Category: art

Fonts

On By CarynIn art

My chorus uses a cheat sheet for performances: a piece of black poster board folded over the director’s stand with the songs we are going to sing, the key pitch, and helpful reminder words. I ran an interesting experiment with fonts, making the same set up twice, one with a standard serif font and one with OpenDyslexic font. I numbered photos and put a poll out on our members only site.

Photo description: song list with a standard serif font
Photo description: same song list with OpenDyslexic font

The chorus response was overwhelmingly for the OpenDyslexic font as the easier option for quick and easy reading. Is it a pretty font? No, but for something you need people to actually read and not get lost in, font choice is key. I do really like the bottom weighted font idea, and that the letters are all unique and can’t be flipped or mirrored to make a different letter.

Expresso paintings

On By CarynIn art

I bought expresso from The Full Cup coffee and book store back in August with the intension to paint more coffee art. Life happened, and the expresso stayed in a bottle in my fridge for nine months. I finally pulled it out and did some paintings on cotton fiber paper.

Photo description: four expresso paintings, all including a coffee ring made from a coffee cup

I digitized the paintings and made greeting cards that I took back to The Full Cup to sell.

Expresso has a more intense color than American drip, and works similar to water colors. I can “erase” by adding more water, and everything looks different when it dries. The image below took many cycles of painting and drying over several days.

Photo description: Brown-eyed Susan flowers painted with expresso

My plan is to have a whole series of these small paintings, which will be digitized for greeting cards.

Throwback Thursday: button art

On By CarynIn art, Craft, throwback

In September 2014 I made a button art tree by sewing colored buttons to a stretched canvas.

Photo description: tree on canvas made entirely with sewn on buttons

My button grandma had a high distain for anything that destroyed buttons, such as glue or cutting off the shank, since that makes them unsuitable for button collectors. So all the buttons are recoverable from this art, should they need to be. I do like how I used the lighter colors to indicate light direction.

6 years

On By CarynIn art, Craft, photography
Photo caption: rusted iron spiral in the shape of a number 6

Today is the sixth anniversary of my blog! I did have a name change over that time from “of chickens and craft” to “critters and craft”. I do still have four chickens, and Wing Ding the Black Star hen is still laying eggs, even when there is snow on the ground, but things aren’t quite so chicken centric over here anymore. Now critters, we’re all about the critters, and making things.

The sixth year anniversary token is iron. I found a photo I took of old rusted farm equipment and did a little Photoshop magic. I like using AI generation to change the ratio of photos and fill backgrounds on my own photographs and work. No fleecing other artist’s work in a dodgy way, and it is hard to anticipate all the potential uses of a photo when the shutter snaps. The original photo is below.

Photo description: rusted iron spiral from old farm equipment sitting in the grass

I also appreciate the search function in photo apps. It is still improving, but it only took a minute to find this photo in my gallery with the search terms “rusty iron”.

Here’s to more posts on critters and craft!

Chicken rock

On By CarynIn art, chickens

One of my friends enjoys painting and has quite a flair for it. She had painted rocks at the chorus craft fair and I just had to buy the one that looked like Wing Ding! And then take a picture of Wing Ding with her effigy.

Photo description: Wing Ding the Black Star hen in molt standing behind the painted rock with a black chicken that I’m holding. Painting by Corinna Standlee.