Echo Challenge Face

Saturday, January 30th, 2010 by Alyice

“I think your whole life shows in your face
and you should be proud of that.”
– Lauren Bacall

It’s echo time! This time the prompt is “Face”. From the moment we enter the world, our facial expressions are a portal into our souls.

Just by looking at a person’s face, we can usually tell what kind of mood they’re in: angry, bewildered, frustrated, sad, or joyous, or if they are tired or in pain.

By observing a person’s facial expressions, we can tell if they’re approachable, busy, interested, shy, or dangerous. We can also tell if they’re surprised, terrified, or just plain disgusted.

But did you realize that in the faces of others, we seek out acceptance, approval, and even love?

Or that in our faces, we can influence others? We can bring them down, or we can lift them up. The choice is ours…

Albert Einstein once said, “The ideals which have lighted my way and, time after time, have given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been kindness, beauty, and truth.“

As we move further into the new year, I hope that we can learn to embrace Einstein’s words of wisdom. That we not only seek out a renewed sense of courage within ourselves, but that by truly observing the facial expressions of others, we learn to reach out more—and lend a helping hand.

We may not have the financial resources to change a person’s life, but we—at the very least—have the ability to give someone the acceptance they long for, to provide a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on, or to bring laughter back into the lives of the hurting.

By simply taking a few precious moments out of our days, we can, in fact, alter the realities of others.

Until next time…

Posted in Echo Challenge | 3 Comments »

Featured On Empty Easel

Thursday, January 28th, 2010 by Alyice

I’ve been featured on Empty Easel, well my byline anyway. I’ve been hired to write a series of posts (articles) on starting a blog on Blogger.com. Twice a month, I’ll share a simple tutorial, complete with screen shots. Then twice a month, I’ll share interviews I’ve conducted with other artists—and show off some of their art in the process. Each interview will focus on a specific area of the artist’s business.

At any rate, check out the articles and tell me what you think, “k”?

You’ll find the blogging articles under Art Marketing Tips and you’ll find the interviews under Misc.

Keep Creating

Posted in Find Me Online | Comments Off

Jazz Up School Photos

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 by Alyice

Last week I received the cutest school photo of my great-niece, Desirae. (Seriously I am not that old. My husband is the youngest of 8 children with the oldest being my mom’s age. But I digress.)

Personally, I love getting photographs of the family each year—they add character and warmth to our family scrapbooks. My in-laws, however, hate getting annual photographs. It’s not that they don’t enjoy seeing how their grandchildren’s children have grown, or even their own grandchildren, for that matter. It’s that they never know what to do with the photographs once they are done looking at them. “We only have so much room in this tiny apartment,” they’d say.

Which got me to thinking about how much fun my children and I had coming up with creative ways to show off their school work and school photos—to distant relatives. We’d make ornaments, refrigerator magnets, wall calendars, and even video recordings. Now that they’re older, of course, those days are long gone. But it doesn’t stop me from reminiscing about times gone by.

In honor of those memories, I put together a fun, quick, tutorial on how to jazz up your children’s school photos.

Supplies:

Wallet-sized school photo
Strathmore Paper for Acrylics or Watercolor
Frame with a 4” x 6″ opening
Colored pencils
Yellow watercolor paint
Copper, black, and Titanium Buff acrylic paints
Thin paintbrushes
Patterned stamp with four large squares
Rinse water
Scissors
Embossing heat tool or hair dryer

Instructions:

Use one of the colored pencils to doodle several circles on top of one another. (You can also get creative by incorporating other shapes.)
Use up to five colored pencils to lightly color each shape a different color.
Dab stamp with Titanium Buff acrylic paint and gently stamp a few squares over the image.
Use heat tool to dry acrylic paint, or let dry naturally.
Use yellow watercolor paint to add a thin “wash” over the entire painting.
Let dry naturally as the heat tool can curl the paper.
While the painting is drying, take the scissors and cut around the child’s portrait until you get a silhouette.
Go back to the painting and outline all the lines in copper.
Once dry, go back over each line, slightly off to the side, in black.
Let dry.
Turn the painting over. Use the glass, from the frame, as a template and trace an outline onto the backside of the painting.
Cut out the shape.
Have your child sign and date his painting on the backside.
Lift the back of the frame and place the picture on the screen, then place the painting on top of the picture. Close frame and stand upright.

Congratulations! You’ve just created an original piece of abstract art—in less than 30 minutes!

Note: You can use double-sided tape to adhere the picture to the artwork; however, I like the idea of not taping the two together so that the recipients can change out the picture, annually, if they’d like.

Keep Creating

Posted in Art How-Tos Children | Comments Off

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AlyiceEdrich.com
I'm a mixed media artist and freelance writer. Need web content? Want to commission or license art? Let's Talk.

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