heArt-a-Day

I was thinking about graffiti as I digitally painted this heart art. True graffiti artists would say it’s nothing like graffiti in the end, but I still can see the influence.

I’m getting ready to send five of these heart inchies off tomorrow for a swap. I showed one of them in an earlier entry before I glitzed them up. They look pretty cool in the bright sunlight we’re having today. I have to say, as much as I like inch-sized art to look at, it’s trickier to do than I anticipated. And as you can see, these are not that complicated. I’m looking more forward to what I can do with the photos and video I took of them than I did to the actual handmaking process. I have to get past this. Nobody wants to buy digital art. They just want to steal it.  (Postscript:  After I posted this I thought I was being a bit harsh with the line about stealing.  Nope.  Probably while I was writing it somebody lifted something from here and made a MySpace background from it, with no credit, no link back even.)

I found these awesome heart art inchies on Flickr. This is the kind of art I wish I could do. Mine always seems to somehow miss the mark. Her sense of color, shading and composition is just perfect to my eyes.

Here is Phizzychick’s Flickr bio:

“Artist living in Sevilla. I was an art teacher until May when we moved with my bloke’s job to Sevilla, Spain. I’m originally from NW England. I love rock/heavy metal music with a passion and any other music that makes me smile. I like nature, birds and insects particularly! I really like quirky little things!”

Click here to see her entire Flickr inchie gallery.

From the Mystic Voodoo website: “Oshun is the Santeria goddess of love, art and dance. Erzulie Freda is the voodoo loa of romantic love.” (For more about Oshun, visit Voodoomama’s lens Oshun on Squidoo.) Oshun and Erzulie are closely related. I see Oshun as more earthy and natural, and Erzulie is more of a glamor girl.

I felt inspired to digitally paint a portrait of Oshun and then found that my friend Denise Alvarado, the “voodoomama”, had painted a portrait of her within days of my project.

I sketched Oshun out first, but then intuitively I felt Erzulie Freda needed to be added. I’ve been watching hours of America’s Next Top Model lately and have become impressed with Tyra Banks. She seems to embody both Erzulie’s – Freda and Dantor – and, though unconsciously at first, I could see as I worked that she was the model for my depiction of Erzulie.

If you look carefully in the background you can see Erzulie Freda’s veve.  And the hearts are there, sprinkled throughout.

Painted in Photoshop with a Wacom tablet. As usual. heArt #108 of 1001.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day I’ve doodled up some hearts for you all to use to make Valentine cards or collages or whatever you like. I’ve written up an easy technique that I use to make collages with drawings like this on my Image Transfer Squidoo lens. (Once there, scroll down to find the “My Faux Image Transfer Method” section.)

I’ve hosted this image at Flickr so that you can choose different sizes to download. Click on the heart image below and once at Flickr you’ll see a small magnifier icon above the image that says “all sizes”. Click on that and you’ll see the different sizes. I’m asking for attribution but I know that sometimes that’s more trouble than it’s worth. If you use it for something you post on a blog, I’d really love a link back to this blog and I will, in turn, feature your work and blog in an entry here.

Check out the new heArt-a-Day website for more clip art, as well as the heArt-a-Day gift shop for already made heart art items.

Enjoy!!

Surprise! This is like a treasure hunt. To see heart art #104 you must visit my website, which is still pretty much in development but the blog is started, anyway. So without further ado, click below:

Fellow Iowan “non-runner Nancy” has a blog about training for marathons when you’re not really a runner. She discovered heArt-a-Day and asked if she could use the “Nine Patch heArt Quilt” for a logo for a virtual race she’s organizing. I’ve never been much of a runner so I was happy to oblige. Besides, us Iowans have to stick together. If you feel like running nine miles on the ninth of February, pop on over to Nancy’s blog and post your time. Don’t be shy, she’s very nice. In fact, I would say she has a lot of heart.

In honor of the “sweetheart shuffle”, as Nancy is calling it, I’ve remixed the original piece of heart art for yet another variation using a gradient background fill and the posterize filter in Photoshop. I think I might like it better than the original. The colors remind me of the Haitian voodoo art by Edouard Duval-Carrie who I’m a fan of.

Today’s Best Award Winner!

This heart art was digitally painted in Photoshop CS2 using a Wacom Graphire4.

Some idiot left this comment on the heart flower pattern entry:

“This heart design would translate very well into a textile. Either woven or surface design. I think you could easily lose the funny little bubble things that drift across the page – they are irritating. But the image is lovely.”

Holy crap! Are they serious?? They expect me to publish that comment with a link back to their blog? Yeah, right.

The comment is from a holistic healer (I use the term loosely) who has been apparently bringing peace and harmony to people psychologically for decades through Feng Shui. And part of their duty is to inform people of what’s wrong with their art? Gee, my blog has been commented on by God. Is that what a Feng Shui consultant does? Goes around playing god?

No doubt, I’m seeing my shadow self here. God knows I’ve offered patronizing opinions where they weren’t wanted many times in my life (ask my former friends the Snake Sisters). The seductive anonymity of the Web makes it really easy for everybody to do that. But I have to pass my Ingrate Crown to this person. This takes it all. They were trying to promote their business, which ironically has a heart in it’s name, too.

And yes, I do heart work and I wish the world was all love, peace and flower power, but if you come at me or mine like that, I will take you down. Full on banishing coming to you, baby.

At any rate, I’m giving that person a backlash instead of a backlink. I’m sending that negative energy right back to that, uh……person (I use the term loosely) three-fold. And I’m sure as hell not giving them a link, a mention back to their website, or even which sex they are, cause this is clearly a case of internet “social” marketing at it’s worst. “I love this work because it’s my passion,” they say on their website. Mmmm hmmm.

Well…I love the bubbles. That’s what I like the best about that piece of art. They stay.

Oh hey, you know what? I bet there are many offensive and wrong things about this blog entry, too. Well -expletive deleted- that!