.  I like the look of these two so far.  I think I will probably do a yellow iris with a pink background and a white or purple/lavender iris with a yellow background.  It should make for a nice set hopefully.

UPDATE:  I got the canvases in this week!  I am 99% finished with the paintings.  I will set them up in my living room and look at them for a few days to be sure there isn't anything else I want to change.  I find that if I "live" with a painting for a few days I can usually pinpoint any changes I want to make.   I really like the way these are turning out. 

UPDATE:  I did make some new changes. I wanted to bring out some deeper color in the blue iris.  I also lightened the purple/pink iris and added some highlights to the lavender iris.  The yellow iris got the most new work done.  I added a lot more detail to the upper petals portion.  I think I'm really finished this time.