Post 148: Blue Heron at Blue Ridge Shores in Louisa, Virginia V2, 10x20 Acrylic

Painting Name: Blue Heron at Blue Ridge Shores, Louisa, Virginia Version 2

SKU: 06CD21AC

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 10x20 Stretched Canvas SOLD

Edition Year: 2021

Framed?: No

Commissioned? No

What Brought About this Painting?

There was such a great response for the first Blue Heron painting (v1) that I just had to do a version 2!

Version 2 - "Blue" doesn't have feet in this one.

Sides of painting are painted as well, so it does not necessarily have to be framed.

Blue Heron at Blue Ridge Shores, Louisa, Virginia versions 1 and 2 are shown here. Version 1 on the left sold immediately (before I even completed it!). 

Maybe not so subtle variations in the versions. Version 1 is a little bit deeper colors and you see a little more of the pier and a pole in the water in the background. Version 2 on the right, "Blue" does not have his feet showing.

See the Painting in progress at https://donnascavepainting.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-painting-in-progress-blue-heron-at.html

See the Version 1 Painting in progress at https://donnascavepainting.blogspot.com/2021/06/blue-heron-at-blue-ridge-shores.html

Again, many thanks to Peter Olsen for the use and permission to use his original photo taken on Memorial weekend 2021 of a Blue Heron as my "model".
See the original photo at https://donnascavepainting.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-painting-in-progress-blue-heron.html

Shop, Follow, Like, Comment and do all the social things for my painting Artworks: 

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Like my paintings? Need a handmade, original painting as a gift for a friend or family member? If you want to commission me to do a painting for you, please contact me through this blog in the form, or on my Facebook link. To Shop for paintings, please go to Donna Liguria Art on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DonnaLiguriaArt to shop my available Artwork.

Thank you for visiting, and remember to Follow, Comment, and Review!

Post 147: Streams Never Stay the Same 11x14 Gallery Wrapped Stretched Canvas Landscape

Painting Name: Streams Never Stay the Same

SKU: 06CE21ACG

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 11x14 Gallery Wrapped Stretched Canvas

Edition Year: 2021

Framed?: No

Check Availability and Prints on my Etsy Shop

Update: September 22, 2021

This painting was entered into a juried event called "Best of the Region 4" - wish me luck! Creative Brush is once again hosting the Best of the Region 4, which is sponsored by p-ART-ners and the Manassas Art Guild

What Brought About this Painting?

The title of this painting comes from a quote by Gary Snyder

"Streams and mountains never stay the same."

Always changing in every way. The light that day, the rain that falls, the creatures that visit, the time of year, the color of the leaves and where the leaves are. Everything changes, nothing remains the same.

Landscapes are, for me at least, very relaxing to paint. Maybe to look at too, what do you think? 

Kind of makes me want to take off my shoes and roll up my pants legs and step into the water and wiggle my toes. Then look for any of the crawfish or minnow - any of the stream's wild life.

A tad bit of glare on the right side of the image when I took the photo of the painting. UGH, still learning how to fix that in PhotoShop.

See the Painting in progress at https://donnascavepainting.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-painting-in-progress-streams-never.html

Shop, Follow, Like, Comment and do all the social things for my painting Artworks: 

See the Share and Where to Find Me Links to the right.

Like my paintings? Need a handmade, original painting as a gift for a friend or family member? If you want to commission me to do a painting for you, please contact me through this blog in the form, or on my Facebook link. To Shop for paintings, please go to Donna Liguria Art on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DonnaLiguriaArt to shop my available Artwork.

Thank you for visiting, and remember to Follow, Comment, and Review!

Post 146: A Painting in Progress: Blue Heron at Blue Ridge Shores (v2)

Painting Name: Blue Heron at Blue Ridge Shores (v2)

SKU: 06CD21AC

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 10x20 Stretched Canvas

Edition Year: 2021

Framed?: No

Check Availability and Prints on my Etsy Shop

What Brought About this Painting?

I had a LOT of people ask me about version 1 of this painting so I started another one. I am very grateful for the interest in it! This one will be slightly different, they always are.

Painting in Progress Images…

Friday, June 18, 2021 10:45 AM Moving along on another big blue heron bird painting. Ooops, looks like I missed filling in the background between the legs and tail. I can fix that.

Monday, June 21, 2021 11/35 AM Version 2 (v2) of "Blue" - he is starting to look like a bird and the lake is starting to look brackish. (See, I fixed it.)

Monday, June 21, 2021 2:31 PM Starting to fill in the bird, but I must get the background leaves in too before it gets too far along.

Tuesday, June 22, 2021 8:15 AM The floating Blue Heron with no legs

See the completed Painting at coming soon

Shop, Follow, Like, Comment and do all the social things for my painting Artworks: 

See the Share and Where to Find Me Links to the right.

Like my paintings? Need a handmade, original painting as a gift for a friend or family member? If you want to commission me to do a painting for you, please contact me through this blog in the form, or on my Facebook link. To Shop for paintings, please go to Donna Liguria Art on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DonnaLiguriaArt to shop my available Artwork.

Thank you for visiting, and remember to Follow, Comment, and Review!

Post 145: A Painting In Progress: Streams Never Stay the Same

Painting in Progress: Streams Never Stay the Same

SKU: 06CE21ACG

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 11x14 Gallery Wrapped Stretched Canvas

Price: $Pending

Edition Year: 2021

Framed?: No

Commissioned? No

Painting in Progress Images…

To me and for me at least, all paintings start out pretty ugly getting the base layers in so occasionally I will get several layers in at first before I post. Apparently not this time though...

Friday, June 18, 2021 8:07 PM Starting to take shape

Saturday, June 19, 2021 12:53 PM Detailing, its all in the detailing to me.

What Brought About this Painting?

The title of this painting comes from a quote by Gary Snyder

"Streams and mountains never stay the same."

Always changing in every way. The light that day, the rain that falls, the creatures that visit, the time of year, the color of the leaves and where the leaves are. Everything changes, nothing remains the same.

See the completed Painting at https://donnascavepainting.blogspot.com/2021/06/streams-never-stay-same-11x14-gallery.html

Shop, Follow, Like, Comment and do all the social things for my painting Artworks: 

See the Share and Where to Find Me Links to the right.

Like my paintings? Need a handmade, original painting as a gift for a friend or family member? If you want to commission me to do a painting for you, please contact me through this blog in the form, or on my Facebook link. To Shop for paintings, please go to Donna Liguria Art on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DonnaLiguriaArt to shop my available Artwork.

Thank you for visiting, and remember to Follow, Comment, and Review!

Post 144: Review of Society6.com - Artist Designed, They Print It

Artist Site: Society6.com Review

I recently joined Society6 today to give it a try. It is an artist site that touts 'the artist created the design and S6 does the work of printing it and shipping it to you' So the products list is extensive and can be anything from art prints - you pick the size and you can also select if you want it framed, to coffee or travel cups, to t-shirts, tote bags, aprons, etc. There's your Christmas list taken care of! It's an interesting concept. 

With that in mind, theoretically if you see an artwork of mine or (horrors!) someone else that you like, and your budget does not allow the purchase of the original painting, you have options to buy something else with a print of the artwork on it. Win-Win in my opinion. (hey that rhymes! 

The set up is very easy for the artist and very straightforward. Connect to your Paypal account so you can get paid if something sells (or so you can pay for something you buy) and go down the short check list to get up and running. A short bio is important, an image, things like that and you can start uploading your art images. 

Images

Good quality images are always vitally important and should be either PNG, JPG or RBG. Make sure their edges are clean and the quality is crisp and the maximum file size should be 150MB not exceed 400,000,000 pixels.

Check this link on the required sizes of images based on the merchandise that your image can be printed on https://help.society6.com/hc/en-us/articles/228101307-Pixel-Dimension-Requirements-and-Templates-For-All-Society6-Products. Depending on merch selected, you will need to adjust the image.

Some of my art designs uploaded in my Artist Studio

Keywords and Tags

On the internet, keywords are so very, very important. Your tags are your keywords as well as the words in your art title. If you were on Google and trying to find something for your mom for Mother's Day let's say, and you type in a few words to find her a great gift. 

If you typed "Mother's Day Gifts" you get 370 million results. Ew, bad, too much like work...

If you know mom would LOVE a tote bag with a "Sunrise at Nags Head North Carolina Tote Bag" printed on it, that tremendously cuts the Google results to 251 thousand results. Still large but look if we do that on the search on Society6.com with a few adjustments...

Using the filters, we can search for specifically tote bags, and use the keywords "Sunrise" or "Nags Head" or "North Carolina" and we can shop the artist made totes available there. Kind of nice to cut out Amazon for a change, right?

As with anything like this, read the help they provide and have a look at the "competition". Don't undersell yourself but see what other people are doing. I'm not convinced fine art should be here as yet, but an artist needs to make a living right? The internet SHOULD be a great resource to connect with art lovers anywhere.

Pricing Merchandise 

Society6 has a BASE PRICE - that's their cut. The artist adjusts the percentage to charge on top of that for each or all of his/her products. This is where it gets pretty easy for the artist to adjust. All at once adjustments and/or customize how you want your prices to go on top of their base price. The adjustments auto-adjust so you can see them real-time.

Generally, very easy and decently quick to set up. I already had a PayPal account set up which helped. Editing and adjustments are an easy task too. After that, it is up to you on spreading the word on your S6 shop, but there is plenty of help and suggestions for that too.

My affiliate link is http://society6.com?curator=[donnaliguriaart] which means I get a piece of the pie. Like I said, I am new on the site, so we shall see how it goes. I can update this post if I have additional commentary to add and -I hope- sales to review in my dashboard. 

Finally, I should say thank you for your support for small businesses. We appreciate it.

Question for you: What art sites do you use and has it worked well for you as an artist?

How to Shop, Follow, Like, Comment and do all the social things for my painting Artworks: 

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Behind the Canvas Blog: Donna’s Cave Paintings Blog

Like my paintings? Need a handmade, original painting as a gift for a friend or family member? Or if you want to commission me to do a similar painting for you, please contact me through this blog or go to Donna Liguria Art on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DonnaLiguriaArt to shop my available Artwork.
Side Note, if you have purchased one of my paintings, please send me a picture of YOU with the painting and I will post it on the corresponding blog page.

Thank you for visiting, and remember to Follow, Comment, and Review!

Post 143: Blue Heron at Blue Ridge Shores, Virginia, 10x20 Acrylic on Canvas (v1)

Painting Name: Blue Heron at Blue Ridge Shores, Virginia (v1)

SKU: 06CC21AC

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 10x20 Stretched Canvas

Price: SOLD

Edition Year: 2021

Check Availability and Prints on my Etsy Shop

What Brought About this Painting?

There are a lot of birds I have been wanting to paint and a blue heron is one of them. Recently, an old friend of mine, Peter Olsen, visited Blue Ridge Shores in Louisa, Virginia. He is known for taking some GREAT pictures especially when he comes up to BRS from North Carolina.

After this past Memorial weekend (May 28 - May 31, 2021) he posted a bunch of photos on Facebook. I spotted his blue heron photo and asked his permission to use it for a painting. Permission granted, the painting began.

As I usually do, I will look at it for a bit to see if it needs any more tweaking before I varnish it but I think its about there. What do you think? This picture may show the colors a bit better.

By the way, see the original photo at the "Painting in Progress" post.

See the Painting in progress at https://donnascavepainting.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-painting-in-progress-blue-heron.html

How to Shop, Follow, Like, Comment and do all the social things for my painting Artworks: 

Etsy Shop: Shop DL Art on Etsy

Twitter: DL Art on Twitter

Tumblr: DL Art on Tumblr

Facebook: DL Art on Facebook

Instagram: DL Art on Instagram

Pinterest: DL Art on Pinterest

Behind the Canvas Blog: Donna’s Cave Paintings Blog

Like this painting? Need a handmade, original painting as a gift for a friend or family member? Or if you want to commission me to do a similar painting for you, please contact me through this blog or go to Donna Liguria Art on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DonnaLiguriaArt to shop my available Artwork.
Side Note, if you have purchased one of my paintings, please send me a picture of YOU with the painting and I will post it on the corresponding blog page.

Thank you for visiting, and remember to Follow, Comment, and Review!

Post 142: A Painting in Progress: Blue Heron

Painting Name: Blue Heron at Blue Ridge Shores, Virginia

SKU: 06CC21AC

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 10x20 Stretched Canvas

Price: SOLD

Edition Year: 2021

Commissioned? No

The Image for Reference:

Photo Credit and Permission Granted from Peter Olsen, May 2021 at Blue Ridge Shores in Louisa, Virginia

Painting in Progress Images…

What would you name this Painting? Blue Heron just does not seem quite enough. Maybe a name suggestion will happen as the painting develops. Follow "the painting in progress" here and leave your comments!

Monday, June 14, 2021 5:10 PM - Roughed in the heron and the background

Monday, June 14, 2021 5:43 PM - He looks kind of ghostly doesn't he?

Monday, June 14, 2021 6:47 PM - bird has a bit of a hunchback. Blue Heron of Notre Dame. I'll have to smooth that out. 

Tuesday, June 15, 2021 8:32 AM - Still no legs but he has an eye. I like painting birds, and other critters. (That's the southern influence on me.) Feathers are such intricate delicate things. Our God and Creator really let His imagination soar (<- get that?) when it came to birds if you think about it. Their colors, how they are so exotic and different from each other, eh? (Eh? - That's the Canadian influence of friends and family there.)

Blue Ridge Shores is a lake in Louisa County, Virginia. The lake is man-made lake that began in 1960 as a resort community. The water has a lot of sediment in it, therefore the "color of water" has a green look to it. 

Coloring water also depends on other things like its bottom (or substrate), what's in it (even as recently as a good rainfall), the surface - refraction and reflection, and a biggie is the light which is directly influenced by the surface.

Tuesday, June 15, 2021 11:11 AM - Still no knobby knees or those long luxurious "strings" of feathers. Coming along but a long way to go yet. Detailing feathers takes awhile. 

What NOT to paint opposed to what to include

Also, from the real picture at the start, I am assuming that the lumpy stuff on the dock are things I do not want to paint. When you blow up the photo, the nails on the dock are actually quite raised. Much for bare feet to be aware of.

I also did not include the stick on the pier as there wasn't really enough room to do it justice. So far I did not include the red reflector on the side of the pier. I'm thinking it over. Attention should be on the bird not the pier one might think.

I was just wondering what these guys sound like? Anyone know?

Tuesday, June 15, 2021 1:15 PM - Pause in the painting for a bit. My neighbor had commissioned a painting for me to do for her daughter, Alison's birthday. Alison is visiting a couple of days and we "sprung" the surprise on her. See the entries listed under the keyword "Richmond VA". Warms your heart when someone sees the work for the first time.

Face details on the heron coming together...

Tuesday, June 15, 2021 3:30 PM - She's got legs, and he knows how to use them. ZZ Top, right? At least these little rinky-dinky things will become legs. HOW do they hold themselves up with those stick legs? Baffling. Like bumble bees. How DO they fly with those big bodies and rinky-dink wings?

I am reminded of the famous painter that painted geese, ducks, etc and she never painted feet. The birds were ALWAYS in the water or sitting down. She had a thing about feet. If you don't know who she is, she's P. Buckly Moss, of Waynesboro, Virginia. http://www.pbuckleymoss.com/

I am currently really liking the idea of no feet. Guess I cannot get away with having the heron standing in a bucket of water.

See the completed Painting at https://donnascavepainting.blogspot.com/2021/06/blue-heron-at-blue-ridge-shores.html

How to Shop, Follow, Like, Comment and do all the social things for my painting Artworks: 

Etsy Shop: Shop DL Art on Etsy

Twitter: DL Art on Twitter

Tumblr: DL Art on Tumblr

Facebook: DL Art on Facebook

Instagram: DL Art on Instagram

Pinterest: DL Art on Pinterest

Behind the Canvas Blog: Donna’s Cave Paintings Blog

Like this painting? Need a handmade, original painting as a gift for a friend or family member? Or if you want to commission me to do a similar painting for you, please contact me through this blog or go to Donna Liguria Art on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DonnaLiguriaArt to shop my available Artwork.
Side Note, if you have purchased one of my paintings, please send me a picture of YOU with the painting and I will post it on the corresponding blog page.

Thank you for visiting, and remember to Follow, Comment, and Review!