[Mottles]

Good discussion going y'all! Hope we are not boring the socks off everyone else! But if you are going to add color to your woodburning or even not these are some good things to know for future use.
There can be some beautiful rich darks mixed without grabing a tube of black paint. As we are all learning. I also like to mix Phthalo green and Burnt Umber, or Phthalo Blue and Burnt Umber. Alizarin Crimson and Phthalo Green make a beautiful greenish black. Or more Alizarin Crimson would be toward a dark purple. It's all in the mix--there are many more combinations of color mixes......tee hee
Susan understand more now what you meant about sepia oil background got lost for a bit. LOL Will have to give those colors a try always something new to learn and that is a good thing.
I'll upload one of my oil paintings to my website and let you all know in this thread. Thank you for asking! 's'
Looks like I'm going to get started on my lantern woodburn without a shader. It's been put on back order so I'm going to go a head an begin my woodburn. Because of our discussion about cross hatching etc. and your example in your post. Maybe I can complete this one without a shader. It's worth a try and some good learning experience. Will get over to your site and take a looky at your example.
Kathy

[Irish]

Kathy,

Sun Flowers - wonderful use of compliments AND complimentary values!!!!

Water Fall and Rocks - Great gray tones in the water and a good use of the reflective purple tones from the rocks! Very Nice!

Ok, found my favorite - Muscle Car definitly would look wonderful over my sofa! Yeap! That's the one, you can wrap it up for me

And Thunder is wonderfully seated. That back paw and belly are right on the wall's surface.

Just beautiful work, Kathy!!!

Susan

[Mottles]

WOW Susan, just came from looking at your Dobie painting it's just beautiful and the background is so effective. Your painting and woodburning work is truely so professional and just--gee's I'm babbling That what I do when I can't find enough words to express how I feel. Beautiful work!
Thank you for visiting my website and for your compliments very much appreciated. I'll stop before I start babbling again. LOL
For anyone interested I have uploaded three of my paintings in both color and grayscale. I hope they will help convey some of what we've been discussing in this thread. http://www.colorjourney.com/id25.htm
I can't tell you all how thrilled I am that I found you all. Thanks WCI
Kathy

[Irish]

Kathy, Great gray scale page! With the wide color palette you are using the two versions - color and gray - really show the difference between hues and values. Love the cactus!

And speaking of cactus, did you drop by Hi_Ho (Dave's) Picturetrail site. He has some fantastic southwestern paintings with beautiful use of a limited color palette ... browns and ochres! He is displaying an adobe structure painting that has some really excellent value work in it.

OK ... for me, enough oil talk ... I simply don't have the time to have three active additions going at once. It's either carving and wood burning, or carving and oils, or oils and burning, or maybe it's carving and burning then oil painting over them both ???

Susan

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

Thanks much for the compliment Susan! I assume you are talking about the painting I made the prints from "pueblo del cielo", the picture doesn't bring out the colors for some reason,,,,,there is a definite monochrome quality to pueblos however, but also bits of color here and there....but thank you, always nice to receive a compliment, especially from someone that is such a terrific artist as you are...it means something

[Irish]

I'm sorry Dave!!! Being a green horn Easterner I don't know the difference between adobe and Pueblo ... (See me reaising my hand saying, "Dumb Woman Here!)

Pueblo ... Taos Pueblo I and II caught my eye with the variations in the gray tones to create the depth. And no white! Perfect. The step effect of the one painting in the side walls is to die for. It reminds me of hard edge painting, a favorite style of mine and not one easy to conquer because it can be so terribly unforgiving if you don't get the values just right.

Old Mine makes fantastic use of tonal values ... that one would be a great wood burning project. The Shadows on the right side of the building with the dark insides and bright biege dirt just make your eye flow through the work. And that little bit of sunshine coming through the back wall just finishes the depth perception off perfectly.

Beautiful work and whosit, would be wonderful subjects for pyro. You deserve the praise, Good Sir.

Susan

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

thanks again! the only difference really between an adobe and a pueblo is the adobe is a building and a pueblo is a village..ha ha.....actually the pueblos are adobe, but they made up a lime mixture, I believe every year and coated the adobe bricks with it to preserve them...the sad thing is, now that is not being done and the buildings are returning to dirt/clay which is what adobe is (with a little straw mixed in)...very interesting, amazing what ancient peoples were able to accomplish without govt inspections, power tools etc...and arrogant people nowadays call them "primitive" lol
As for the Taos I and II, I won best of show for Taos I at the local college. as for colors, I have not figured out how to get a really good photo? There are no grays..all the colors are a pastel with shades of (very light) crimson, orange blue etc.......I guess when I look at the photos that escapes me because I know what the pic. looks like, didn't realize I lose that much in the photos...sorry. Dave

[Mottles]

Susan: Thank you for your nice compliments I appreciate you taking the time to have a looky. It is good to see our work in grayscale it either confirms values are in place--or it confirms there not.
Dave: Wonderful work here I especially liked the light you achieved on the old pubelo you painted from a old photo. I really liked the Colorado cabin the composition, colors well didn't find anything I didn't like. Beautiful work Dave!
I'm starting my lantern tomorrow I think I have everything in place. Color photo both color and to grayscale. Drawing is complete and transferred to my birch panel. The only thing missing is my spear shader but I'm determined to push on without it. Susan has given me the courage to take it on!
Kathy

[Nancy_G]

I've been following this thread avidly. Some physical problems have hampered my carving so I've thought about going back to flat painting. Burning sounds wonderful.
I have a Colwood Super Pro II, all the tips, all the patience and detail is 'my cup of tea'. Tell me where to get this gray tone program, please.

[Irish]

Nancy,

That raccoon is beautiful, is he watercolors? Wonderful fur technique!!!

If you have a scanner it probably has a gray scale setting. Just about any image editing graphics program has gray scale. Many digital camera also let you take images in gray scale.

I personnally use Paint Shop Pro. That one lets you not only gray scale but also decide the number of gray tones you want in your image. It also has a replacement tool where you can pick one color and change it to another. That's a nice way to get rid of the fuzzy or blurry halos that sometime happen. It's great for resizing the image as well.

I believe that you can download the program for a 30 day trial at www.jasc.com

Susan

PS ... I find it extremely relaxing as it is one area of my work that I CAN'T hurry through! So setting down with the burner for an hour means just that, Setting down, being quite, and having fun.