I just have to pause for a day on art posts and show you this adorable new member of the fammily. We lost our little precious dog about two months ago. Ricky and the dog were best buds and now we are sad and alone ........so.......good idea....we got a new kitten. If you've ever tried to introduce a young kitten to an older cat you know it has to be done carefully. Well after a week of separation they got wind of each other. Another week went by and all of a sudden as I was sitting on the bed out of the corner of my eye I saw the little one jump up and start his approach to the 9 year old. I happened to be reading on my ipad at the moment so I could just click the camera record button and got the who interaction. It's adorable. I posted it on the youtube station and give you a link here to see how cute it is. You can fast forward through my "talking" if you want to get to the cute part. Enjoy. MEANWHILE I'm working on an abstract and it's HARD !

PUTTING MY PAINTINGS ON THE COVER of books

Once again I am letting you know how excited I am about my latest project, putting my high resolution images on the cover of notebooks and planners. I made a video where I show you a few of the 100s that I've posted. I am also becoming a more organized person with my appointment and project management notebook. I love digital things but I have found that anything I post disappears into the depths of the internet. Digital planners are of couse good for tickle notifications but I genuinely like writing things down and enjoy being able to turn pages and see the past and the future. LOOK on your amazon account and type in sally rosenbaumm composition books or planners

Alizarin crimson, indian yellow and prussian blue AGAIN

This is an 8 x 10 image from a photograph I took ages ago......33 years ago to be exact. It's mind boggling how time works. I started with an indian yellow toned canvas and then outlined the figure with the blue. I then began to block in the shapes within the figure and without the figure. Keeping the palette simple once agains keeps you as the artist simply asking the simple questions. Is it warmer (add more yellow) or cooler (add more red) than what it's next to. The other important question will be Is it lighter or darker. Everytime you add a color to another color it diminishes it's brightness unless of course you're adding white which again can work to cool it down. WITH such a limited palette you get the hang of it really easily. When I was photographing subjects and scenes to paint I would generally ask them (in this case I did the choosing) to wear white. It's of course super reflective and you can make the painting sparkle with the reflected lights. This is still available for sale on website www.sallyrosenbaumartgroup.com and as a print, or greeting card on FINEARTAMERICA https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/1-sally-rosenbaum/shop

Painting a dog is not so hard

I thought it would be impossible to paint a dog. I don't know why. But it really turns out to be an exercise in placement. You have to get the nose and the eyes in the right place and much of the rest is following the outline carefully to get the right shape of that particular dog. I am extremely recently partial to dachshunds because my son got one "BIRDIE" two years ago and she is quite the diva. She isn't black like this one. She is red and I have painted her silliness many times. It's fun. It's a good way to warm up.

Limited palette: Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine blue, and Indian Yellow

This is another limited palette painting. It's very very fun to do many and line them all up and see how similar and different they appear all at the same time. In the beginning during the "lay in" stage it's easy to say oh I'll never get the colors to pop or stand out but the longer you create you "soup" (the combination of colors you're mixing on your palette) the more the tiniest differentiations start to appear and add definition to your canvas. I am now convinced that this is the way to learn. 1. You realize that a painting is about the canvas not the image or the photograph 2 You are striving toward harmony 3. You are actively experiencing at a very simple and effective level the differences between darker or lighter and the other important question, warmer or cooler, or brighter or duller. Your mind is not confounded but a vast array of colors with so many different values. If you must add more colors, wait until you've laid in the main idea to your satisfaction and use the 4th color carefully to enhance.

The Limited Palette always Impresses

I picked up a photo of a young woman I had painted once upon a time and thought I'd like to explore it further. I've always absolutely loved the artwork of Toulouse Lautrec. The subject matter of the dancing show girls, the night life of the French bougousie, and the dedication of the young toulouse have always intrigued me. Looking closely at it I know he uses a lot of yellow and alizarin crimson and maybe some blue, maybe some green. So I put blobs of alizarin, Indian yellow and Ultramarine blue along with titanium white on my glass palette and using a small brush and the red I sketched her in. THis is the final result. After a while I felt like I was simply doing a value study but the limitations of color make it much easier than being overwhelmed with a full palette. It facilitated the ease of asking the simple questions that propel us around the canvas. Is this space lighter or darker, warmer or cooler. Easy peasy. I am going to continue this little exercise for a while. I find that limited palettes are kinder to the eye and the harmony is automatic.

I have now had the pleasure of selling these composition books and the response I am getting is "LOVELY" and quick shipment from amazon. They are indeed a bargain if you have amazon prime and do not have to go through the rigmarole of shipping costs etc. I am so fortunate that I always documented my paintings with as high of a resolution as I could afford. At first it was a matter of actually driving the painting an hour away to a "Lab" where they took 4 x 5 transparencies. Then we were digitizing the transparencies. After that and the driving I decided to invest in an epson art scanner which did a very good job but was limited to a 12 x 16 glass panel. I learned that I could do larger paintings by scanning the painting section by section. I then found a way to "stitch" the pieces together on photoshop and had quite a high resolution "large" file which was perfectly suitable for prints and products. I speak about "stitching" the pieces together. I did it one segment at a time and then blurred the edges with the clone stamp. HOWEVER LET ME TELL YOU ....I found out a few years back that photoshop (the most amazing editing software around) has a feature under edit called automate and merge cells which will do it automatically. GAME CHANGER! THAT is still the procedure I use but I have a 24 mp canon and I still divide the canvas into fourths or sixths and then use the camera instead of the massive scanner. I use photoshop to automate the stitching. I have large files of my favorite paintings or seminal works that were part of a series. I am loading them all onto Amazon and making the 120 page college ruled books. They are pretty elegant and hey! you don't need just one, you need many. As handy as digital notetaking and planning is, the pleasure of scanning through written pages will never be replaced. AND as you all know the act of writing things down is therapeutic for the brain and helpful for the mere process of memorization. I am so pleased with how these turned out AND the price point: Here are a few. There are many more that you will see if you search Sally Rosenbaum Disclaimer.. I receive a small commission if you click and buy.

I am having a ball publishing my vast vast collection of high resolution scans of my paintings on KDP. If you don't know what kdp is yet it's a way to self publish professional results. If you design a high resolution cover the results are stupendous. I have 20 of my paintings listed there. They are in the form of $6.99 regular school or home composition books. The quality is high and i am enjoying giving them to friends and acquaintances and making many sales. I am giving you a link to see what I mean Each of these are composition books on your amazon channel and only 7.00 I'm excited.