The Artist's Eyes by Jenn Lee

Our children grow up so fast, but never so fast as the infant stages. I have been reminded of this recently as I have been watching my first Grandchild go from newborn to 4 and a half months old. How quickly they go from sleeping all the time, to interactive and on the move. In a blink they are a year old, then two years old, then off to school and finally adulthood!

Remembering the cute little expressions or funny little habits or ways they acted becomes a blur as time goes by. This made me think, “I would love to capture and freeze in time, a moment in my child/grandchild’s life.” With that in mind, I have painted portraits and taken a million photos but never sculpted a 3 dimensional keepsake.

This inspired me greatly so…I did a search on the internet one day and found this cute little baby portrait as inspiration. It made me think of my children because every one of my children loved playing peek a boo with blankets. This first test sculpture turned out exactly how I envisioned it so I plan on creating sculptures of all my own children soon. You can view the pictures of my first test keepsake sculpture below. Please let me know what you think! Sculpting our children into adulthood is an art of it’s own…in this artist’s eyes.

“Get your motor running, head out on the highway,
Looking for adventure in whatever comes our way.” ~ Steppenwolf

As I sat here this morning looking back on the year past and thinking about the year just begun, these song lyrics just popped into my head…literally. What an inspirational and motivational quote for the new year!

Each year we sit and ponder new years resolutions…health, careers, relationships, changes of all types in an constant quest to make each year better than the year before. Instead of making new years resolutions this year, I decided I wanted a new year motivation/inspiration. I hear people all the time say “I wish I had stuck to my new years resolutions…” or “I broke my new years resolution…”, myself included. Finding your inspiration or motivation is key to meeting goals or expectations. Each goal requires steps to fulfillment.

While you sit there thinking about the goals or plans you want to complete this new year…think first about what inspires motivation for you. Think about what keys help keep your motor running. Then get out on that highway and find your adventures! On your mark…get set…go! Inspiration and motivation is an art…in this artist’s eyes. Happy new year everyone!

Johns boss’ Fred and Carol are a sweet couple. They are what I see as a storybook couple…starting out as a young struggling husband and wife that decide to build their own business out of their garage, sinking everything they have into it till they grow it into a strong business in multiple locations all the while keeping their relationship together.

Fred and Carol are avid dog lovers. When I met them they had two big Old English Labradors, Rocky and Bullwinkle. These two dogs were just a couple of big teddy bears. Last year I was saddened to hear from them that they had to put Rocky to sleep, then to add to misfortune, Bullwinkle soon followed. Fred and Carol loved these dogs like their children. Bullwinkle would follow Fred everywhere, even when he would go out traversing the back acres of their property.

John asked me to paint a portrait of Bullwinkle for them for Christmas. I was excited to do this and got to work immediately. The finished product of Bullwinkle has him set amongst shrubbery like he would when he was alive.

My good friends Jason and Christy of Webfoo and PetResearch.net have the biggest hearts when it comes to animals of every kind. Their love for animals is shown not only by their support of animal shelters & services but shown in the knowledge every one of their dogs were rescues. When I first met their dogs, I learned the story behind each addition to their family. It brought tears to my eyes to hear the sad stories. One was near death on the roadside, another tortured by mean people, another owned by a breeding farm and mistreated/uncared for. These dogs were very lucky to have been given a second chance at life…the happiest life a dog could wish for, with these two wonderful people.

Recently I did a portrait of one of their dogs that had passed away…Rudy. I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting Rudy, but given the extremely unique personalities in each of their dogs, I can’t imagine Rudy didn’t have an equally fantastic personality of his own. He can be seen on my blog here. When Christy saw Rudy’s finished portrait, she had tears in her eyes. She had felt I had captured him perfectly. The feeling of satisfaction was priceless! After Rudy, they then asked me to paint their other dogs portraits, to which I was honored to fulfill.

Each portrait is painted on canvas’ of 100% recycled paper materials, 11×14 in size (standard frame) and painted with ECO friendly paints. I’d like to introduce you to…Hardy, Lois Lane, Buddy and Blue!

My fiance and I decided it was time to upgrade our cell phones. I was upgrading from the LG Vu which was a total touch screen phone and he was upgrading from a Pantech Slate, with qwerty keypad. After a bit of investigating and listening to friends advice, we decided to go with the iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone had won the great debate over which phone was the best phone for us. It may not be the best phone for everyone of course, but that’s why the Cell Phone Companies provide us with so many options. The great debate currently seems to be the iPhone vs the Android. I do have to say I think the Android system is pretty awesome, but currently the amount of applications available is limited vs the iPhone. At some point though…they will definitely compete neck in neck with Apple’s iPhone regarding applications.

With the iPhone 3GS as an artist of photography or drawing, it has so many good applications available for total customization in any interest one wants. My fiance, John Adkins, wrote a great article about  the photography applications he and I like for the iPhone 3Gs. On the arts end, I researched and tested out quite a few applications. I of course started with the free applications (because I am frugal..he-he) and then moved on to the pay applications. Out of my research, I have come up with two art applications that I have to place at the top of my list, Art Studio and Brushes.

With both Art Studio and Brushes, you have complete control over the pencil size, pen size as well as brush size. You have a fully customizable color palette as well as ability to add multiple layers and filters. You wonder how a person draws in detail on such a small canvas? Well you can zoom in to an unbelievable per pixel detail, as well as zoom out so no matter the amount of detail you want in your art, you can zoom into any portion and add the minute details desired. Several other features are smudge, the ability to adjust transparency of colors and line detail as you want. There really are no limits to either of these two applications for your inner artist.

Last but not least in this little review, since my other love besides art is photography, I was pretty happy to see the additional features towards photography, implemented in Art Studio. You can add text, adjust all the same properties of your photos that you can with most photo editors from exposure to contrast, hue to saturation, as well as filters like Gaussian Blur, Emboss, Sepia etc.

I hope you enjoyed my little review of two of my favorite iPhone applications! Below you can see a few screenshots I took of the applications open and a couple of youtube videos that I thought gave good examples of these two apps. As far as I can see, these two apps allow the inner artist to go wherever your eye-phone can see…in this artists eyes.

This first video for Art Studio is primitive in nature. The amount of detail in it’s drawing capabilities is equal to Brushes app. My idea with this video was more intended to show you the features and options in the creation of your masterpiece regardless of the level of the art experience you may have.

This second video is using Brushes. You will want to watch closely as this video is sped up significantly, but I chose it because…well…it’s just awesome! You still get  gist of the features in Brushes, just don’t blink or you might miss them! Oh and as far as the subject matter, yes I admit I am a Star Wars fan…