Painting do it yourself

Home Decorations and Art Works

2010-12-04T17:00:00.000-08:00

Many art collectors are confused on how to make home decorations with their precious art collections. Maybe their painting can't match the sofa and other furniture, or the color contrast between the art work and rooms are not in harmony. It's because there is distinction between art works and decoration designs. Only when the collectors learn how to select the art works that can match their rooms, these problems can be settled gradually.

First, one matter we should be clear is that the display method of art works at home is different from that in gallery. It's for private appreciation, not for the public; so the works can be arranged in different free styles as we like.

Of art works, planar paintings are most suitable for home decorations. The display positions should be chosen at walls that are complete and suitable for appreciation. Except themes and styles of painting works, we should consider whether the painting area, the wall area and neighboring furniture in good proportion or not. Besides, how to keep a lively balance between the painting hanging position and and neighboring furniture should also be considered. Small-sized paintings are good choice when small-sized walls and large-sized paintings could make congestion effect; large-sized paintings are preferred when large-sized walls and small-sized paintings would look empty and blank. Anyway, proper blank space left on the walls is important, or art effects of paintings would be reduced.

For solemn effect, paintings can be arranged in symmetrical style. For instance, one or more paintings can be hung in the upper central part of sofa, fireplaces or berths; while unsymmetrical arrangement could produce lively effect. Generally, the edges of a painting should not be too close to furniture edges, and at least 20-30cm gaps should be left; color of paintings and frames should agree to that of furniture, which would produce a harmonious beauty.

Though each piece of art works is of particular character and beauty, they should be in good coordinations with the environment, or they would lose charm in the eyes of beauty lovers. The related resources is art supplies.

Jing Xiao Wang is the freelance writer for e-commerce website weiku.com which offers the buyers around the world to find quality supplier of comprehensive products globally. We try our best to aggregate leads in the e-commerce business world, and let these leads benefit the entire business.
By Jing Xiao Wang
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jing_Xiao_Wang

Hand Paintings With Acrylics - Family Therapy Turned Hobby

2010-12-04T16:58:00.000-08:00

Do you have an elderly parent in your home and looking for an activity that he or she would enjoy? I found painting for my mother as an outlet. I have known for years because of previous nurses training that hand painting as a creative outlet is very therapeutic.

If your parent or your child has experienced high stress and is suffering from anxiety or other mental or physical problems hand painting is wonderful therapy. And if you are a person in good health consider painting as a wonderful hobby or as a new career.

My mother and I may have started acrylic hand paintings as therapy, but we discovered that we like it. We have been currently specializing in acrylic portrait painting. You may wish to start as we did doing landscapes.

As you are painting your landscaping, you learn how to hold your brush, how to use the brush, and which brushes do best at making trees or flowers. You will learn that each brush has its unique purpose when applying acrylic paint to canvas. We also found that we needed to practice painting on the canvas paper. The canvas texture is very different from smooth practice paper.

If you should make a mistake, do not worry. As many artists say, "it is a happy accident" and they are right. The mistake or accident will turn you into another direction which you did not consider and will do better.

Acrylic painting is very affordable. We did not find it to be expensive. All that is needed to start is a variety of paints or just start with prime colors, brushes, and acrylic canvas paper. Starting with prime colors teaches you how to mix colors and create new colors as needed.

You may experience, as we did, that as you improve you will want better painting tools and purchase paint sets and easel to make painting easier.

My mother has been doing so well that she is now considering selling her paintings. I will do the same. We are currently putting our collection together and will start displaying them at arts and crafts shows.

Acrylic hand paintings may be for you as well. Start drawing and you may be amazed to discover a hidden talent. Take lessons that are needed and before long you too may be selling your works of art.

Take lessons today and learn how to do hand paintings. Visit the hobby section of Tricia Deed at http://www.Infotrish.vpweb.com/ and review Portrait Painting With Acrylic &Oil Paint.

Tricia Deed of http://www.Infotrish.vpweb.com/ brings you through internet marketing hobbies for your leisure and recreation and business hobbies to increase your household income. I invite you to my web pages to visit and review hobby companies of your choosing. Do take advantage of their free giveaway.
By Tricia Deed
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tricia_Deed

Halloween Face Painting Ideas For Kids

2010-10-27T05:05:00.000-07:00

Halloween is indeed one of the most exciting seasons of the year. You will be able to enjoy a lot of activities and events. There are costume parties everywhere and you will surely enjoy dressing up for the party. Another activity that makes a lot of people happy during this time is the face painting activity that can be done during parties. It is one activity that you can include in an event that you will be creating. There are some face painting ideas that kids will surely love.

TODDLERS

Toddlers do not have the patience that is needed to complete this activity. You have to know that it may take time to do face painting. Toddlers may not be able to tolerate sitting and waiting for you to complete the design. You have to make sure that the design is just simple and easy to do. You also need to involve the kid to the activity. This will surely make him feel entertained and thus he will be able to cooperate well. Make sure that the designs that you will sketch will include simple and easy designs for kids.

GRADE SCHOOLERS

Grade school children can already become patient and they can easily understand some instructions. If you tell them to wait, they are more likely to cooperate. At this age, kids are into carton and TV characters. Try to watch some shows in TV to know more designs that will be appropriate for them. Fairies, witches and lot more characters are good designs to consider for them.

TEENS

Teens are always conscious about how they look. They are more careful in choosing the design and style of the face painting. The fairy theme is still popular. Teens tend to choose the design that will not ruin their physical look. So you need to include simple designs that will just complement their makeup and outfit.

Face painting is indeed fun and cool to do during the Halloween season. You just need to make sure that you have the best ideas with regards to the design. They must be appropriate to the age and preference of the person. Try to remember the tips mentioned.

Kids will surely like face painting kits. You get one now.

Try to have more face painting ideas. Kids will like it.

By Jane Chaster
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jane_Chaster

Best Face Painting Ideas For Kids Halloween Costumes

2010-10-27T05:01:00.000-07:00

Face painting is a popular activity during parties and during occasions like Halloween. It involves the application of cosmetic paint on the face and making it as creative as possible. When face painting, it is important to know what kind of paint is ideal to use for the face. Take note that acrylic and tempera paints cannot be used on the face as they can cause allergic reactions in some people. They can also damage the skin permanently. Kids and adults alike love face painting but it is perhaps more enjoyable for kids to paint their faces.

Cartoon characters are popular for kids. They love having the face of their favorite cartoon character painted on their faces. This is ideal for Halloween and is a good substitute for a mask. Kids who want to dress up as clowns, normally just paint their faces white with red lipstick as this is usually how clowns are portrayed. Cat faces are one of the most popular face painting ideas for kids as it is easy and fast to make and kids usually love it. Superhero designs are also popular on kids, especially little boys. Perhaps the easiest superhero to copy when face painting is Spiderman as all you need is red, white and black paint. Other designs that are popular are butterflies, dogs, rabbits and other animals.

When painting, especially on kids faces, it would be ideal to just make use of water based make up as it is usually safer. Since make up is designed especially for use on the face, you can be assured that there is little risk of allergic reactions. Remember that the skin on the face is more sensitive that the skin on other parts of the body. Body paint is not even recommended for use on the face. It is also important to note that children have more sensitive skin than adults.

This has been a tradition even during ancient times. It was used for religious and cultural ceremonies and rituals. It is also used in the military for camouflage purposes. Face painting has a lot of uses and using them for fun and costumes is just one among its many uses.

Choosing face painting ideas for kids is easy. You just have to ask them what they want and then look for a pattern on the Internet and copy it. You don't have to be a professional artist just to paint a face. Face painting makes Halloween extra fun for children. They love that they can draw on their faces as this is something they can't normally do on regular days.

If you really want your kids to have fun on Halloween, let them paint their faces on their own as this allows them to unleash their creativity. There are a lot of face painting ideas for kids and the options are endless. Sometimes you don't even have to research, just let your child create the design he or she wants.

If perhaps you are looking for a little bit more for your Halloween costume this year than just face painting then why not check out this excellent Tween Halloween Costumes site which has some really cool costumes that will have your Teen blowing a gasket or for Avatar movie outfits this Navi Halloween Costume could be right up your street.

By Zara Jones
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Drawing and Painting Tips - The Layout Sketch

2010-09-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

By John A Burton

A layout sketch is the process of faintly outlining the key elements of an image on to paper (or canvas). The aim should be to get each component the correct size and in the right position before moving forward. However, this first stage is where most amateur artworks go wrong!

In a portrait for example, the layout sketch would merely ensure that the outline of the eyes are the precise shape, correct size, accurately aligned and the right distance apart. The layout sketch requires no further detail, but get this wrong, and your artwork will be doomed to failure, no matter how good your painting or drawing technique is.

It is possible with a great deal of practise and care, to complete a layout sketch by eye alone, but is that how professional artists work? No they don't! Time is money and professional artists use techniques and tools to get precise layout work done quickly.

Here are the most common tools and techniques for working from a photograph.

Measuring

The simplest tool is use of a pencil as a ruler and protractor. For example, when drawing a face, the pencil can be used to measure the relative size of an eye, the distance between the ear lobe and the corner of an eye, or the angle of the nose. This works best when copying from a photograph, and reproducing an image of the same size.

The technique is simple: lay the pencil flat on the photograph. Place the point of the pencil where you want to measure from, and grasp the other end of the pencil at the exact point you wish to measure to. Without changing your grip, move the pencil to the paper and make a mark on the paper at the tip and point of your grasp. If you are right handed, it helps to always measure in one direction only (e.g. left to right).

Similarly, angles can be duplicated by laying the pencil on the photograph, say a roof line in a landscape, and carefully moving the pencil to the paper while retaining that angle. An easier method is to place you reference photo over your paper, so that the pencil can be rolled from one surface to the other without altering its angle significantly.

A slightly easier method is to use a ruler, and take absolute measurements. If you need to re-scale an image, the use of a ruler is preferable. For example, when scaling up to twice the size, you simply double the measurement (etc). But, this technique has become outdated.

Alternatively, it is possible to buy dividers that achieve the same measuring effect. Some even have a limited re-scaling function.

Most people now have access to a PC with peripherals, so it is easier to scan and re-print a photograph at the same size you want to draw or painting, rather than re-scale as you go.

The use of a pencil (or anything else) as a ruler is best employed for checking minor detail dimensions and angles.

Grid method

Another slightly outdated but effective method of laying-out is the grid. Briefly, you need to draw a grid over the reference image, and a grid on your paper. The layout is achieved by separately copying the contents of each box of the grid. In effect, your layout will comprise lots of tiny drawings that all fit together to make the whole.

Using a grid limits the potential for error, and the smaller your grid boxes, the more accurate your copy will be. If your grid is say 1cm squares, then your layout lines can never be inaccurate by more than 1cm (unless your grid is inaccurate, or you draw something in the wrong square), but the chances are your sketch will be pretty close to millimetre perfect.

You can use any grid size to like, and different sizes for the reference photograph and the artwork. In this way, re-scaling (if you need to) is easy. For example, to double the size, use a 1cm grid on the photo, and a 2cm grid on the drawing paper. However, for the system to work, both parts must have the same number of grid boxes.

Grids take a good deal of effort to use. The other down side is that the reference photograph must be expendable (you need to be able to draw lines all over it), and you need to remove the grid lines on your art paper when you have finished the layout. Grids are good for oil paintings, since they can be painted over.

Tracing Paper

Many professional artists use tracing paper. It is a really accurate way of completing a layout. I recently read an instructional article on the use of tracing paper, published on a major UK artist site. My recommended method of use is different.

The first thing is to lay the tracing paper over the image to be copied, and mark its position. This is so that you can place the tracing paper over the image time and time again, and always in exactly the same place.

Although tracing paper is very transparent, it can be hard to see detail in darker tones. The best way to use it is with back illumination; do your tracing on against a windowpane (in the day time!), rather than on a desk or table.

Draw carefully around the key elements with a sharp pencil (step 1). Reverse the tracing paper and draw accurately over your pencil lines, to create a mirror image on the backside (step 2). Use a sharp soft pencil for this, and remember that an outline with be transferred to whatever your tracing paper is resting on (so use some scrap paper). Now place the tracing paper right side up on your art paper. Mark its position, so you can put it back in exactly the same place if you need to. Draw over your pencil lines again to transfer the image (step 3). At no point should you scribble. Use the minimum pressure on your pencil marks; the aim is to transfer a light (temporary) pencil mark, not engrave an outline into your art paper.

It takes some time, but you should end up with faint, but very accurate layout lines. Obviously, you cannot re-scale an image using tracing paper. Tracing paper works best on a smooth surface. You may struggle to achieve a transfer on watercolour paper, and toothed pastel papers, so aim to transfer the minimum detail you need for a layout.

When working with darker papers, a white pencil at step 2 gives better results. A white pencil also often gives better results with coloured pastel papers.

Tracedown Paper

Tracedown paper is a form of carbon paper for artists. I have never personally used it, but it works like tracing paper with steps 1 and 3 being performed simultaneously, and step 2 omitted completely. Briefly, you place the transfer down paper on your art paper, the photograph on top, and you draw around the key elements directly on to the photo. The pressure of your pencil makes a faint line on your art paper.

As with tracing paper, re-scaling is impossible, and I imagine the reference photo takes a bit of a battering.

Projectors

There are a number of specialist projectors that can be purchased. Briefly, this tool projects an image on to art paper, and allows layout lines to be drawn directly on to the paper (or canvas), using the projected image as a guide. They are fast, and designed to accommodate re-scaling, but they are expensive and aimed at professional artists. The projector is a modern take on a system of layout transfer used by the old Masters.

Now the last two sentences are critical. Trying to do everything by eye alone is foolish and unprofessional. Get an accurate layout down using any technique or device available to you.

Top Tips on Using a Spray Painting Machine

2010-08-13T16:36:00.000-07:00

By Wayne Barker

When you have to paint a difficult to reach area or an uneven surface then the use of a spray paint gun could be essential. There are a number of things to think about when using a spray painting gun before jumping head first into the project. If you decide that the project is beyond your capabilities there are a number of spraying companies that offer specialist spray painting services - however if you have a small job that you believe you are capable of handling yourself then here are a few pointers to set you off on your way:

1. First up you are going to need to rent yourself a machine- renting is the preferred method due to the expense of the machines. Any good tool hire shop will have a number of these machines. Alternatively you could try a specialist paint merchant as these often have machines that you can rent.

2. Spray painting machines are notorious for spreading the paint round in the air- it is absolutely crucial that you protect all areas that might get paint on them - you can get plastic sheeting and paper sheeting from all good DIY stores nowadays and these are absolutely essential for protecting your environment. If you are spraying outside it is also important to take into consideration the wind and where the paint may travel if it is picked up on a gust of wind - dust sheets are essential for covering cars and plants and other things in this situation.

3. Always use fresh paint in the bucket that will provide your spray painting machine with the paint to spray. It is crucial that there are no lumps in the paint as you do not want to block the nozzle!

4. For perfect flow you will want to thin the paint a little when running it through a paint spaying machine - always refer to the recommended thinning percentage on the tin of paint though!

5. Wear protective clothing - paint merchants stock very cheap disposable coveralls and masks.

6. Start at the top left hand corner and move swiftly, apply a thin coat of paint (several thin coats are more preferable to one heavy one and this will reduce the risk of runs!).

What to remember when spray painting:

1. Always keep the equipment clean as the nozzles clog easily
2. Make sure you know how to clean the nozzle if it should become clogged - you don't to get stuck half way through a job!
3. Make sure everything around you (and yourself) is protected from overspray. You do not want to damage yourself, your belongings - and if you are outdoors you do not want to damage your neighbors car or garden.

Spray painting can be easily undertaken on a DIY basis but it is always recommended that you consult a professional for more specialist jobs.

5 Things to Consider Before Choosing Bathroom Paint

2010-07-13T23:20:00.000-07:00

Choosing bathroom painted is not a calm errand. Many people would just do it, without stopping to think about what should be done before first. Nevertheless the consequences of making an astute resolve can be disastrous. After all, this is not something that you're leaving to do very often. So it's best to take sometime to respect the consequences first.

Let's take a look at 5 things to think about before choosing bathroom paint.

Most importantly, you penury to take bathroom paint that will not mold or mold clearly. After all, your bathroom is doubtless the dampest space in your house.

To help check mold, you have two choices. You can buy a paint that is made especially for bathrooms, that contains an element that kills toadstool before it can take footing. Or you can use everyday paint, and add a mildewcide to it first.

A densely connected consideration is choosing bathroom paint that is unwilling to humidity. Using the wicked kind of paint could allocate damp to dribble in, causing the paint to peelings.

This conundrum could be banned if you are with unique bathroom paint, which helps to check detaching as well as toadstool. However, this is not surely basic, as partially-comment and sheen paint textures will not tolerate humidity to trickle into the fence.

One thing that many people would not even ponder when painting a bathroom - who are the central users of the area? If it will be worn primarily by guests, then you can select scarce ensign that you might not want to look at every day yourself.

And a bathroom intended to be used by children would certainly indigence special consideration. Kids should be made as comfortable as viable in their own bathroom, since it is there that they learn some worthy teaching.

The one catalog that most people would make without being reminded is the paint blush. This, of course, is a substance of private tang. However you should keep in wits that incline makes the area appear better or lesser. And it can also change your mood - and even your whole life, if you are an advocate of feng shui.

Finally, you indigence to determine if you certainly want to use paint at all. Maybe some other sense of decoration would be preferable. Ceramic tiled, for case, is an excellent catalog for a bathroom, as it thoroughly water-evidence. And even wallpaper can be used, if you choose a category that water-resistant.

Once you have considered and evaluated all the factors, you should be able to come to a verdict about choosing bathroom paint. Nevertheless possibly you must a more thorough look at these choices.

Baby Portraits - An Oil Painting From Your Photos

2010-06-07T05:42:00.000-07:00

By Allan Holder

Forget the tie this Father's Day; oil painting portraits of children is a Father's Day gift that is sure to be unexpected. A custom-created oil painting can be commissioned from a professional using a photograph of your baby, which is especially helpful if you're child does not sit still for long. If you are truly adventurous and enjoy experimenting, you can even paint an oil painting on your own.

A Unique Gift Idea

A child portrait, especially a baby portrait, is not only a timeless and classical way to commemorate the privilege of fatherhood, but is also a Father's Day gift that will likely be completely unexpected. Forget the work shirts, golf equipment and barbecue supplies this year; a Father's Day gift should be a sign of thanks and appreciation for your special dad. Furthermore, a baby portrait is truly a gift that he will cherish for the rest of his life and one that will probably also become a family heirloom.

An oil painting is a non-traditional and unique Father's Day gift idea. While baby portraits, just like any other original oil paintings, can be expensive, it may be worth the cost to be able to convey a special message to the man who has been such a wonderful father.

How it's Done

Most babies are not willing to sit still for the long hours that are necessary to paint a traditional portrait; however there are many artists who will create an oil painting from your photo. Choose a photo that is clear and accurately portrays the expressions and personality of your baby. Giving a Father's Day gift such as a commissioned baby portrait will forever preserve that particular moment in time for the father and will be a vision that he will surely carry with him always.

Select the Right Artist

When it comes to oil painters, not all artists are the same. Make sure to choose an artist that specializes in portraits, perhaps even one that works solely on baby portraits. Choosing an artist that works mostly with landscapes and still-life paintings or other non-human subject matter may not be the best choice for your baby portrait, though his or her work may be impressive. The artist that you commission should be able to capture facial expressions and the humanity of the child in the portrait. In order to select the artist that is best for you, ask your friends who they have heard of and spend some time looking through portfolio books.

Once you have your commissioned baby portrait, make sure that you wrap it well so that it does not get any scratches before Father's Day. Select a location in your home that you can be proud to feature the work. As your child grows, you will likely want to place this baby portrait next to future portraits of him or her.

And this Royal Brush Oil Color Brush was for our 15 year old whom is getting an interest in art who loves the color assortments as well as all the supplies that came with it. Would have like better instructions on how to clean brushes, ect, but we were skilled enough to show them.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Allan_Holder

How to Paint a Garage Floor Properly

2010-01-30T14:28:00.000-08:00

How accessible it is to altogether act like a garage stagger you might pry into, after all, all you've got to do is undeniable the keep and using a roller vanity it all over. Or being it? How the epoch have we all pragmatic detaching whitewash on garage floors, what an eats it looks but also what a hang-up it is to sublimate.

We have freshly buttoned up a reinstatement of a tame hangout aloof to an indemnity acquit which was consonant to a sprint the weaken, while at the greenback the policyholder like the troubles he had endured with such a credible irritation.

While most bourgeois would hurt for craft a garage stun to be pushover vivacity alas I've got to render you it is just so the crosswise, to drum up adhesion against a genuine come is in fact a nominal control and construe manufacturers have endowed thousands of pounds in reconnoitre and inflation.

Message in flashback that most factories, aircraft hangers, aliment activity businesses require their affirmative floors sealing with the pledge that it dish out not separation single, you can apperceive that it's potentially a broad bazaar. A far out obligation for factories where they instruct forklift trucks is the right for a pull that proposal resist interval-to-date travel and not check nailed low.

We are palmy that promptly's manufacturers have obsessed to generous lengths to accretion commodities that serviceable the criteria, previously these were dissolvers-based equipment which to be exemplary where very horrendous to concern nondiscriminatory to the supreme waste which they twisted when the compound working was started. However manufactures have now attracted to more customer-civil crop which dampen-based epoxy paints which are open to all and are gladly unfilled, temperate to advance and horde the objective for which they are awake.

When you are visaged with a trade name-other pave articulation the supreme criteria you lack to concursion is that the sliver has altogether well, a thoughtful controller key is isolated span per sole crawl (25mm) of confound lot. Another burden you haw clash could be the item has been consistent if this is the pursuit you service to acerbic carve it, this is a relatively vanilla tax but most laypersons would not funk the materiality of this. This is a very inconsiderable concern which in past is you relate a willing liquor (partly like drench) onto the parcel you drop out for an epoch of leisure then bathe/dowse with no sweat freshwater, you then insufficiency to sufferance the allotment to donnybrook out in reality. Erst you have finished this you can proceed with the relatively indisputable mission of applying the interpret.

Farther a passable misjudge people make is to harness the epitomize scrupulous out of the tin, the assurance because the meaning to effect adapted haziness with as some coats as conceivable. The most worth for laud here is too close timely adhesion to the conclusive rasher this is very unemotional to sit-in, all you minimally have to do pertain suchlike solvent to the paint to 'permit it' unbefriended, the exquisite cover accordingly should be commodious thinly into the slab. This is the most needful cover you parcel out affect as all future coats aim interlace to this singular. For a cause phenomenon blank wall we would advertise the deeper two coats undesigning from the tin appropriate generously, also manufacturers objective generally favor nourishment on how much material should be utilitarian over a claim metre, this is forever a whole awareness that at the parting of the while you bourn have a finish which aspiration work, contour good and most importantly of all not rupture down and sliver.

Preceding to the crop of the assurance remedial vim at the wampum the computer requested that we disburse our lowdown and skillfulness in partitioning the edition of his garage story, which of run we were hilarious to suitable his pump.

Start a Painting Business - How Do You Get the Experience You Need?

2009-06-27T01:46:00.000-07:00

The best part about starting a decorative painting business is that you can turn something you enjoy doing into a moneymaking business. Being paid to do what you love to do is the greatest job to have.

You don’t have to be a painting expert to start a home-painting business but it helps if you have been practicing your painting skills for some time. That way you will have a lot of pictures in your portfolio to show potential clients. This also will help you develop more self-confidence in your work.

Before you tackle walls it’s a good idea to start by painting smaller objects like ceramic pots, candles, vases. Then, gradually work your way up to larger projects. If you’re feeling uncertain about how to handle the scope of a larger project you could try painting a large piece of cardboard or appliance box.

As you gain experience, try your hand at painting placemats and floor cloths. These surfaces require more planning and placement and are great practice for pre-wall painting. You can use canvas or the back of linoleum flooring as a surface.

You can prepare yourself to paint on walls by painting the floor cloth or placemat as if you were painting a wall (i.e. don’t turn the surface as you paint.) Instead, practice turning your wrist and doing the strokes outside of your comfort zone as wall painting requires you to be skilled at painting vertically.

The best way to perfect your talents is to start transforming rooms in your own home. Start with a small room such as a child’s room. Starting out doing a bathroom is not recommended, as working around all the bathroom fixtures can be very frustrating. Additionally, in bathrooms you must use the correct type of paint or your finished masterpiece may soon start to peel off the walls.

If you’re renting your home, you probably won’t be able to practice painting on your own walls. This is where friends or relatives come in. It’s great to be able to learn your craft on their walls while at the same time practice your client consulting skills for future use.

Paint sample boards and use pictures from magazines to show your friends / relatives the design you envision for their walls. You need to walk them through step by step and get them to see the design in their minds too.

Have fun while you learn and then take everything you’ve learned from practicing to launch your own decorative painting business

“How to Start Your Own Decorative Wall Painting Business”

Interior Painting Tips

2009-06-18T06:18:00.000-07:00

By Nicolas Hantge

If you are thinking about painting your interior walls, get ready for a big project! It's not as easy as one might think and it always takes longer than planned! Here are a few tips to save you a headache and some of your valuable time.

1.) Set Aside a Separate Time for Preparation.
When you are planning your interior painting project, make sure to set aside a separate time for preparation. By doing this, it will help you stay focused on your project. The last thing you want to do is rush a painting project. Another reason you want to prepare for your painting project at an earlier time is it will allow your patchwork time to dry. You cannot paint a wall that has recently applied putty. I like to go with a 24 hour rule of thumb on this one. At the bare minimum, make sure you let it dry 8-12 hours.

2.) Remove as Much Furniture as Possible.
If you are going to be painting a room, you do not want to worry about dripping or spraying paint on your furniture. It is much easier to lay your equipment where you want and have a free reign of the room. If it's possible, remove all of the furniture and lay down drop clothes on the floor. Removing furniture might take a little of your time but will be sure to speed up the process of interior painting. PLUS it will ensure you will not ruin it as well! (If you cannot remove your furniture from the room you are painting, push it all together in the middle.

3.) Removal All Fixtures/Hardware.
I know, it may seem easier to just paint around your light fixtures, door knobs and other w but in the end you are bound to drip or smudge some paint at sometime. Also, it is much quicker to paint a complete wall that you do not have to paint around objects. Even if you think you are an excellent painter, removing wall fixtures and hangers will save you time in the long run.

4.) Don't Paint over a Problem
Please do not be the home owner that puts a fresh coat of paint over a crack or holes in the wall. It's not worth all of the time, energy and money to paint a wall without at first fixing the blemishes. If you are tackling your own paint job chances are you have the ability and skills needed to spackle small holes and cracks. The important thing when spackling, be heavy with putty and sand everything very well.

If you would like more painting tips like these, make sure to check out some of my other Ezine articles. If you are looking for Denver painters a good source would be Calco East, Ltd. (303) 594-8295

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nicolas_Hantge

Angelo Bronzino - The Great Italian, Sixteenth Century Portraitist of the Italian Mannerism Movement

2009-05-19T05:33:00.000-07:00

By Annette Labedzki

Agnolo di Cosimo, or Angelo Bronzino, or Bronzino II, one of the most respected Italian painters of the sixteenth century, was born on November 17, 1503, in Florence, Italy. The artistically intelligent portraitist had adopted the painting style called 'Italian Mannerism,' where sophistication and restraint towards 'Naturalism' was the essence.

Under the tutelage of the knowledgeable painter, Pontormo, Angelo Bronzino got the exposure of portrait painting. His teacher even created a portrait of the child Angelo, in his 'Joseph in Egypt' series, now exhibited at the National Gallery, London. In 1520s, Angelo and Pontormo were commissioned some collaborative assignments, including "Annunciation" and "The Deposition from the Cross," both altarpieces that adorned Capponi Chapel in Santa Felicita, Florence. In 1530, the artist painted even great literary figures, such as Dante and Petrarch.

In 1539, Angelo Bronzino was commissioned the decorative work for the wedding of Cosimo de' Medici with Eleonora of Toledo, the daughter of the Viceroy of Naples. His artistic brilliance profoundly influenced the Duke, eventually resulting in his appointment as the Duke's court painter. The contemporary European artists deeply admired the portraits Angelo created during his job. His works were presented with a huge erudition.

In 1541-1542, Angelo Bronzino created his religious art piece, "Crossing the Red Sea," a fresco, adorning the Chapel of Eleanora di Toledo in the Palazzo Vecchio. The creation depicted the Florentine court in its full fervor and zest. One of his prominent portraits, "Eleonora of Toledo, 1544," is famous for its scrupulous attention to the details of the subject's costume. In fact, the costume overpowers the personality of the subject. In 1545, Angelo Bronzino created his magnum opus, "Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time," an allegory painting. The artwork proved controversial for depicting bold eroticism, while reflecting a behavioral ambiguity of its different characters. His other masterpiece, "Andrea Doria as Neptune, 1550-55," made its mark for its heroic theme, depicting a public personality as a mythical figure in the nude. "Resurrection of the Virgin Mary" (1552) and "The Story of Joseph and Deposition of Christ" (1565), are a couple of Bronzio's other famous works.

In1563, Angelo Bronzino co-founded Accademia del Disegno. He died on November 23, 1572, in Florence, Italy. Today, along with Florence and the National Gallery of Art, London, many other art galleries display his works.

Annette Labedzki received her BFA at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. She has more than 25 years experience. She is the founder and developer of an online art gallery featuring original art from all over the world. It is a great site for art collectors to buy original art. Is is also a venue for artists to display and sell their art . Artists can join for free and their image upload is unlimited. Please visit the website at http://www.labedzki-art.com
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Painting Kitchen Cabinets to Save Money

2009-04-12T05:43:00.000-07:00

By James Mahoney

If replacing your cabinetry is too expensive for your budget, after cabinet refacing, painting kitchen cabinets is the least expensive option and can really transform your kitchen. Plus this kitchen remodeling job can be accomplished over a long weekend or about 3 days with the right kind of preparation and planning. Depending on the area of the country you live in it is probably not a good idea to do this type of job in the winter months because you will need to have windows and doors open because of fumes from the paint and primer.

Kitchen cabinets take up most of the wall space in most kitchens and because of this by making a change in the look of your kitchen cabinets as in painting, you can greatly improve the look of the entire kitchen.

Whether you want to lighten up dark cabinets or brighten them up with bold colors, paint can provide an instant makeover for almost all types of cabinets. Because of problems of paint adhering well to laminate and melamine cabinets, it isn't recommended to paint these types.
Painting your kitchen cabinets can be the fastest and easiest method to update a tired worn-out looking kitchen and increase the value of your home. Painting the cabinets is a simple and low-cost alternative to an expensive kitchen-remodeling job. Painting the kitchen cabinets can give them a fresh new look. Painting kitchen cabinets will save you money while making it look like you spent a lot on remodeling your kitchen.

You can easily change the kitchen cabinet accessories such as the cabinet knobs and handles. You can leave the insides of the kitchen cabinets alone except the insides of the doors to save even more money on the job and the hassle of having to take out everything that is inside the cabinets.

Preparing the Kitchen Cabinetry for Painting

First you can begin by take off the doors removing any screws and all the hardware from the cabinets. Make sure to clean the cabinets thoroughly before starting to paint with a wood cleaner containing orange oil. This type of cleaner is good for removing grease. If there is any grease, oils or even a little dirt the paint may not adhere to the wood surface correctly. Make sure the surface is totally dry before applying the primer.

Now check for any rough areas on the doors and the cabinet base, sand them down, and wipe away any dust or sawdust from the surface.

Apply an even coat of primer-sealer to the cabinet doors, starting in the center and following the grain of the wood. By using primer-sealer you will not have to sand down and degloss the wood before painting it.

Painting the Cabinetry

When it comes to the choice of the type of paint either a high-gloss or a semigloss paint are recommended for cabinets. Some people feel that semigloss can provide a richer finish however. Use a good quality brush for applying the paint. This will insure a more superior finish. As with the application of the primer-sealer you should start in the center and follow the grain. Two or three coats are required to achieve a good quality finish. The paint should be allowed to dry about four hours per coat. Using thin coats make for fewer brushstrokes and less time for drying.
Once you have all the doors painted, start on the bases. Follow the same steps you did for the doors: sand, clean, seal, then paint. You will not have to worry about doing the inside of the cabinets. It will only be necessary to tape off the edges for a clean finish and just leave them as they are. However you might want to start thinking about replacing the hardware for the drawers and doors to totally complete your new kitchen look.

If you proceed carefully and follow all the necessary steps, you should have a like new kitchen with a fresh look to be proud of.

James Mahoney is the author of many kitchen design articles, visit at Kitchen Designers Ideas.com. If you want to find out more about kitchen design software go to Kitchen Design Software. He also publishes a newsletter on kitchen design. For more about kitchen remodeling advice go to kitchen remodeling advice
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Acrylic Paints - Best in the Painting Industry

2009-04-09T08:53:00.000-07:00

By Murtaza Habib

The main characteristic of acrylic paint is, it dries very fast. It contains many types of pigments dissolved in an acrylic polymer emulsion. Once they get dried-up they become water resistant, otherwise they can easily mix up with water.

In many ways they are very similar to other oil paints, but they are very easy to use and much cheaper compared to oil paints. If you just start your painting career, it is very advisable to use them. It doesn't require skills that are required to use watercolor or the patience needed for oil paints. Trust me, it is very flexible to use in many ways.

Because of all these qualities, many artists prefer them to make their paintings.

Let's get down to know their more basic features...

In the 1950s they were available for commercial use. Initially, they are mineral spirit based paints, but as time goes through water based acrylic paints came into a picture.

They are completely opaque, when they are in an undiluted state.

You can apply any color with other one very easily.

You can consider this one as advantage or disadvantage that they dry up very quickly. Artist must be very fast with his or her design and ideas while using them. However, in present time additives are used in them to slow down its drying process.

If any artist wants to use this type of paint for exterior use, he has to buy a special paint made for exterior use only.

It is preferable to use them on a base layer.

Make sure that one who uses them has to wash brush immediately right after once a task gets completed, otherwise it will get wasted.

Generally, they produce a very uniform color.

Therefore, in future whenever you think to use them, keep above tips in your mind for sure.
What if I teach you how to get started with drawing and painting with great ease following simple steps?

Follow these steps for your perfect creativity flow.

Grab my free ebook on Drawing And Painting
'Murtaza Habib' has helped hundreds of newbies to start their painting courses, now you can do it too...
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10 Ways to Make Money With Body Painting

2009-04-04T17:48:00.000-07:00

By Jodina Meehan

Are you considering making a living (or at least a little money on the side) doing body painting? Is it even possible to make a living doing body painting? Yes, you can make good money as a 'pro' body painter, and even kids as young as twelve have made good money (like $500-$400 in an afternoon) doing simple painting techniques like airbrushed temporary tattoos at fairs and festivals.

It may be difficult to believe that there are so many different ways to make money doing body painting. I know that when I first discovered the art of body painting, I thought maybe you could make some temporary money at a party or fair. But there are many, many more possibilities, as you will see.

Here are just 10 of the ways you could get paid to do body painting:

1. Doing body painting at parties. You could hire yourself for a night or a day and get paid either by the hour or a flat fee for the event.

2. Painting party-goers before they go to a party or event. Themed or holiday parties would be a good opportunity for this. Make sure you mention that you could body paint their friends, too!

3. As a professional body painter for the theatre. You could do one show for a discount to get in the door and get some recognition, if you don't have a track record yet.

4. Travel with the circus as their 'in house' makeup artist.

5. Become the official body painter for a dance company. Again, you could work for a low fee or even free to get in the door.

6. Face painting alone opens up several opportunities: parties, festivals, fairs, and special events all are possible places for you to set up shop. Just make sure (as with all these options) that you are using proper, non-allergenic paints meant for face painting alone.

7. Special events like graduations, celebrations, fundraisers, and reunions.

8. Sports events: painting fans in their team colors and symbols has had a long tradition.

9. Festivals around the world. There are several festivals specifically for body painting around the world, but there are many more that would be a great place for body painting. Look up the festivals in your area and find out how to become a vendor and what their requirements and rules are.

10. Teach others how to do body painting. You could hold a one-time workshop, give ongoing group classes or even do an online body painting course (as I am doing).

I hope this gives you some good ideas about how you could make money as a body painting artist. Maybe you have even thought of some ways that I didn't include...great! Choose one method, research what you need to do to get started, and go for it!

Bonus Tip:

Here's a secret hint...as you are considering one of the possibilities above. Don't choose what you think would make you the most money...choose what you think you would happiest and best at doing. You will always make more doing something you love doing, in the long run!

Jodina Meehan is a professional artist and the editor of BodyPaintingExpert who can show you how to paint like a pro in 10 days or less. To claim your 7 Free Body Painting Secrets now go to http://www.BodyPaintingExpert.com
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Butterfly Tattoo Designs - Get Lost In Mother Nature

2009-03-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

By Wincent Weng

Tattoo art form are increasing in popularity especially in the US and European countries. Trendy and decorative tattoo designs are a choice of every next person. Moreover, the choice is not less. Tattoos are available in several design and sizes, so you need not worry about how to decorate your body. Few of the most fashionable contemporary tattoos are butterfly tattoo designs, dragon tattoo designs, tribal tattoo designs, cross tattoo designs, henna tattoo designs, and religious tattoo designs, the list is long!

Butterflies have essentially been thought of as a style statement for years together. Be it garments, accessories, baggage, or jewellery, this lovely creature has managed to form a creative idea. The vibrant colors of the butterfly sported on you would make you look hot. Butterflies tattoo designs are very colorful and have a nice blend of eye-catching colors.

Tattoos with butterfly pictures will leave you in confusion for the selection. Some of the coolest butterfly tattoo designs are tribal butterfly tattoos, fairy butterfly tattoos, lower back butterfly tattoos, animal butterfly tattoos and Celtic butterfly tattoos. Tribal butterfly tattoos are generally influenced by ancestral art from local and native tribes. The tribal art comes from the large clans or tribes from Ireland and Scotland and even some of the tribes of Borneo. Butterflies since many ages have been linked with fairies. Butterfly wings are considered fairy wings and vice versa. A butterfly really represents a multi-colored picture of Mother Nature itself. Hence, these fairy butterfly tattoo designs are even more famed especially with females and modern males.

These butterfly tattoo designs have held a special place in a woman's heart. Amongst the preferred designs, the butterfly tattoo designs are one of the favorites. Butterfly tattoos come in wide-ranging designs and color formats, from two toned ones to multicolored. Normally, its are tattooed on the arm or on the shoulder blade no matter it is permanent or not. There are the energetic ones who have butterfly tattoos positioned on their neck or ankle if they can take the pain of the needles for lasting and permanent tattoos.

They are a subject of creative expression and the blending of colors is very unique and expressive. Butterfly tattoo designs are all about taking butterfly in the kingdom of fashion and combining it with art forms. The butterfly tattoos not only interest the lady world, but are amongst the chosen designs of the artists too. Permanent or temporary stick ones, even body painting; the tattoo designers love to play with colors that make the butterfly wings.

Some butterfly tattoos survive just a few days and can be cleaned off by any paint remover, some of them just need soap and water to vanish. Body painted butterfly tattoo designs are not very lasting and thus give a better chance of variety. Irrespective of the type a butterfly tattoo design, it is always amongst the finest designs as one can have fun with colors which are not likely with any other design.

Get your cool butterfly tattoo design at http://www.cooltattoofinder.com/butterfly-tattoos/why-female-love-butterfly-tattoo-designs
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Kanji Tattoos - Locating Good Tattoo Art For a Wonderful Style

2009-03-13T04:52:00.001-07:00

By Adam Woodham

Finding good artwork when skimming the web for Kanji tattoos should not be taken lightly. You have a very big change of running directly into the generic laced galleries that will have the mot basic, cookie cutter designs, and that's about it. If you want to pick from original, crisp, well drawn Kanji tattoos, here's the info you need.

Let me start with the basics. A huge amount of your success (just about all of it) depends on how you're planning on looking for tattoo artwork. To get one thing out in the open, search engines should not be used. It's the one huge mistake that 90% of people make. Just about everyone will start here. They click through the random listings and are presented with the same generic junk everywhere they go. It's a disgrace that these websites are posting such cookie cutter Kanji tattoos.

This is a style that is very original and the artwork should reflect that. How do you find that kind of quality artwork then, if search engines aren't showing it to you? That's easy. You do it, pretty quickly, by using forums instead. Big forums to be precise. Nothing comes close to providing you with such a wide range of inside knowledge on tattoo artwork. Big forums have enormous archive sections, which is the part of the forum you need to find amazing Kanji tattoos.

Everything you could possible want can be pulled up here, because you have instant access to years and years of past tattoo related topics. Just a little bit of skimming on your part can reveal a whole lot, including the galleries that other people have found that have the best artwork out there. This type of info is constantly shared by tattoo enthusiasts and it's your main source for finding those hidden sites that post original, high quality Kanji tattoos. Nothing else even compares.

Nothing should stand in your way of seeing the absolute best Kanji tattoos that are available to you.

Here are the 3 largest, most original websites to browse tons of great Kanji Tattoos.
Adam Woodham is the author of this article and runs the blog Quality Tattoo Art, which features the 3 top websites, with the absolute largest gallery of Kanji styles you will ever see.
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Glass Paintings - Rich Indian Art Tradition

2009-03-13T04:46:00.000-07:00

By Murtaza Habib

Do you know that India has been one of the top countries that has wide varieties of artistic forms? What if you knew that India has its artistic foundation built in before 2000 years?
India has its artistic tradition hidden in various cultures, traditions, regions, religions of ancient times even times before brushes and papers were produced.

That's right, in olden days India practiced art on palm leaves where various textures and illustrations were created.

In this article you will learn more about glass paintings, one of the unique Indian artistic forms.

Do you know when glass painting evolved in India? It was between 18th and 19th century.

At that time Europe had achieved mastery in glass paintings during the middle ages.

A Chinese artist learned the skill of glass painting from Europe that helped them out to provide quality paintings that were then exported to Europe.

In the mean while there were strong trade relations between India and China which eventually got this unique form of art to India.

Glass painting was mostly used by local artists who painted popular epics and stories on the glasses. The most commonly form of painting was that of Lord Ganesha.

The special type of glass on which painting was performed was imported from countries like Belgium and Britain.

In fact, India was one of the best quality glass producers during 16th century, but it was of no use because this form of art lost its interest eventually as time passed by.

Various ancient traditional themes along with European themes were used in this unique form of glass painting.

European works and portraits along with Indian epics like Ramayan and pictures of God and Goddesses were created on glasses which were in high demand.

If you observe carefully there are some parts of North and South India where glass paintings are still widely popular where they specialize in producing various popular and folk art traditions.

Are you able to bring your creativity on to your canvas? Will you take action step by step, if I help you to learn drawings and paintings until you succeed? Grab 6 lessons on Oil, Acrylic, Watercolor, Fabric Painting, Pencil Drawing, Color Theory.

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'Murtaza Habib' has helped hundreds of newbies to start their painting courses, now you can do it too... Keep visiting Paint on my canvas for unique articles on drawing and painting.
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Changing the Size of a Room With Paint

2009-03-09T19:43:00.000-07:00

By Allison Ryan

Rooms which have ceilings that are considered too high or too low may be changed simply by painting it a pale color; hot colors to make it seem lower, cool colors to make it seem higher. Brown as a color can belong to either of the two groups of color, depending on the amount of red in the make-up of the brown.

The choice of colors must to some extent largely be based on the situation and location of the house. If the house is in a town, bright clear colors will look extremely vibrant and will serve to brighten the rooms in dull districts.

However, if bright clear colors are used for interior decorating in houses situated in the country, where they are seen against a background of nature's own colors, they very often look harsh and cold.

The colors on the walls will also have some effect on the home décor you have scattered about. Whether you prefer metal wall décor or posters, the color of the room is going to either compliment it or be a hideous contrast.

Tenants of houses situated in seaside districts may have a problem of their own to consider as certain colors will fade to a neutral gray when exposed to sea air. These are mainly pastel shades of pale greens and blues, and this fading may also happen in some country districts in rooms which have southern aspects where sunlight is particularly strong.

The deep greens of modern paints are able to stand up both to air and to light, and many of the best known brands of different kinds of paints are guaranteed against fading.
When planning an interior color scheme it is first necessary to choose the main or basic color which should be one that will do most to help the shape of the room. Here are some simple examples:

Low Ceilings: As previously explained the effect of low ceilings can be largely offset by the use of pale colors such as the shades of ivory and light blues. If the main colors are used for ceilings and walls and it is really no bigger, floor length curtains considerably affect the appearance of the height of the room, as do plates and other wall décor like a small metal wall art piece hung up high. Metal art is better fort his than canvas because it is slender.

High Ceilings: To give the effect of decreasing the high ceiling it should be painted or distempered in a deeper shade of color than that used for the walls. Pink and beige are good examples of this when set-off by a deep colored carpet.

North Room: North rooms usually lack sun, but they have a strong light, and colors most suited for rooms that face the north are warm creams, yellows, gold, pinks, peach and shades of reddish browns, which also tend to give warmth to these rooms which have a cold light.

The type of art that best suits a room of this type would be celestial themed art designs. You can find a lot of laser cut metal wall art like this in holistic shops, or laser cut to order magazines.
Allison Ryan is a freelance marketing writer from San Diego, CA. She specializes in do-it-yourself interior design, home improvement, gardening, and landscaping. For an amazing selection of laser cut metal wall art and other types of metal wall décor, check out
http://www.laserwallart.com/.
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Benefits of an Exterior House Painting Contractor

2009-03-06T02:07:00.000-08:00

By Nicole Martello

With home improvement projects, homeowners would be wise to find all the help that they can get, especially if they do not know the first thing about home painting or home improvement in general. With a wealth of experience, professional painters can handle the exterior painting project with relative ease. This kind of professional approach to the project is just what the homeowner needs to ensure a successful home improvement endeavor.

With an exterior house painting contractor, homeowners will be able to move through their exterior painting projects very easily. They will be able to relaxing knowing that their work is in good hands and that professionals trained in the field of home painting are doing the project. An exterior house painting contractor will be able to handle problems as the arise as well. With the proper training or adequate experience, a professional contractor will be able to handle these problems so that they do not become larger issues later on in the remodel. This will ensure that things move along nicely and everybody experiences a hassle free remodeling project.

An exterior house painting contractor will make everything easier so long as the communication is given a top priority. With the homeowner and the contractor on the same page, the project will move along nicely. This means less stress and a more enjoyable experience for all. Painting has been given a bad wrap because of the problems that homeowners encounter when attempting the project. When a contractor is involved, and good communication is practiced, the problems are decreased and the whole project seems to go much smoother.

More information on http://www.homeloaninfocenter.net/collegeworkspainting.php College Works Painting is just a click away.
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Painting and Decorating - Several Pointers For Painting and Decorating Your Home

2009-03-03T19:08:00.000-08:00

By Lee Cusano

Growing up, I had a good friend named Reggie who lived in a house that was always clean, always well decorated. Due to this fact, painting and decorating has always come easy for me.
His mom liked to do a quick re-paint of their whole house every spring. She and Reggie (his dad died when he was young) would take a whole week to give everything a fresh coat of paint. His mom was a very clean women. She was raised on a farm and I guess people back then farm kids were raised well.

Because my best friend and his mom would take a few days to go throughout the house painting, no doubt this made an impression on me. I would come into the kitchen or go through their house and everything was nice and new. A nice lifestyle. Something painting decorating is all about - it adds flavor to our lives.

As I got older and found a wife, I moved into one of my grandfathers apartments. I noticed that he was a good painter also. He painted white ceilings with pastel color walls and the woodwork trim was enameled white also. So from these two experiences alone I learned how to be a good painter decorator.

Basically if I was to do a custom interior paint job, I would get custom color charts from the paint store. Paint stores have historical custom color charts with three-color schemes. This helps to take the guesswork out of matching and choosing colors as well as planning out a color scheme for each room.

From there all you have to do is pick your curtains, bedspreads, carpeting, rugs etc. and match them to your new paint job. That's basically all there is to doing interior decorating as far as I see it. Then comes the talent. Some people have a knack for putting colors together that it looks really good.

If you just moved into a new house and there is existing carpeting that you don't want to change, tile floors, stained woodwork or painted woodwork that you plan on keeping the same, you simply have to match up new colors to those existing items.

I painted for an interior decorator off and on for a few years until they moved to another city. I painted most of her house inside and some of the outside. She had a real knack for pictures, wallpaper and furniture. She also had the money to do it all.

Painting decorating the outside of your home can be mentioned here also. There are exterior custom color charts that show three-color patterns or scenarios, even historical colors.
It can get rather pricey to live life at its best when it comes to painting and decorating your home. If you do a little bit at a time it can be a fun hobby. One thing that I highly recommend as a painter decorator is to use quality paints and wall coverings. Never skimp on these things. After all, why waste your precious time and resources on inferior materials? Especially if you have to live with it.

I like to see people put different colors in every room so that every room that you enter is a treat to the eyes and the emotions. I like to see colors that gradually flow from one room to the next gracefully. It's the little things like that that create the nicer lifestyle. There is power in color. Colors effect our moods.

Some people that I have painted for will put the same drab color in every room throughout the house as if they got a special deal on the paint or something. And some people never paint any rooms until they move out. They never get to enjoy the paint job.
Now I'm not all that good at choosing colors. I remember a friend in school that had some of those doodle art pens and was coloring a psychedelic VW Beetle. All his colors he chose were amazing. They all went together so well and they were bright.

As long as I use a custom color matching chart from the paint store I can do a pretty good job when painting and decorating houses. Nonetheless some people have real knack for making awesome colors flow.

Lee Cusano has owned his own successful painting decorating business since 1991. He has also helped many others to start their own painting business with his "Paint Like a Pro Estimating and Advertising CD-ROM". Lee also offers a new free report titled "How To Quit Your Day Job This Week and Double or Triple Your Income". To get it please go to http://www.painting-business.com
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Home Exterior Painting With a Contractor

2009-02-26T01:36:00.000-08:00

By Nicole Martello

Finding knowledgeable and competent contractors to help finish a home painting job can be the lifeline that many projects need. When a homeowner gets in over their head, they are often forced to hire a contractor to come out and either fix or finish their project. Avoiding this altogether and hiring a contractor right away can be a great plus for many homeowners as they work towards a better home.

Home exterior painting is one home improvement project that often requires the attention of a professional. These projects can be very complex and complicated for amateurs or homeowners with no formal training as painters. Getting the project done in an efficient and effective manner can help to make the experience a positive one and to avoid any problems or mishaps that plague these projects for many amateur painters. A contractor can handle the home exterior painting so that homeowners can ensure their projects turn out exactly as they planned.

Planning is a very important aspect of home exterior painting, one in which a contractor can help with. Their advice is often very insightful, as they often come from a good deal of experience, or have been trained and taught about painting to the point that they can very effectively help in the planning phase of a project. If a project has been properly planned, then things will usually go much smoother and the homeowner will run into little to no problems as they work through towards the finished product. A contractor can be very valuable to a project, so hiring one in the beginning, before things get crazy, will ensure that the project is in excellent hands.

More information on College Works Painting home repair for your home is just a click away.
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Home Contractor Painting Can Help Avoid Delays

2009-02-26T01:35:00.001-08:00

By Nicole Martello

Delays in a project are like the plague to many homeowners that wish to see their remodeling projects finished as soon as possible. The sooner they are finished, the sooner they can enjoy the hard work that went into planning and working on the projects. Hiring professionals to help with things is often the best way to ensure that everything is done in a timely manner without sacrificing quality.

Home contractor painting often holds a major advantage over any amateur painting job, as professionals will have the proper training to succeed. A successful project often makes homeowners not only very happy with the results, but it will also make things easier when it comes to handling problems that may arise. Home contractor painting also gives a big boost to the speed in which the project is completed. Trained to finish their work in a timely manner with no sacrifice to quality, professionals provide much better service than amateurs. Some may not consider professional work truly worth the cost of hiring these contractors, although many homeowners end up saving money when hiring professionals.

Homeowners often thwart their own plans of saving money by messing up a project so that they have to repurchase their materials or even to the point that they have to hire a contractor anyways to fix their problems. Either way, many homeowners often end up spending more money than they would have if they had gone with home contractor painting in the first place. It may not only save a good deal of money, but can save a tremendous amount of headaches and reduce the stress felt by the homeowner.

More information on College Works Painting is just a click away.
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Cat Make Up

2009-01-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

By Michael Haydon

Cat Make Up: A New Cat Every Month
We all appreciate that cats are the animal kingdom’s most graceful and beautiful creatures. I’ve got a great new idea for dressing up our cats. Well it’s not entirely my idea. In fact I saw a Google video on the ultimate cat make up and I just fell in love with the idea even though it’s a bit off the wall! But, it suits my personality I guess, after all I’m the one who always dresses up as a cat at costume parties.

Cat Make Up Kits

Before I tell you a bit more about the latest craze to hit my household, I must admit that I was a bit unsure about how to tackle this article. It could just cover how to make up your cat, or how you can use cat make up to turn yourself into a cat. So, I decided to do both.
There are several cat make up kits on the market. Some emphasize the sexuality of a hot blooded female cat, others focus more on the goofiness of the kitten, still others are slightly forbidding, reminding us that the cat is only partially domesticated whatever we may think. Many cat make up kits will transform you into a feline who looks like an extra for a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats.

The kits vary greatly in price, but they all come with basic cat make up and instructions for applying it.

Cat costumes are also readily available both online and in costume stores. Again, you'll have a wide selection to choose from--everything from the comic-looking Cat in the Hat to outfits so skimpy a Las Vegas cocktail waitress would be shy about wearing them.

But I Want to Do My Own Cat Make Up!

You can't go too far wrong with a cat make up kit, but there's always the chance that you'll show up for your Halloween event looking just like someone else. If you want to be truly unique, do your own make up.

You'll need grease paint (color according to your preference), a white highlighter, eyeliner, mascara or false eyelashes, and lipstick and lip liner. If you're really into creating the perfect costume, consider purchasing a latex nose, some spirit gum, and a bristly black paint brush to provide whiskers.

After you look at the cats on the web site you’ll get some great ideas on how to develop a really unique cat look for yourself. And the ideas are almost never ending. I always use crayons or colored pencils to sketch my ideas and color combinations to see how they will look, then go online to other resources on how to apply the cat make up properly. But the most important thing is to have an image of what you are trying to project first. That is, cuddly, aloof, angry or just warm and fluffy.

When you're ready to start applying your cat make up, do so carefully. If you make a mistake with grease paint, it's hard to wash off. You might want to enlist a friend to help you get your make up just right.

When you're finally finished, it's off to the party. Just remember to conduct yourself with the appropriate amount of feline pride. After all, just a few thousand years ago, your ancestors were worshipped as gods.

Michael is the owner of Love Your Kitty, the BEST site for looking after your cat properly. You will also find great gift ideas for your kitty at http://www.PussyCatsAlive.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Haydon

Boy's Room Paint Ideas - Have a Little Fun With It

2009-01-27T18:52:00.000-08:00

By Debra T Conrad

Most children like their bedroom to reflect their own personality and interests. With a bit of imagination and a few pots of paint a plain boy's room can be turned into a place of their very own. By all means surprise him - but it won't harm to get some ideas and feedback from the intended resident.

Themed Boys' Rooms

A popular way of making over a boy's room is to theme it according to their interests and passions. Whatever the boy's favorite subject or activity there is likely to be a theme that can complement it. At the risk of gender stereotyping, popular choices involve cars, trains, cowboys, marine themes, outdoors, outer space and sport. Especially if you're on a budget, the important thing with choosing a theme is to make sure that the key features of the theme can be achieved in paint.

Expressing a room theme using paint can involve little more than choosing a suitable color scheme (perhaps a sports team's colors) and recreating motifs associated with the theme. At the other end of the spectrum is the creation of a full-on illusion. If your son is adamant he wants to live in a tree house, you can use paint on all four walls plus ceiling to create that fantasy, using accessories to provide the finishing touches. With faux brickwork (easy with stencils) you can fake a room in a castle or, with trompe l'oeil portholes, the appearance of a ship's cabin.

Imaginative ways to use paint in themed rooms are legion. A young car fanatic might be amused by road markings painted on the floor or faux tire tracks stenciled on the walls. You don't have to stick to murals or borders depicting cars. If the theme is the Wild West or a castle, you can use faux painting techniques to simulate a distressed or antique look. Metallic paints can be used to simulate chrome, bronze and metal features appropriate to a particular theme.

Bear in mind when choosing a theme for a boy's room that children's passions can be short-lived and you don't want to have to redecorate when the fad passes.

Color Schemes and Paints

Themed rooms often invite particular color schemes and treatments. If you're not going for a theme, consider a color scheme that doesn't show the dirt that many small boys seem to attract. Washable, scuff-resistant paints are recommended for active boy's rooms.

Special Paints

Special purpose paints can add humour and fun to a boy's room. A young astronomer might appreciate the constellations in luminous paint on the ceiling, for example. Chalkboard paint is a great idea for children's rooms and serves a practical purpose. It only comes in black and green though you can make your own in other colors. Painted on walls or doors, chalkboard paint allows kids to draw on the walls without doing permanent damage! Magnetic paint is another fun invention that will allow a boy to pin up his favorite pics using magnets.

Getting your boy's room ready? Visit ThatPainterLady.com for tons of decorating ideas and find popular nursery theme ideas for boys too.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Debra_T_Conrad

Wave Wall Texture in Plaster and Paint

2009-01-19T21:37:00.000-08:00

By Gregg Hicks

Putting texture on a plain wall can add a little personality to an entire room. Whether it is wave wall texture, circular wall texture, or any other type of texture you can think of, adding a little excitement to the walls in your bedroom, bathroom, or den will bring a lot of style and uniqueness to the entire room. There are several steps to deciding what type of wall texture you want and whether or not a certain wall texture is right for a particular room. There are also a lot of things to know about how to correctly apply a plaster or paint wall texture.

A wave wall texture can be done in either paint or in plaster. The plaster version of this texture goes onto the drywall and is fairly difficult to do correctly. Luckily, you will have some opportunities to correct any mistakes you may have made while the plaster is still wet. You will want to make sure that the amount of plaster you apply is not too heavy - too heavy of a layer of plaster will make the wall look bulky rather than textured. And if the plaster is too thick, the texture won't look good once it is painted later on. Also, use the correct tools to create the wave wall texture in the plaster. A comb-like tool will make creating curves and waves in the wall easier.

If you want to do your wave wall texture in paint, you will need to pick a few different colors of paint to create the feeling of waves. Most people choose to use a variety of blues to create painted wave like look. The painting can be done over the plaster wall texture. However, keep in mind that using more than one texture on one wall can be overwhelming. Having more than one wall texture on all four walls in a room will definitely be overwhelming, and can even look tacky. So consider which type of texture you want to use before you start your wall texturing project.
This article was written by Gregg Hicks of http://www.reliableremodeler.com which provides Internet-based home improvement information and services. Offering homeowners a simple, quick, and free way to access, qualified home improvement remodeling contractors.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gregg_Hicks

Abstract Art - A Breakthrough in Artistic Expression

2009-01-18T19:09:00.000-08:00

By Suzanne Macguire

The origins of abstract art can rightly be attributed to the imagination of man. Abstract art is distinguishable from fantasy art, which makes imaginative characters and myths its subject. It is closer to reality as it reflects the real in figurative terms. In other words, abstract art depicts real forms in a simplified or rather reduced way, keeping the original subject the same.

Abstract art did not originate all of a sudden nor is it the outcome of the 20th century thinkers. In the Jewish and Islamic religion, depiction of human beings was banned. As such, they took recourse to all forms of decorative and non-figurative arts or calligraphy.

Wassily Kandinsky is regarded as the inventor of non-figurative art in the 20th century. Gradually, his paintings moved out of figurative subjects. In 1910, he created the first figurative work of art- a watercolor sans any reference to reality. Kandinsky not only became the first abstract artist, he also took pains to promote it as a theorist. After Kandinsky, it was the Russian painter, Kasimir Malewich, who took abstract art to the next level. Melewich's paintings mostly focused on simple geometrical forms.

The landmark events in the mid-twentieth century changed the course of abstract art. The World War II, persecution of Jewish people by Hitler, and denunciation of modern art by the Nazis led to the immigration of hundreds of avant-garde European artists into the United States of America, especially New York. This created a new wave in the American art scenario prompting the birth of Abstract Expressionism.

Abstract expressionism is more a concept of performing art than a style. This movement stresses the trend of pushing the conventional boundaries beyond all limits. Some of the famous artists of this movement are Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.

Currently, there are two primary segments of abstract art. One segment, known as Color Field Abstract Art, features unified blocks of color. Mark Rothko is one of the pioneers of this genre. The second segment includes multiple genres- Surrealism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Action painting. Regardless of all these influences, the core of abstract art paintings remains the capturing of the essence of the artist's subconscious on canvas.

Suzanne Macguire is an expert writer and art connoisseur. Her articles have covered a lot of information on fine art and abstract art gallery.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Suzanne_Macguire

Pre-Painting Preparation Gives Beautiful, Professional Results

2009-01-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

By Matt Gallo

While many homeowners are anxious to just start painting already, it is important to properly prepare your trim and walls prior to painting. Whether it's patching nail holes, removing old wallpaper, or just cleaning your walls before painting them, the prep work makes all the difference. Correctly prepared painting surfaces take paint better, allowing it to completely adhere for a beautiful, long-lasting finish. Don't worry if you're not sure how to correctly prepare your walls; read on for advice on the simple steps that make a difference!

Patching
The first step in preparing your walls for painting is to address any nail holes or cracks. These small blemishes can be easily filled with spackle. For larger holes, you will need to patch the drywall itself. If you're not comfortable mending drywall, contact a local interior painter; they will be able to provide a smooth, professional drywall patch.

Sanding
The next step is sanding. Especially if you spackled cracks and nail holes, you'll need to smooth them out to create a flat, even painting surface. Wallpaper should also be sanded before being painted; while it is usually best to take down all wallpaper before painting, removing wallpaper that was applied directly to unpreped wallboard may cause irreparable damage. In this case, your best option is to detach any loose pieces (especially curling seam edges) and then sand the remaining wallpaper. This creates a slightly rough surface for the primer to stick to.

Cleaning
Now you need to clean your walls and woodwork. (Note: it's best to do this step after sanding; otherwise you'll just have to do it again to remove the dust created by sanding.) Although generally invisible to the eye, dust and grime can accumulate on your walls and trim; this layer can prevent the paint from completely adhering to the surface and needs to be eliminated prior to painting. A mild solution of soap and water is usually enough to get rid of any residue. Simply wipe down walls, woodwork, and anywhere you sanded, then rinse with plain water.

Priming
The final pre-painting step is applying primer. Primer should be used to cover stains, darker paint, wood with knots in it, and, of course, wallpaper. Make sure that you're using the correct type of primer for the task; if you're priming wallpaper, water-based paints should be avoided as they may make the paper bubble. If you're worried about using the incorrect primer or uncomfortable with the task of priming, your local painting specialist can help. Also, be sure to always prime over spackled spots to avoid shiny spots in your finished paint job.

Now it's time to paint! The pre-painting preparation may have taken some time, but it will be worth it in the end. By correctly prepping your painting surfaces, you'll get an attractive finish that lasts. The best part is, since the walls were correctly prepared, the paint will last longer: meaning you won't have to paint this room again for years! Of course, if you don't want to bother with the work of pre-painting preparation or the hassle of painting itself, you can always hire a professional painter. They'll take care of all of the preparation, painting, and clean up, allowing you to sit back, relax, and enjoy your beautifully painted room.

Matt Gallo is a home improvement hobbyist and the Internet marketing manager for Prospect Genius, a leading provider of online local advertising.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matt_Gallo

Wall Paints - Various Colors, Textures, and Patterns

2009-01-15T22:49:00.000-08:00

By Barbara Tobiasz

The earliest appearance of paint was approximately thirty thousand years ago. There are still some caves today where graphics and pictures can be found that were drawn using paint. Color has fascinated cultures throughout history. Some cultures used colors for healing purposes.

Paint is made up of a pigment, a binder to hold it together and with thinners it makes paint easy to apply. We use paint to help preserve, decorate and add function by covering a surface with a protective coating.

Before the nineteenth century, the word paint only applied to oil bound types. Those that were bond by glue were called distemper. The first synthetic dye was discovered in eighteen fifty-six and was produced inexpensively. It was during this time frame that linseed oil began being mass produced. By eighteen eighty, Sherwin Williams produced and marketed paints in tins in a wide range of colors. With their success, the paint was exported all over the world.

Americans have been practicing the green revolution for a long time. They started having concerns around nineteen fifty regarding what chemicals and solvents were being put in paint. In nineteen seventy lead and mercury was outlawed and could not be used in the manufacturing of paint. A major difference in modern wall paints is the change from linseed oil to alkyd oil which is generally derived from soybeans. The use of synthetic resins such as acrylics and epoxies have become prevalent in the last thirty years.

Wall paints are the easiest and least expensive way to change the entire look and feel of a room. Your stark cold walls can be transformed into a sophisticated ambience of color and texture. It seems to breathe new life into the room with harmony and design.

Scientists have proclaimed that color affects us psychologically and certain paint colors provide either a cooling effect while other colors give us a sense of warmth. Some warm colors are orange, red and pink, while blues, greens and violets are thought to be cool colors.

Choosing just the right color and finish can be confusing and challenging. Here is a color and finish vocabulary to help you figure it out:

• Hue- The base of a color. Lighter or darker variations are still the same hue.
• Value- The lightness or darkness of a color.
• Shades- Colors with values closet to black, the darker reds and so forth.
• Tints- Colors with values closet to white, the lighter blues and so forth.
• Tone- A color's intensity brightness or dullness.
• Flat Paint - Is the standard paint for walls and has the lowest sheen available.
• Satin Paint - Has a slight sheen and is easier to clean then flat paint.
• Semi-Gloss Paint - Is highly durable and easy to clean. Great for kitchens, bathrooms and children's rooms.
• Gloss Paint - Has a high sheen and is used in areas that are susceptible to getting dirty. This is great for doors and door frames.

Paint can also be mixed with a glaze to create various textures and patterns. This process is referred to as faux finish and is quite popular with home owners and interior designers. Washes are simply latex paint that has been thinned with water to produce color that is more delicate then that of a glaze. Washes also show brush marks which add depth and texture to your surface. There are other techniques that create unique charm and characteristics such as sponging, stippling, rag-rolling and color blocking.

Your first step before actually painting should be to take measurements of the area and calculate the amount of paint you will need. Then prepare your walls for painting. Patch all holes and allow spackling to completely dry. You must also remove any loose paint and sand uneven edges.

Please don't forget to cover the furniture and floor and remove light switch and outlet covers. A primer may be needed if your walls are new or show a lot of damage. You should also seek assistance from your home improvement store. They deal with this daily and can offer valuable advice.

It is best to take small steps and before too long you will feel like a professional and show off your technique on every wall in your home. At the end of the day as you look around you will be amazed at how a little color, texture and pattern will change your world.

Barbara Tobiasz is an expert in interior/exterior decorating. Along with her husband Joe, they own and operate Wall-Decor-Concepts.com. For more information on Wall Paints, go to: http://www.Wall-Decor-Concepts.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barbara_Tobiasz

Glass Paintings - Rich Indian Art Tradition

2009-01-15T22:45:00.000-08:00

By Murtaza Habib

Do you know that India has been one of the top countries that has wide varieties of artistic forms? What if you knew that India has its artistic foundation built in before 2000 years?
India has its artistic tradition hidden in various cultures, traditions, regions, religions of ancient times even times before brushes and papers were produced.

That's right, in olden days India practiced art on palm leaves where various textures and illustrations were created.

In this article you will learn more about glass paintings, one of the unique Indian artistic forms.
Do you know when glass painting evolved in India? It was between 18th and 19th century.
At that time Europe had achieved mastery in glass paintings during the middle ages.

A Chinese artist learned the skill of glass painting from Europe that helped them out to provide quality paintings that were then exported to Europe.

In the mean while there were strong trade relations between India and China which eventually got this unique form of art to India.

Glass painting was mostly used by local artists who painted popular epics and stories on the glasses. The most commonly form of painting was that of Lord Ganesha.

The special type of glass on which painting was performed was imported from countries like Belgium and Britain.

In fact, India was one of the best quality glass producers during 16th century, but it was of no use because this form of art lost its interest eventually as time passed by.

Various ancient traditional themes along with European themes were used in this unique form of glass painting.

European works and portraits along with Indian epics like Ramayan and pictures of God and Goddesses were created on glasses which were in high demand.

If you observe carefully there are some parts of North and South India where glass paintings are still widely popular where they specialize in producing various popular and folk art traditions.

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'Murtaza Habib' has helped hundreds of newbies to start their painting courses, now you can do it too... Keep visiting Paint on my canvas for unique articles on drawing and painting.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Murtaza_Habib

Interior Painting Color Scheme

2009-01-14T22:31:00.000-08:00

By John Catech

There's one tip to keep in mind when choosing an interior painting color scheme - it's only paint. If you get the color on the wall and simply hate it, you can always start over again. If you're not certain, buy a quart or a single gallon first, try it out on a section of wall, and see if it's going well. If you like it, you can buy the full amount and mix it together.

In choosing your interior painting color scheme, you may be working to match your paint to a fabric print or to the tones in a piece of artwork. If so, the tried and true, standard advice is to match a coordinating color for the walls to the background color for the print. If you have bright floral flowers on white, then a shade of white should be your wall color. If you have a rose-colored background fabric with deep maroon and black designs, have a version of rose or something from that color family as the primary wall color. Those bright or deep colors can act as an accent color around the room or in an adjoining room as you develop your interior painting color scheme.

Traditionally, the slightly darker is on the walls, while the door and window trim as well as the crown molding or other decorative trim is white or a shade of cream. However, if you're feeling adventurous, try using a lighter shade on the walls and a dark or bright shade on the trim for a striking and different look to your interior painting scheme. You could also use a color on the wall and a very pale coordinating shade for the trim. Again, a more traditional interior painting scheme would include using white or off white on the trim.

A simple formula for choosing an interior painting scheme is to find a fabric or piece of artwork you wish to make the primary background for your room. This fabric should have at least three colors in the design, and you should plan to use this fabric in at least three places in the room (ie: valances, couch and throw pillows or loveseat, drapes and table runner, etc.).

Looking at the fabric or painting, choose the background (usually the lightest shade in the pattern) and select a shade of that to use as the main color on your walls for your interior painting scheme. This will be the main color in your room, with about 60% of the room in that shade. You would then use the mid-tone color as the second most prominent color, often using it in the floor covering or curtains. You could use that color as a trim accent, or accent your room by painting one wall in the mid-tone . The third, brightest type would be used as an accent, and would likely not show up in the paint, but rather on throw pillows or curtain ties
To learn more about home painters in nj
Come visit us at njpaint.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Catech

How to Paint Your Cat

2009-01-14T22:25:00.000-08:00

By Larry Chamberlain

Why paint your cat? After all cats are beautiful creatures if you want to appreciate the appearance of a feline, you look at the cat not at a painting.

Some of the reasons that you may want to paint your cat are:

To capture your pet at a particular age, in a particular pose, in a particular place. To have a permanent reminder of your companion when she has moved on to feline afterlife. To give as a gift to a fellow cat lover.

So you figure how hard can it be to turn out a pleasing semblance of your moggy? You are no Van Gough, but you know how to handle a paint brush. You have all the materials that you need in order to paint your cat, the paints, brushes, stuff for cleaning, you even have a home made easel. Boy, it sure is going to be fun to paint your cat.

There she is, curled up asleep by the window, a look of cat contentment upon her face and the sunlight giving her coat an extra gloss. What a magnificent painting of your cat you are going to produce. Quietly you set everything up, you have your canvas propped on your easel and your paintbrush in hand. You turn to face your subject, and...

She's gone. Your little darling had been snoozing in that spot for most of the morning and now that you are ready to produce your masterpiece, she decides that someplace else is where she needs to be! Well, she is not going to get away with it, you have decided to paint your cat, and that is just what you are going to do.

You search for her. Eventually you find your feline subject siting at the top of the stairs without a care in the world. Scooping her up, you carry her back to the sunlit window so she may cooperate with you and resume her pose. But cats don't cooperate. She paces up and down, and you know that the only thing stopping her from making a bolt is the fact that you are betwixt her and the door. The fact that you want to paint your cat is of no importance, the only thing that is of any concern to your cat is what she wants!

You consider for a moment the possibility of restraining her, like Guliver lashed to the ground by the little people. No chance, no chance whatsoever. So what to do? Of all the creatures on this earth the cat is the last one to be told what to do.

You conclude that the only thing that you can do to paint your cat, is to forget about producing a detailed precise painting. You will paint your feelings about your cat. This will not be a long drawn out process, get it on the canvass, let your subconscious communicate the essence of the feline! Looking at your cat and not your canvass, you start to paint. Rapidly you slash with your brush, you don't worry about the colors that you use corresponding exactly to those of you cat, it is the feelings that they represent that is important.

Meanwhile, your cat looks on bemused.

At last you are finished. Time to inspect your art work, you turn and look and your jaw drops. Well it could be some kind of animal, those lines in purple do seem to represent a tail. And that is an eye, no mistake about that, but whatever eye it is, it's not your cat's eye!
Ah well! At least you tried to paint your cat. Don't think of it as a failure, after all you did produce something, and who knows, your cat at least, may have enjoyed the experience! Meanwhile, your cat has resumed its perfect pose, asleep by the window.

About The Author
Larry Chamberlain is a lifelong cat lover and webmaster of http://www.best-cat-art.com - Cat art posters, art prints, cat calendars and cat collectibles. Great cat gifts for yourself or your cat loving friends; Larry@best-cat-art.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Larry_Chamberlain

Interior Painting - What Colors to Choose

2008-12-21T06:24:00.000-08:00

By Eugene Makeev

When thinking of a home improvement project that can splash your New York home with the needed ambiance and considerably change its look and feel within the budget, then Interior painting is your best bet. Though it is seemingly simple, do not get fooled as there is more to the job than meets the eye. To make a success out of it, the wall preparation should be done accurately. There are also a lot of things to consider like the paint, finish, and wall painting techniques and processes. Depending on how you see it, choosing the right paint color for your inter painting project can be a daunting or the most fun task.

Through all the plethora of choices, you are bound to find the perfect one for the room you need to spruce up in your interior painting project. What you need to do first is answer these questions:

- Are there constraints to the color selection such as needing to fit into a historical or conservative neighborhood?

- What impression or effect do you want to achieve? Would you like to implement something peaceful and harmonious or would you rather have it bold and bright?

- How long do you intend to live in your New York home?

Neutral or safe colors are the way to go if by chance you have plans on selling the house in the n ear future or live within a historical neighborhood. By going neutral, you will not risk having to turn off any potential buyer just because yours and his tastes doe not jive. This color option also helps preserve the classical look of any periodic home adding more value to it.

But if you are in a situation where you are free to exhaust every possible color schemes to integrate into your interior painting, then here are the most common color schemes to look into: the monochromatic using just one color of varying tints and shades; analogous and complementary. These color coordinations can be achieved with the help of a color wheel. If want to get more ideas you can browse through other home interiors, nature, photographs, paintings, fabric designs or just anything that could inspire your color selection.

There are also other factors that you need to consider when choosing colors to get the most out of your interior painting project. Not unless you also plan to buy a new set of everything for the room to undergo interior painting, choose a scheme that would best complement the rest of the fixtures and furnishings. The space or area of the room, artificial and natural lighting, existing elements, fabric furnishing or flooring should also be taken into consideration.

When deciding on whether to pick the darker or lighter hue of your color choice for the interior painting project, here are several tips to help you:

- Light colors give any room a more spacious look and are not ideal to be used with unevenly proportioned walls if you have no plans on highlighting it.

- Unknown to many homeowners, the darker shades require more effort to maintain, absorbs more heat and fades sooner than that of lighter colors.

- And colors presented on the color chips, swathes or just any color samples may slightly vary from the actual look. Be sure to consult with an expert before making that final choice.

Eugene Makeev has been in the home improvement industry for a while. His skills and expertise, which have been polished through time, are now used to help New York home owners avoid the common pitfalls in home improvements by matching their needs with the right, prescreened Painting Contractor New York. Feel free to use our Interior Painting Calculator.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eugene_Makeev

Choosing the Correct Wall Paint For Your Interiors

2008-12-21T06:22:00.000-08:00

By Percy Johnson

When you choose wall paint, think about what the rest of your room looks like. You should always choose something that will go with what you have if you cannot, or do not want to, change the entire room. Do not match your paint with your floor color or with your drapes. Find a color that compliments or contrasts with those colors to give your room dimension and personality.
You can also buy some accessories in those colors if you want to spice up the room even more. Get things like throw pillows, throw blankets, and art pieces that may feature those colors. These things don't have to be expensive to look good, you just have to choose the right colors.
If you choose a dark color don't worry too much about it dimming down the room. There are a few things you can do to make sure your new, darker color will make the room look better, not like a dark cave. Choose light colored curtains, and use a bright white to paint your trim and the frames around your doors and windows. Not only will it look great, it will also draw in a lot of light and help keep your room looking fresh and new.

If you aren't sure how to choose the right wall paint colors, you can find help in your local home improvement store. You can find some colors you like on paint samples, and then look at the other colors on the same strip. Those colors are ones that will go with the main color you like. If you can find the color of your carpet or your furniture on a strip, you can usually choose your wall paint color from any of the other ones on that strip. Choose something that feels good, and then make your room what you want it to be.

Percy Johnson is an interior designer living in California. Check out these great DIY Home Improvement guides and articles, or maybe Discount Home Improvement is what you are looking for.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Percy_Johnson

Top Face Painting Patterns For Boys and Girls

2008-12-13T01:44:00.001-08:00

By Clare Adams

If you are looking for some great face painting patterns to make your kid's next birthday party a big hit, then you've come to the right place. This article will give you some great ideas that you can put to great use in being the superstar mom we'd all love to have.

First off, you should get prepared with stocking up on face paint stencils and face painting paint. That way you'll have everything ready to go and won't have to run out when it comes time to face paint.

If you're keeping a good stock of supplies you should also be certain that have snazaroo face paint. This is the highest quality face paint you can purchase and offers you a world of great face painting opportunities.

Listed below is some great face painting patterns to choose from to make your party a great hit:

This list consists of patterns that are most popular for girls:

Butterfly- This one can be a little complicated, so you should certainly consider using a face painting stencil for this.
Fairy - Here again, this one can be very complicated, so a stencil should be in order..
Princess - This is one of the most popular for girls.
Fantasy - This can be related to anything in this area.
Bunny Rabbit - Another very popular one that make for a cute face paint.
Cat - This one can be adorable if done with precision.
Dog - This one is quite popular with kids with pets.
Flowers - Always a favorite with girls.
Rainbow - This can really allow you to showcase your color talent.

This list consists of face patterns that boys tend to like the best:

Red Spider's Web - Boys seem to love this.
Pirate - Another favorite with boy's of all ages.
Skull - This makes the boy feel scary to others and they love it.
Tiger - This is a colorful one that require a lot of face paint colors.
Robot- Boy's tend to love this one a lot.
Bat- This one can be difficult to do, but kid's love it
Clown- You most likely should invest in some clown face paint to make this one as great as possible.
Puppy Dog - This one can really be a cute one if done correctly.
Alien - Boy's of all ages find this one likable and fascinating as well.

This list should be very helpful when it comes to finding face painting patterns your kids will love and even gives you some great insight on which face painting design is most suited for your child's gender.

If you are looking for some face painting patterns, you can find some great lists here that are most suited to the gender of child. To learn more, click here: http://www.102tips.info/face-painting

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Oil Painting - Getting Done With Oil

2008-12-13T01:42:00.000-08:00

Murtaza Habib

Oil painting has its roots during the ancient Roman era, and in the following years, its reputation immediately disperse throughout the other regions.

Oil painting is the progression of painting with pigments using dry oils, most particularly linseed oil, poppy seed oil, safflower oil, and walnut oil.

Artists diverge and contrast in style, stroke, or color, they want to portray. Different kinds of oil likewise present different colors and characteristics. Some, in a single painting, use different oils to depict the character and mood of their expressions.

To begin, most artists make a sketch to draw round and chart in the theme of their paintings. From there, the pigment will be applied to the surface which likewise varies, depending on the artist.

It may range from a canvas, cardboard, pressed wood, paper, slate, or wooden panel. The artist may opt to mix the pigment first with the oil of their choice, rather than applying the pigment on the surface, and topped with oil.

A universal rule among painters is the "fat over lean" rule which means that less oil should be applied at the surface to allow easy drying of the material. The higher the layer, the oilier it gets, thereby giving the outer layer the best glow in the canvas.

Moreover, this should be the standard technique because the lower layer sucks up the paint from the upper layers.

The surface coat or the under painting lay an important foundation and must be carefully applied. A thinner or turpentine lays the groundwork in every oil painting. Let it dry, and then proceed to undertake the mosaic surface or beginning with a murky or shadowy color to the brightest.

Here, the painting will appear dramatic, not to mention. Again, this layer has to be dried up. The artist may proceed to add intricate details in the next layer, and then the succeeding ones.
However, this may take years to dry up. In the Impressionist era, notable artist in this period is Jan van Eyck, began reconstructing the traditional technique called "Direct Painting". Instead of letting it dry for several months, they immediately paint wet paint on wet layer.

While the character is bizarre, the contemporary artists began to embrace this new style, and adopt it. Renaissance artists would prefer to seal the painting with a varnish, but Impressionist painters would have it varnish-free, maintaining the original art as they painted it.

The best thing about oil painting is that it can be redone anytime. The reason since oil paints does not dry immediately, it can stay wet for an hour, and hence, the artist can alter the style, texture, or totally remove the design until it becomes dry.

The solidified layer must be scraped in order to give the painting a smooth and downy effect. In scraping off the dry matter, never leave traces of chafed grime because traces of scraping to become obvious when scrutinized.

While it can be considered dry at first look, be cautious in finishing the art because some oil paints will completely dry for sixty to eighty years.

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Oil Painting - Harmonizing With Oil Painting

2008-12-13T01:41:00.001-08:00

By Murtaza Habib

Oil painting is the most versatile specie of art. Different painting variables can be used and not limited only to the artists' paintbrushes and paints. Aside from oil paints and a canvas, some artists use other media. Varnish is one thing.

The different media used by the artists can be fine-tune or fiddle with the luster or polish of the painting, or may cover up the strokes of the paintbrush, or make the painting appear mobile even if still.

Oil painting gets the hand of only the most adaptable and flexible talents. It has its own varieties.

May it be mixture or in glazes, its new and old result attracts the eyes of the many. Mixture is how the artist thickly applies the oil paint, whereas glaze is how thinly the paint is applied on the surfaces.

The attractiveness of oil painting stretched through Italy during the 15th century. From then one, it has touched many artists across the globe. Color selection becomes paramount most especially in oil painting because the properties of each oil paint may give adverse or good effect.

Conditionally, artists will mix the paints in advance before applying them on the canvas, paper, slate, pressed wood or wooden panel. As artists are trying to establish their own identity, developed in the art of oil painting is the technique of using oil paints in tubes.

It is more convenient, and less messy. First, one may initially paint the surface with a clear paint, or instantly apply charcoal, depending on the theme of the artist.

Artists vary in their style, strokes, and subject matter. In this painting, it matters not the theme or subject matter, but on how well the artist apply the techniques, or even make his own technique. For some, they let the initial coating or the under painting dry first.

However, the new school would already venture on wet-to-wet painting. This is more difficult because considering the component of oil paint that does not dry instantly, applying paint on a wet layer could modify the preliminary design, or my end up revising the entire piece. Artists like Jan van Eyck are too bold to undertake this method.

This is very complex, if not, the intricate piece of work. The oil paint could dry up for years. Some artists would wait for several years before they could apply the second layer, then several years again before it will dry. Oil paints do not dry by evaporation but by oxidization.

Patience is the number one material in this painting. Nonetheless, the masterwork will definitely be a stunning success.

However, oil paintings dry by oxidization, they often leave the painting a hardened surface. That is why it is necessary to scrape its surface to remove the coarse and jagged exterior to give a smooth and leveled facade. To preserve the painting, apply varnish.

However, this medium can alter the color, or the translucency of the painting, so you may just want to have it varnish-free to preserve the original color and tint.

What if I teach you how to get started with drawing and painting with great ease following simple steps?

Follow these steps for your perfect creativity flow.

Grab my free ebook on Drawing And Painting

'Murtaza Habib' has helped hundreds of newbies to start their painting courses, now you can do it too... Keep visiting Paint on my canvas for unique articles on drawing and painting.

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How to Paint Grass and Fields

2008-12-01T08:05:00.000-08:00

By Julie Shoemaker

Chance are that a good majority of your paintings will contain some grass. Grass can be a little challenging if you don't follow a few guidelines.

First of all, use a variety of values for the grasses. For example, look at fields and notice how they are not all the same colors. This may be to different things growing, but it is also due to shadows and where the sunlight is hitting.

A good and effective way to start is to lay in a distant field just under your horizon. I would make it sloped a little and don't make it too wide (because it is in the distance and perspective wise, it might be barely visible. Use a dark green. Next, add some yellow or white to brighten the green up and lay in the next layer. This layer will appear to be catching the sun light. Finally as you work your way forward use a medium shade green and come all the way forward. Let the slopes show and let any color variation show.

In the preceding example, you created very simple indications of grass lawns or fields. It's pretty simple to indicate individual blades of grass as well. Clumps of grass are painted by simple using a color that will show up (darker against a light background and vise versa.) Use quick strokes pull the paint upwards with a light touch. Your brush should comes off the surface of the canvas giving a fine point to the tip of the grass stalk.

You would only need to add a few stalks here and there to indicate that the entire fields has blades of grass. Grass in the foreground should stand out to be effective. Use a little yellow to really highlight and make them stand out. Like usual though don't over do it.

With a little practice, you'll be painting very effective grass and fields in no time.
Julie Shoemaker is an avid painter and hobbyist who regularly gives paintings as gifts to family and friends. To read more articles like the one here, and to see more free art tips, tricks and techniques and free step by step lessons please visit http://www.IamPainting.org
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Fabric Painting - Bored of Painting on Paper? Start Painting on Surfaces

2008-12-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

By Murtaza Habib

You might have painted on the paper several times.

However, with fabric painting you will have fun painting on different materials.
You can use your painting skills on anything right from clothes, curtains, cushion covers or any other material that will enhance its beauty due to painting.

Just take an old outdated cloth, use your artistic skills out there and instantly transform it into a highly fashionable piece in a blink.

Do you know that cotton is the best material where fabric painting can be done perfectly well?
However, silk clothes is also suitable as such. If you want to try out fabric painting on other types of clothes all you need to do is just take a small piece of that cloth and try fabric painting out there to see whether the finishing of the paint is perfect.

It is important to note that the cloth that you are using for your fabric painting has a tight weave...

- Reason being, the colour seeps out through the fabric which does not give it a perfect look in loosely woven clothes.

Many clothes when they are new have a bit of sizing, which in turn does not attach the fabric painting to that cloth.

To solve this problem make sure that you wash the cloth before you do fabric painting on them.
Here's an easy way to test whether fabric painting is suitable for a particular type of cloth...

- Just drop water on that cloth and see whether the water gets soaked up inside that cloth or not, if it gets then it is a good piece where you can comfortably use fabric painting.

The above tips will surely help you to make your cloth absolutely safe when it comes to applying fabric painting and come out with a mind blowing artistic experience. Make sure you get started today.

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Painting Your Wood Trim

2008-11-26T05:02:00.000-08:00

By Matthew Jaworski

Painting wood trim can be fulfilling as it allows you to maintain or change the looks and appearance of your wooden trim as necessary as possible. Painting it also contributes to its maintenance and upkeep and ensures its durability.

When considering painting your wood trim, you need to know the following first:

· Are they interior or exterior trim?
· Was the trim previously painted or stained?
· Is the paint or stain in natural, in latex or in oil finish?

These will enable you to determine the proper primer and finish paint to use for your work.

Here are the things you'll need for the job:

1. Paint brushes
2. Paint ladders
3. Paint drop cloths
4. Screwdrivers
5. Rags
6. Caulk, caulk gun
7. Wood filler
8. Sandpaper
9. Duster
10. Tape

The following are your quick guide on how to paint your wood trim:

· First, prepare the woodwork. Sand and de-gloss the wood and wash it with a detergent, if possible. The paint will not adhere well if there is dirt, grease, grime or gloss over the surface.
· Take of or protect items such as door knobs, door handles and hardware. You can paint while the wood trim remained hanged, but you can paint it better if it is laid flat. Use blue tape to cover hardware and handles/knobs, if necessary. If the wood trim is removed, lay it across two sawhorses or a table when you start to paint.
· Check for cracks and holes and apply wood fill or caulk as needed. Use epoxy filler or the same stuff used as filler for car bodies to cover essentially bigger holes. Again, sand the areas where needed.
· Start your painting. First, apply a coat of primer if the surface has no paint yet. Then, leave it to dry.
· Next is to apply one or two coats using semi-gloss or glossy paint. These are preferable as these are the most durable and also, easy to clean. Using a high-quality brush and preferably one with a tapered end, paint in even strokes.
Here are more practical tips and even some warnings when you paint your wood trim:
· It is better to paint the jambs or the area where the door closes into first. Next to paint is the trim around the door and the last is the door itself.
· If you happen to use a paint that gets too dry to spread, you can let it dry all the way. Sand it down and then paint over it.
· For exterior wood trims, make sure to paint its top and bottom edges even if these are not visible. This will help to protect it against rot and possible swelling.
· If possible, avoid using roller on a door. Even if it it's perfectly flat, it cannot allow you to lay the paint evenly and may not produce a good look.
· Try to avoid loading up enough paint on your paint brush. Either these will collect in the door's details, will puddle up or even drip. Paint with one side of the brush with one long stroke. On the reverse stroke, use the other side of the brush. Apply varying pressure when you cut along the edge. Brush lightly and evenly when you paint the finishing coat.
Wood trims are just some of the parts of the house. However, it can also add to the glow and allure of the house when properly kept.

Jaworski Coatings, Inc,
41375 Oberlin Elyria Rd.
Eylria, Ohio 44035
Toll Free Office 1-866-87-2114
Fax (440) 328-4539

welovepainting@gmail.com
http://www.WeLovePainting.com
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Making a Fine Art Painting - Which is Best Acrylic Paint Or Oil Paint?

2008-11-24T07:55:00.000-08:00

By George McKim

Trying to decide which type of paint to use to paint your next art masterpiece? Should you go with the tried and true oil paints, or should you try the newer medium of acrylic paint? Each of these types of paints has their pros and cons which you should investigate so that you can choose the medium that suits your painting style. You are the artist, you make the call.

Oil paint, the traditional medium, is basically powder pigments mixed with clear linseed oil. This paint is slow drying and for that reason is perfectly suited for blending colors together smoothly with plenty of time to contemplate the painting's progress and still have time to edit and adjust the image before the paint dries. Another plus of oil paint is the luminous quality of the paint which is achieved from the linseed oil medium which allows light to pass through the paint and bounce thereby illuminating the paint on the surface. Additionally, oil paint has been proven to be the most permanent medium for fine art painting. Most paintings on canvas and wood were made with oil paint from early Renaissance times until the 1960's when acrylic paints were introduced.

Acrylic paint is only about fifty years old, and is the new kid on the block. This paint is made from powdered pigments and a liquid acrylic plastic medium. Unlike oil paint, acrylic dries fairly quickly and you will need to plan ahead and move quickly if you want to do much modeling or blending of colors with this type of artists paint. However, the quick drying quality of acrylic paint can be an advantage if you paint in layers or paint in such a way that does not require the blending or colors. You don't have to wait for several days for paint to dry before you paint something on top of a previous layer with acrylic. If you want to mix several mediums together, like acrylic drawing paper and found objects, then acrylics are the perfect type of paint for the job. There are also a wide variety of specialty paints and mediums that can be used with acrylics such as modeling paste for texture, gloss and matte mediums for thinning and mixing, iridescent and fluorescent paint, and many other special effect mediums and additives that could broaden the range of your creative artistic expression.

Some artists begin their paintings with acrylic paint and when that dries, they finish the artwork with oil paint. Hopefully, this will give you enough basic information to make an informed choice about what type of painting medium is most suited to your type of artistic expression.

The author, George McKim, is an award winning artist who has exhibited his artwork in museums and galleries. George has created a new and rapidly growing Artist Social Network and Online Gallery at http://www.myartfriends.com

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Is Waterproof Paint a Good Option For Basements?

2008-11-24T03:17:00.000-08:00

By Christopher W Smith

We all want a dry basement, especially if we're using it for storage or as a finished part of our home. If you've ever had water in your basement, you know how much damage it can do and how it lowers the value of your property. You don't have to live with the problem, though, because there are a number of ways in which you can waterproof your basement to keep the space dry and usable.

One very popular way to waterproof a basement is by using paint that is made especially for that purpose. Although the paint may not provide the entire answer to the problem, it will definitely help. You can buy this paint in both interior and exterior grades. Before you start painting, though, you need to keep reading to find out a few things you need to know about waterproofing.

If your house had the foundations waterproofed while it was being built, this will usually keep you from having water problems. Exterior grade paint has a petroleum base, and it usually only comes in black. That's why it's used on the exterior of a foundation while it's being built. It just wouldn't be very attractive used as an interior color.

Interior waterproof paint is used to provide a barrier between the moisture outside and the dry space inside. You can find different types of paint in stores, and you'll discover that this is one of the cheapest ways of waterproofing your basement. The paint will help to stop water from condensing on your walls and then seeping into your basement.

Before starting to paint your basement, you need to look at a few other issues. If you have large holes or cracks in the walls, the paint alone won't be able to stop water from coming through. Therefore, prior to painting you need to repair the cracks and holes with cement or epoxy and allow the areas to dry completely. After they're dry, you'll be ready to paint over them.

If you're after the cheapest way possible of stopping water problems in your basement, waterproof basement paint can be a great option. If the only problem you have is seepage through pores in the walls, this paint will probably be very effective. Of course, if you have other problems, such as ground water, you'll need to combine the paint with other methods of water control.

Are you looking for more information on waterproofing your home and under deck waterproofing?

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The Good Earth 3 - Painting on Linen

2008-11-18T18:31:00.000-08:00

By Dorothy Gauvin

In a previous article, I promised a few tips on how to stretch your canvas ground. Here they are:
TIP. For any size larger than 18 inches on the long side, I recommend that you use heavy-duty stretcher bars. This timber is strong enough to make the traditional 'cradle' support unnecessary. However, you will still need to set-in an upright centre bar in the slots provided. It's a good idea to reinforce each end of these with a small piece of timber nailed to both upright and stretcher bar.

TIP. Keys - those little wooden wedges designed to be inserted in slots at the corners of the finished stretcher - are best not used at all. You can tack them, in a small plastic sandwich bag, to the back of the stretcher so they're handy if you do feel a need to tighten the canvas later.

TIP. Use stainless steel staples only; ordinary steel will rust and may rot the canvas. Invest in a good, heavy-duty staple gun; your hands will really appreciate it. Always cut your piece of canvas from the roll 4 inches longer each side than the stretcher. Don't trim it off at the sides. It won't look so neat, but if ever the painting needs to be de-mounted or re-stretched, the framer or conservator will bless you.

The day will come when nothing else but linen will satisfy you, and you'll be glad you're already familiar with the techniques for stretching and painting on canvas. As an organic fabric, any canvas absorbs moisture, swelling as it does so, and stretches or sags with the pressure you apply while working on it. Not a worry; that's just natural. When the work is finished and the paint layers begin to dry out, the canvas will return to its original state. There's no need for you to tighten the keys at the stretcher's corners; it's far better that you leave them alone.

TIP. Sometimes, collectors are tempted to tighten the keys when they notice a painting getting 'floppy' during a spell of wet weather. The risk of physical damage from that busy little hammer on the keys, and possible compromise of the paint layers from the stressing of the canvas, are thoughts that haunt me. So I've developed a way of deterring them. Over each mitre at the back of the stretcher I apply a galvanised steel bracket, held with galvanised screws - not nails. And I briefly explain why they should not be interfered with. Clients appreciate the extra care and trust the artist to know what's best for the painting.

Finally, why paint on linen?

The immediate answer lies in the gorgeous, 'live' look of linen and its substantial 'feel' as you work on it. Most artists who work in a finely detailed, realistic style prefer the smooth and tightly-woven version called Portrait. I happen to enjoy a heavier, rougher grade of linen. It does mean some wastage when cutting the roll, to avoid any areas where defects are too obvious. Also, it requires thought when choosing which side is 'up' so as to avoid having a troublesome slub just where a face or some other delicate element is to appear. But I think it's worth it to gain that subtle 'richness' that only a heavy grade of good linen can impart.

The 'How To' books on painting are legion. No doubt, like me, you've helped enrich the authors of many. Frankly, the years have taught me that is their main purpose in being; nearly all are too personal to the author/artist's style to be of much help to the artist trying to find her/his own Way. Of far greater help to you is a good, clear, and comprehensive book on materials and techniques - something that will give you the tools of craft to make your own kind of art. Here is one I recommend unreservedly:

The Painter's Craft - An Introduction to Artists' Methods and Materials by Ralph Mayer 226 pages limp cover illustrated in black and white. First published in 1948 by D Van Nostrand Company Inc, New York, the book has no ISBN since the International Standard Book Number system was adopted only in 1969. I have a treasured copy of the 1966 edition published by Viking Press of New York, from whom I understand the title is still obtainable. If you're a painter, and can have only one book on techniques and materials - this is the one!

The long-term benefit of using linen is simply that: Longevity of your work. None of us can predict what verdict History will make on what we produce. But after all, why not proceed as if our paintings, or some of them, may one day be as treasured as the work of the Old Masters? They were trained to have respect for craftsmanship in every aspect of making a work of art. As a result, many of their paintings survive to delight us, five hundred years later. We may as well follow their lead.© Dorothy Gauvin

Dorothy Gauvin's oil paintings have been reproduced as high-quality, affordable, limited edition art prints. Four prints comprise the Waltzing Matilda series. Five prints comprise the Great Australian Horsemen series. See them at http://www.gauvin.com.au

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Five Fun Painting Ideas For Kids Rooms

2008-11-13T04:10:00.000-08:00

By Debbie Gretsch

So you want to change the look of your child's room but aren't really sure how to do it. You've never really been a painter, but hiring someone else to do is going to cost way too much. So now what? There are some fun and easy painting ideas for kids rooms that anyone can do and will easily change the look and feel of the bedroom all together.

1. Using words to decorate the walls. You probably never thought that decorating the walls with words could change the way it looks. You can keep the background color of your walls exactly the same not even lifting a paint brush. There are several different ways to go about painting words. You can do it by hand which can add a personal touch to any room, however if you're handwriting is less than perfect you can also buy stencils to etch the words across the room.
Some of the most fun and creative ideas come from nursery rhymes and other poems you may have heard. For example, for little boy's rooms you could write the words "Snakes and Snails and Puppy dog tails, that's what little boys are made of." For little girls who might be sharing a room with sister you could write a cute phrase like, "Two are we, my sister and me." You can make them up yourself or go looking for different quotes to use.

2. Murals. There are hundreds of different murals you can paint onto the walls of a kid's room, however finding someone to draw it for you might be hard to find. Since it's not a "professional" room or model home that you're showing to a lot of people you can get away with having an amateur artist come and draw whatever it is you need. Then once the mural is done you can paint it as you like. Murals can change the look and feel of a bedroom dramatically and can literally make a kids room become a fantasy world.

3. Sketches. Sketching is a great way to use the paint in a bedroom, especially if you're talented with the pencil. So what if you're not? Well, instead of fretting over how you're going to draw what your child wants look through some magazines and books to find the picture, make transparency of it and then project it onto the wall and trace it. It's really that simple. Once you've got the outlines of the character or object you can start painting. So sketches can be a fun and easy way to add some personality to the bedroom whether you can draw or not.

4. Themes. Of course when you're painting your child's room you can always go with a theme which sometimes makes it easier to figure out exactly what you're looking for. If you pick a theme before you begin any of the other stuff you can really get a clear picture of how you want to paint the room and what colors you will want to use. There are thousands of ideas out there when it comes to using themes to paint a room. From ocean sea floors, to princess and space ships the sky is truly the limit.

5. Magnetic and chalked paint. There are thousands of different ways to paint a child's bedroom, and two of the coolest things you can do with wall paint is painting a wall with magnetic or chalked paint. Yes it's true, you can buy paint that will actually make the wall a magnet and create a world of fun for your child. You can also buy paint that will allow your youngster to write directly on their wall like a chalkboard and erase it just the same. Of course you have to be careful that they only draw on the wall that has the chalked paint on it, but other than that it can be a lot of fun. There are literally hundreds of painting ideas for kid's room. The hard part about it is finding one that you absolutely love and your child will love.

Debbie Gretsch is a work-at-home writer. Her interests are parenting, education, pets and relationships. She lives in San Diego with her husband and two kids.
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Paint Color Selection Made Easier With Home Painting Ideas

2008-11-10T07:13:00.000-08:00

By Tim Lee

So you want to have your house repainted. But the problem is what the perfect color for your home is? With home painting ideas, you will be educated on how to select the paint color that will suit your style and needs.

Paint colors miraculously do marvelous effect to your home. If you will read on some lifestyle or home magazines, you will notice that most of the homes look alluring because of the choice of paint colors they used to design it. In fact, with the appropriate color selection, it can liven up the look of your home. But, with the many option for paint colors, a homeowner would get confused on what to pick, especially how a particular paint color would match from one room to the other.
Many individuals get baffled on selecting the right color that they would use for their home. Therefore, there are ways and guidelines that someone can follow in order to get the correct color inspiration for home painting.

With these guidelines, it is much easier for the owner to choose which colors would complement the rooms of their home. This would also help when a person decides to have some alterations in the home paint color by just relying on the owner's preference of colors. Having a mere knowledge of color combinations as well as the effect of each combination would do the magic.
There are 4 factors that should be kept in mind when choosing color: hue, intensity, temperature and value.

Hue is also the color. Hue pertains to major color combinations in conjunction with assorted intensities and values. Intensity is the judgment of the hue's brightness. Intensity is solely classified as dull or bright. When you see a hue as light, medium and dark, you are assessing the hue's value.

Temperature is the warmness or coolness of the hue. Red and yellow are considered warm colors. Blue and lime are acknowledged as cool colors. Beige is a neutral hue having the combination of cool and warm colors.

Value signifies the lightness and darkness of the hue. This term is related to shade, tone and tint. When the colors black, gray, or white are included in a certain color, it will eventually be judged whether the hue is light, medium or dark colored.

When a person is knowledgeable of these four factors to be considered, then selection of home paint colors would be more thrilling.

Moreover, searching the correct color temperature would sooner aid in creating the mood for a particular room of your home. This will crucially give effect on the overall appeal of the area. Home painting must also complement the colors of the furniture in your house, but if you know the factors to be considered, deciding wouldn't be a hassle.

With the factors stated, it will be helpful for the person in harmonizing the color scheme of the home. Understanding the effects of the colors to the person's mood is essential and that will make the task easier. These home painting ideas would open up great suggestions on how to beautify your dwelling.

For more home painting ideas, visit http://www.homepaintingdiy.com
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Fine Art Graduate Schools

2008-11-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

By Lucy Bushman

Upon completing a Bachelors degree in either the arts or the fine arts, many students opt to continue their education by applying to graduate school. Fine Art Graduate Schools offer students the opportunity to continue to refine their creative skills, become proficient in their area of expertise, and learn the professional skills needed in the art and business world. With many concentrations available, students should be able to find a graduate program that will meet their abilities and desires. Many schools encourage students to experiment with their own personal artistic expression in order to tap into the creative potential possessed by the individual student. Cultivating talent and providing students the opportunity for unlimited creative growth are just a couple of the goals of graduate schools. Graduate schools offer Masters Programs in the arts and fine arts, and many schools also offer PhD Programs as well.

Many Fine Art Graduate Schools offer both traditional classes and online classes. Since most graduate student bodies includes working adults, online classes are available to those who may not be able to attend traditional classes. However, many traditional classes are held in the evening in an effort to accommodate those in the workforce. Earning a graduate degree can take anywhere from 1 year to 5 years, and the time it takes to earn the degree is dependent on the type of degree sought.

Both online and traditional fine art graduate degrees include:

• Graphic Design
• Art Education
• Museum Studies
• Advertising and Public Relations
• Film Studies
• Non-profit and Arts Administration
• Multimedia/Visual Communications
• Industrial Design
• Theater and Drama
• Construction Science
• Ceramic Art

These are just a few of the degrees offered by Fine Art Graduate Schools, and there are many other concentrations from which to choose. The Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia offers both traditional and online art classes as well as the Academy of Art University in San Francisco California and the University of Massachusetts in Shrewsbury. The New York Film Academy and East Tennessee State University College of Arts and Science offer art and fine art graduate degrees.

Generally, graduate schools require a student desirous of an art or fine arts graduate degree to have earned a Bachelor degree in the arts or fine arts. Many schools require students to submit a portfolio containing the student's artwork. CDs and videos are also accepted but usually not in lieu of a portfolio. The student should be prepared to submit to the graduate school a statement or letter of intent along with the subject of their work. Graduate schools also ask students to provide them with information concerning the concepts and issues the student wishes to explore during their graduate studies.

Lucy Bushman is an accomplished niche website developer and author. To learn more about fine art graduate schools, please visit Today's Fine Art for current articles and discussions.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lucy_Bushman

The Alumni Paint

2008-11-05T19:36:00.000-08:00

By Nadeem Alam

There is nothing better than going back towards the roots while, there is nothing worse than cutting off the roots!

Nostalgia is normally considered in maroon sense but one of its shades; homesickness is something that crafts a tender heart and high values of association.

Association with home, association with family, association with friends and association with the institution; all this is what contributes to making of a unique personality, evolved from an ordinary one.

NCA is an institution par excellence, having a history over a hundred and thirty years when it was known as the Mayo School of Arts. It has produced first-rate skills in its generations of students. Eleven years after the partition in 1958, the Mayo School was renamed as the National College of Arts, but it took almost 47 years when few considerate minds felt the nonexistence of a common platform to rejoin the different generations that had qualified from this institution, subsequently on March 24th 2005 NCA Alumni Association was formed. After settling the necessary rules and regulations and registration process, NAA announced its first ever ‘Painting Exhibition’ at Zahoor al-Akhlaq Gallery on 24th Aug 2007. It became a much awaited event as all eyes were anxious to see a panorama of shades stretched over decades with old and the young painters from the same institution were getting registered to be displayed under the high-wooden roofs of NCA Gallery, now known as the Zahoor al-Akhlaq Gallery, named after a renowned alumnus as well as a reputable teacher of the college.

Prior to the opening of the exhibition, a small gathering of alumni, artists, critics and art-lovers was addressed at Shakir Ali Auditorium by Mr Abd al-Rahman, President NAA, Ms Nazish Ata Ullah, Principal NCA and Mr Khalid Maqbool, Governor Punjab and the chief guest, who later inaugurated the momentous exhibition.

The show comprised of 64 creations by 42 painters including great names like; Bashir Mirza, Saeed Akhtar, Zahoor al-Akhlaq, Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Asif and Muhammad Javed, masters like RM Naeem, Mehboob Ali, Asad Faruki, Kaleem Khan, Ghulam Mustafa were also rubbing shoulders with the very young ones like Ali Kazim, Faisal Asghar, Munazza Rashid, Nadia Rizwan, Mudassar Manzoor, Munazza Baqir, Shireen Bano, Ufaq Ahsan and Zoona Khan. Dr Murtaza Jaferi, Mehmood Alam, and Zulfiqar Ali Zulfi also participated in this first show of its own kind, where Nazish Ata Ulla, the Principal of NCA did contribute with her textured though simple prints.

Although the exhibition was long awaited and much debated, but for a frequent viewer, there were very few canvases, which could be called as new! There was a feeling that one had seen most of the work at one or at other gallery within the span of two to three years, most paintings had been displayed at different galleries of the town and was giving an impression of “Alumni Painting Collection” rather than “Alumni Painting Exhibition”. No doubt, it was a treat to watch the work of departed BM (Bashir Mirza) and Zahoor al-Akhlaq, but the new and young artists also put on show their repeatedly exhibited work, which made stronger inkling that only the walls behind the frames were different. Even then, taking into consideration the dispersive attitude of ours as a nation, this exhibition was a landmark as it, at least, amassed painters scattered across the country, and provided art critics and students with the opportunity to have a look on diversity of approaches and techniques, different painters from different eras were blessed with. Interestingly, there were missing, many renowned and famous names who, off and on, kept on exhibiting their work at different galleries, but did not grace this occasion due to reasons best known, either to them or to the management committee of the NCA Alumni Association. Frames that were put on view were also lacking, title of the painting, medium and size that hinted the impulsiveness and the hastiness which might be there behind the scene.
By and large, the show provided few very crafty canvases; Saeed Akhtar flaunted two of his assorted paintings one produced in 1967 and the other in the 21stcentury, showing the class of a genius from early realistic life-size male figure to a stylized and candid portraiture of a nomadic-looking modern women. But the dull and brown shades with variation in tones were the common features in both the paintings putting across the skills of the maestro in creating three-dimensionality, while working in monochromic paints.

A simple and diffused brown canvas with vague geometrical shapes, composed in a closed composition was letting the viewer get acquainted with the balance and craftsmanship the great Zahoor al-Akhlaq was known for. It was the most easy-looking painting of the entire exhibition but the feel created with ease, was not as effortless as it was looking.

Bashir Mirza, an artist, who accomplished international recognition through his creativity and unusual skill which, evolved through years of continuous work and observation. After acquiring mastery in realistic style, in his later years, BM experimented with form and colors; the painting at display was one of those bold and beautiful works shaped in 90s. A portrait in pure Red, Yellow and Green with tinges of Blue was making everybody realize the big BM mark, which earned him the pride and fame across the continents.

Balochistan was not known for its landscape beauty in terms of landscape painting before Kaleem Khan started to record the hazy, obscure and dry mountains as curvaceous horizon behind the meager yet attractive flora of the rocky lands. In this exhibition he came up with more colorful foliage, and for a change, with no mountain behind. But the color composition, created against the earthen color of a triangular soil-patch in the foreground, created a balanced contrast in terms of color and composition, independently.

Ahmed Khan with calligraphy of Arabic scriptures, composed in Yellow Square with maroon and black Hashia around, was something reminding the great tradition of illuminated manuscripts, an art the Persians and Mughals were known, for transmitting it into already existing practice of Sanskrit Manuscripts widespread within the subcontinent.

A Red, two panels red canvas with a little white and fluffy pigeon places on a rock was asking for applauds for a designer’s composition who dared to paint. Asad faruki’s ‘Untitled’ in Acrylic was making the atmosphere warmer which was already humid.

Normally in Pakistan, when one utters a word ‘woodcut’ the second word that comes to mind is ‘Mehboob Ali’. Undoubtedly, Mehboob Ali is the survivor of woodcut technique in Pakistan, who through his vision and skill documented the city of Lahore, especially the walled-city with gates, old buildings and historical architectural accomplishments. Other than woodcut, he revamped his sheets with dry pastels, in this exhibition; he displayed his pastel work capturing ‘Anarkali Food Street’ from Nabha Road. Honestly speaking, the standard, Mehboob has set for himself in woodcut, were not in attendance in his pastels.

Ali Kazim, a young and talented painter came up with his unique rendering of male head, captured from behind. A frame with water based pigments having modest tonality but enough depth to create three-dimensional form, while the detail of subtle neck and head muscles was splendid. His brown tones went from dark to darker without disturbing the eye of the viewer and the frame of the painting.

RM Naeem, who after setting himself up as master of linearity in connection with realistic craftsmanship, has started to grope possibilities in form, forced by emotions and perception. For the last couple of years his endeavors to excavate the reality within the reality had come up with a realistically-stylized technique. In this show, he was all set with his ‘Mystic Ritual’, a frame explicating monologue.

The show was attended by many, but not by many ‘Alumni’!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nadeem_Alam

How to Accurately Do a Cat Face Painting on Your Child

2008-10-31T02:02:00.000-07:00

By Clare Adams

If you have a young child who loves to have their face painted, then you should try cat face painting for your child. They most likely will love this type of thing because it is one of the most popular in the face paint industry.

In order to get the best paint job you can, you may want to be certain to use face paint stencils which can really give you the best possible results and allow you to paint with precision and accuracy.

This is a great idea for your child if you're throwing them a birthday party, and you can base the theme around the cat face painting as well. You can have all sorts of different cat designs in the party to make it a cat theme. This would make a fun party for your child especially if they like cats.

Kids facing painting designs can be very easy to create when you follow a stencil. This is one of the best ways to get the best results and allow your child to have a great face painting design that will give them hours of fun and allow them to feel their best.

Listed below are some reasons to use your own face painting paint and do the designs yourself:

Kids aren't very patient and they aren't going to sit still for long, so you should not expect them to sit still for very long. They just won't do it. So, one of the best ways for you to practice your technique is to use clear acetate. This can be purchased at most any supply store and you can use it over and over.

Have a photo album of some face paint designs which you like and wish to use again. When you do a great design, simply take a photo and put it in the album

Stick to simple designs because will certainly be the easiest for you to do, and as stated earlier, kids just want sit still for long.

Avoid face painting on very young children. If the child is less than two and a half, you should avoid doing a face painting on them. It' just too difficult and they just won't sit still long enough.

Avoid painting children's mouth if they're going to be eating soon afterwards. This can just cause some problems when they go eat and it can make for a mess.

These are some great ideas when it comes to face painting, and can really allow you to make the most of your time and efforts as well as doing a great job when you decide to try a cat face painting on your child.

If you are interested in doing more face painting for your child or at parties, you need to know the do's and don'ts to get the best results. Click here to learn more!
http://www.102tips.info/face-painting
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Clare_Adams

Learn to Draw & Paint - How & Where to Study to Be an Artist

2008-10-31T01:59:00.000-07:00

By Barry Waldman

The answers can be complex and confusing. Search the web for the phrase "art school" for millions of choices. If you go to the web and Google (search) "learn to draw" you get to choose from 4,880,000 web sites (at least that's what I found while writing this article). By the time you try it, there will likely be more.

If you do a web search using Google for the term "learn to paint" Google showed 854,000 web sites in the light blue bar at the top of the page under the "Google" logo.

There are degree granting and non-degree granting art schools, art schools with classrooms and online art courses. Some non-degree art courses give "Certificates of Completion."
Finding an art school course to learn to draw and paint that suits your personal needs, budget and available time is a challenge.

Here is a list of some of the options:

Option 1: A way to learn drawing and painting is to go to an art school, college or university like Pratt Institute (campuses in Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City, USA where I graduated and later taught). Two issues for many people are the time and money needed. The Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree I took at Pratt now costs over $100,000.00 USD for the four year degree program. Of course, this web article is viewed by a worldwide audience. To see the great art schools around the world, there is a very good listing of them on the Saatchi Gallery web site page titled: "Art Colleges around the World: Universities, Visual Arts, Fashion and Design Institutions." The Saatchi Gallery Art Colleges page web site address is listed on the links page in the resource box at the bottom of this article.

The Saatchi Gallery list includes the college I graduated from (Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York City, USA) and art schools in many countries all across the world. The Saatchi Gallery art school listings had 57 pages with thousands of art schools listed when this article was written.

Option 2: Take a local art course either at a private art school, a local high school, secondary school or college. Of course, some localities don't offer that option and the skills of the teachers are important, so you need to get recommendations and check these teachers out before you enroll. You can Google these choices, ask neighbors, friends and teachers in schools near you. You might also get recommendations from art clubs if you have them in your locality. Some artists give private art classes to individuals or groups. I used to give private group lessons in the basement of my home.

Option 3: Just pick up a pencil or oil paints and start drawing and painting. This works for some people like Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson) who taught herself how to paint starting at age 81. See the article about her on Wikipedia (address of Grandma Moses article on Wikipedia is listed on the links page in the box at the bottom of this article). Grandma Moses had no art training and her paintings, originally priced at $5.00 to $10.00 USD, now sell in the $10,000.00 to $60,000.00 USD range and her annual income was said to be $500,000.00 USD in the late 1950s. Grandma Moses died in 1961 at the age of 101.

Option 4: Buy some art books and/or video tapes on how to draw and how to paint at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble online or at your local book store and learn to be an artist. I once had a teacher who said take a few weeks in art school learning the basics (which end of the brush to use, etc.) and paint 200 pictures and you'll be an artist. This works for some people.

Option 5: Online distance learning art courses are for students unable to attend on-campus classes. Online art courses provide flexibility as to when students study and practice and when they complete lessons. Some offer degrees and some hobby courses issue certificates of completion. Some consist of totally online step-by-step how-to lessons the student follows to teach themselves. Others send the students art textbooks, art supplies and lesson plans. The student reads the art textbooks and follows the recommended drawing and painting practice sessions. Next, the distance student completes and mails their assigned drawing or painting to their school. An instructor at the school draws or paints a critique with comments of each of the student's assigned picture and mails the student's work and critique to the student.

Option 6: There is a new kind of art school using the web to interactively teach drawing and painting.

A digital camera is included in each student's sign up kit along with art textbooks and art supplies. Students who have their own digital camera deduct the cost of the digital camera, usually supplied with the course, from the tuition cost. The kit is mailed to the newly enrolled student. The student works at home, reading the art textbooks, practicing, and then doing the assigned lesson artwork from the assignments they get in their personal web folder on the school web site.

The student takes digital photos of their completed lesson artwork for each lesson and then sends those photos as email attachments to the school.

The art teacher at the online art school draws or paints a critique of the emailed student's lesson artwork with comments on how the student might have better understood the lessons taught in the art textbooks and supplemental on line mini-lessons. That painted or drawn critique of each student's submitted artwork is posted to the school website, a personalized how-to-do-It-better critique for the student to see 24/7/365. The student's submitted drawings or paintings and the teacher's critiques are shown on in the student's personal web folder at the school's web site.
Subjects covered are drawing, form, composition, color theory, perspective, still life, landscape drawing and painting as well as drawing and painting the figure.

This school offers a "Certificate of Completion" and a CD with all of the student's submitted work, all of the critiques by the teacher and suggestions for continued growth as an artist on completion of the full art course.

The author has painted and taught for 50 years and has had over 30 art exhibits of his paintings. My USA based online art school has students in 19 countries. I have taught art classes at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Manhattan, USA, Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, Famous Artists Schools in Westport, Connecticut, USA. I have also lectured on various art subjects all over the USA and in Holland, Belgium, France, South Africa and Australia.

Links to web sites mentioned in the article above can be found at: http://www.interactiveartschool.com/linksEzine.html
My online interactive art school is at: http://www.interactiveartschool.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barry_Waldman

Free Tattoo Art Gallery - Free Tattoo Artist?!

2008-10-31T01:56:00.000-07:00

By Tatum Tyler

Are you looking for a free tattoo art gallery? Why? Are you about to get a new tattoo? Are you going to look for a free tattoo artist also? No?! Well if you're going to pay good money for a tattoo artist, why wouldn't you want to pay money for a good tattoo design?

A free tattoo art gallery is bound to give you outdated and generic looking designs. You're not going to find many people who are going to give away good art work unless it's been around for awhile. If you want an outdated, cookie cutter tattoo, then a free tattoo art gallery is where you want to look.

Do you know the type of tattoo you want inked? Do you know where on your body you want the tattoo? Armed with that information, you can now start looking for your tattoo design. If you want a unique tattoo design, you will need to browse through online tattoo galleries that have superior quality designs. The best way to get a unique tattoo is to design your own tattoo.

Membership tattoo galleries allow you unlimited access to tattoo designs you can print anytime. You can find a couple different designs, print them out and work the different ones together to make your unique tattoo design. A free tattoo art gallery would give you designs that look like they were made on your computer for a coloring book. Some free tattoo designs were never meant to be used as tattoos. It is hard to ink a tattoo from a sub standard design.

A tattoo from a free tattoo art gallery would not be unique. When you get a tattoo, you have a story to tell. Since everyone is different, your designs should be different. A tattoo is an expression of ourselves. If you get the same tattoo as someone you see walking down the street, you are saying that the two of you are alike and expressing the same thing. I don't think that's true.

Don't end up with tattoo regret. Find a unique design that speaks to you. Take your time. If you're looking in the right place, you will find something that you will feel is uniquely you. You just have to be in the right place.

Stop wasting time looking at website after website for a free tattoo art gallery Find great looking tattoos by looking through thousands of the best tattoo designs all in one place.
Check out this review and make an investment now in one of the best membership tattoo gallery sites and get unlimited downloads of tattoos so you can find the best tattoo designs for you.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tatum_Tyler

Art Paintings From Your Photo

2008-10-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

Gunpowder drawings by Cai Guo-Qiang, who was recently given a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, sold for well below $500,000 in 2006; a suite of 14 works brought $9.5 million last November.

According to the Art Price Index, Chinese artists took 35 of the top 100 prices for living contemporary artists at auction last year, rivaling Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, and a host of Western artists.

"Everybody is looking to the East and to China, and the art market isn't any different," says Kevin Ching, CEO of Sotheby's Asia. "Notwithstanding the subprime crisis in the U.S. or the fact that some of the other financial markets seem jittery, the overall business community still has great faith in China, bolstered by the Olympics and the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010."
There are indications, however, that the international market for Chinese art is beginning to slow. At Sotheby's Asian contemporary-art sale in March, 20 percent of the lots offered found no buyers, and even works by top record-setters such as Zhang Xiaogang barely made their low estimates. "The market is getting mature, so we can't sell everything anymore," says Xiaoming Zhang, Chinese contemporary-art specialist at Sotheby's New York. "The collectors have become really smart and only concentrate on certain artists, certain periods, certain material."
For their part, Western galleries are eagerly pursuing Chinese artists, many of whom were unknown just a few years ago. Zeng Fanzhi, for example, has been signed by Acquavella Galleries in New York, in a two-year deal that exceeds $20 million, according to a Beijing gallerist close to the negotiations; William Acquavella declined to comment. Zhang Xiaogang and Zhang Huan have joined PaceWildenstein, and Ai Weiwei and Liu Xiaodong showed with Mary Boone last spring. Almost every major New York gallery has recently signed on a Chinese artist: Yan Pei Ming at David Zwirner, Xu Zhen at James Cohan, Huang Yong Ping at Gladstone, Yang Fudong at Marian Goodman, Liu Ye at Sperone Westwater. Their works are entering private and public collections that until now have not shown any particular interest in Asian contemporary art.

"The market hasn't behaved as I anticipated," says New York dealer Max Protetch, who has been representing artists from China since 1996. "We all anticipated that the Chinese artists would go through the same critical process that happens with art anywhere else in the world. I assumed that some artists would fall by the wayside, which has not been true. They all have become elevated. It seems like an uncritical market."

One of the key artists buoyed by this success is Zeng Fanzhi, who is best known for his "Mask" series. Five years ago his works sold for under $50,000. Today he commands prices on the primary market closer to $1 million, with major collectors Charles Saatchi and Jose Mugrabi among his fans. Now preparing for his first solo show at Acquavella in December, he is considered one of the more serious artists on the Beijing scene because he works alone, without the horde of assistants found in most other artists' studios in China. Still, his lifestyle is typical of that of his equally successful peers. When asked if he owns a mammoth black Hummer parked outside his studio, he answers, "No, that's an ugly car. I have a G5 Benz."

This success has blossomed under the watchful eye of the Chinese government. Movies, television, and news organizations are strictly censored, but on the whole, the visual arts are not. Despite sporadic incidents of exhibitions being closed or customs officials seizing artworks, by and large the government has supported the growth of an art market and has not interfered with private activity. In the 798 gallery district in Beijing, a Bauhaus-style former munitions complex that has been transformed into the capital's hottest art center, with more than 150 galleries, one finds works addressing poverty and other social problems, official corruption, and new sexual mores. The icons of the former China-happy workers and peasants and heroic soldiers raising the red banner-are treated with irony, if at all, by the artists whose works are on view in these galleries, which are private venues generally not under the strict control of the Ministry of Culture.

On the eve of the Olympics, however, the government asked one gallery to postpone an exhibition until after the games. Considered unsuitable was "Touch," a show by Ma Baozhong at the Xin Beijing Gallery of 15 paintings depicting important moments in Chinese history, including one based on a photograph showing Mao Zedong with the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama in 1954.

The Beijing municipality spent enormous funds to renovate the 798 district before the Olympics, putting in new cobblestone streets and lining its main thoroughfare with cafés. Shanghai, which has benefited less from government support, now boasts at least 100 galleries. Local governments throughout the country are establishing SoHo-style gallery districts to boost tourism.

One person who seems confident about the future of the Chinese market is Arne Glimcher, founder and president of PaceWildenstein, who opened a branch of his gallery in Beijing in August. Located in a 22,000-square-foot cement space with soaring ceilings, redesigned at a cost of $20 million by architect Richard Gluckman, the gallery is in the center of the 798 district. "We are committed to the art, and we wanted to open a gallery where our artists are," says Glimcher. Adding that he normally eschews the "McGallery" trend of setting up satellite spaces around the world, Glimcher insists that it was necessary to establish a branch in Beijing because there is "no local gallery of our caliber" with which Pace could partner. He has, however, recruited Leng Lin, founder of Beijing Commune, another gallery operating in 798, to be his director.

Another Western dealer who has taken the China plunge is Arthur Solway, who recently opened a branch of James Cohan in Shanghai. "I started coming to China five years ago, and I was fascinated by the energy," says Solway, who wanted to introduce gallery artists like Bill Viola, Wim Wenders, and Roxy Paine to Asia but, like Glimcher, could not find a public museum or private gallery that he considered professionally qualified to handle such exhibitions. James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is located on the ground floor of a 1936 Art Deco structure in the French Concession, a particularly picturesque section of the city. The building was once occupied by the military, and red Chinese characters over the front door still exhort, "Let the spirit of Mao Zedong flourish for 10,000 years."

"From 1966 to 1976, during the Cultural Revolution, people had nothing, but now there are spas in Shanghai and people drinking cappuccinos and buying Rolex watches-it's an amazing phenomenon," says Solway, who believes it is only a matter of time before these same newly affluent consumers begin to collect contemporary art.

Chinese collectors-or the hope that there will be Chinese collectors-are the key draw luring these galleries to Beijing. As recently as two years ago, few could name even a single Chinese collector of contemporary art. It was a truism that the Chinese preferred to spend their money acquiring antiquities and classical works. Since then several well-known mainland collectors have emerged on the scene.

Most visible is Guan Yi, the suave, well-dressed heir to a chemical-engineering fortune, who has assembled a museum-quality collection of more than 500 works. A major lender to the Huang Yong Ping retrospective organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2005, he regularly entertains museum trustees from all over the world, who make the pilgrimage to his warehouse on the outskirts of Beijing. Now he is building his own museum.

Another noted figure is Zhang Lan, head of the South Beauty chain of Szechuan-style restaurants throughout China; she also has assembled an enviable collection and displays pieces from it in her chic establishments. The film actress Zhang Ziyi is representative of a new class of collectors from the entertainment industry, while Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, chairman and CEO of the mammoth SOHO China real estate empire, have commissioned projects for their upscale residential properties.

Two collectors who are cheerleaders for the Beijing art scene are Yang Bin, an automobile-franchise mogul, and Zhang Rui, a telecommunications executive who is also the backer of Beijing Art Now Gallery, which took part in Art Basel in June, one of the first Beijing galleries to appear at the fair. These two do more than collect art. They have hosted dinners for potential collectors, organized tours to Art Basel Miami Beach, and brought friends with them to sales in London and New York. Zhang Rui, who owns more than 500 works, has lent art to international exhibitions, most notably the installation Tomorrow, which features four "dead Beatles" mannequins floating facedown, created by artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu for the 2006 Liverpool Biennial, which rejected it.

Zhang is now building an art hotel, featuring specially commissioned works and artist-designed rooms, outside the Workers' Stadium in the center of Beijing. "I am trying to think of ways of changing my private collection into a public collection," Zhang explained to ARTnews through a translator. It isn't financially advantageous to do this in China, as no tax benefits accrue from donations to museums or other nonprofit institutions.

Zhang Rui represents the handful of Chinese collectors who are public about their activities and are building noteworthy collections. Far more typical of buying activity in China is the rampant speculation taking place in the mainland auction houses. There are 1,600 registered auctioneers, and their sales attract hundreds of bidders. Chinese buyers are more comfortable with auction houses, which have been in business since 1994, than with galleries, which weren't licensed to operate by the government until the late 1990s.

These auction houses run by their own rules, generating what sometimes seems like a "wild, wild East" atmosphere. It is, for example, fairly common for a house to get consignments directly from artists, who then use the sales to establish prices for their works on the primary market. More often, now that China has hundreds of galleries, dealers come to a sale with buyers in tow, publicly bidding up works to establish "record prices" and advertise their artists. This kind of bidding ring would be considered illegal in the United States, but in China it is viewed as a savvy business practice. There is little regulation of auction houses and few developed legal norms in the field, so that even when buyers have grievances-with fakes and forgeries, for example-they do not feel they can resort to the law. Bidding is a social as well as a business activity, and buyers are happy to flaunt their status by paying record prices or quickly flipping artworks, not only for profit but so they can boast of their short-term gains.

As the domestic market for contemporary art matures, however, many of these practices are coming into question. "Two years ago it was more necessary for me to bring my artists to auction," says Fang Fang, owner of Star Gallery in Beijing, which specializes in young emerging artists such as Chen Ke and Gao Yu. "Now that the gallery market has increased, I find it is better to keep my artists out of the auction rooms, and there is much less reason to sell there."
Two mainland firms, Beijing Poly International Auction Company, and China Guardian Auctions Company, dominate the field of contemporary Chinese art. Their combined 2007 total of more than $200 million in sales represented nearly two-thirds of all auction sales in this category in mainland China for the year. Last spring Guardian achieved $142 million in sales of classical artworks, furniture, ceramics, silver, and coins, and $40 million in sales of contemporary material. The latter figure included the $8.2 million fetched by Liu Xiaodong's Hotbed No. 1, a record for a painting sold on the mainland. In a similar range of sales last spring, Poly sold $130 million worth of works, including $27 million in a single evening contemporary-art sale. (These figures represent a slight decline for the year because both houses held benefit sales for Szechuan earthquake victims, raising more than $20 million to support relief efforts.)
Poly and Guardian reflect two vastly different perspectives on the domestic market in Chinese contemporary art. Guardian is the oldest and most respected auction house in China, founded in 1993 by Wang Yannan, daughter of Zhao Ziyang, the former Communist Party leader who was placed under house arrest after opposing the government's use of force against demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in 1989. If Poly is known for its vast resources and willingness to make deals to nab consignments, Guardian is known for its respected specialists and long-term client relationships. For example, when the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, decided to sell 20 pieces of Qing dynasty porcelain in mainland China, it consigned the collection to Guardian.

The atmosphere of a sale at Poly or Guardian is surprisingly similar to that in the salerooms of Christie's or Sotheby's. The catalogues are identical in design, and the bidding proceeds in an orderly, even sedate, fashion, despite the crowds of spectators in the room.

"From our beginning, we studied what the principles of an auction house should be, and we stick to these principles," says Guardian president Wang. She also serves on the board of the new nationwide auctioneers' association, which hopes to enforce regulations on the auction market.
Poly is an enterprise within the China Poly Group Corporation, a $30 billion conglomerate that is the privatized branch of the People's Liberation Army. Established initially to repatriate artworks and antiquities, Poly has spent $100 million buying objects such as the bronze animal heads from a water-clock fountain that were looted from Beijing's Summer Palace by British and French troops in 1860; the pieces later turned up in the West. The repatriated objects are showcased in the Poly Art Museum in the sparkling New Beijing Poly Plaza, a glass-enclosed tower designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

The more freewheeling Poly is known for practices such as putting up for auction works from its own collection or having consignors guarantee that they will bring buyers to the sale to meet low estimates. Still, even here there are signs that the market is maturing and has become too expensive for casual speculators. "These collectors that you are talking about are actually quite small collectors," explains Zhao Xu, senior consultant at Poly. "They bought for several years at very affordable prices, but now that prices are skyrocketing, the only way they can afford to buy is to sell. The collectors that I know already come from a high social status, and they can afford to buy pieces worth $1 million or $2 million and are looking for the best works, the masterpieces, to add to their collections."

When asked if Poly follows the rules of the Western auction houses, Zhao sharply retorts, "Sometimes even Sotheby's doesn't follow the rules." Or as Gong Jisui, an art-market specialist who is a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, says, "The Chinese learned this game of speculation from the Westerners who played it first."

The incident to which both men are referring is the sale of the Estella Collection at Sotheby's Hong Kong on April 9 of this year. The event reaped $18 million for 108 works. (An additional 80 works will be up for sale this month at Sotheby's New York.) The collection was put together from 2003 to 2006 by New York dealer Michael Goedhuis for a group of investors that included Sacha Lainovic, a director of Weight Watchers International, and Raymond Debbane, CEO of the Invus Group, a private equity firm.

Last year the collection of approximately 200 works was sold to William Acquavella, who consigned it to Sotheby's. Auction house officials will not discuss financial details, but Sotheby's had a stake in the collection. After the sale it was widely reported that many of the artists were angered by the auction because, they said, they had sold their works to Goedhuis at discount prices in exchange for promises that the collection would remain together for public display.
"The idea was to keep the collection intact and to see it safely into some institution," says Goedhuis, who denies that any promises were made. "The ideal situation was to see it with an institution in China, because there is no such collection." The collection was published in a book, China Onward, with an essay by leading China expert Britta Erickson, and it was exhibited at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem shortly before the sale. According to Goedhuis, because of the rapid rise in prices, the investors chose to sell the collection with hopes that it would not be broken up.

"Since the museums in China aren't mature enough nor are they rich enough to do an acquisition like this, my hope was that Steve Wynn would do so for his sophisticated casino complex in Macao," Goedhuis says. He turned to Acquavella because, he says, he believed the dealer would bring the collection to Wynn; Acquavella paid a reported $25 million. Acquavella director Michael Findlay laughs at the suggestion that there was any indication that the collection would go to Wynn. "I think this whole thing is surrounded by so much rumor and speculation," he says. "We bought a group of paintings, and we sold a group of paintings, and that's the whole story."
According to Maarten ten Holder, Sotheby's managing director for North and South America, the firm received inquiries before the sale from several artists in the collection, wondering why the works were to be auctioned. There is disagreement about whether Goedhuis made firm promises to keep the collection together or merely made a sales pitch to artists that inclusion in the collection would enhance their reputations. Yue Minjun, who had two works in the sale, says no promises were made. And Goedhuis bought Zeng Fanzhi's Chairman Mao with Us from Hanart T Z Gallery in 2005 for the asking price, $30,000, no discount given. It sold for $1.18 million.

"You have to understand that there was no market for this work when I was buying," says Howard Farber, whose collection brought $20 million at Phillips de Pury & Company in London last October. Farber assembled 100 choice works by assiduously visiting artists' studios in Beijing in the late 1980s, accompanied by the Beijing-based critic Karen Smith, a leading author and curator in this field. A work for which he paid $25,000 in 1996, Wang Guangyi's Great Criticism: Coca-Cola, was sold at Phillips de Pury for $1.6 million. The buyer was Farber's son-in-law, Larry Warsh, who bid on several works at the sale, according to newspaper accounts. "I really didn't actually know I was going to buy the Wang Guangyi until that moment," says Warsh. "Howard has his collection, and it's not my collection, and there were many pieces I wanted from that collection that I would have wanted to buy but couldn't afford."
Many Beijing artists had agreements with Warsh to produce work for his collection and his art advisory business, which began in 2004, inspired by Farber's example in the field. "I was enamored by China, and then I was enamored by the art of China as I learned about important artists," says Warsh. "But what really hit me first was how the pricing did not make sense to me at all-everything was out of whack."

Warsh, who amassed a collection of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf in the late 1980s, was the publisher of the now-defunct Museums Magazine, which he sold to LTB Media in 2004. He stated at one point that his collection totaled more than 1,200 works; now, he says, he owns approximately 400 paintings and photographs. Part of his collection is managed by his new business venture, AW Asia, which has a gallery in Chelsea and intends to assemble collections of Chinese contemporary art for museums and major private collectors. The Museum of Modern Art in New York recently acquired 23 photographs from AW Asia.

With Farber and Warsh circulating in Beijing for a variety of purposes, it was easy for Chinese artists to become confused about who was buying for whom and for what purpose. In recent interviews, several artists-most notably Zhang Xiaogang, who had an agreement with Warsh-pointed to him as an example of a speculator.

Warsh replies, "While some artists are not so pleased with their decision to have sold quantities of artwork at what was then their current values not so long ago, there are many artists who are not resentful and actually pleased that someone has taken an interest in their work."
New York dealer Jack Tilton, who has worked with Chinese artists since 1999, says, "All of these artists are hoping that their work finds good homes rather than getting churned in the commercial market. But they have also played a part in this market, embracing capitalism more than we have, in funny ways. They are not naive about any of this stuff."

When asked about the artists' reactions to the sale of his collection, Farber was flabbergasted: "So what? Now I am the bad guy. That pisses me off!"

A number of major collectors of Chinese contemporary art who have been in the field for some time are holding on to their collections. Uli Sigg, Swiss ambassador to China, Mongolia, and North Korea from 1995 to 1998, has built a collection of key works that he has toured in the exhibition "Mahjong" to museums throughout Europe and, most recently, the University of California's Berkeley Art Museum (September 10-January 4). Belgian collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens have used their resources to establish the first nonprofit contemporary-art center in Beijing, where they are currently exhibiting their historic collection. So far, collector Charles Saatchi has been hanging on to his purchases in preparation for opening his new gallery in London on the 9th of next month with a show of Chinese contemporary art; he has also launched a Chinese-language Web site on which mainland artists can post their works.

In comparison with Western buying, mainland Chinese participation pales. Though there are many rumors about the power of the new Chinese buyers, their presence has not been felt in the major auction houses, where most of the records are being set. "Hong Kong right now covers the global buyers, especially those from across Asia," says Eric Chang, Christie's international director of Asian contemporary art. "I am not really seeing mainland Chinese buyers-less than 10 percent-a drop from around 12 percent." Dealers in China also have seen few mainland collectors among their regular clients. "I don't know yet about collectors," says New York dealer Christophe Mao of Chambers Fine Art, which recently opened a branch in Beijing.

Despite the current shortage of mainland art collectors, China is emerging as a major art center, having become a hub for buyers from South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia, and for overseas Chinese from all over the world. Reflecting this diversity is the wide range of foreign dealers among the 300 galleries in Beijing, including Continua from Italy, Urs Meile from Switzerland, Arario and PKM from South Korea, Beijing Tokyo Art Projects from Japan, and Tang from Indonesia.

"In Beijing it's getting increasingly difficult to talk about the Chinese market as a separate entity from the broader Asian art market or the international art market," says Meg Maggio, an American who came to China in 1988 and ran one of the first galleries in the country, CourtYard, in Beijing, from 1998 to 2006. Now she has her own gallery, Pékin Fine Arts, where she represents an international stable of artists. "How do you describe the market for a Korean artist showing in China or a Chinese artist living in New York?" she asks, noting that her business can come from South Korean collectors visiting Beijing or European companies doing business in China.

One factor in China's development as a center for contemporary art is the proliferation of art fairs. Beijing has two, the China International Gallery Exposition and Art Beijing; Shanghai has the newly created ShContemporary, now in its second year; and Hong Kong just launched ART HK. CIGE director Wang Yihan says her fair attracted 40,000 visitors this year, while the more high-toned ShContemporary brought in 25,000 and ART HK 08 had 19,000. These numbers may seem small in comparison with the 60,000 who crowd Art Basel, but dealers believe that the fairs in Asia are worthwhile because they attract new buyers and make Asian collectors feel more comfortable about acquiring art from galleries.

"Anywhere else, a fair is just a fair," says Lorenz Helbling of ShanghART, one of the oldest galleries in China and a participant in Art Basel. "But in Shanghai a fair feels like so much more because only there can it make an impact on several million people." He is referring not only to attendance but to the intensive publicity and official recognition given to ShContemporary in its inaugural year.

Just a few years ago it would have been impossible to try to sell contemporary art to Asian buyers, let alone mainland Chinese collectors, in the public forum of an art fair. Now, with the astounding success of Chinese contemporary art, collectors from across the region-and more than a few from the United States and Europe-are targeting China as a destination. According to Nick Simunovic, who has opened an office and showroom for Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong, it is only a matter of time before these regional buyers turn their attention to Western contemporary art.

"My sense is that wherever you have tremendous wealth creation, the collecting cycle goes through three phases," he says. "First, people collect their cultural patrimony, and then they collect their own contemporary art. I think the final stage is when they gain a more globalized contemporary-art approach."

Gagosian first considered opening an office in Shanghai but encountered obstacles to doing business on the mainland. The most formidable of these is a 34 percent luxury tax on art, which foreign galleries that participated in ShContemporary found difficult to avoid. Hong Kong, by comparison, is a duty-free zone. And Simunovic found that even Jeff Koons was a tough sell in Shanghai, whereas Hong Kong offers more possibilities for Western contemporary art. Just a year ago Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau paid $72 million for Andy Warhol's Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I). In May Christie's brought a Warhol portrait of Mao, valued at $120 million and for sale privately, for viewing in Hong Kong. (At press time it had not yet been sold.)
"Sure, China is hot, but that's just the peak of the iceberg," says Lorenzo Rudolf, former director of Art Basel and cofounder of ShContemporary. "This is not just about a group of Chinese painters. It's about a growing market going on in this continent."

With the sheer abundance of galleries, auction houses, and art fairs in China, the larger art world is recognizing the power of the Asian market. Standing in an auction house in New York or London watching paintings by Chinese artists sell for millions, one can grouse about this boom and hint that it will turn out to be a bubble. But strolling in a bustling gallery district in Beijing, with students and tourists crowding the cafés and boutiques and filling the huge art showrooms, few would predict a downturn in the near future.

Portrait Artists
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linda_Huang

Halloween Face Painting Ideas

2008-10-18T06:40:00.000-07:00

By Penny Crane

Halloween is such fun for kids of all ages, and adults too. Here are some face painting ideas to get you in the Halloween spirit.

Halloween face painting idea 1: pumpkin

A bright orange pumpkin painted on each cheek. Black paint used to paint eyes, nose and mouth. A light grey would be used to show the ridges of the pumpkin as well as its outline. An alternative would be to do a full face pumpkin with an orange face base (blending a darker orange shade over cheekbones), black triangle shape over the eyes (extending above and below the eye area), a black nose and a large black mouth (need to cover more than just the lips).

Halloween face painting idea 2: skull

A full face design. Has a white face as the base, large black 'panda' eyes, black and white vertical stripes on the lips (with the white stripes wider than the black ones) and a trickle of red from one side of the mouth (to indicate blood).

Halloween face painting idea 3: vampire

A full face design. A white face base, bright red lips, fangs coming out of each corner of the lower lip (outline is light grey, fill is white, and tip is red to denote some blood), eye lids are smoky grey (right up to and over eye brows), eye brow then exaggerated with black sweeping strokes.

Halloween face painting idea 4: bat

A full face design. A white face base, bat's face painted on forehead above the nose (it's in black with light grey for eyeballs, and for some definition in ears); the bat's body is painted in black on the nose and ends at the base of the nostrils (use different shadings of black; the bat's wings extends out from head and body and covers the eyes curving up towards the temple and down the outside of the eye to mid cheek (again use different black shadings and some fine dark grey strokes to paint some definition into the wings); the lips are painted in dark grey with an exaggerated upward curl at the corners.
For another 50 face painting ideas - click here to check them out.
If you would like to learn face painting techniques - click here to for more information.
From Penny Crane - http://www.greatfacepaintingideas.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Penny_Crane

5 Best Reasons to Paint a Halloween Pumpkin Instead of Carving This Halloween

2008-10-18T06:38:00.000-07:00

By Jamie Josephs

Now that Halloween is just around the corner, you'll notice many of your neighbors decorating their front porch and home exterior with scary spiderwebs, scarecrows, skeletons and just about anything and everything spooky.

Along with all those new-fangled state of the art and traditional Halloween decorations (like lights, ghosts & goblins), no front porch Halloween decoration display would ever be totally complete without the traditional American Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins. But are there all that many folks who truly enjoy the whole messy pumpkin carving experience?

This Autumn, why not try to paint a Halloween pumpkin for your Jack-O-Lantern display? You'll likely be surprised that once you try painting a pumpkin, you'll probably never go back to carving your pumpkins again.

Now presenting, my top 5 reasons why you should skip pumpkin carving and learn how to paint a Halloween pumpkin this year instead...

1) Pumpkin Painting is really easy to learn

Just about anyone can quickly learn how to expertly paint amazingly impressive pumpkin designs without much work involved at all. Even young children will enjoy and have fun painting their own personal pumpkins and will feel a real sense of pride when you proudly display their little pumpkin creations on your front porch right along with your expert painted pumpkins. Plus, pumpkin painting doesn't limit you to what you can create. Many times, carving can make it very difficult to create more than just a basic outline design.

2) Pumpkin Painting is Safe with no knives or sharp cutting tools

Who likes dealing with sharp knives, saws and other pumpkin carving tools? Probably nobody. Plus, knives are dangerous (especially with younger ones) and give you very little control over the more intricate pumpkin design patterns you may want to create. There's just only so much design freedom when you're using a big, sharp blade to cut through almost an inch thick of pumpkin flesh. Pumpkin painting is safer and easier and allows even you're littlest Halloween enthusiast to participate in the pumpkin painting fun.

3) Less mess. No pumpkin guts splattered everywhere

I absolutely hate the whole pumpkin guts mess thing. Once you finally work your way through sawing the top off your gourd, then it's a sloppy, slimy chore of scraping and pulling all the pumpkin slop and goo out. It takes alot of time and always makes a big mess no matter how careful you are. Add kids to the mix and you're scrubbing your table, walls and floors for weeks not to mention picking up pumpkin seeds until Christmas.

4) Your painted pumpkins will outlast a carved pumpkin by many weeks

While carved Jack-o-Lanterns can sometimes get saggy, mushy, stinky and rotten in a couple weeks if the weather's warm, a painted pumpkin design can and will last a month or even two! You can enjoy your pumpkin painting masterpieces right up through Thanksgiving. And when you paint your pumpkins, you can even paint new pumpkins FOR the Thanksgiving holiday. No so with carving. A carved pumpkin on your Thanksgiving dinner table just wouldn't look right.

5) Pumpkin Painting is really fun, for anyone of any age.

Everyone in your family can have fun painting pumpkins this Halloween. It's a great family activity everyone can enjoy. Mom's, Dad's and kids of all ages can participate in the pumpkin painting fun. And little ones can really enjoy getting creative and expressing themselves in designing their little pumpkin masterpieces.

Go ahead and give it a shot. Skip the pumpkin carving this Fall and instead, paint a Halloween pumpkin this year. I guarantee you'll have a ton of fun, you and your kids will really enjoy the experience, and you'll create some awesome pumpkin painting designs so that you'll probably never want to go back to carving your Jack-O-Lanterns again!

Painting pumpkins is a unique alternative to the old time tradition of pumpkin carving. Pumpkin painting patterns and designs are unlimited and painted pumpkins will endure significantly longer than carved Jack-O-Lantern. While these benefits by themselves are perfect reasons to try painting your Halloween pumpkins this year, there are other benefits too. Become a pumpkin painting expert at:
===> Easy Pumpkin Painting Decorating
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jamie_Josephs

House Paint Colors - Planning Before the Plunge

2008-10-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

By Rico Franco

Doing a repaint of the house is one of the most exhaustive, expensive, and exasperating projects to be done in the homestead, but it doesn't always have to be. Oftentimes, the troubles arise when the project is rushed into without any planning, survey of the area to be painted, and budget considerations. You get house paint colors you don't like, you pay too much, and then you realize all of the problems could have very well been avoided.

This is why it is important to have several things in mind before you plunge into a repaint project of your domicile. This will save you a lot of time, effort, money, stress, and the eventual headache.

Here are some considerations that you should help you plan ahead for your next foray into interior paint color combinations:

Room area - This is a pitfall a lot of first time do-it-yourselfers trip into on their first attempt in doing a paint job in their space. Take the time to actually know the measurements of the room or area you are painting. Knowing the measurements allows you to plan how much paint you need to buy and use.

Room dimensions - Depending on the actual size of the room, did you know you can actually generate the impression that a room is really bigger or smaller that it really is? Colors produce a subtle effect that has a way of changing how a room is perceived. Certain colors, like violet, green, or blue have the ability to make a room appear to be larger than it really is, although the darker aspects of the hues, such a hunter green and navy blue, have the opposite effect, making a room smaller. This is information is particularly useful if you would want to make a smaller room appear to be larger, and if this is the case, it would be good to invest in either light neutral colors, or even go all out white.

Ceiling Color - Very much the same can be done with the ceiling. A very large space in rooms is almost a rare thing to find in modern houses today, where maximization of space has become the primary thought, rather than having an actual large space. By painting the ceiling in either white or very light colors, the illusion of a high ceiling is achieved, adding to the apparent size of the room. Conversely, darker colored ceiling can make drawn in the space of a room, making it appear to be smaller.

Large surface area - When painting over a surface that is particularly large, most paint colors have a tendency to become actually darker than it really is. This has often puzzled many people, thinking the colors they purchased weren't the ones they wanted or the wrong colors were mixed. Truth is, it's the right color, it just so happened this is how paint looks like when spread out over a large surface area. A good idea would be to pick wall paint colors that are somewhat lighter than the shade you had originally intended. Add to this the surrounding colors in the room, like that of the furniture, large fixtures, light sources, etc.

Rico Franco is an SEO Copywriter/Marketing Specialist specializing in optimized written content and marketing/advertising copy. He was awarded by the Catholic Mass Media Awards in 2005 for Best Business/Feature story written, produced, and aired. He has had extensive experience in writing for various fields: 8 years in Journalism, 4 years in Advertising/PR, and 2 years in Online Marketing (SEO/SEM). Rico also writes various articles in home improvement, online games, and other topics.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rico_Franco

Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa - The "Industry Standard" of Portrait Painting

2008-10-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

By Annette Labedzki

"Portrait of Lisa Geraldine, wife of Francesco Del Giaconda...." That might not get a layman real excited, even if some Renaissance man executed it. Neither would that layman get worked up about it, knowing further that the painter of this non-creatively titled painting was in reality a scientist & a mathematician, and was more famous for his architectural drawings than his portraits. Bias against the painting would build up further if he knew that this was one of the artist's "minor" works, which he did for earning a living. Who would want to look at some rich man's wife sitting in the front of an imaginary landscape? Who would want to buy such a boring work? Who would indeed? Unless that painting was known as "The Mona Lisa" and its painter was none other than Leonardo da Vinci, the teacher of the very famous Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo.

Considering that Leonardo was not quite an oil paint maestro and his expertise lied actually in science and mathematics, one tends to forget that often great artists are shadowed by their own talents. So famous was da Vinci in his times for his scientific inventions, that painting was not really his forte. The surprising part was the apparent disdain with which Leonardo treated painting. He painted, repainted, mutilated, and rebuilt most of his paintings, despite them being excellent classics that ranged from the likes of "Last Supper" to the "Virgin of the Rocks." Leonardo's obstinate urge to experiment with different techniques led to total disasters and many of his creations crumbled in his lifetime only. Owing to the usually messed up treatment of Leonardo, only few of his paintings survived to the level that no more than fifteen could be traced today.

Leonardo lived in Italy in the mid of fifteenth century and created a majority of his works on commission from religious trusts. Mona Lisa was a personal commission, Leonardo though gave it a religious touch by posing her as the Virgin Mary, according to the then prevailing fashion. The painting's subject, "Mona Lisa" is as ordinary as it sounds; it is the portrait and the painter's mystery motives that intrigue. The real mastery of da Vinci lies in creating a classical yet somewhat surreal atmosphere around this woman that has tickled many art lovers. Many questions have been raised from time to time such as, "Is she real?" "Why is the background imaginary?" "Why are her eyebrows plucked?" "Is "she" a man?" "Are there any hidden codes in the painting?" "Why the positioning is in a particular way?" In addition, the views of millions of conspiracy theorists have made the painting all the more enigmatic. As mentioned earlier also, all this guesswork is natural considering the fact that da Vinci was a man who created puzzles beyond the intelligence of his times.

"Mona Lisa" is a classic textbook framework of portrait painting. The proportion and the positioning of each element used in this portrait were aesthetically so strong that they became a sort of "industry standards." If not for anything but this, da Vinci deserves all that he has been revered for, including the very wonderful Mona Lisa.

Annette Labedzki received her BFA at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. She has more than 25 years experience. She is the founder and developer of an online art gallery featuring original art from all over the world. It is a great site for art collectors to buy original art. Is is also a venue for artists to display and sell their art . Artists can join for free and their image upload is unlimited. Please visit the website at http://www.labedzki-art.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Annette_Labedzki

History of holiday art in Italy

2008-10-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

The fork of rebirth and for centuries the heart of Western civilization, Italy has contributed a huge part of Europe 'in the historical and cultural capital of the holiday S. of the manufacturers with an interest in art or culture and appreciates the abundance of opportunities to explore a part of the world 's masterpieces of art and architecture more incredible.

Anyone with a passion for art as a holiday in the history of art in Italy, but the thick fur of art interested in the Renaissance and Baroque periods are particularly within the party with the country a great job of leaders from Michael Angel, Leonardo Da Vinci, Donatello, Botticelli, ATF Angelico, Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Bernini, Titian and Raphael.

There are many attractive areas to visit in Italy, but three of the most perfect in the history of the holiday art are glorious cities of Florence, Venice and Rome.

Art holiday in Florence : Florence was the epicenter of the Italian Renaissance and the rest of the world S attractions highest possible for art lovers, as well as being one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

With previous residents including the rebirth Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Donatello, Botticelli and Raphael, it 's command that Florence is not surprisingly so popular during the holidays in the history of the article.

Uffizi : Florence 's Uffizi Gallery is a Mecca for these celebrations of art, history and celebrations of cultural capital, and contains the important job of all the top artists and more. It is one of the most famous museums of painting and sculpture in the world.

Holiday art in Venice : In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Venetian republic was significant energy during the 1700s and began to significantly influence art, architecture and literature of Venice from the rest of Europe.

Today, with most of the city for 600 years without change, except that the lovers t come into the art gallery to get the address instead of Manufacturers cultural capitals that the feast day of St. with an interest in the Venetian school of painting must be sure to visit the small gallery of the valley of 'Accademia, with its many heads working together to Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and Tintoretto.

Despite the major impact of the large number of tourists who gathered in Venice to take his magic, the city remains a need for the art of holiday in Italy.

Holiday art in Rome : Another main focus during the Renaissance, the heart of Rome is a mix of models of Renaissance art. Baroque Rome is famous for its seventeenth century of the great places and its many monuments, museums and artistic leaders.

Rome 's Borghese Gallery of Modern Art : The city has many museums and galleries to visit fantastic holiday in the history of art, including the Borghese Gallery, with the main work by Raphael, Rubens, Titian, Caravaggio and Bernini.

Rome also praised the museum of modern manufacturers of fine art and the rule of the holidays is surprised by this gallery, which puts the largest collection of Italian paintings and sculptures of the nineteenth and XX centuries, understanding the work of Goya, Renoir, Van Gogh, degasser always, Monet, Cezanne, Modigliani, Kandinsky and Klimt.

Use Paint Chips to Match Colors to Your Decor

2008-10-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

By Jack S. Blacksmith

Everyone knows that painting is about the easiest and least expensive way to update a room's look. That's fine, but how do you choose the right design colors?

The right color might not matter so much if you live alone and don't get much company. But if you have family or roommates, then this simple decision can have major consequences. So what do you do? The answer, as it is in so many situations is to compromise: Have everyone who lives there make a list of the colors they'd like in that room (yes, even the kids). Then, look to see where you have common ground.

Next see if there are any complementary colors. Go to a paint department or a home improvement center to get paint chips and see if the colors you choose are complementary. Use the lighter color for the walls, for example, and a bolder color for accent pieces and moldings. Perhaps you can find wallpaper striped with the colors you've picked. If you can narrow down your color choices to one or two, then the compromise should be easy to make.

If you simply cannot agree on the colors you like, then consider what is already in the room: Choose a color from the upholstery or the flooring and use that as your base color. This will give your room a pulled-together look. You may want to go dramatic by picking a color that contrasts rather than matches a predominant color in the room. Try a contrasting color on the wall that is the room's focal point. You will be impressed with how dramatic it is.

There are some other simple rules to follow when picking a room color. Always paint the ceiling the same color or a lighter color than the walls to avoid giving the room a top-heavy appearance. If you want to make a room seem bigger and brighter, use light colors. Your ceiling will seem higher up. On the other hand dark colors make the ceiling look lower and the room will seem smaller.

Of course, when you paint the room be very careful: cover all the furniture that can't be moved, and the flooring as well. Be sure to patch up all holes and fix any uneven parts of the wall before you open the paint can. Don't be surprised if you need a second coat of paint and have the additional coats on hand so you don't have to make a second trip to the store to get a paint that matches.

If the task is beyond you, you may want to hire a professional painter. Call for price estimates. When you call be sure you have the room's dimensions so the painter can give you a fair price.
When the painting is done and the furniture is put back in place, you will be impressed with how much better the room looks. You'll be inspired to keep going with the rest of your home. Soon you will have a showplace to be proud of.

Jack Blacksmith's summaries can be found on different web publications tied to information on kitchen design. You can come across his work on kitchen cabinet hardware at http://www.kitchen-cabinets-tips.com and other sources for kitchen cabinet hardware information.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jack_S._Blacksmith

Tips on How to Paint a Seascape

2008-10-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

By Annette Labedzki

One thing vital to any form of art is to look deeply at the reality and then try break it down to the small fragments of Colors and Space. It is important to get a big picture view, especially when one sets out to paint a Seascape or a Landscape. One need not paint every bit of the Leaf of Grass in a Landscape, nor does one paint every bit of foam on a sea when painting a Seascape. That is well nigh impossible and if you wanted to do that, why paint a Seascape or a Landscape, get a camera.

The first bit of preparation for Seascape Painting starts with choosing the scenery that excites you. It is no use trying to paint a panorama, which looks great but does not evoke any feeling in you. Only when you are excited, you pour your heart out and produce great art. So how do we go about painting a Seascape onto our canvas? Lets explore:

1. Subject. First, a "field of view" has to be chosen to paint a Seascape. This means that you have to restrict your view to the scenery you want to paint and exclude the rest. For selecting that, you have to make a View Finder by cutting a 3"X1" slot in a Hard Board. The View Finder has to be placed at an arms length to view the Seascape you want to paint. Once you have decided upon the view to be covered through a Seascape Painting, draw a rough sketch on the Canvas.

2. Lines. While painting a Seascape, the first line is that of the Horizon. Place the line of the Horizon at three fourth a distance from the top. Loosely define the lines to bring out the basic contour of the Foam or Spray in your Seascape Painting.

3. Backdrops. Paint large areas of colors such as, the sky and the land, in your Seascape. These elements define the sea and bring out the contrast. One important point to be taken care of is that the sky is more or less of the same hue as that of the sea. The Land that brackets the Sea in a Seascape Painting generally contrasts with the color of the Sea. Moreover, it looks nice to place some man made structure in your View Finder, while painting a Seascape.

4. Foam. The Foam/Wave/Spray of the Sea is the defining part of a Seascape Painting. The most common mistake that occurs while painting the Spray (especially with Oil Paints) is to define it very strongly with closing Brush Strokes. These calculated Brush Strokes give a very heavy appearance to the Waves and they look like puffed cotton. The trick to avoid this mistake is to look closely at the direction of the spray and not the volume. Use your brush to "spray" while coloring in the direction of the wave and not being too firm about it.

5. Practice. It is advised that you try at least a hundred Pencil Sketches of the Waves before embarking on painting a Seascape. Once you have captured the lightness and the sparkle of the Waves, you have covered major length and may not be "at sea" to paint a Seascape.

Annette Labedzki received her BFA at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. She has more than 25 years experience. She is the founder and developer of an online art gallery featuring original art from all over the world. It is a great site for art collectors to buy original art. Is is also a venue for artists to display and sell their art . Artists can join for free and their image upload is unlimited. Please visit the website at http://www.labedzki-art.com
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Easy Steps For Drawing Hands

2008-09-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

By Annette Labedzki

Drawing Hands may initially seem difficult to the most of us. The unique shapes of Fingers, Nails, and Palms add complexity to the structure of Hand. While drawing Hands, it is necessary to draw the shapes of all its elements in correct position and proportion. When observed, you may find Hands with different sizes and shapes such as, Short, Long, Fat, and Slender. Moreover, we can find variety in the length of Middle & the Little Fingers, and the size of Joints, to mention some.

The best way to draw anything is to reduce hypothetically its structure to basic Geometrical Shapes. Similarly, imagine the shape of Hand to be a complex of Circles and Ovals. Once your Eye is trained to visualize Hands in the dimensions of Ovals and Circles, overlapping each other, the observations can be put up on paper easily. This is the simplest method for drawing Hands.

Method 1: Geometrical Shapes

• Basic Framework. Imagine your Hand enclosed in a Cotton Glove, and sketch the basic shape of Palm and Fingers. In addition, draw Imaginary Lines to illustrate the Folds of Hands and its Joints. Remember to keep the Pencil Strokes as light as possible.
• Fingers & Thumb. Now, observe the gap between the Fingers and their placement in the respect of Thumb. Draw as per your observation, and check if the position of the Fingers you have drawn is right.
• Detailing. After you have drawn the basic structure of complete Hand, it is time to detail it now. For this, draw all the Curves along the outline of Hand, especially near Thumb, the elevations due to folding. Next, concentrate on the Creases of your Hand and sketch them. Carefully draw the Curves near the Joints of Fingers and Palm.
• Shade. Observe the light and shadows on the Hand surface and accordingly shade the Hand you have drawn. This will give a more realistic look to the Hand you have sketched. If the drawn Hand has a Dorsal View, then do remember to shade it light, while drawing the Veins and Bones, actually visible on that surface of Hand.

Method 2: Hands Print

• Hands Prints. Take an imprint of Hands dipped in color and pressed on paper.
• Geometrical Figures. Now, take a Tracing Paper and mark the shapes of Fingers in the terms of Oblongs and Circles, while that of Palms as Circles.
• Hand Framework. Now, trace the drawn Geometrical Figures on a fresh sheet of paper. You will get the Oblongs & Circles, arranged in the format of Hand.
• Shapes & Joints. Develop the Rounded shapes of Fingers and Palms. Look at your Finger. It is divided into 3 sections between Knuckles & Tip. Now observe the Joints of Hand along with the thickness and the distance between the Joints. It has to be shorter on the inner side.
• Drawing Fingernails. Keep your Pencil Strokes light to draw Nails, indicating their White portion. Different Hands have different shape of Nails. Some have rounded or Flat Squared Tips, some extend past the Finger, some are short, some Nails are Tiny, while some are long.
• Cuticles. While drawing a Close up of Hand, make sure to draw Cuticles.
• Drawing Thumb. Thumb has a very different shape. It has two joints, while the Fingers have three. Notice that the Thumb curves outwards from Hand. Thumb is Rounder in shape than Fingers and it has a fleshy fat shape at its base.

Annette Labedzki received her BFA at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. She has more than 25 years experience. She is the founder and developer of an online art gallery featuring original art from all over the world. It is a great site for art collectors to buy original art. Is is also a venue for artists to display and sell their art . Artists can join for free and their image upload is unlimited. Please visit the website at http://www.labedzki-art.com
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Jack the Dripper - Discussing Jackson Pollock

2008-09-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

By Benedict Hunter

Jackson Pollock is probably one of the most recognizable names when it comes to the world of abstract expressionism. He is most famous for his paintings that showcase his "Drip Technique" like in No.5 1948 which prompted the New York Times to fondly refer to him as "Jack the Dripper" in 1956. The nickname effectively encapsulated what Pollock's art was all about, but it also pigeonholed him to the drip technique. But, nonetheless "Jack the Dripper" is certainly one of the greatest artists in American Art History that has effectively immortalized abstract expressionalism the way Braque and Picasso did for Cubism.

Born on the 28th of January 1912, he spent his youth in Arizona and later on in Chico, California. He studied in Los Angeles at the 'Manual Arts High School'. He also managed to experience Native American Culture when he went out with his father during his land surveys of the Native American land. By the 1930's, Pollock had already moved to New York and was under the tutelage of Thomas Hart Benton. Benton's work and artistic point of view influenced Pollock's early work for only a short while.

At the age of 33, Pollock married Lee Krasner, who was also a very important American Painter. They moved into to Springs, Long Island, New York. Their former residence is now known to be the "Pollock-Krasner House and Studio". The house had a nearby barn that Jackson Pollock turned into his studio. There he created the majority of his most well known pieces and it was also here that he allowed himself to be photographed by the young Hans Namuth. The young photographer eagerly documented the movement and the attitude of Pollock when he fell into a Zen-like state as he drizzled and splashed paint onto a canvas that has been tacked to the hard floor of his barn studio.

As mentioned, Pollock is most famous for paint drip technique, but he also has a lot of graphic work that were made up of brightly colored pieces. Notable of these include: Male and Female - completed in 1942, Moon-Woman - 1943, Stenographic Figure - 1942, Easter and the Totem - 1953 and a lot of others. The middle part of Pollock's career was dominated by this paint drip artwork. In the early part of his career, he often gave names to his work, but it is said that he grew tired of magazines and critics trying to look through the name of the artwork and that is why he started numbering his work instead.

There was also a point when Pollock stayed away from color and concentrated on Blacks, Grays and Whites, but he later on returned to using color as portrayed in Easter and the Totem and in Portrait and a Dream- both finished in 1953. Pollock tragically died in 1956 in a supposed "alcohol related" car crash. It has been reported that Pollock struggled with alcoholism during the later part of his life and that affected his work.

Pollock was once again in the news in 2006 when one of his paintings entitled: No.5, 1948 sold for a record breaking US $140 Million to a supposedly 'anonymous' buyer. The painting was once the property of David Geffen. Pollock's life and work was also commemorated in the movie entitled: Pollock, in 2001. The movie stared Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden. It gained Academy Award nominations for the Best Actor for Harris and harden won the Best Supporting Actress Category.

Pollock's life was the life of a true artist. Despite his death, his name is one of those that are easily recognizable and his fame is comparable to Picasso, Van Gough, Degas and a lot of other great artists.

Art Prints and Photos on Canvas are available to buy from GetCanvas.co.uk. Benedict is a freelance article writer for Dolphin Promotions SEO Company.
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Vincent Van Gogh's Life, Works and Death

2008-09-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

By Steve Kevin

Born on 30th of March, 1853 in Groot Zundert, a small town in the Brabant, the southern Netherlands - Holland at the time - Vincent Van Gogh was destined to become the most popular post-impressionist painter of all ages, alas only appreciated after his tragic death.
He was named after his brother who died exactly the same day a year before and arguably this naming had a huge negative impact on all his life.

His father Theodorus Van Gogh (1822-1885) was a minister of Dutch Reformed Church and it seems that Vincent became very much interested on his father's profession which as the result years later he chose to work as a preacher in a mining region in Belgium known as Borinage and even worked for free after he was dismissed.

Vincent had 2 brothers named Theodorus and Cor and three sisters named Elisabeth, Anna and Wil. Theodorus who was 4 years younger than Vincent played a very significant roll in his life. Theo not only financially supported Vincent throughout his life but he was the one who encouraged Vincent to take up painting seriously. It is widely accepted that if it hadn't been because of Theo's support the world would not had such a remarkable painter.

Having lived more than a year together Vincent ended his relationship with Clasina Maria Hoornik and a year later he fell in love with Margot Begemann, his neighbor's daughter who was ten years older than him but it didn't result a happy marriage either as both families opposed their relation.

Vincent started his career as an employee for the art dealer Goupil & Co. Later the company sent him to London where he increasingly got interested in religion. Later he was sent to Paris where the company found him troublesome and dismissed him. In 1880 he started taking painting lessons seriously.

Some of the most famous and expensive paintings in the world were created by Van Gogh, in fact four of top ten most expensive paintings are Van's work, sadly he didn't have much luck selling his works during his life time which left him a poor artist.

"Red Vineyard at Arles", the only painting that Vincent managed to sell before his death earned him just 400 Francs - roughly the equivalent of $1000 today - was painted in 1888 and exhibited in 1890 in Brussels.

The most expensive painting by Vincent is "Portrait of Dr. Gachet". Gachet, a hubby painter himself, was the doctor who took care of Vincent during the last months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. As with many paintings of Van this one has two versions, one of which was sold for $82.5 millions in 1990. The current estimate of value is $136.1 millions.

It is believed that Vincent suffered from insanity and depression all his life which ended in committing suicide several times. Finally on 27 July 1890 he shot himself in the chest which caused incurable injuries that killed him two days later. He left behind him many highly respected and extremely expensive paintings which changed the course of Neo-Impressionism forever.

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How to Paint a Room in a Few Simple Steps

2008-09-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

By Tony Evans

There are not many projects that you can do to your home that offer so much improvement at such an inexpensive price as interior painting. You can change the entire look and feel of a room in very little time. Painting is a great way to update any room with just a little time and effort.
Once you have decided on your color choice, go your local paint or hardware store with that particular color and have enough paint mixed to cover your entire room. Latex paint should be your first choice for painting your walls. The most common paint sheen for walls is flat, eggshell and satin. Flat finishes will hide flaws in your wall much better than eggshell or satin finishes, but will not resist dirt as well and is harder to clean. Eggshell or satin would be a better choice for high traffic areas. If you will need to paint the trim in your room you will also need to purchase your trim paint. The most common color for painting trim is white, but you can paint it any color that you choose, just be sure that it complements your wall color. Trim paint is usually semigloss or gloss, both of which form a hard shell when dry and holds up very well to wear and tear.

There are some tools and materials that you must have in order to complete this project. You will need drop cloths or tarps, paint roller, paint tray, a paint brush, screwdriver, putty knife, wall spackling and a household cleaner.

1. To begin, move all furniture away from the walls and place the items in the center of the room. Next you will need to cover all of your flooring and furniture with drop cloths. You can also use disposable plastic covers to place over your furniture instead of drop cloths if you choose. Remove all electrical switch plates and outlet covers. After removing the switch plates, replace the screws so they will not get lost. Remove all pictures and any other items hanging from the walls.

2. Using a cleaning solution, clean the walls thoroughly. Rinse off with water and allow to completely dry. If you have any stains such as smoke or water stains you will need to prime these areas using an oil based primer. If you do not prime these areas first, the stains will penetrate through your new paint.

3. Using the wall spackling and a putty knife, repair all nail holes in the drywall. Once the wall spackling dries, lightly sand the area using fine grit sand paper.

4. Begin painting by trimming around all doors, windows, baseboards and the edge where your walls and ceilings meet. If you are not planning to paint your trim, you may wish to tape the edges of the trim using painters tape before you paint.

5. Using your paint roller and paint tray, begin painting the wall from the top corner and working your way down the wall with the paint. Apply the paint in small sections, usually an area approximately 4' x 4' can be covered with each roller refill. Begin each new section beside the previous and then blend the paint edges together while still wet.

6. Work quickly and don't stop until you have completed one wall or have reached a break such as a door or the corner of the room so that you can maintain a wet edge.

7. Allow the first coat of paint to fully dry and then determine if you will need an additional coat of paint.

8. When painting your trim, paint the tops of the doors and windows first and work your way down so that you can remove any runs as you go. Paint your baseboards last.

Allow the paint to fully dry at least a full day before hanging your pictures back on the walls.
Take your time and good luck. The benefits that you receive from interior painting is definitely worth the time and effort that you invest.

Copyright (c) 2008 Smoky Mountain Painting
The author has over thirty years experience in the home improvement industry and is the owner of Smoky Mountain Painting in Pigeon Forge Tennessee.
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Drawing is Really Not That Hard!

2008-09-21T18:23:00.000-07:00

by Musa Aykac

If you walk up to any person on the street and ask them if they can draw? You are bound to get a reply such as "I can't draw to save my life" or "Draw? You must be joking".

Drawing is rarely a skill, obviously if you are a born talent and drawing is in your blood like Da Vinci or Banksy then there is nothing to really be taught. But not being able to draw is just a saying, or ignorance by a person who has not actually been taught. If you put a human mind to any task, it will eventually learn to pick up the traits to that solution. Art is a form of mechanics, your first attempt will probably fail abysmally, but that's not to say that you such give up.

Drawing is a skill, vision is natural. You will always be able to draw, but the difference between someone that can draw and someone that can perform art is all in the vision. The likes of Banksy and many over artists all have the vision, which is why they are one of the finest artists around. But it only takes a little education of art, for you to become a confident drawer.

We will now look at a few solutions that you can perform, to make you a confident artist. There are a variety of ways in which you can use to brush up on your drawing skills, the first and most obvious being to join an art class. This has a downside to it, especially for beginners, as they do not feel confident enough to show there drawings in front of the public. To build up your confidence and self of steam, I would grab yourself some books or DVDs. In this collection of resources you will be able to carefully study the fine art of drawing, and get step by step guides on how you can improve your technique.

When you have built up your confidence, you should then join a variety of classes. This way you will not only have a tutor teaching you the ins and outs, but you will also be able to socialise with other artists.

Everybody has the ability and agility to draw, if you open up your mind and do not be discouraged by failures, then you will be able to pick up a pencil and draw whatever your heart desires.

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Art Paintings From Your Photo

2008-09-19T09:55:00.001-07:00

By Linda Huang

The market for Chinese contemporary art has developed at a feverish pace, becoming the single fastest-growing segment of the international art market. Since 2004, prices for works by Chinese contemporary artists have increased by 2,000 percent or more, with paintings that once sold for under $50,000 now bringing sums above $1 million. Nowhere has this boom been felt more appreciably than in China, where it has spawned massive gallery districts, 1,600 auction houses, and the first generation of Chinese contemporary-art collectors.

This craze for Chinese contemporary art has also given rise to a wave of criticism. There are charges that Chinese collectors are using mainland auction houses to boost prices and engage in widespread speculation, just as if they were trading in stocks or real estate. Western collectors are also being accused of speculation, by artists who say they buy works cheap and then sell them for ten times the original prices-and sometimes more.

Those who entered this market in the past three years found Chinese contemporary art to be a surefire bet as prices doubled with each sale. Sotheby's first New York sale of Asian contemporary art, dominated by Chinese artists, brought a total of $13 million in March 2006; the same sale this past March garnered $23 million, and Sotheby's Hong Kong sale of Chinese contemporary art in April totaled nearly $34 million. Christie's Hong Kong has had sales of Asian contemporary art since 2004. Its 2005 sales total of $11 million was dwarfed by the $40.7 million total from a single evening sale in May of this year.

These figures, impressive as they are, do not begin to convey the astounding success at auction of a handful of Chinese artists: Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun, Cai Guo-Qiang, Liu Xiaodong, and Liu Ye. The leader this year was Zeng Fanzhi, whose Mask Series No. 6 (1996) sold for $9.6 million, a record for Chinese contemporary art, at Christie's Hong Kong in May.

Zhang Xiaogang, who paints large, morose faces reminiscent of family photographs taken during the Cultural Revolution, has seen his record rise from $76,000 in 2003, when his oil paintings first appeared at Christie's Hong Kong, to $2.3 million in November 2006, to $6.1 million in April of this year.

Gunpowder drawings by Cai Guo-Qiang, who was recently given a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, sold for well below $500,000 in 2006; a suite of 14 works brought $9.5 million last November.

According to the Art Price Index, Chinese artists took 35 of the top 100 prices for living contemporary artists at auction last year, rivaling Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, and a host of Western artists.

"Everybody is looking to the East and to China, and the art market isn't any different," says Kevin Ching, CEO of Sotheby's Asia. "Notwithstanding the subprime crisis in the U.S. or the fact that some of the other financial markets seem jittery, the overall business community still has great faith in China, bolstered by the Olympics and the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010."
There are indications, however, that the international market for Chinese art is beginning to slow. At Sotheby's Asian contemporary-art sale in March, 20 percent of the lots offered found no buyers, and even works by top record-setters such as Zhang Xiaogang barely made their low estimates. "The market is getting mature, so we can't sell everything anymore," says Xiaoming Zhang, Chinese contemporary-art specialist at Sotheby's New York. "The collectors have become really smart and only concentrate on certain artists, certain periods, certain material."
For their part, Western galleries are eagerly pursuing Chinese artists, many of whom were unknown just a few years ago. Zeng Fanzhi, for example, has been signed by Acquavella Galleries in New York, in a two-year deal that exceeds $20 million, according to a Beijing gallerist close to the negotiations; William Acquavella declined to comment. Zhang Xiaogang and Zhang Huan have joined PaceWildenstein, and Ai Weiwei and Liu Xiaodong showed with Mary Boone last spring. Almost every major New York gallery has recently signed on a Chinese artist: Yan Pei Ming at David Zwirner, Xu Zhen at James Cohan, Huang Yong Ping at Gladstone, Yang Fudong at Marian Goodman, Liu Ye at Sperone Westwater. Their works are entering private and public collections that until now have not shown any particular interest in Asian contemporary art.

"The market hasn't behaved as I anticipated," says New York dealer Max Protetch, who has been representing artists from China since 1996. "We all anticipated that the Chinese artists would go through the same critical process that happens with art anywhere else in the world. I assumed that some artists would fall by the wayside, which has not been true. They all have become elevated. It seems like an uncritical market."

One of the key artists buoyed by this success is Zeng Fanzhi, who is best known for his "Mask" series. Five years ago his works sold for under $50,000. Today he commands prices on the primary market closer to $1 million, with major collectors Charles Saatchi and Jose Mugrabi among his fans. Now preparing for his first solo show at Acquavella in December, he is considered one of the more serious artists on the Beijing scene because he works alone, without the horde of assistants found in most other artists' studios in China. Still, his lifestyle is typical of that of his equally successful peers. When asked if he owns a mammoth black Hummer parked outside his studio, he answers, "No, that's an ugly car. I have a G5 Benz."

This success has blossomed under the watchful eye of the Chinese government. Movies, television, and news organizations are strictly censored, but on the whole, the visual arts are not. Despite sporadic incidents of exhibitions being closed or customs officials seizing artworks, by and large the government has supported the growth of an art market and has not interfered with private activity. In the 798 gallery district in Beijing, a Bauhaus-style former munitions complex that has been transformed into the capital's hottest art center, with more than 150 galleries, one finds works addressing poverty and other social problems, official corruption, and new sexual mores. The icons of the former China-happy workers and peasants and heroic soldiers raising the red banner-are treated with irony, if at all, by the artists whose works are on view in these galleries, which are private venues generally not under the strict control of the Ministry of Culture.

On the eve of the Olympics, however, the government asked one gallery to postpone an exhibition until after the games. Considered unsuitable was "Touch," a show by Ma Baozhong at the Xin Beijing Gallery of 15 paintings depicting important moments in Chinese history, including one based on a photograph showing Mao Zedong with the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama in 1954.

The Beijing municipality spent enormous funds to renovate the 798 district before the Olympics, putting in new cobblestone streets and lining its main thoroughfare with cafés. Shanghai, which has benefited less from government support, now boasts at least 100 galleries. Local governments throughout the country are establishing SoHo-style gallery districts to boost tourism.

One person who seems confident about the future of the Chinese market is Arne Glimcher, founder and president of PaceWildenstein, who opened a branch of his gallery in Beijing in August. Located in a 22,000-square-foot cement space with soaring ceilings, redesigned at a cost of $20 million by architect Richard Gluckman, the gallery is in the center of the 798 district. "We are committed to the art, and we wanted to open a gallery where our artists are," says Glimcher. Adding that he normally eschews the "McGallery" trend of setting up satellite spaces around the world, Glimcher insists that it was necessary to establish a branch in Beijing because there is "no local gallery of our caliber" with which Pace could partner. He has, however, recruited Leng Lin, founder of Beijing Commune, another gallery operating in 798, to be his director.

Another Western dealer who has taken the China plunge is Arthur Solway, who recently opened a branch of James Cohan in Shanghai. "I started coming to China five years ago, and I was fascinated by the energy," says Solway, who wanted to introduce gallery artists like Bill Viola, Wim Wenders, and Roxy Paine to Asia but, like Glimcher, could not find a public museum or private gallery that he considered professionally qualified to handle such exhibitions. James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is located on the ground floor of a 1936 Art Deco structure in the French Concession, a particularly picturesque section of the city. The building was once occupied by the military, and red Chinese characters over the front door still exhort, "Let the spirit of Mao Zedong flourish for 10,000 years."

"From 1966 to 1976, during the Cultural Revolution, people had nothing, but now there are spas in Shanghai and people drinking cappuccinos and buying Rolex watches-it's an amazing phenomenon," says Solway, who believes it is only a matter of time before these same newly affluent consumers begin to collect contemporary art.

Chinese collectors-or the hope that there will be Chinese collectors-are the key draw luring these galleries to Beijing. As recently as two years ago, few could name even a single Chinese collector of contemporary art. It was a truism that the Chinese preferred to spend their money acquiring antiquities and classical works. Since then several well-known mainland collectors have emerged on the scene.

Most visible is Guan Yi, the suave, well-dressed heir to a chemical-engineering fortune, who has assembled a museum-quality collection of more than 500 works. A major lender to the Huang Yong Ping retrospective organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2005, he regularly entertains museum trustees from all over the world, who make the pilgrimage to his warehouse on the outskirts of Beijing. Now he is building his own museum.

Another noted figure is Zhang Lan, head of the South Beauty chain of Szechuan-style restaurants throughout China; she also has assembled an enviable collection and displays pieces from it in her chic establishments. The film actress Zhang Ziyi is representative of a new class of collectors from the entertainment industry, while Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, chairman and CEO of the mammoth SOHO China real estate empire, have commissioned projects for their upscale residential properties.

Two collectors who are cheerleaders for the Beijing art scene are Yang Bin, an automobile-franchise mogul, and Zhang Rui, a telecommunications executive who is also the backer of Beijing Art Now Gallery, which took part in Art Basel in June, one of the first Beijing galleries to appear at the fair. These two do more than collect art. They have hosted dinners for potential collectors, organized tours to Art Basel Miami Beach, and brought friends with them to sales in London and New York. Zhang Rui, who owns more than 500 works, has lent art to international exhibitions, most notably the installation Tomorrow, which features four "dead Beatles" mannequins floating facedown, created by artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu for the 2006 Liverpool Biennial, which rejected it.

Zhang is now building an art hotel, featuring specially commissioned works and artist-designed rooms, outside the Workers' Stadium in the center of Beijing. "I am trying to think of ways of changing my private collection into a public collection," Zhang explained to ARTnews through a translator. It isn't financially advantageous to do this in China, as no tax benefits accrue from donations to museums or other nonprofit institutions.

Zhang Rui represents the handful of Chinese collectors who are public about their activities and are building noteworthy collections. Far more typical of buying activity in China is the rampant speculation taking place in the mainland auction houses. There are 1,600 registered auctioneers, and their sales attract hundreds of bidders. Chinese buyers are more comfortable with auction houses, which have been in business since 1994, than with galleries, which weren't licensed to operate by the government until the late 1990s.

These auction houses run by their own rules, generating what sometimes seems like a "wild, wild East" atmosphere. It is, for example, fairly common for a house to get consignments directly from artists, who then use the sales to establish prices for their works on the primary market. More often, now that China has hundreds of galleries, dealers come to a sale with buyers in tow, publicly bidding up works to establish "record prices" and advertise their artists. This kind of bidding ring would be considered illegal in the United States, but in China it is viewed as a savvy business practice. There is little regulation of auction houses and few developed legal norms in the field, so that even when buyers have grievances-with fakes and forgeries, for example-they do not feel they can resort to the law. Bidding is a social as well as a business activity, and buyers are happy to flaunt their status by paying record prices or quickly flipping artworks, not only for profit but so they can boast of their short-term gains.

As the domestic market for contemporary art matures, however, many of these practices are coming into question. "Two years ago it was more necessary for me to bring my artists to auction," says Fang Fang, owner of Star Gallery in Beijing, which specializes in young emerging artists such as Chen Ke and Gao Yu. "Now that the gallery market has increased, I find it is better to keep my artists out of the auction rooms, and there is much less reason to sell there."
Two mainland firms, Beijing Poly International Auction Company, and China Guardian Auctions Company, dominate the field of contemporary Chinese art. Their combined 2007 total of more than $200 million in sales represented nearly two-thirds of all auction sales in this category in mainland China for the year. Last spring Guardian achieved $142 million in sales of classical artworks, furniture, ceramics, silver, and coins, and $40 million in sales of contemporary material. The latter figure included the $8.2 million fetched by Liu Xiaodong's Hotbed No. 1, a record for a painting sold on the mainland. In a similar range of sales last spring, Poly sold $130 million worth of works, including $27 million in a single evening contemporary-art sale. (These figures represent a slight decline for the year because both houses held benefit sales for Szechuan earthquake victims, raising more than $20 million to support relief efforts.)
Poly and Guardian reflect two vastly different perspectives on the domestic market in Chinese contemporary art. Guardian is the oldest and most respected auction house in China, founded in 1993 by Wang Yannan, daughter of Zhao Ziyang, the former Communist Party leader who was placed under house arrest after opposing the government's use of force against demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in 1989. If Poly is known for its vast resources and willingness to make deals to nab consignments, Guardian is known for its respected specialists and long-term client relationships. For example, when the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, decided to sell 20 pieces of Qing dynasty porcelain in mainland China, it consigned the collection to Guardian.
The atmosphere of a sale at Poly or Guardian is surprisingly similar to that in the salerooms of Christie's or Sotheby's. The catalogues are identical in design, and the bidding proceeds in an orderly, even sedate, fashion, despite the crowds of spectators in the room.
"From our beginning, we studied what the principles of an auction house should be, and we stick to these principles," says Guardian president Wang. She also serves on the board of the new nationwide auctioneers' association, which hopes to enforce regulations on the auction market.
Poly is an enterprise within the China Poly Group Corporation, a $30 billion conglomerate that is the privatized branch of the People's Liberation Army. Established initially to repatriate artworks and antiquities, Poly has spent $100 million buying objects such as the bronze animal heads from a water-clock fountain that were looted from Beijing's Summer Palace by British and French troops in 1860; the pieces later turned up in the West. The repatriated objects are showcased in the Poly Art Museum in the sparkling New Beijing Poly Plaza, a glass-enclosed tower designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

The more freewheeling Poly is known for practices such as putting up for auction works from its own collection or having consignors guarantee that they will bring buyers to the sale to meet low estimates. Still, even here there are signs that the market is maturing and has become too expensive for casual speculators. "These collectors that you are talking about are actually quite small collectors," explains Zhao Xu, senior consultant at Poly. "They bought for several years at very affordable prices, but now that prices are skyrocketing, the only way they can afford to buy is to sell. The collectors that I know already come from a high social status, and they can afford to buy pieces worth $1 million or $2 million and are looking for the best works, the masterpieces, to add to their collections."

When asked if Poly follows the rules of the Western auction houses, Zhao sharply retorts, "Sometimes even Sotheby's doesn't follow the rules." Or as Gong Jisui, an art-market specialist who is a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, says, "The Chinese learned this game of speculation from the Westerners who played it first."

The incident to which both men are referring is the sale of the Estella Collection at Sotheby's Hong Kong on April 9 of this year. The event reaped $18 million for 108 works. (An additional 80 works will be up for sale this month at Sotheby's New York.) The collection was put together from 2003 to 2006 by New York dealer Michael Goedhuis for a group of investors that included Sacha Lainovic, a director of Weight Watchers International, and Raymond Debbane, CEO of the Invus Group, a private equity firm.

Last year the collection of approximately 200 works was sold to William Acquavella, who consigned it to Sotheby's. Auction house officials will not discuss financial details, but Sotheby's had a stake in the collection. After the sale it was widely reported that many of the artists were angered by the auction because, they said, they had sold their works to Goedhuis at discount prices in exchange for promises that the collection would remain together for public display.
"The idea was to keep the collection intact and to see it safely into some institution," says Goedhuis, who denies that any promises were made. "The ideal situation was to see it with an institution in China, because there is no such collection." The collection was published in a book, China Onward, with an essay by leading China expert Britta Erickson, and it was exhibited at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem shortly before the sale. According to Goedhuis, because of the rapid rise in prices, the investors chose to sell the collection with hopes that it would not be broken up.

"Since the museums in China aren't mature enough nor are they rich enough to do an acquisition like this, my hope was that Steve Wynn would do so for his sophisticated casino complex in Macao," Goedhuis says. He turned to Acquavella because, he says, he believed the dealer would bring the collection to Wynn; Acquavella paid a reported $25 million. Acquavella director Michael Findlay laughs at the suggestion that there was any indication that the collection would go to Wynn. "I think this whole thing is surrounded by so much rumor and speculation," he says. "We bought a group of paintings, and we sold a group of paintings, and that's the whole story."
According to Maarten ten Holder, Sotheby's managing director for North and South America, the firm received inquiries before the sale from several artists in the collection, wondering why the works were to be auctioned. There is disagreement about whether Goedhuis made firm promises to keep the collection together or merely made a sales pitch to artists that inclusion in the collection would enhance their reputations. Yue Minjun, who had two works in the sale, says no promises were made. And Goedhuis bought Zeng Fanzhi's Chairman Mao with Us from Hanart T Z Gallery in 2005 for the asking price, $30,000, no discount given. It sold for $1.18 million.

"You have to understand that there was no market for this work when I was buying," says Howard Farber, whose collection brought $20 million at Phillips de Pury & Company in London last October. Farber assembled 100 choice works by assiduously visiting artists' studios in Beijing in the late 1980s, accompanied by the Beijing-based critic Karen Smith, a leading author and curator in this field. A work for which he paid $25,000 in 1996, Wang Guangyi's Great Criticism: Coca-Cola, was sold at Phillips de Pury for $1.6 million. The buyer was Farber's son-in-law, Larry Warsh, who bid on several works at the sale, according to newspaper accounts. "I really didn't actually know I was going to buy the Wang Guangyi until that moment," says Warsh. "Howard has his collection, and it's not my collection, and there were many pieces I wanted from that collection that I would have wanted to buy but couldn't afford."

Many Beijing artists had agreements with Warsh to produce work for his collection and his art advisory business, which began in 2004, inspired by Farber's example in the field. "I was enamored by China, and then I was enamored by the art of China as I learned about important artists," says Warsh. "But what really hit me first was how the pricing did not make sense to me at all-everything was out of whack."

Warsh, who amassed a collection of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf in the late 1980s, was the publisher of the now-defunct Museums Magazine, which he sold to LTB Media in 2004. He stated at one point that his collection totaled more than 1,200 works; now, he says, he owns approximately 400 paintings and photographs. Part of his collection is managed by his new business venture, AW Asia, which has a gallery in Chelsea and intends to assemble collections of Chinese contemporary art for museums and major private collectors. The Museum of Modern Art in New York recently acquired 23 photographs from AW Asia.

With Farber and Warsh circulating in Beijing for a variety of purposes, it was easy for Chinese artists to become confused about who was buying for whom and for what purpose. In recent interviews, several artists-most notably Zhang Xiaogang, who had an agreement with Warsh-pointed to him as an example of a speculator.

Warsh replies, "While some artists are not so pleased with their decision to have sold quantities of artwork at what was then their current values not so long ago, there are many artists who are not resentful and actually pleased that someone has taken an interest in their work."
New York dealer Jack Tilton, who has worked with Chinese artists since 1999, says, "All of these artists are hoping that their work finds good homes rather than getting churned in the commercial market. But they have also played a part in this market, embracing capitalism more than we have, in funny ways. They are not naive about any of this stuff."

When asked about the artists' reactions to the sale of his collection, Farber was flabbergasted: "So what? Now I am the bad guy. That pisses me off!"

A number of major collectors of Chinese contemporary art who have been in the field for some time are holding on to their collections. Uli Sigg, Swiss ambassador to China, Mongolia, and North Korea from 1995 to 1998, has built a collection of key works that he has toured in the exhibition "Mahjong" to museums throughout Europe and, most recently, the University of California's Berkeley Art Museum (September 10-January 4). Belgian collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens have used their resources to establish the first nonprofit contemporary-art center in Beijing, where they are currently exhibiting their historic collection. So far, collector Charles Saatchi has been hanging on to his purchases in preparation for opening his new gallery in London on the 9th of next month with a show of Chinese contemporary art; he has also launched a Chinese-language Web site on which mainland artists can post their works.

In comparison with Western buying, mainland Chinese participation pales. Though there are many rumors about the power of the new Chinese buyers, their presence has not been felt in the major auction houses, where most of the records are being set. "Hong Kong right now covers the global buyers, especially those from across Asia," says Eric Chang, Christie's international director of Asian contemporary art. "I am not really seeing mainland Chinese buyers-less than 10 percent-a drop from around 12 percent." Dealers in China also have seen few mainland collectors among their regular clients. "I don't know yet about collectors," says New York dealer Christophe Mao of Chambers Fine Art, which recently opened a branch in Beijing.

Despite the current shortage of mainland art collectors, China is emerging as a major art center, having become a hub for buyers from South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia, and for overseas Chinese from all over the world. Reflecting this diversity is the wide range of foreign dealers among the 300 galleries in Beijing, including Continua from Italy, Urs Meile from Switzerland, Arario and PKM from South Korea, Beijing Tokyo Art Projects from Japan, and Tang from Indonesia.

"In Beijing it's getting increasingly difficult to talk about the Chinese market as a separate entity from the broader Asian art market or the international art market," says Meg Maggio, an American who came to China in 1988 and ran one of the first galleries in the country, CourtYard, in Beijing, from 1998 to 2006. Now she has her own gallery, Pékin Fine Arts, where she represents an international stable of artists. "How do you describe the market for a Korean artist showing in China or a Chinese artist living in New York?" she asks, noting that her business can come from South Korean collectors visiting Beijing or European companies doing business in China.

One factor in China's development as a center for contemporary art is the proliferation of art fairs. Beijing has two, the China International Gallery Exposition and Art Beijing; Shanghai has the newly created ShContemporary, now in its second year; and Hong Kong just launched ART HK. CIGE director Wang Yihan says her fair attracted 40,000 visitors this year, while the more high-toned ShContemporary brought in 25,000 and ART HK 08 had 19,000. These numbers may seem small in comparison with the 60,000 who crowd Art Basel, but dealers believe that the fairs in Asia are worthwhile because they attract new buyers and make Asian collectors feel more comfortable about acquiring art from galleries.

"Anywhere else, a fair is just a fair," says Lorenz Helbling of ShanghART, one of the oldest galleries in China and a participant in Art Basel. "But in Shanghai a fair feels like so much more because only there can it make an impact on several million people." He is referring not only to attendance but to the intensive publicity and official recognition given to ShContemporary in its inaugural year.

Just a few years ago it would have been impossible to try to sell contemporary art to Asian buyers, let alone mainland Chinese collectors, in the public forum of an art fair. Now, with the astounding success of Chinese contemporary art, collectors from across the region-and more than a few from the United States and Europe-are targeting China as a destination. According to Nick Simunovic, who has opened an office and showroom for Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong, it is only a matter of time before these regional buyers turn their attention to Western contemporary art.

"My sense is that wherever you have tremendous wealth creation, the collecting cycle goes through three phases," he says. "First, people collect their cultural patrimony, and then they collect their own contemporary art. I think the final stage is when they gain a more globalized contemporary-art approach."

Gagosian first considered opening an office in Shanghai but encountered obstacles to doing business on the mainland. The most formidable of these is a 34 percent luxury tax on art, which foreign galleries that participated in ShContemporary found difficult to avoid. Hong Kong, by comparison, is a duty-free zone. And Simunovic found that even Jeff Koons was a tough sell in Shanghai, whereas Hong Kong offers more possibilities for Western contemporary art. Just a year ago Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau paid $72 million for Andy Warhol's Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I). In May Christie's brought a Warhol portrait of Mao, valued at $120 million and for sale privately, for viewing in Hong Kong. (At press time it had not yet been sold.)
"Sure, China is hot, but that's just the peak of the iceberg," says Lorenzo Rudolf, former director of Art Basel and cofounder of ShContemporary. "This is not just about a group of Chinese painters. It's about a growing market going on in this continent."

With the sheer abundance of galleries, auction houses, and art fairs in China, the larger art world is recognizing the power of the Asian market. Standing in an auction house in New York or London watching paintings by Chinese artists sell for millions, one can grouse about this boom and hint that it will turn out to be a bubble. But strolling in a bustling gallery district in Beijing, with students and tourists crowding the cafés and boutiques and filling the huge art showrooms, few would predict a downturn in the near future.
Portrait Artists
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Oil Vs Acrylic Paint

2008-09-17T23:50:00.001-07:00

By Chad Marshall

What are the pros and cons of acrylic and oil painting? What techniques work in one medium but not in another? We'll discuss these questions and more. Read on.

The pros and cons of acrylic painting

PRO: Fast drying time. When layering paints, acrylics will dry in as little as 15 to 30 minutes. PRO: Due to the fast drying times, it's ideal as a base color for oil painting.
PRO: Student grade oil paints can be obtained at very low prices.

CON: Due to the quick drying time, more modern painting techniques like Wet On Wet (created by William "Bill" Alexander) will be difficult to take advantage of.
CON: Although oil paint can be applied over acrylic paints, acrylic paints should never be applied on top of oils.
CON: Almost all acrylic paints are thin and soupy, limiting the techniques the artist can use.

The pros and cons of oil painting:

PRO: Many student and professional grades are available.
PRO: Modern painting techniques such as those used in Wet On Wet can be used with the right oil paints.
CON: Very slow drying time. Some paintings can take months to fully dry, although most paintings are dry to the touch in a few weeks.
PRO: Slow drying time can be helpful for many people. When using Wet On Wet painting techniques, slow drying time is preferred and actually aids the artist, allowing new layers to be applied on top of wet layers and also allows the artist to correct any mistakes during painting.
PRO: Most oil paints are thin and soupy and geared towards traditional oil painting methods, but some oil paint producers have reformulated their oil colors making them very thick and rich, expanding the possibilities for artists. Companies such as Alexander Art and Winsor Newton carry very thick oil paints that are ideal for a variety of oil painting techniques.

Did you find this article helpful? Learn more about wet on wet oil painting and Alexander Certified Instructor Chad Marshall at his website. http://www.wichitaoilpainting.com
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An Expression of Scotland's Mountains As Painted by Keith Salmon

2008-09-17T23:50:00.000-07:00

By John McMenemy

The beauty of Scotland can rarely be captured in art as well as is done by Keith Salmon. This partially sighted artist who now lives with diabetes related blindness says he presents an "impression" of the mountains and hills to be found in Scotland`s landscape. However, Keith, being an accomplished hillwalker knows perhaps more about the secrets of Scotland`s landscapes and particularly its mountains than many fully sighted people. It is for that reason that his work should more properly be regarded as Expressionism as it presents the emotions that Keith experiences when he is on the hills and most definitely relates much more than a simple single impression.

Impressionism began in France over a century ago and was quickly followed within a few decades by a concept known as Expressionism. I believe that the work of Keith Salmon transcends both of theses "-ism`s". Keith`s most recent work centres around his deep love and passion for hillwalking which he has had since a child. And the emotions he feels and experiences from reaching the peaks of Scotland`s mountains know no limits when he captures them on the canvases and boards within his art studio.

Each work interprets his view of the world - quite literally - that which he experiences while standing at the top of a mountain where he uses his remaining senses and the 15% vision that is still available to him to feel the mountain upon which he stands and of which he has conquered. Bringing the feeling of beauty that is presented by nature be that in full sunshine or rain, fog sleet or in snow, Keith translates the emotions stirred up the experience to dramatic painted landscapes when he returns to his art studio in Irvine, Ayrshire. There he labours to recreate that moment and share it through his art for those who senses are as equally keen and appreciative of life and its expression through art. How one moment can be captured forever, and made available for re-living and for sharing with others is not just a talent that the artist presents but one that he is happy to give.

A short visit to Keith Salmon's studio will bring you in direct contact with not just an artist but with someone who not only wants to creates what he feels but also to selflessly share that joie-de-vivre with others. People often speak about "art imitating life" but in the case of Keith Salmons artwork - his art is life.

Keith Salmon is an accomplished artist and gained his diploma in arts long before he lost most of his sight. His work has encompassed not only Scottish mountain and landscape art but also contemporary sculpture. Take the time to find out more about the life and art of this extraordinary artist and see for yourself how determination and deep felt passion can really create, develop and express through art what we know to be that part of man that is most often hidden from public view and sometimes even from himself - his soul.

To find out more about this outstanding artist and his work please visit: KeithSalmon.org
John McMenemy is a respected art dealer and artist promoter who works internationally while based in Bogota, Colombia.
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An Exterior House Painting Story

2008-09-15T16:50:00.001-07:00

By Vickie Faria

One day when deciding to embark on the challenging prospect of painting my own house, I enlisted the help of a few neighbors and an uncle. As we set out on this ever-important mission to paint my mother's house, we felt confident in a smooth and efficient victory. Little did we know, however, that we were in for the ride of a lifetime.

Ignoring the advice of my brother, we chose not to hire an exterior house painting contractor to do the work for us, believing we were in this way saving time and money. After buying all of the supplies, we jumped into the project. By doing so we ignored another piece of advice handed down from my brother: plan accordingly and anticipate problems before they happen if at all possible. With such a crack team of painters that included a substitute middle school teacher, the local barber and that guy who speed walks every evening wearing only blue jeans, we felt confident that we would be able to take on the project without any problems. Two spilled buckets of paint and a few changes of clothes later, we were running to the phone to call that exterior house painting contractor.

The exterior house painting contractor showed up the next day, skilled team in hand, and finished the job we had sort of started. I guess I had to learn the hard way of the value of a professional job. After experiencing that for myself, I now have a new found respect for the skill it actually takes to paint a house.

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House Exterior Painting - Dealing With Rust

2008-09-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

By Vickie Faria

There is nothing like a fresh paint job to spruce up your home's exterior. It can be very disheartening however to find problems with the painting that begin appearing shortly after the job has been completed.

Your house exterior painting can keep the outside of your home looking its best, or worse, depending on the level of quality that the project was completed. If you begin noticing problems with the house exterior painting after it has been completed, this could be a sign of a poor home painting job. Several problems can arise such as peeling and the growth of mildew. Another problem that occurs is rust stains. Home owners often wonder where this rust comes from and how it is appearing on their home painting. The rust spots are typically caused by nails heads on the outside of your home that have met with moisture and thus have begun to rust. Newer homes often don't have metal nails and therefore won't be faced with this home painting issue. Older homes, however, do develop rust stains from the metal nails and often have to undergo a treatment to remove the rust from the house exterior painting. Treatments often involve sanding the spots and applying rust resolving solutions to the home painting. The spots can then usually be repainted with high quality paint to resolve the issue.

If you are uncomfortable with completing a rust stain removal on your won, a contractor can be hired to do it for you. A contractor is often a good decision because they have experience with this type of problem and can make sure to fully resolve the issue. A contractor can also work with you to find the source of the moisture to prevent the nails from rusting again.

Your home is a statement of who you are so you probably don't want unsightly issues with the house exterior painting to go untreated. If you are uncomfortable resolving the house exterior painting problems on your own, painting professionals are always there to help.

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Home Painting - Ask For Color Samples

2008-09-11T18:20:00.000-07:00

By Violet Williams

It is time to have the exterior of your home repainted and you are thinking of choosing a different color to keep things looking fresh. You think you've found the perfect shade for the painting but are afraid that it will look different once it is applied to your home. How can you be sure this won't happen?

To help make sure that your home painting will look the same shade as you have envisioned, you can work with a paint contractor. Hiring an experienced paint contractor for your home painting can be a good idea to make sure the project goes smoothly and the end result comes out how you envisioned, especially if you have no experience in home painting. You can ask your paint contractor to provide you with color samples of how a color would look on your home. An experienced contractor will work with you on finding the perfect color and will know how to complete the project so it turns out just how you have envisioned.

The contractor can show you examples of previous work. This is extremely useful if they have done a previous home painting in the color you want so that you can get a good idea of what it would look like on your home. If the contractor has references from previous projects that are willing to let you go to their home and look at their home painting, this could also be very beneficial is giving you an idea of how the color would look on your home.

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Exterior House Painting - How to Prepare

2008-09-10T19:37:00.000-07:00

By Vickie Faria

If the exterior of your home is beginning to look a little faded and weathered, it may be time for a paint job. It is never good to put a badly needed paint job on hold because you are risking a great deal of damage to the outside of your home.

If you are unfamiliar with exterior house painting and aren't comfortable with the steps involved in the process, it is probably a good idea to bring in a contracted painter for the job. There is a great deal of prep work and other procedures involved in an exterior house painting and a professional contracted painter will make sure that those procedures are completed to keep your home painting looking the best that it can and to ensure that your home's exterior is being protected.

One example of the prep work needed during an exterior house painting is pressure washing your home before applying the new home painting. Pressure washing will help clear your home's exterior of any debris and anything else that can negatively affect the exterior house painting. Any mildew and loose paint will also need to be taken care of before the painting is completed. These are just a few examples of the procedures involved in the project.

A home is a major investment and you probably don't want to do anything that would damage that investment. If you have been putting off a badly needed paint job however, you may be unknowingly risking damage to your home's exterior that could be easily avoided. So, when you notice that your exterior house painting is looking faded and weathered, it is probably a good idea to call your contracted painter to schedule that home painting.

More information on exterior house painting safety and College Works Painting in your area is just a click away.
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The Home Painting Contractor

2008-09-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

By Violet Williams

Finding a good individual to do work on your home is often a headache in and of itself. Finding somebody who will see the work through to the very end, ensuring that the work is done properly and in a timely manner is another story. Many contractors will brag about past projects and provide samples testifying to their skill as painters, but many do not complete the job in the time allotted.

A good home painting contractor not only does the work right, but does it in a timely fashion. Experienced contractors know exactly how to complete a job in an acceptable amount of time. They rely on careful planning and past experiences to tell them how long each step will take. Using this method, many contractors will leave their customers satisfied with their work. Unfortunately, a bad home painting contractor, while they may do a good job in the end, will take forever and leave the homeowner frustrated and angry at their laziness or disrespect.

It may be rare, but it does happen; some contractors show up for one day and do not show up for a week or so, telling the homeowner they have other projects that required their attention in that time. While this may be true, the home painting contractor should have realized this was bound to happen and made the proper arrangements to avoid this burden on the homeowner. Past testimonials or referrals from friends may help to alleviate some of the headaches faced when hiring contractors.

More information on home painting contractor job opportunities and College Works Painting in your area is just a click away.
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Home Exterior Painting and Its Effects on Your Home

2008-09-09T18:07:00.000-07:00

By Violet Williams

Many are aware of the many benefits fixing up one's house can have on the appearance and value of their home. For this reason, so many homeowners spend a lot of time, effort and money on making their home as beautiful as possible. Painting one's house may have the biggest impact on the appearance of a home, as it is what first strikes people upon laying eyes on a house.
Home exterior painting can have a huge impact on the appearance of a home. Often times the first thing people notice about a house is the color of the paint. Unwittingly, they also notice the quality of the paint job. Many will not take notice to the fact that a house is painted well, but they will almost surely take notice if the house is painted poorly. Poor home exterior painting sticks out like a sore thumb in a neighborhood. It can decrease the attractiveness of your home and, even though the next owner can fix the problem, may reduce the value of your house come time to sell. For this reason, keeping up with your painting and making sure it is done right is vital to the upkeep of your house.

Choosing how to go about ensuring the appearance of your house is acceptable or beyond is up to you. Many choose to take on home exterior painting projects alone or with a friend. This is fine if that person knows what they are doing and can do the job well. However, many do not possess the skill or experience required to provide an acceptable finished product, so hiring a contractor may be a good idea. Many contractors are extremely skilled and reliable and will leave your home looking its very best.

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Exterior Home Painting is a Lofty Task

2008-09-06T18:49:00.000-07:00

By Vickie Faria

A fresh coat of paint can make your house stand out among the rest of the neighborhood. Something about the new, bright paint makes your house sparkle and seem like new. Such an important responsibility may sometimes be too much for individuals to handle themselves.

It's never a bad thing when you look for outside help and exterior home painting is no exception. Don't feel bad if you cannot accomplish this task alone, as it takes a few people to paint an entire house. Nobody has ever become less of a man because they couldn't paint their own house, that would be ridiculous. Not only does it take manpower, exterior home painting requires skill and practice that many do not possess. Contractors and companies offering skilled teams of painters are readily available in most cities with a zip code these days so do the smart thing and open the phone book.

Make sure that you know who you are hiring, as many contractors with a number of large projects may put your exterior home painting job on the back burner before getting to it. A reliable, smaller team of painters is sometimes the way to go.

They usually have a smaller clientele and are more concerned with customer satisfaction and service than some of the larger companies who have such a vast list of huge projects. A lot of college students take up house painting as a way to earn extra money. Do not be worried about the college student image that is often portrayed in movies and the media, as most college
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How to Use Appliance Paint

2008-09-04T16:48:00.000-07:00

By Peter Gitundu

In order to successfully and attractively freshen up an old appliance one can use commercially available appliance paint. These paint can be used to freshen up your kitchen or dining area with perfect results.

It comes as stainless steel or brushed aluminum and can be applied on refrigerators, dishwashers and microwaves. Most of these paints are spray paints and so it would be necessary to carry out the repainting outdoors to avoid the paint coming into contact with other surfaces.
When considering a make over for your kitchen or dining area, you can always repaint your items, which is a cheaper option than replacing the items all together. For those appliances that generate a lot of heat, proper consideration is taken to purchase heat resistant appliance paint. Make sure you follow the instructions on the label to avoid pitfalls on the procedure for applying the coat. The best way to apply these kind of paint is to use an airless spray gun in order to avoid brush strokes on the surface.

Appliance painting is not like the normal painting that we are used to, but then you can do it yourself by following a few basic procedures. Keep your paints at room temperature in a dark dry place. Apply light paints at a time, preferably at intervals of 15 minutes each. Leave paint to dry for at least one day. If you think that this is not the task for you, then you can opt for professional advise from an interior designer, but this will cost you a little more, though it will be cheaper in the long run and you are sure to get a better finish.

Peter Gitundu Researches and Reports on Paint. For More Information on Appliance Paint, Visit His Site at APPLIANCE PAINT
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Lessons in Exterior Home Painting

2008-09-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

By Violet Williams

Learning from our mistakes is one of the best qualities we can have as human beings. While it is never fun to fail or falter, ensuring that we do not make the same mistake twice is one of the most important things we can learn in our lives. The same goes for painting one's home, as many people make the mistake of overloading themselves and making silly mistakes along the way.
The last time I went about taking up exterior home painting I ended up spilling a bucket of paint on my lawn, and partially on my dog. My dog had a glossy red tail for about three days that glimmered in the sunlight anytime he wagged his tail. I also sloppily brushed the paint on my house and it turned out looking pretty ugly in the end. This would have probably been easily avoidable if I had done a little careful planning and read up on exterior home painting a bit. We all have the Internet, one of the most valuable tools in our modern society, and there is an abundance of information on painting and painting contractors that can be found.

If I had read up and done my homework, I would not be sitting here with red grass and a dog that, even by dog standards, is unusually interested in his own backside. I would have found that exterior home painting contractors are easy to find and are quite reliable granted you choose the right one. This would have saved me a great deal of time and an embarrassing trip to the vet.
More information on exterior home painting safety and College Works Painting in your area is just a click away.
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Tips to Frame an Oil Painting

2008-09-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

By Ben A Jonson

Oil painting framing can be really expensive if they are framed by professionals which can really add up to your cost of your purchase. Professional framers have great experience in choosing the right frames that match the exact architectural piece and the framing process can be a time consuming task and not everyone would be willing to spend money on this task. However framing the oil painting is an important task but there is no requirement that you need to pour loads of money on this tedious task.

You can frame your art painting by yourself with a frame for a cost effective result that will give you satisfactorily results as well. This article will help you in crafting an amazing frame for your painting.

Choosing the apt frame

• Visit a store nearby and look in for a frame and browse for your backless frames.
• Search a frame that fits the dimensions of your painting. Be sure that you search the frame whose inner dimensions match with the dimensions of your frame.
• Select a frame that doesn't distract the art but matches the feel. While choosing the frame you also need to keep in mind that you do not spoilt the interior decor of your paintings. Simple, flat, black or brown frames can suit any style of painting nicely. Metallic frames with ornate carvings can be held for traditional paintings such as portraits, landscapes and still lives.
• Check your frame along with your painting and check if they both blend well together.
Framing process
• Place the frame inverted on a clean place.
• Put in the painting through the opening from the back portion of the frame
• Enclose one offset clip on each side of the frame it can be placed either at the top and bottom sides and then you need to screw the clip using size two screws.
• Fasten a strap hanger in each side of the frame, 1/3 of the way down; using the two sizes eight screws. Do not constrict the screws all the way; allow the screws to rotate freely.
• Slide one end of the hanging wire into one of the strap hangers and wrap the end around it for five to six times.
• Insert the wire into the strap hanger, leaving a little bit of space. Then wrap the end following the same procedure as the first one.
• Hang your painting on to a screw with the hanging wire.
Thus the framing of your painting is done with considerable ease and without causing a considerable pinch on your pocket.
Ben Jonson is a Copywriter of http://www.paintingmax.comHe had written many articles in various topics. For more information visit: Painting brush - Types and values. Contact him at paintingmax.ben@googlemail.com
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Oil Painting Reproductions - The Secret to Affordable Oil

2008-09-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

By Marcy Ruberto

Art is one of the most incredible parts of human culture. Only we have the ability to capture our imaginations and perceptions of the world, and put that onto a permanent medium such as canvas. An oil painting can then be shared with others to love and enjoy as well. There are so many beautiful works of art in the world but most are housed in museums and galleries around the world where many people don't have the chance to see them. Now, however, many talented artists are capturing the beauty of these masterpieces and the general public is being given the opportunity to buy these oil paintings at an affordable price. How? Through an exciting method called oil painting reproduction.

What is an Oil Painting Reproduction?

An oil painting reproduction is basically a recreation of a masterpiece by a new artist. As the name suggests, these pieces are created using oil-based paints on a canvas. Because they are oil painting reproductions, they are considerably more affordable than the originals. Instead of millions of dollars, you could be paying less than one hundred dollars.

Perhaps the best part is that you are not purchasing a manufactured copy of the painting. You're not ordering mass created art. Each oil painting reproduction is hand created by actual painters and artists who have been specially trained so they can carefully and accurately recreate the works of such revered artists as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso and others. Each piece may be a reproduction, but each is also unique with minor differences incorporated by the different artists.

Another amazing thing about these oil painting reproductions is that they have great texture. The oil painting is crisp, clear, and alive on the canvas. It creates a breathtaking finished piece of art that will be a focal point or topic of conversation in any room.

There is a huge variety of oil painting reproductions to choose from. If you have a favorite artist, you'll be able to purchase an oil painting reproduction of his or her art. Almost all of the classic masters' work can be re-created. Even art that was massive in scale can be redone as a smaller oil painting for display in your home. You can have an artist create an oil painting from a photograph that you submit. Imagine hanging an oil painting reproduction of your family portrait over the mantel.

No matter why you buy an oil painting reproduction, whether its because the painting speaks to your heart, or because it makes your room come alive with color, personality and life, you're going to love having your very own oil painting reproduction on display for you to enjoy 24/7.
If you're looking for something that's alive with personality, maybe a bit on the wacky side, or just something that speaks to your heart, check out our affordable oil painting reproductions at http://www.artsmartdecor.com
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World's Most Famous Art Museums

2008-08-29T17:31:00.000-07:00

By Mark Traston

Famous art museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art have one of the largest collections of art under one roof. Located in New York City's Museum Mile area, it has over two million works of art within its permanent collection, which is split into 19 sections of interest.

The Met's American paintings section also has one of their earliest sculptures from 1870 on display. Hiram Power's California was one of the first pieces that inspired them to focus building the museum around American art. Over the years, the Met has built its collection of art that covers many areas. Their art section features paintings by Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Van Gogh amongst its 11,000 paintings on hand. They have also built sections featuring Asian Art, American Decorative Art, and Arms and Armory as some of the many sections that they feature.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is a privately-run museum that has a wide collection of European art, Greek and Roman sculptures, and classic drawings. The museum also has an extensive collection of American photography collection, which is one of the only areas within its museum that focuses on American areas of interest. There is also a research center that was opened in 1985, where a staff researches information about the artifacts that exist and makes sure that the information being presented can be used in publications and workshops for presentation purposes.

The Musee du Louvre in France is one of the oldest, famous and most visited museums in the world. Known as a place where artists were allowed to showcase their art since the early days in the 1700s. The museum was formally opened in 1750, and much of France's much neglected artists were allowed to present their works in this museum. They have owned collections of famous artists like Rembrandt and Da Vinci for years and have them up on display to the public.Visitors can view some of the favorite famous pieces, like the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa, which has called the Louvre home for centuries.

The Louvre has over 380,000 pieces of art within its collection. It showcases 35,000 works spanning over eight curatorial departments in its current rotation. One of its highlights is the collection of 11,900 paintings on display. The museum also hosts exhibits on archeology, sculptures and objet d'art. They also have a permanent gallery showing large holdings of furniture, including the Bureau du Roi by Jean Henri Riesener.

Mark Traston is an associate with Portrait Painting. The company specializes in turning a photo to painting. Each portrait artist specializes in a specific area including wedding paintings, pet portraits, and executive portraits
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Learning How To Paint Your Guitar Can Be Easy

2008-08-29T03:32:00.000-07:00

By Chris B Simpson

For anyone wanting to learn how to paint guitars, it does not have to be so difficult. It is best to research this on the internet or through books before you ever begin the whole painting process. It is important to also know what precautions that you will need to take before you get started, because painting guitars can be hazardous to your health and can cause harm if inhaled too much at one time.

You have got to plan out the process of painting your guitar by purchasing the materials that will be needed for this project. The things that you will need to purchase before ever beginning to paint your guitar are, goggles, face mask, screw drivers, sand papers of all types, something to cover up your counter or table, primer, finishing lacquer, cloths and most importantly, paint, whichever color you decide to choose for your new and improved guitar.

Now it is time to choose a good location for using when painting your guitar. You will want something sturdy and stable you can put your guitar on to paint and you will also need to make sure that this area is the safest spot to keep your guitar during the painting process. Not a high traffic area, you do not want anyone coming in contact with your guitar when you are trying to get it painted. Any false move could damage the paint job on your guitar, so you have to be extra careful. You would hate to have to inflict bodily harm on a loved one or friend for ruining your beautiful work of art. Seriously though, remembering all of the basics before you ever get started will save you some stress in the long run, you will be glad that you checked into it before actually taking on this kind of difficult task.

Maybe you have a friend that knows a little about painting guitars, do not be ashamed to ask for help if you are seriously unsure of how your paint job will turn out. They could possibly help you with the entire job or just give you some helpful advice that will at least get you properly started with the painting process. It would make you feel more confident if you could talk with someone more experienced first. If you do not know anyone that can give you advice on painting your guitar then you should go to a music store and find out there, if someone can help you out or guide you in the right direction.

Sanding the guitar is the biggest part of the job, once you have it completely taken apart. Just make sure you do not get carried away with the sanding because sanding too much could totally ruin your guitar. Once that is done, place all of your nuts, screws and bolts in a specific location, where you will know where to find them once you are ready to put your guitar back together. This can be a fun experience if you are prepared properly, so take the time out to check into it, before you attempt to paint your guitar.

Looking for a guitar or accessories? Check out Guitar Heaven for a full range of guitars and accessories. Also download free guitar lessons.
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Rock Painting Fun for All Ages

2008-08-29T03:26:00.000-07:00

By Lin Wellford

If you’re looking for an inexpensive art or craft activity for yourself or to share with kids, consider the art of painting on rocks. Rock painting may be man’s original art form, but these days it is probably the easiest and most fun way to learn to paint. The reason is simple; painting on something that already has shape and dimension is like taking a shortcut to great results.
Compared to the challenges of creating a lifelike image on a flat surface, figuring out perspective, filling in foregrounds and backgrounds, trying to achieve the look of dimension, all are things that tend to be intimidating for new painters. On the other hand, painting on a rock that already has a shape and dimension is so much simpler. In fact, one painter noted that painting on rocks is more like coloring, and, after all, ‘anyone can color!’

Finding good rocks to paint is a big part of the fun of this activity. Where else can you find such exciting art material lying around on the ground? Look for rocks that have smooth shapes. River tumbled rocks are excellent, but more angular ‘side-of-the-road’ rocks, or broken field stones can also be turned into exciting things like little cottages and vases or planters of flowers.
To get started, you need only a handful of basic colors. Acrylic paint works best and some brands even have a built in sealer so that the paint will hold up well even if the finished rock art is displayed outdoors. Get the primary colors, plus black and white, and you’ll be able to create just about any other color you may need. A few inexpensive brushes (I love the stiff, white bristled ones you can pick up at those ‘everything for $1.00 stores in sets of 4 or 5), plus at least one narrow liner brush for making lines, are generally all you need to get started. Lay out old newspaper to protect your surface and slow down spills. The lids from plastic margarine tubs make fine palettes for mixing colors, but Styrofoam picnic plates are also good.

Use a pencil to sketch on the details. You might start with something as simple as a ladybug or butterfly, drawing on the round or triangular designs with a pencil. Fill in the shapes with base colors, then, when the paint is dry, go back with a smaller brush and add the details that will make the piece come to life; the spots on the lady bug’s back, or the dots and patterns to decorate the butterfly wings. There is no right or wrong way to paint a rock, and anything you don’t like can be wet down and lifted up with a paper towel if caught quickly. Otherwise, just let the mistake dry, then paint over it. You simply can’t ‘ruin’ a rock! Rocks are not intimidating the way more traditional art forms can be, so new artists tend to relax and enjoy the process more. This, in turn, helps them to achieve even better results, because creativity flourishes when you are not feeling fearful. Many rock painters got their start with very easy pieces and progressed quickly to making more challenging artwork.

“I used to think I couldn’t even draw a stick figures and now people call me an artist!” is something rock painters often tell me. Whether you are longing to uncover your own hidden artistic talents or just want to have a fun time with friends or family, discover the fun and pleasure of rock painting. I guarantee you will never look at rocks the same way again!
Lin Wellford has been painting rocks since 1978. She has appeared on The Carol Duvall Show, Smart Solutions, Your Home Studio and more. In addition, she is the author of eight books and a video on the art of painting rocks. Her newest book, Rock Painting Fun for Everyone! has just been published. You can see all of her books at http://www.LinWellford.com. After seven books with a large publisher, she decided to establish her own company, ArtStone Press, and she plans to add more rock painting books to her line.
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The "Art" of Preparing Painting Estimates

2008-08-28T08:24:00.000-07:00

By Dawn Hall

Starting a wall murals or faux finish painting business can be a lucrative venture. Many aspiring painters, however, run into the question of how to prepare painting estimates. Although there are no easy answers to this question, there are some guidelines to consider.
First, you have to determine how you will prepare estimates for potential clients. There are three common ways of bidding a job:

1. Flat Fee Bidding

The most commonly used method by muralists and faux finish painters is flat fee bidding. This requires that you go to the work site, discuss with the customer his or her expectations for the job, factor in the expenses for any materials needed, and provide a flat fee bid after assessing the site.

2. Charging by Square Foot

Another method is bidding based on the square footage of the site. If using this method, it is still important to meet with the client and survey the site conditions. Although you may normally charge a certain amount based on square footage, you may want to adjust this amount if the site conditions present obstacles to completing the job in a timely manner or require you to purchase additional materials.

3. Charging by the Hour

The final method discussed here is bidding based upon your hourly charge. As someone just starting a wall murals or faux finishing business, it may be difficult to tell how long a job is going to take, but as you gain experience, this is something that you will become accustomed to determining. Keep in mind that if you are providing a per hour charge to your customer, most will want an upfront estimate as to how long the job will take to complete. You will also need to determine if your expenses for materials will be included in your hourly charge or will be itemized separately.

Regardless of which method you use for preparing estimates for potential clients, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

First, it is imperative that you scope out the work site first before providing a quote. Although some customers may call you with the dimensions of their project and expect you to provide your fee over the telephone, it is never a good idea to give a quote without first assessing the site conditions.

Second, you should include the cost of materials into your estimate. This can either be factored into your labor expenses or itemized separately. If itemizing separately, consider getting a reseller's license so that you can purchase paint and other supplies at wholesale and without paying sales tax. You can then charge the customer the retail price for the supplies needed for the job. You will then need to collect the sales tax from your customer, and forward these payments to the proper governmental entities in accordance with your local and state laws.
Finally, if you are having a difficult time determining what to charge, more experienced painters in your area can also be a great source of information. Don't be afraid to let them know that you have started or are thinking of starting your own business in the same field. You may run across some who are not willing to talk to you, but the majority should be willing to help you, as well as offer valuable insight into the business.

This article was written by Dawn Hall. Visit her website, Wall Murals 1-2-3, for other tips and techniques, including instructions regarding how to paint a mural.
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The Things We Learn in Art School - Art School Taught Me That Painting is Dead

2008-08-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

By Annette Labedzki

As long as I can remember I knew that I was an artist; as a young teen I knew that I wanted to pursue fine art and painting as a career. I remember my first few days in art school, I was so excited! Finally I would study that which I loved most; painting!

I eagerly participated in the lectures and went to every class with a smile on my heart and big ears trying to absorb as much information as possible.

One of the first things the instructors mentioned is that "painting is dead". I couldn't believe my ears. What were they talking about? That was a great way to discourage someone. I felt terrible, here I am a painter, something I knew about myself for a very long time, and the school is telling me that painting is dead. Did this mean that I was dead? I considered myself lucky because I already at a young age knew what I wanted to do with my life; so many people spend a lifetime trying to figure that one out! When I heard that remark I felt that not only did I have to start from scratch as a painter but I had to dig myself out of a negative dead hole, painting was dead remember?

They said painting was dead because in the mid-1800's photography could replace paint by representing and documenting the world in a much more precise and quicker manner than what could be accomplished with a brush and paint.

Marcel Duchamp simply gave up painting entirely and focused mainly on dada and neo dada objects which later became the inspiration for conceptual art.

In my humble opinion painting is alive and well. Painting is alive because it is driven by the art market. It continues to live because of the institutions which promote it; museums, galleries, collectors, critics and art schools. Now what about the artist? If I am alive , and I am a painter, therefore painting is alive!

I have a web site in which I am able to invite other artists, so I was wondering if you would like to join. If you don't have time or don't want to I fully understand! The address is. http://www.labedzki-art.com

It's quite simple to join, click on "register", "login", "create/order album"(this is where you give your album a title only,) then "upload images", I usually only load two or three at a time .Once you've loaded you can go to home page click on "user gallery" and you'll see your images! Of course there are no fees and your image upload is unlimited! For art collectors this is a great place to buy original art for a great price.

Thank you so much and I really hope to see your work thereRegards,Annette Labedzki
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The Detroit Institute of Art - A Michigan Masterpiece

2008-08-26T17:12:00.000-07:00

By Mark Traston

The Detroit Institute of Art is an art museum in Michigan which houses one of the most extensive collections in the U.S. Located in Detroit's Cultural Center Historic District, it boasts over 65,000 pieces of artwork. Housed within its walls are exhibits ranging from ancient Egyptian art to contemporary art. Works by artists such as Mary Cassatt, Andy Warhol, John James Audubon, and Andrew Wyeth are represented at the Institute. It was the first public U.S. museum to add a van Gogh painting to its collection.

Established in 1885, the Detroit Institute of Art is comprised of 600,000 square feet. Visitors have the opportunity to stroll through 100 art galleries. In addition to galleries, the museum boasts a conservation services laboratory, an auditorium that seats 1,150, a lecture hall that accommodates 380 people, and an art reference library. The museum is often referred to as the temple of art.

When you visit the Detroit Institute of Art, you can enjoy a variety of activities. The museum provides guided tours, lectures, and Art Talks to groups. Visitors can dine at the CaféDIA or Kresge Court Coffee Stop. If you'd like to create your own art, you can attend an Art-Making Workshop. Special Exhibits, films, and behind-the-scenes tours are other options. Families have access to special family audio or guided tours. More family fun includes drop-in art workshops, storytelling, live music, and various other family-friendly activities. Many of these family events take place on Fridays and Sundays. According to its official website, the Detroit Institute of Art upholds the idea that "art is for everyone, learning is a lifelong process, knowledge is based on experience as well as formal study, [and] best practice is based on understanding our visitors and employing effective teaching strategies."

If you enjoy world class museums which provide a variety of educational programs and activities, your family should check out the Detroit Institute of Art. With programs ranging from drop-in art workshops to live music and storytelling, the Institute is the ideal place to visit. The museum's hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 5 pm. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Fridays, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. They're closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Adults pay $8 admission while kids ages 6 to 17 are charged $4. Senior citizens get in the door for only $6. Museum members enjoy free admission. The museum is accessible to people in wheelchairs and strollers through the Farnsworth entrance.

Mark Traston is an associate with Portrait Painting. A portrait artist will turn your photo into an oil painting. Our artists specializes in a specific area including wedding paintings, pet portraits, and CEO portraits.
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Paint Your Kitchen Cabinets in Six Steps

2008-08-25T16:44:00.000-07:00

By Tony Evans

Painting your kitchen cabinets is a great alternative to purchasing new cabinets. Not only can you save a lot of money but if done correctly the results are fantastic.

The most simple way to complete this project is leave the inside of the cabinets unpainted . The inside is only seen when the cabinet is open so I would suggest that you not paint the inside. Plus if you don't paint the inside you don't have to remove everything from inside the cabinets.

Be sure the room is well ventilated because the primer and paint have a strong odor. You may need to use a fan placed close to a door or window in order to pull some of the fumes out of the house.

Step 1. Take off all of the cabinet hardware including all knobs, handles and pulls. Cover all counter tops and flooring using drop cloths or tarps. Leave the doors attached. Using painters tape, tape all the hinges on the doors.

Step 2. You will need to clean the cabinets using a cleaning solution such as TSP. This is a cleaning agent which is readily available at most hardware stores. Wash the exterior of all the cabinets that are to be painted using your cleaning solution. Allow the cabinets to fully dry and then sand them to a dull finish using a fine grit sandpaper.

Step 3. Prime cabinets using a good oil based primer such as BIN or Zinsser primer which you can also purchase at most hardware or paint stores. Apply a thin coat of primer using a short nap roller and a brush. Prime the front of the doors first then open and prime the backs of the doors. After priming the doors, prime the remainder of the exposed cabinets. After the primer is completely dry, take your fine grit sandpaper and lightly sand the cabinets.

Step 4. Paint the cabinets using a brush and short nap roller the same way you applied the primer. You can use either oil or latex (water based) paint. The oil is going to be more difficult to apply but will be more durable than the latex. If you do use oil paint, you may need to thin the paint using paint thinner so that you can achieve a smooth finish. Be careful and do not thin the paint too much. Start out by thinning the paint a very small amount and thin more if necessary. You will also need paint thinner for cleaning up the paint and primer.

Step 5. Once the cabinets are completely dry, lightly sand any bubbles that formed in the first coat of paint using fine grit sandpaper. Do not sand so hard that you remove the paint you just put on. Paint the final coat using the same method as before. Allow the cabinets to dry at least 24 hours before reattaching the knobs and pulls.

Step 6. If you used an oil paint, clean the brush and roller sleeve using paint thinner. If you used latex paint you can use regular tap water to clean your brush and roller sleeve. If you used an inexpensive brush and roller sleeve you may want to discard them instead of trying to clean them.

Painting cabinetry can be a tedious task so just take your time and follow the steps in this article. Following these guidelines I believe you will be pleased with the outcome.

Copyright (c) 2008 Smoky Mountain Painting
The author is the owner of Smoky Mountain Painting and has over thirty years experience in the home improvement industry. For more information visit http://www.smokymountainpainting.com
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How to Paint Abstract Art?

2008-08-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

By Cecile McFedries

You don't have to have Picasso's imagination to create an abstract art painting. And in a sense abstract art is the most forgiving style of all, because anything goes, as long as your abstract artwork can give you the feeling you have expressed yourself.

So fetch your brush right now - and a sheet of paper. You can also use canvas, of course, which is more expensive.

If you use paper, then the kind of paper you need depends on the medium you use. For starters I recommend acrylic paint. It dries quickly so you can over paint your creation many times during one session. Using oil paint can get messy because it won't dry at all during one session and the beginner will end up mixing all paint he/she has into a grey-brown abstract art blur.
For paint, get yourself the cheapest acrylic paint you can find because we're assuming you're only trying to amuse yourself at this point and with cheap paint you can splash it around freely and fun and freedom are king in abstract art.

One of the keywords in our approach to abstract art is spontaneity. This means letting your brush take control, unearthing visions from the depth of your nervous system like a shaman in trance. That is one side of abstract art. The other side of abstract art - and of any other kind of art - is using your intelligence to guide your animal instincts.

What you need is a plan.

What would you like to paint? Who would you like to be? Kandinski, Mondrian, Modigliani, Picasso, Klee, Chagall? To be a copy-cat is an excellent way to start painting, not just abstract art. Art historians attribute the success of French art to young students going to the Louvre, copying the old masters. This is legitimate as long as you know the difference between educational copying and forgery. Copying is too strong a word for our purposes, by the way, because we will try to stimulate your imagination, but with a plan - and a little help.

You could start to be inspired by Picasso and simply paint a face. That sounds hard to do, but Picasso showed how to balance realism and abstraction in portraiture. So pick up your brush and paint something that looks like a face. Don't paint it "en face", that's not very interesting, but "en profile" or else something in between. You may also use a pencil to make a drawing, or charcoal, but only use charcoal on a surface that is large in size (like 50 by 60 cm), unless you can apply the charcoal very lightly. If you are too prolific with charcoal on a small sized surface you will create a terrific mess, from which your painting may not recover during the painting process.

Now that you have something that looks like a face, remember one thing: Your drawing is sacred. We're referring to the contours of your drawing in particular. Once you've finished the drawing and have started to paint, never change the contours of the drawing's main elements, in this case the head, the eyes, the nose, the mouth and the ears and hair-line, if you have drawn these. Within these contours you can go wild!

You can also go about it in a different way, depending on how abstract you want your paintings to be. If you feel drawn to abstract expressionism, you may want to start painting without any plan and create as big a mess as possible, right away. That is, you paint random forms by instinct, without a preconceived plan. With this approach it's important to know when to stop and start thinking about what you've done. A beginner will have a tendency of painting layer over layer and merging down most of the painting's color. Try not to paint layer over layer in a random, uncontrolled way. When you have the feeling you can't go on without over painting existing brush strokes, stop painting altogether. I can't overstate the importance of knowing when to stop painting and to continue later, when you have a clear head and contemplated what you have painted. Don't assume you can finish your paintings in one go; it takes discipline and judgment to know when to stop and wait for new insight and ideas.

So suppose you have made a start with making a painting that looks expressive. One possible way to elaborate on it is to take a small sized brush and try to accentuate the most relevant elements of your painting. You don't do this by thinking about it in a conscious sort of way, but try to imagine what it would feel like if you applied this brush stroke in that color to that location. If this sounds esoteric, it's because painting is about the most implicit form of intelligence: intuition.

About the Author:
Cecile McFedries (previously known as Cecile Coxe) is the founder of Gallery Cecile, an online art website that supplies affordable paintings and artworks to individuals and businesses. For more information, go to http://www.gallerycecile.com
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The Fun of Painting

2008-08-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

By Shiji Shijina

Painting can be a wonderful experience. Things which make the place in which we live are always lovable and enjoyable and painting our room gives a very new and enjoyable look to our room though it is a tedious job but the whole exercise of painting your house is an enjoyable experience.

This article will act as an in-depth guide or would give you tips as to the selection of paint colors the clean up tips which would enable you to give a disciplined and a well maintained house even after the painting procedure is finished.

Painting your room gives a new life to our room; it makes the room fresh, new and clean. In just few hours of time our room gets transformed into a beautiful place to live in and even the money spent on the room does not act as a pinch on our pockets.

Paint selection

There are two things which you need to consider when selecting the paint colors. You need to understand that what kind of feel do you want the room to evoke, is it going to be a calm effect or a vibrant effect. If you like a calm look then you can go in for colors like sky blue, cream and incase you are seeking to get a vibrant look then you need to understand the nature of colors like it could be lavender, navy blue all these colors will satisfy you with the different vibrant setups for your room.

The second consideration which you need to look for is the different furniture setup at your place. It becomes that you select colors on the basis of the furniture. You will have to keep in mind if the colors are selected keeping in mind the different furniture setups this will enable your room to give a cohesive feel.

The mood impact:

The first thing that you need to consider in the selection of the painting colors is that you need to think about your favorite colors. Many of us have strong emotional attachments to certain colors, so it would be a great idea to select colors which you are most attracted to.

Tools which would be required to paint:

Paint rollers and several roller covers. For most of your wall stake a low nap for most of the wall and take a high nap roller for a textured wall Paint tray Ladder Extension pole (for painting the ceiling) Brushes or paint pads Canvas drop clothes

Process of painting

Move as much furniture possible out of the room. It would be better to use drop clothes for covering the furniture which would remain in the room while you paint.
Clean the greasy marks on your wall these marks if they are not cleaned properly then these marks would give a bad look to your newly painted walls.

Place tape on the switches to protect them from painting.

After all the touch u work is done you need to start painting all the edges with a brush because the roller cannot paint the edges.

After the edges are done with you need to start with the roller, it would be better if you would use long even coats.

Wait for the first coat to dry. Then apply the second coat.

Remove the tapes from the switches and start admiring your work.

Shijina is an expert SEO copywriter for Marine art. She written many articles like Maritime art, Marine paintings, Maritime gallery For more information visit our site Marine Arts and Artifacts. Contact me at shijinaseo@gmail.com
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Preparing Your Chopper Motorcycle For Painting

2008-08-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

By Dave H Clark

After buying you custom painting manual guide, tools, paint and equipments, the next job is to dismantle the motorcycle. Start dismantling your chopper motorcycle with utmost accuracy. While dismantling the chopper motorcycle, you should be very careful with wires attached to the motorcycle.

Dismantling chopper motorcycle is not very difficult, if you do it according to the custom painting manual guide. Remove only those parts from motorcycle, which you want to re-paint, as most of the people remove each and every part from the motorcycle and find it difficult to assemble it later. You should remember while dismantling your chopper motorcycle, that you have to assemble it. By using the basic tools kit, you can easily dismantle or assemble your chopper motorcycle. You should collect all the big or small parts of your chopper motorcycle very carefully at the time of dismantling your motorcycle.

Sanding

Sanding is done to remove the old paint from the dismantled parts of chopper motorcycle and to give smooth and silky surface to paint. The process of sanding is done by using sand papers. Generally, there are two types of sand paper used in sanding process of motorcycles, first is rough sandpaper and second is fine sandpaper. Rough sandpaper is used to remove the old paint from the motorcycle and fine sandpaper is used to give smooth surface for the new paint. If the old paint is remain on the motorcycle then it might cause problem with the new paint. Therefore, sanding is very important before you start painting your chopper motorcycle. Never try to avoid sanding because it is very important for the long lasting shine and grace of new paint.

Sanding Your Chopper Motorcycle

Sanding a motorcycle doesn't need any specialized knowledge or skill. You must be careful while choosing the correct thickness of the sand paper (rough sandpaper and fine sandpaper). Sand papers with grit form 600 to 1000 can be used, depending upon the roughness of your chopper motorcycle. 600 grit sand papers are used for the rough surface i.e. to remove the old paint. 1000 grit sand papers are used for fine finishing of the motorcycle.

Although sanding is not a specialized job, but you have to be expert in judging the smoothness of the surface on which you are going to paint. When you are going for motorcycle sanding, you should be well prepared, as the people who perform such jobs are regularly exposed to dust (powder of old paint). Chances of getting dust in the eye and throat are very common. Therefore, your must wear the safety equipments. Swallowing these powders sometimes might leads to lung cancer.

For the final finishing of your chopper motorcycle, it is recommended to use 200 grit sanding paper. Smooth and sparkling surface of the motorcycle is the reward of proper sanding. Use 1200 grit wet and dry sand paper if you want to paint a metallic color on your chopper motorcycle.
Chemical Stripper for Sanding
If you find it difficult to remove the old paint of your motorcycle with a sand paper, then you can also use chemical stripper. Apply the paint stripper very carefully all over the motorcycle with a paint brush.

Chemical stripper can affect your skin badly. Therefore, you must wear safety equipments while applying chemical stripper on your chopper motorcycle.
How to Apply Chemical Stripper

You should cover all the parts of your motorcycle, which you want to paint, with clear plastic sheet (available from any hardware shop), so the vapors will be trapped inside and will work more rapidly on the motorcycle. After covering the motorcycle parts with the plastic sheet, than wait for the 2 to 3 hours and remove the plastic sheet.

Now you can start to scrape off the old paint from the motorcycle with a putty knife or a paint scraper. After applying stripping chemical on the motorcycle parts and keep the water away from these parts. If necessary, use the stripping chemical again. Never use the chemical stripper to remove the old paint from the motorcycle part, as it can affect the body (metal) of your chopper motorcycle. Therefore, sanding by sand paper is the best and simple way to remove old paint from motorcycle.

Wash the Parts before You Start Painting

After the sanding process, wash each and every part. Washing is necessary and important to remove the sanding powder which is left after the sanding process. There are some people who jump from sanding directly on to the base coat and might suffer later, as if you start with base coating without washing it, then after completing the first base coat, you will find small particles on it. Therefore, wash gently all the parts before you start painting.

For washing purpose, you can use any common soap or dishwashing detergents which are commonly available in the market. You can also use a scrub or a hard brush with these soap or detergent. A scrub or a hard brush will also remove the old paint left during the sanding process. You can also use cleaner to wash motorcycle, but never use any strong and chemically reacting cleaner which can damage the body (metal) of your chopper motorcycle by starting the rusting process. These types of chemical cleaners contain a chemical irritant which is known as Ethylene Glycol Monobutyl Ether. Therefore, it is recommended to use common soap or dishwashing detergent to wash your chopper motorcycle before painting.

Dave Clark is a experienced article writer and has been in the industry for many years, he has written many books and is very knowledgeable in various fields, Dave also works for Cushy Sofa a supplier of Memory Foam Sofas, Memory Foam Mattresses, Memory Foam Toppers, Divans and Memory Foam Pillows
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