Paint by Number Revisited

Last weekend, our granddaughter was coming to spend most of Saturday with us while her brother and parents left to host his birthday party. As Everleigh is a keen young artist-in-the-making, we always have fun painting or doing a craft together.

Getting us each a paint by number set sounded like the perfect plan. When there wasn't an appropriate one for a 6 year old, I settled on a "mermaid kit" - image on stretched canvas and necessary paints for her, and a paint by number for me. The image is a cute, paint-splattered Dalmation pup, with lots of pink, purple and other bright colours, so I figured she would enjoy seeing it come to life. 

Here is a picture of the boxed kit. A 16 x 20 piece of canvas, all the required paints, 4 brushes and a hanging system, for $20. Seemed like a good idea. (Artist's Loft from Michael's BTW)

When I removed everything from the box, I was in for a bit of a shock. Although on the box, the paint areas look like they are a good size, here is what you see when you open the "legend". Zoom in a bit and you will see what I was in for. Luckily, I have a fancy magnifying glass, a gift from a friend, which came in very handy.

While Evvie and I painted together, which was a couple of hours, she was nearly done her painting and I had made a very small dent in mine. By the end of Sunday, after probably 8 hours, here is what I accomplished.

The good news is that it was just as relaxing as I remembered. And it turned out to be a very good "value exercise", which I always like to see. Got me thinking that perhaps I should have my "portrait" students colour or paint in the values on their patterns before they start hooking.

Evvie decided that this dog should come and live on her bedroom wall, which is what I had been secretly hoping would happen. But even better, her mom was about to buy another animal print for her wall and totally fell in love with this pup - who wouldn't? She was even going to invest in a frame so she could do a grouping with the other critters on one wall.

So the challenge was on. I really, really wanted to finish this in a week, so that they could take it home.

A few hours spent every day got me to the end of all the "splats", and just the background remained to be done.  Evvie and mom both wanted the background to be white, versus the light blue you see on the box. And it saved me another chunk of hours to leave it white. I was in!!

Here is another picture that I shared when the painting was done - just background left. I wanted them to be sure before I did anything that they didn't want blue. It was a unanimous "team white" decision, so I just had to cover all the little number 1s that were on the canvas - pale, but still there.

Today, this pup, who we named Splat, went into a frame to be part of a feature wall. I am so happy that he has gone to a good home.

My net takeaway from this experience is that, like most other things, paint by number has come a long way in the last 60 years lol. There are a ton of places online that sell them, a number who will create a paint by number from your photo (and not too expensive, I might add). There are sites that encourage you to do it as a social event - girlfriends and a bottle of wine. And some of the designs are very contemporary and would look great in any room.

I definitely give this exercise a hearty two thumbs up. It did keep me away from hooking for a whole week, so keep that addictive factor in mind. Totally worth the money and the time. 

PS  A little story about paint by number in my childhood. My oldest brother Bill loved these - the old kind of bucolic scenes, or trains, or whatever. And in the day, I think the paints were oil versus acrylic. He would paint the entire thing on Christmas day, rather than doing one colour at a time and letter it dry.

One year, he put his painting on the desk in our dad's study to dry. My sister Nancy had a phone call and decided to sit on the desk, in her brand new stretchy stirrup pants. When she stood up at the end of the call, she had an imprint of the paint by number on her backside. I laugh every time I think of that.  

Some Special Sparklers.

On New Year's Eve, our three grandkids were together, which is always a wondrous thing.  After dinner, to burn off a bit of steam, the kids were ushered outside, where there was a fire in the fire pit, and sparklers for twirling (with appropriate adult supervision).

Theo, our daughter-in-law took an amazing shot with the slow exposure on her camera and this was the result. 

I knew immediately that I would have to "hook" this moment. And today, I had a little time to see where this would take me. First of all, I wanted to get closer to the action, so I cropped it.

Much better to get in on those expressions. Jackson (10) already has swagger in his sparkler. Everleigh (6) seems very focused on watching what she is doing. And Charlie (2) is enjoying the wonder.

Next, I ran the image through my favourite Photo Editor - Photomania. And I decided the effect I liked best was "Brush Strokes".  Simpler sketch, stronger values, a much better hooking road map. Not much different from the original shot. 

And to create my sketch, I ran the Brush Strokes effect through "Coal Sketch", another effect on Photomania.

The initial result was just way too many lines in black and white, so I used the slider to reduce the effect, and let more of the photo show through, while still keeping a good strong line I can use for my pattern. I will trace the key lines onto a piece of tracing paper, and use that to transfer the pattern to backing.

This whole photo editing process is one of the technology tools I cover in my workshop, Creating Fibre Art in the Age of Technology.

My Workshop Week 2024 class filled in a couple of days after registration opened. My wait list turned into a second workshop in early March. And now I have another wait list for a third. It makes me so happy that folks are keen to learn about all of these tools waiting out there on the internet.

A New Online Adventure

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hope your holidays were filled with love and joy (remember, I'm a big seeker of joy and mine certainly was). 

I started my year off with a big learning curve.

As mentioned before, I am one of the instructors teaching a Zoom workshop in Workshop Week 2024. My workshop is Creating Fibre Art in the Age of Technology, one of my passions.

Here is a link to their Instagram page, where you can see all the information about the lectures and classes during the week.  https://www.instagram.com/inthestudioonline/

My workshop filled incredibly quickly and a second one was created for March 2. It too is filled. I am so thrilled that so many people are interested in learning about the free, online tools that can be used in mat making - or any fibre art, for that matter. 

As part of our instructor responsibilities, a group of us were asked to take over the Workshop Instagram page - for a day - and tell the followers a bit about ourselves. My day was January 3rd. I had not taken over a page before, so that was a lesson unto itself. And then I had to figure out what I was going to say. 

I eventually settled on six posts, which I spaced throughout the day. You can see them (should you want to) if you go to that page.

I feel like I can put another notch in my "online adventures) belt. 

And it is always fun to learn something new!!!