Protect the Environment Every Day

Message from the Overseas Houston Docked at Old Port Tampa

Protecting the Environment at Home: 

Earth Day 2012 was a success in Tampa Bay with many community groups of volunteers organized.
Though I'm accustomed to channel traffic of commercial shipping lines, barges, fishing and sail boats, coast guard and other security traffic, this ship got a second look during Earth Day clean-up on Picnic Island Saturday.

Docked in Old Port Tampa at the entrance to Picnic Island, which runs under Tampa Airport fuel pipes, this line is in-port frequently and all ships are lettered with the "protect the environment" reminder.

Beautiful Egret Wading on Littered Picnic Island Beach

I cleaned up one small section of beach and park for three days Easter week, collecting hundreds of plastic eggs, plastic "grass", flipflops, candy containers, boxes, plastic drink bottles, plastic cups and other refuse left by adults. Most dangerous were the small plastic rings that birds and waterfowl will become tangled or trapped in.

I gave three days to protect this beautiful egret and thousands of other birds whose home is this island estuary. In this photo, taken after my clean-up, the beach is still littered in green plastic grass and at least one plastic jar top I missed.

Pristine Picnic Island Beach

The Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful group volunteered at Picnic Island for Earth Day. As you can see, it's clean again, after the volunteers collected countless bags of litter from in and around the park and playground plants and beach areas. Park staff were on-hand, too.

Another island painter is in this photo. I believe he keeps to himself. If you visit Picnic Island and happen upon me when I'm painting, I'd very much enjoy your stopping to chat. Sometimes I have to keep working while chatting, though, if the winds are high and I'm using acrylic paint-it dries very quickly.


Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for nature art prints:
nature prints

 

Nature Art for Older Kids

Island Floers Series : 1 of 6

Choosing decorative art for children after they've outgrown Mickey and Little Ponies, but before they've discovered zombies or vampires makes for a challenge.

I'm working on several island nature series for my Fine Art America young people's gallery with the originals now offered on Etsy as affordable art as each series is completed. Island Flowers Great paintings for the young-at-heart, too!

Six series in total in the works: butterflies, flowers, fish, shells, seabirds, and trees. Each is a series of 4-6 acrylic paintings on 6x6x1-1/2" canvas executed in a very spontaneous watercolor style.

Butterflies Series : 2 of 6

These paintings, not graphic art, are all about nature--bright colors and peaceful settings. All images, except the soon to be listed tropical fish, are from the island where I paint regularly.

Girly girl flowers painted in pinks and purples and golden yellows are balanced with boyish tans for moths, butterflies and shells.

The very bright tropical fish series is for the youngest art aficionados. The trees series will feature some great climbing trees and more delicate ones, too, for girls and boys. All are being listed on Etsy as they are completed, then will be available as similar prints in a variety of sizes and formats on Fine Art America.

Island Flowers Series : 2 of 6

Island Flowers 2 of 6  is a beautiful little painting suitable for all ages.

All of these paintings convey the peace and tranquility of nature's gentle movement in an island estuary. 

These images, also very attractive as greeting cards will be  offered at Fine Art America as completed in multiple formatting choices.


Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

Butterfies Flutter By

Island Butterfly

I've always thought butterflies should be called flutterbys. That's the way my mind works and why I love languages.

Childlike fun in my art, getting as much paint on myself as on the canvases, is the order of the day this week. Escaping business, politics and planning, can be difficult, but we must take the time occasionally.

Butterflies is one of my latest series of small spontaneously executed paintings on Picnic Island that capture my beautiful island surroundings in Spring. The originals are offered at Etsy  Butterflies Series  with reproductions soon from my prints site at Fine Art America 

Butterflies are popular with many artists, visual and performing.  They're capable of garnering academy awards as in the classic Butterflies are Free, or stimulating commentary and action on social concerns as with Julia Hill.  Julia Butterfly Hill

Island Moth

While these paintings aren't my usual genre, they are a wonderful diversion from the domain site I'm patiently waiting to load up with original works. Meanwhile, there will be several small series of garden subjects painted in different background colors.

Having a camera that only worked on scenic shots for a few months, I've uploaded photos for card prints to my Fine Art America site. Some are quite stunning captures of the Tampa Bay area and flower photos. Photo Gallery

With a new camera, I can "focus" on photographing my paintings now when I finish playing in the garden, watching the butterflies flutter by.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

Cameras for Visual Artists

Bon Voyage from Bayshore Boulevard

Yesterday, Palm Sunday, the Bayshore Boulevard (of Dreams) in Tampa could not look more inviting than in this snapshot.
 
For several months, my fifth digital camera has been on the fritz. I've only had this one for three months. Granted it's only a P+S Kodak, but the prior two gave me acceptable results when shooting outdoors. I'd drag out the old SLRs but they're no longer practical. I don't even want the bulk of a DSLR.

 Bayshore Boulevard Rainbow Sans Pot o' Gold

This photo taken across the street from the above, and minutes apart, is a little pond in old Palma Ceia. It's actually the old Palma Ceia Spring swimming hole from days long past.

In different light, different colors, this shot is problematic for many digital P+S cameras. The lens is fast enough to stop motion, stabilized, but colors are hard to correct.

Look at the rainbow, though, beautiful. While the greens are okay and the focus is spotty in a few areas, this is still a pretty greeting card scene.

Point+Shoot cameras I've owned and researched have a problem with contrasting and differentiating the transition from sun to shade and, in my more colorful flower shots, correct to blobs of bright color, or everything is monotone blurred blues.

Bayshore Garden Club Live Oaks Draped in Moss

A lovely scene across the side road to the spring, shot on automatic setting with strong backlighting and multiple shades of green. Not bad. I'll re-shoot when I have a new camera.
This link offers lots of information from an experienced professional fine art photographer.
Photograph Art 

Maybe more technical than you need, but you can easily pick out the sections on 2-D art and just enjoy the pictures in the rest of the post.

Cruising Down the Bayshore

Off to look at cameras now. Our difficulty in photographing our art is the close-up focus required for reproductions. Artists need those fantastic scenery shots only for reference, unless like me, uploading photos for prints.

With my current information, I may choose a Panasonic Lumix today and continue reading before committing to a Canon Powershot SX40HS, as referenced in my prior post link - New Camera - which the author has updated.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios
 

Museums and Other Cultural Changes

When is the last time you visited a museum or any other community cultural center, or read an actual newspaper? We're online (alone) garnering our cultural snippets of art, literature, games, music and movies, and community news. We don't go to museums or to libraries unless we're in search of blockbuster entertainment.

A comprehensive discussion of the American museum historical perspective in today's changing needs can be found at this link. It's a long article, about our society, too, and well worth the read if you love art and museums. What's a Museum?

Picnic Island Prickly Pear

Thinking about our digital focus this week I spent lots of time at the beach, my cultural center. Google vs. Facebook; how we socialize and interact with one another, it's changing. I enjoy nature with other nature lovers at the beach where outdoor activities don't compete with computer time. We need both.

I found this ancient prickly pear in some mangroves. I've never seen cacti taller than I am, so had to read about it online. My digital library completed the picture by warning me to stay far away to shoot.

Picnic Island Restoration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This photo of fresh plantings at Picnic Island beach appears to be random growth of tropical plants. We know otherwise if we read local newspaper blogs. The whole story is: we've lost beach during storms and new sand was brought in, newly planted with sea oats, sea grapes and flowers and grasses, so sand won't wash away so badly during storms. Not at all nature's randomness in placement.

Gray Morning at Picnic Island

 For visual artists, the web is our life's blood. We must have an online presence to grow and survive in what can be a prickly environment. We are not in museums.

This is my only new finished painting for the week. All those that I've had on the drawing board are complete and just need to be photographed and uploaded.

Is there a museum masterpiece on this post?

Most probably no masterpieces. But until and unless Google decides to shutdown this blog, which they own, these images are captured for all the world to see and I've happily expressed a little of our Tampa Bay culture along with my images. I was able to do so only because life is changing and anyone can share almost anything digitally if they take the time to develop the skills.



Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

In Search of Excellence in Fine Art

This week we learned that Qatar had recently purchased one of five Cezanne Card Player paintings for the record-setting price of $250-million. At first glance, we may wonder why this affluent royal family would want imagery of peasant card-players. It's not the image they've purchased. The Cezanne name and the work as part of a series puts Qatar in a very exclusive club of owners of the other four images, as they purposefully purchase works for their museums. Qatar Buys One of Cezanne Card Players


Whether or not we find these five paintings meet our taste for excellence, excellent works they are. Once again, we see that mundane subject matter in the hands of a master painter can produce extraordinary imagery that will rank excellent at some point in it's existence.

We each have our own reasons for appreciating someone's creative expression, and for our own expression in our works. I believe that it's okay to paint for the joy of painting even if I never create a masterpiece. I'm not sure any of the masters knew their works were masterpieces, except for Clyfford Still. Clyfford Still Museum Denver. He was absolutely certain that he had created excellent art and that it must be shared with those who would appreciate its excellence.

Red Tulips in Spring Snow

I had the good fortune of painting a few hours every day this week working on a series of Spring images from the mountains to the coast. As I worked at the beach, tourists and locals stopped to chat. To some I gave a business card so they could view my "beach" pieces online.

These new works are expressive of my feelings at the time I planned them, regardless of the actual locale in which they were painted. Red tulips in snow are typical for an Asheville flower garden when snow comes late in the year.

Red Maple in Bud

A Montgomery red maple tree is gorgeous in all seasons, but especially when the buds cluster and take on the appearance of brilliant red flowers. We also have red maples in Tampa Bay, but they don't put on as dramatic a Spring or Fall color show as those in cooler climates.

Mountain Home Spring

 

Another view of Asheville in Springtime. This is much later in Spring when flowering trees are rejuvenated in their pale green colors and Carolina blue skies are reflected in the many mountain springs, lakes, and streams.

Along with this serene view, I painted a half dozen mountain farms over the last few weeks that are in my Spring series studies. Most of these will be painted in more detail as larger oil works.

Water Iris

And one little tropical image completes this post of many pretty pictures. I strove for excellence in each of these small acrylic studies as I painted to capture the essence in each subject.

We tend to be a little selfish with our Florida gardens. Though we can't grow tulips, or crocus, or Iris, we buy them in pots to celebrate Spring's arrival, and do have them in art works or art deco pieces around the home.



These works, along with other pieces completed in the last few weeks, will be available only as prints on my Fine Art America site (first link below.)

Comments are always encouraged. How do you strive for excellence in your works?

If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 


All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

Untalented Thief Copied Your Art Again!

What else can you say? 
They have no original talent, and they are thieves who risk copyright infringement. Yet, they make money selling your imagery on their canvases.

It happens to visual artists who put their work out on the internet. You can watermark or protect your images in a number of technical ways, none of which will deter them. Fakes, copies, knockoffs-- a huge problem for this country and others when copyrights and trademarks aren't respected. Consumers foot the bill for it because there is no free ride. If you're any good at your art or craft, you will be copied.

I recently got a little suspicious of some of the hits on my works that didn't quite fit the profile of my market--multiple hits from same source addresses was curious, too. Without searching for "similar" imagery, I decided to take a look at another less professional site many professional artists join that is heavily populated with a great variety of talents, skills and techniques.

Bingo! Look at all that copying going on over there! No respect for others, and ignorance of trademark laws, too. Do they not know that if you paint a portrait of an angry bird, you'd better have a license. Guess not. Do they not know they cannot lift my image from my website, change a little color in a little line and call it their art? Guess not. Here's a link about copyright Art Legalities. Professional artists copyright their art and give notice of that fact. We don't contact thieves, our legal teams do.

Funny thing happened on my way to that other site, so funny that I laughed all afternoon over it. I posted recently about a fellow on a paid website who had 12,000 images Keyword Worth a Thousand Pictures and I have to admit, I find it hard to believe but it's true, the works are all his original works. His style is totally unique and reflects his training. Evidently, he has been copied by the untalented thief who also copied my images.

But wait, there's more! The untalented thief who copied me and the other fellow was copied by another very successful untalented thief on that same website. Both untalented thieves "toot their own horn" quite loudly about their talents in their profiles. Amazing.

A few years ago I was in an interior design store when their "Art" vendor arrived. He pulled his truck to the back of the store and unloaded dozens of paintings in the parking lot for the design team to see. Being an observant and curious painter, I followed along and got into a discussion with the vendor about the art and the pricing. Of course I didn't tell him I'm a painter.

This load of paintings was sourced offshore for pennies on the dollar and sold to designers for "wholesale" as original art. These paintings were blatant copies of European masters. Though both the quality of the painting and framing were ghastly, they were "original art" and would be sold for top dollar. This link is an example of higher quality "original art" from one of many offshore sources michael-wolfs-copy-artists. (My old favorite, Vincent, is in this batch.)

You, too, can have your works produced offshore. Sadly, though, you probably won't be aware that a thief has taken your work. Should you discover you've been ripped-off, domestically or offshore, you can do as I did and have a good laugh about it, or you can get tough with the thieves right away. I prefer to wait patiently until they've built a very strong case of infringement. I haven't traced down the offshore multiple hits I'm getting. Yet.

Please don't hesitate to share how you've dealt with this unpleasant business on your sites, or link your blogs.

Harbor Sunset

Update on my domain GailKentStudio.com : 

Year-end; Holidays, Not-Quite-There-Yet Skillset, Perfect Florida Weather, - I'm working on it! 

Plan is to list large traditional paintings done from the small field works, such as Harbor Sunset, that I've posted this Summer. I have 3 beautiful landscapes almost completed with more to come, painting daily - 

I'll have the site up soon.



All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studios

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

Illusive Inspiration

Inspiration can be triggered when we least expect it. I related in my last blog, "Soulful Song in the Sea Fog,"  ( http://gailkentpainter.blogspot.com/2011/11/soulful-song-in-sea-fog.html ) how the sound of a distant voice that wafted through the fog lit that spark for me. Sometimes it's inconvenient to follow through on the creative impulse when it arrives. Capturing the inspiration and holding it until you can express it as a visual image can be a real challenge. Just as flashes of memory may be fleeting moments, inspiration can be here one minute, gone the next.

Painters often have the create compulsion at the most inconvenient of times. For instance, I've scheduled today for tax work and cannot allow myself to put that aside to finish up the 5 little works I started yesterday when inspiration took over. I was able to take the hours I needed then to rough in my paintings to almost completion. Yesterday was clear, today is rainy. I'll get back to painting next week. Most of my painting is en plein air, even when I paint mountain themes on the Florida coast. If the weather doesn't cooperate with my creativity schedule, I won't be painting that day.


Five Ways to Capture Inspiration:

Following is a list of  five ways I have developed for generating and holding onto creative ideas when they wander into my mind. Take what you need from my list and, please, add your ideas to share as a comment. No need to suffer the anguish of creative block when staring at a blank canvas.

1.  Record Your Ideas
A small writing pad you can sketch in, or a small recorder, or  phone video or memo that you keep with you is a great way to capture ideas to act on later.

2.  Take a Break in "Thinking" About Art
Immerse yourself  in great art by visiting a local museum if possible, or  larger museums online, or take an outing to the environment that you most express in your painting. You'll find that you are "feeling" the art when you are surrounded by imagery that you love.

3.  Chat it Up with Other Artists
If you don't have a local group of artist friends, the weather's bad, or you're otherwise homebound, get online with other artists. We are a generous group putting our ideas out there for dialogue on projects or promotions we're beginning or mulling over. If you don't have an online presence, setup one.

4.  Peruse Arts and Decor Publications
I love spending time in a new Architectural Digest ( https://www.facebook.com/architecturaldigest ) or  Elle Decor (  @ELLEDECOR ) and other publications where I soak up trends for design colors and in artists' magazines where I read about new products or processes. You can follow them on Facebook or Twitter if you can't get the actual publications.

5. Be a Child Again
It's fun to play with line, color, composition when you're under no pressure to produce your next masterpiece. You can scribble in pencil, paint in watercolor or ink, or do simple studies to juice up your creativity. I keep a stash of  3x5" canvas boards, 8x10" stretched canvases, and inexpensive watercolor paper and bristol board for my play time. You may even sell those small works.

Sea fog conceals a beautiful sunny day that lies ahead.

A clear day vista from my island painting perch

  Inspiration can be gained in many ways. I was pleasantly surprised by my foggy day inspiration. If you find my five ways to kick start creativity helpful, please share them with friends and feel free to add you own as comments before you share.

All the best,

Gail Kent

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com
Twitter - @Gail_Kent, and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios/ (in process)