Monthly Archives: January 2023

Barns in Sepia

The sepia tone in photography creates an old look to any capture and in todays world of digital art and processing it’s easy to do. I chose four captures to share this week. They are all barns, one in Oregon and the other three in Iowa. I’ll start with the Oregon Barn…

I was doing a photo shoot of covered bridges in Oregon off the beaten path when I came across this barn. I loved the setting and the architectural appeal of this barn. To add to that “old…historic” look, I created some subtle texture to the photo to recreate the type of paper that it could have been printed on back in the day.

The next series of barns takes us to Cedar Rapids, Iowa and barns south of the city with one exception….

This particular barn was in the South East quadrant of the city just off a busy highway and up against new housing construction. I really liked the look of it and had to stop the car, pull over and hike back to it for this shot. I was anxious to make this in the sepia tone as it was truly old and probably isn’t standing anymore. I also added the textured photo paper look.

The next two were located south of Cedar Rapids in typical farm settings.

Both of these buildings were very aged, but still being used on a working farm.

The last one was on a working farm also, but was in great shape and as the name states bright red!!

Thoughts? As I have said before, everyone reacts to visual art techniques and looks differently, so I am not in the least offended by opinions.

Follow my work:

My art gallery: TheWallGallery

Facebook: TheWallGallery.KirtTisdale

Instagram: instagram.com/kirttisdale/

Twitter: KirtWallGallery

Three Lighthouses – Different Presentations

25 Replies

I love lighthouses as I have a high appreciation of architectural features, especially the uniqueness in these types of structures. For this post, I am sharing three different lighthouses that I created using different techniques.

I’ll start with the Cape Meares Lighthouse along the Oregon coastline. For this print I used a basic technique which focuses on traditional watercolor, but uses a precise drawing technique that creates sharp pockets of color in an almost abstract manner.

Then moving up the coastline to the state of Washington, I have the North Head Lighthouse. For this print, I used a more abstract approach with stronger lines drawn to create the shapes with strong pockets of color.

And then for the third lighthouse we move further north into the Seattle area to the West Point Lighthouse. This lighthouse sits on a piece of land that juts out into the Puget Sound and marks the northern end of Elliot Bay which lines the downtown waterfront of Seattle. For this art print, I created it using a color pencil sketching technique.

Thoughts? As I have said before, everyone reacts to visual art techniques and looks differently, so I am not in the least offended by opinions.

Follow my work:

My art gallery: TheWallGallery

Facebook: TheWallGallery.KirtTisdale

Instagram: instagram.com/kirttisdale/

Twitter: KirtWallGallery

Hot Air Balloons in Abstract Style

14 Replies

I not only love flying in hot air balloons, I love the look of them. I’ve done a number of posts over the years on them and today’s post is of a couple different abstract techniques I used depicting them.

The first one was created using a fauvism (Fauvism: a style of painting with vivid expressionistic and non-naturalistic use of color that flourished in Paris from 1905) technique. This technique uses abstract shapes and variations of colors to create a unique look. The event is the annual Hot Air Balloon Festival in Avondale, Arizona (Phoenix metropolitan area). The balloon envelopes are inflated in the early morning hours for flights and races. After that series of events, the balloons are deflated until the evening hours when the envelopes are again inflated, but this time they stay on the ground. As evening turns into night with the darkening sky, the balloon operators shoot large flames up into the envelope of the balloon illuminating the brightly colored balloons.