My First Giclee Print: Girl and Dragon

Hey everyone!

I couldn't wait to share with you all some exciting news! As you know I have ordered my very first giclee print and I finally picked it up today! There were some complications with the printer (as in it broke) so I had to wait an extra week for them to order a new special printer before it was ready. I'm so happy with the results and so I took some pictures for you :)

Here is me with the unveiling of the amazing print! It's the the first time I've seen it though, since I had to see it at the print shop to confirm, but still, that sounds way more dramatic. In any case, I was still happy to see it again. The owner of the print shop (River City Digital Graphics), Jim commented that he liked the painting and that I did a great job with it :) That was so great to hear, especially since he has been painting for a very long time. He also said that I did a great job with the digital image as it looks as good as if it were scanned (I took a picture with my camera with strategic lighting). That also was amazing to hear; it's always good to get confirmation that you are doing a good job.

Now that I have an archival quality print of this painting, I will be happy to share both with Andi and have him pick which ever one he wants to have. After all, this painting wouldn't have existed without him.

So that was my exciting news for today. That makes two posts in one day! Yowza :) Until next time!

<3 Kara

Self-portrait in the style of Amedeo Modigliani

大家好！ Hello everyone! Today I am bringing you a self portrait!

The first picture (top left) was a sketch I did in 2003. At this time, I was just doodling and drawing whatever I could.  As I became more involved with graphic and web design, I decided to mess around in Photoshop and make a rough digital version (top right) the following year. At this time I was so into making vectors, and I was still figuring out the ins and outs of Photoshop without a guide or tutorial, so I'm sure this digital rendition could use a bit of work. However, I do like this rough look to it and do not have plans to change it in any way.

The final painting (bottom picture) was the result of an IB art assignment. I was to research an artist of choice and do a piece in the style of that artist. At that time, I was trying to re-sketch this self-portrait from 2003 to make it better, since I was really interested in portraits. Now this was 2007, so a couple years following. I am basing everything on the sketch and digital version that I made (I couldn't find the original photo). Also, I could never draw myself to look like myself, so I was constantly trying to improve on that.

I was going to choose Georgia O'Keeffe because I had taken a bunch of close-up pictures of flowers and felt that her flower pieces were extremely beautiful. But I really wanted to work on portraits, so I chose Amedeo Modigliani. It turned out well because I was able to incorporate a bit of my style with some of Modigliani's style. I had fun with this, and there were two main reasons why I chose Modigliani. The first and main reason is the way he did the eyes, which I found fascinating. The eyes are just one murky color with no real details of what an eye really is. With the thought of the eye being the gate into someone's soul (wow that was corny), the lack of an eye really says something to me. The secondary reason is the backward "S" shape of the subjects. He paints is subjects in a way where you can trace the basic shape of a backward "S". I thought that was interesting too. And when I looked at my sketch, I saw that an "S" shape could be traced, so I thought this would be a good choice as the subject for the assignment.

I hope you enjoyed my self-portrait in the style of Modigliani. This was done in March 2007.

<3 Kara