LYLAS 4 ~ "Maginty" ~ J. M. W. Turner Exhibit ~ DMA ~ Angel Painting

LYLAS 4
SOLD
LYLAS 4 "Maginty" Acrylic
9" x 12" Gallery Wrapped Canvas, 3/4" profile black (depth)
This is the fourth in the Lylas series. See this post to read how the paintings came to be.

Now to the DMA

J. M. W. Turner "The Angel Standing in the Sun" 1846
was painted in his 70's and it shows where the light of the sun dissolves the boundary of Heaven and earth and an angel appears causing a bridge between Heaven and earth.
The Turner exhibit closes at the Dallas Museum of Art May 18 and it was very busy when I attended Thursday, April 17. I recommend you make the trip and get the audio guide. I'm an artist without an art history degree and much of my Turner education came from this visit. From this brief day of information, I think Turner would have been an art blogger with a web site promoting his art. I'm an art blogger and I think I know one when I see one. He embraced the technology at the time and was a canny business man. While other artists would wait until their painting was hung to put on the final varnish, Turner opted to do some actual painting on his, in other words a short free demo and then varnish causing more hype. Usually his paintings included some descriptive statement with a few lines of poetry and sometimes the poetry was written by him. Sounds like a blogger to me.
Turner, at times, used watercolor like oil and oil like watercolor. On several paintings the oil was used so thinly the texture of the weave of the canvas was visible. The exhibit is a dazzle to the eyes with approximately 140 works and there are over 20 stations discussed with the audio guide. It is the largest and most comprehensive retrospective ever held in the U.S. of J. M. W. Turner's works in oils and watercolors (1775-1851). One word, LIGHT, has always been associated with his work and it is prominent in his depiction of seascapes, mythology, religious themes, imagination and historical events.
The one above, The Angel Standing in the Sun, spoke to me as I'm been painting some angel type figures and up close you could only view one wing.
Here are some links of this particular angel piece and gives more insight and explanation of the work. Eat a hearty breakfast before going as you will want to linger and read the additional information posted by the paintings or you can take a museum lunch break and go back in the afternoon but please go. If you have time, the Wikipedia article would give a little additional information before attending.

Another view of the painting.

Art Notes.

The TATE.

Angel at Rest ~ Skinny Girl Award ~ CBC Mini Paintings

$40.00
6" x 6" acrylic on canvas
Purchase through Canvas by Canvas.com
Angels are referred to as Watchers, Holy Ones, Host of Heaven, Spirits, Messengers, Guardians and our Champions. They are commonly depicted as having halos and wings and in Christian iconography they are shown as a winged human form and are powerful and are used to execute God's will. This angel is an imaginary angel at rest and as a former librarian, I gave her a book to read but even though she is supposed to be on a "rest break" she still looks down guarding her charges. I used some Pearlescent paint on the wings. Wikipedia has a long article on angels.
Canvas by Canvas has been painting some mini paintings for their upcoming shows and we have done, fish lures and flys, high heels, cupcakes, and now angels. I am one of the 11 members of CBC.
Since March, some of us at CBC have been in a weight war. See my post of July 30, 2007.
Yesterday was weigh in day at the Upstairs Gallery annex. This a photo of the winner, Nancy..yep, that's me being presented with the Skinny Girl Award by the keeper of the money, Cindy Yandell. It was her idea for us to undertake this project and I'm glad I joined in with the group as I've lost 19 pounds and plan to lose some more. I really didn't get serious until about a month ago and this post tells a little about one of my tactics.

Nancy is holding the $$$, Cindy Y is presenting the Skinny Girl Award.

I hope to use some of the cash award to take more art workshops and photo op trips.
Other blogs where I post:
http://artistfoodnetwork.blogspot.com
http://canvasbycanvas.blogspot.com
http://myspace.com/nancystandlee
TO PURCHASE PAINTINGS: Go to Paypal on http://nancystandlee.blogspot.com
Eat Well ~ Paint Your Food ~ Laugh Often

SOLD ~Copper Curls ~ Small Portrait ~ NeoCounter ~ Art Blog

SOLD to an art collector in Plainview, TX
5" x 7" Acrylic Portrait on canvas board

I have a fondness for painting girls with red hair. Red hair is more fun to paint than just plain brown. I see that this redhead may have gotten a little too much sun on her cheeks. Wikipedia has this to say about people with red hair and I learned that Scotland is the country with the highest proportion of redheads in the world.
And talking about countries, I've found the neatest, coolest web widget in the Blogosphere. When you scroll down my page you'll see a list of visitor's cities and countries beside their flag. I found it in operation on a site in Australia, Life in the Health Lane while visiting Blog Catalog.
Then I couldn't wait for Megha to click on my site so Australia would show up on my NeoCounter. You can download your free copy at Neoworx.
Today some from Canvas by Canvas painted at the Upstairs Gallery on an upcoming project of mini flies and lures and the rest will have to be a surprise (no sneak peeks yet). This is just the "bait"..sorry. But while there the gallery owner, J.T. Martin, stopped by from his UTA teaching position and I had to snap a photo of this handsome Southern Gentleman.

We have a NeoCounter on our Canvas by Canvas site and I am jealous. I see they have had 2 hits from my home town of De Leon, Texas (population 2200) and I haven't had one De Leon visitor. I think I may have to email some old classmates! Also, my brother lives in Midland and I don't see a Midland visitor yet..hey, Bro.. come visit my blog but there is a Midland visitor on the CBC web site. OK, this could get addictive.

Other blogs where I post:

http://artistfoodnetwork.blogspot.com

http://canvasbycanvas.blogspot.com

http://myspace.com/nancystandlee

TO VIEW MORE PAINTINGS OR PURCHASE: Go to Paypal on http://nancystandlee.blogspot.com

Eat Well ~ Paint Your Food ~ Laugh Often

(NFS) Calypso Market Series #6 of 10 -~ PageRank ~ Wi-Fi

Donated to the Arlington Museum Black and White Gala
7.5" x 5.5" image
Acrylic on 140 lb. watercolor paper
The Calypso series #6 of 10

Good news for my laptop traveling friends and good news this morning for those living along the Thames. Free access is open to a Wi-Fi hot spot for about a 13 mile stretch in London. Yoo-Hooo!
The painting is of two friends enjoying a special moment while shopping. Shopping for what? That’s for you to decide. Maybe it’s for some of those really Sassy high heels they’ve heard about at the Canvas by Canvas site or leaf-green limes, maybe mangoes or lemons. Or they might be conversing about PageRank and it’s importance to a beginning blogger. See more about PageRank with our friend Mr. Wiki at Wikipedia.
Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes your site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The Google Toolbar has a symbol to show PageRank. The Google Toolbar's PageRank feature displays a visited page's PageRank as a whole number between 0 and 10. The most popular websites have a PageRank of 10. The least have a PageRank of 0. I have a Google Toolbar and I’ve never know the meaning of that little horizontal bar – looks a little like a horizontal thermometer. So now as I find out more about it, I’m curious about everyone's PageRank since I don’t even have the slightest smidge of leaf green color in my little themometer. I have zero page rank. Ohhhhh! I’d like to have at least 1 little piece of leaf green to show.
There are several theories on how to get PageRank. Go to one of my favorite places to look for answers at Peter Chen for Blogger Tips and Tricks and type in PageRank in his search bar. His site has a PageRank of 5 – way to go PC.
This post cautions about who you link to: http://blogger-tricks.blogspot.com/2006/11/precaution-to-take-before-linking-to.html

Peter suggests you do one important thing to increase your PageRank if this is a concern of yours. Register with DMOZ and Google . If you have a blog and want to get a good page ranking read this post: http://blogger-tricks.blogspot.com/search/label/DMOZ
I registered my blog at both places. Read carefully the instructions given before registering.
If you don’t have a Google toolbar and don’t want one, (can’t imagine why you wouldn’t) here is a site, Top 25 Web, (PageRank 6) to search for a web or blog's url to see their PageRank.
For example: I looked for Amazon (PR 9) and Dick Blick (PR 7) – 2 of my most used searches and sites and where most of my expendable income ends up for books and art supplies and listed on my side bar for your convenience of shopping.
Yes, you know I had to search out Google’s PageRank and are you surprised? Yep, it’s a 10, after all, it’s their deal. It’s amazing how popular they have become and most people know exactly what you mean when you say, "Oh, just Google her or him or it…"
My bet is when our Calypso Market shoppers pass a Wi-Fi hot spot; they will stop and check their PageRank.
If you want to see if there is a Wi-Fi hot spot in your area check out this link at Free HotSpot, and put in your zip code, maybe share a laptop/java moment with a friend before plantain shopping.

CALYPSO JUDGE Series #5 of 10 More BLOG and PING

7.5" x 5.5" image
Acrylic on 140 lb. watercolor paper
The Calypso series #5

This figure reminds me of a judge. What do you see? I have the bright colors, and lots of splatter, and the addition of the black and white squares suggests a checkerboard. It is dramatic when you have your darkest dark up against the lightest light in a painting and it will tend to draw the eye to this area. I don’t want an exact likeness but just an impression that does not bore.
In yesterday’s post, I reported on a ping site. Today I have another site to add to our arsenal and instructions on how to put it on your blog so as to ping several blog directories to possibly cause some indirect traffic to appear at your blog site. My painting buddies at Canvas by Canvas are calling us "Nancy and the Bloggernuts" and these instructions are directed more at the Bloggernuts than anyone else.
Autopinger is a free and convenient service for all bloggers. Just set it and forget it. It relays your blog updates to blog search engines every 30 minutes or you can add a button and ping after you update. Disclaimer! I’ve been blogging about 2 weeks now (a baby blogger trying to find my way in the blogosphere). Please read your directions for your Ping Me button as given on http://autopinger.com/ as the ones given below are only suggestions.

Gadzooks! Batman!...go for it.
Go to: http://autopinger.com/

Register- Sign up is free
You will receive an email notification, follow
instructions
Sign up by clicking
Go to My Account
Add new blog
Type in the url of your blog - ADD
Set ping services (on the left)
All are set automatically
Get the: Quick Ping Button
Copy the html
code generated (scroll down, left click inside the box, control C to copy
(Here I paste it in a Word document in case for some strange reason I lose
it?) Paranoia?
At Blogger Template, add a page, HTML, and paste in the code
(I had a box at the bottom of my page that I’d put in a stat counter (the long
skinny one) So as not to add another box on my page, I used the stat counter box
and pressed enter several times to put some space between the html code and
added the Ping info into the same box.)
Paste into the Blogger template
(Here grab you a glass of iced tea and bring it back to your computer...Be
careful of spills! or some Sweet tea, sometimes known as Southern Table Wine.
View and Ping the PING ME button...Fun! and Watch what
happens in the pop up window…Drink you iced tea and WAIT and WATCH as your site is pinged to death. Autoping will do this automatically every 30 minutes.

(I can’t believe computers all over the world are being pinged every 30 minutes but then I don’t understand electricity either or even how my coffee pot works!) OR and this is the fun part you can press your Ping Me button when you have an update. BLOG and PING!! Scroll all the way down to the bottom of my page and you can see my Ping Me button and yours should look just the same. I hope so. Happy Pinging!

Sold ~ CALYPSO ANGEL Series #4 of 10 by Nancy Standlee BLOG and PING

SOLD to an art collector in Austin, TX

7.5" x 5.5" image
Acrylic on 140 lb. watercolor paper
The Calypso series #4.

I’m in “blogging infancy” and absolutely enjoy sharing my images each day. Not everyone in our Canvas by Canvas group agrees but Margie Whittington does. Here is her email to me this morning after finding more search items related to her name and the blogs and edited in part,

"****Thank you Nancy for being our R & B GURU ! (Research and blogging guru)
***** Now besides CBC Sistahs, we are..."Nancy and the Bloggernuts"....sounds
like a children's TV show.
Have a good day everyone. I'm off to paint
fairies and flowers in Alyssa's room in Benbrook.
I'll catch up on the
emails this evening.
Margie"

Yes, Margie I agree, “Nancy and the Bloggernuts” sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon. She may be referring to a hint I sent yesterday from morning research I did for getting traffic to your blog. I think others might like to have this information also.
1. Pinging connects or notifies a number of services that update and track your blog by crawling and indexing your site to help increase your blog’s popularity. Why would you want to be "pinged"? In May 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 71 million blogs.

2. This service, Pingoat, will ping several services at once. I tried it and so did some of the others from CBC and will it help? We’re newbie’s and we don’t know but here is how I did it. I skipped the first yellow highlighted area, scroll down to Get Started, and fill in your information. I left Xml blank because I didn’t know what it was. This is a little confusing when they say ( Click category title to Select all ;-) You click on GENERAL and all the ones below are checked. I did not check non-English nor Special and then GO PINGOAT!

No guarantees it will work. It’s just what I did. Why? I think blogs are
changing the landscape and I want to be a part of it.
Here is another site that has more pinging information from Quick Online Tips

http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2005/09/one-click-multiple-blog-services-pinging
But I see that this is a 2005 archive and may not be current.

What do you see in this painting exhibited today? Do you see a mysterious lady with wings, an angel perhaps or a figure surrounded by a very colorful sky? I thought of an angel, a supernatural being, a guardian acting as God’s messenger to man. I scraped into the surface with the end of the brush and color shaper tools, splattered paint, and generally just got messy with the painting. This series is painted on a ground of white gesso on watercolor paper.

Click on the Dick Blick icon on the right for more information about the Colour Shaper tools from one of my favorite art suppliers, Dick Blick. Be sure you search COLOUR Shapers.

Colour Shapers are a revolutionary tool for painting, drawing, lifting, and blending. Invented by artists for artists, Colour Shapers combine tradition with exciting new technology. The durable tips are made of an advanced rubber composite. Apply oil or acrylic paint straight from the tube with a Colour Shaper, and then use it to carve back into the paint for a variety of texture and surface effects. The tool easily lifts paint from the surface or draws lines, contours, and edges on the color. With seamless nickel ferrules and lacquered hardwood handles, they offer the quality needed by dedicated artists. To clean, simply dip the tips in water or solvent and wipe with a cloth. Don't worry — dried color just peels away!

BLOG AND PING. New vocabulary? Are angels ancient territory in the realm of man or as new to you as blog and ping? Blog. Ping. Angels.

SOLD ~ Women Only Red Lipstick by Nancy Standlee

Women Only Red Lipstick
6” x 8” Acrylic on Canvas Panel

Red Lipstick. On my AT&T/Yahoo homepage this headline and video caught my eye. Since I didn’t think there were very many things left just “For Women” I did a Google search….Wrong! There were millions of hits. I was interested in Pommygranate’s blog that reported this "Women-Only Beach" item. I like the idea of lipstick still being in the female domain. It’s one of my earliest memories of femininity. Your mom making sure your first tube was the palest of pinks and hiding out in the school bathroom to try on the newest shade from a friend. One friend, Shirley, in high school, always wore Revlon’s “Orchids to You” and when she said the name, I always thought she said “Orchid Stew”. Why do I still remember that? I did a Google search on “Orchids to You” and came up with a delightful story, “Harrell: At the beauty parlor”, posted in 2003 in the Carolina Morning News about her experience with “Orchids to You” nail polish and another beauty product, the Frankenstein machine for perms (I’ve had one of those also). Now it seems the newer lipstick names are “Wild Orchid” and “Orchid Beach”. Do you wear “Orchid Beach” lipstick at the women only beach? Whatever the color, it’s better than crushing carmine beetles like Cleopatra as mentioned in Wikipedia. I like Red and red lipstick for women only.

Saturday Synchronicity

$100.00 in the FWCAC Show during December.
11” x 7.5”
acrylic on watercolor paper
unframed, no mat
I had not planned to post today but a little Saturday Synchronicity intervened. Today I’ve joined a group of 149 painters, Daily Painters Marketplace, who are interested in sharing their art. Talented groups of artist’s band together to share their love of art and develop a market for sales. If this is a new concept to you, Google “daily painting” and you will be amazed to find 86,000 results. Will our works be found? We hope so and we hope you will subscribe to our daily painting email feed. If life gets in the way, as life is prone to do, I may not post daily but daily is the goal. If I’m not actively posting, be sure I’ll be planning the next post. Today I did have a mysterious lady waiting for the synchronicity. And daily I agree with Georges Braque “With age, art and life become one”.