Owner: Arts & Stuff URL:http://susanborgas.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2007 18:12:16 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: As an artist I do enjoy many aspects of the profession. I don't only create artworks with pastel, oils, watercolour etc, I also enjoy photography. My blog will cover different subject matter that I would like to share with my readers and do hope they beco Site statistics:Click here
Sketch of Grapes 1970-01-01 00:59:59 For some reason the internet connection to my home is timing out constantly over the last few days. It has happened in the past with the problem improving on its own accord. Our very old and tired underground telephone lines do not help matters and it is hoped that sometime soon the area I live in will catch up with the more populated areas who enjoy a more reliable internet at much higher speeds.On a much happier note; at the moment my local supermarket is suppling very cheap seedless grapes. Before gobbling these succulent orbs up a quick sketch was the order of the day and once completed ..... oh what a sweet flavour the grapes did have. sigh!"it isn't working!"With my commissioned oil paintings finished I decided to dig out a pastel that was started a few months ago. Putting it on my easel I am hoping my inspiration to paint it in the first place will return to me so that the work can be completed. So far it isn't working! Maybe laying my pastels out tomorrow will do the trick wi
A Remarkable Story 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The little township at the foot of Mount Remarkable
is the oldest settlement in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. This area is within half an hours drive from my own home and has been the subject of many of my landscape paintings.Mount Remarkable was discovered and named by the first explorer into this area; Edward John Eyre. More can be read by going to Adelaide Library website. This is a quote from the page that will be viewed.From our present encampment a very high and pointed hill was visible far to the N.N. W. this from the lofty way in which it towered above the surrounding hills, I named Mount Remarkable.Surprise surprise, even I am surprised; my fingers did get pastel dust all over them today with some work achieved on this painting shown in this post. There will be no painting tomorrow because I have a full day of shopping along with appointments in readiness for my holiday that is fast approaching. With a temperature forecasted around forty one celsius, I can't say
Keep current date and time for drafts with New Blogger 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Found a piece of paper with a draft for a post and knew that a better idea would be to make more use of drafting my ideas on Blogger
rather than loosing scraps of paper. The only problem with the draft posts on Blogger if I forget to change the date and time when posting it to the public, the post can be lost in earlier posts as the current time and date was never updated when editing the draft. A blogger called The Last Word that writes scripts for Greasemonkey for Firefox has come to the rescue with a keep current date and time for your draft posts script and the post can be found at Keep Current Date & Time On Posts. Before downloading and installing scrips it would be worth you reading this post at A Consuming Experience so that you are informed of what to expect. I am having no problems using this script and can see where it is going to save me a lot of time.It is a shame I can't find a script that will do all my holiday preparations and packing then that would leave me free to Read more:drafts
A Tale of Two Cockies 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Tomorrow my husband and I leave on our two week holiday. Not much in the way of art supplies are packed other than pencil and papers, art magazine and of cause camera and laptop. These two weeks are going to be used to recharge my batteries in readiness for the year ahead, which is going to be the busiest ever. Most important of all this holiday is to have some quality time with my husband, as he also has been extremely busy and so often when two people are working we forget to put time aside just for us.I would like to share this story with you that a family member passed onto me. It is about a story of Love, Compassion, Friendship & Loyalty. It makes one think about our own relationships and how many have to overcome obstacles along the way. There are many images that help tell this story but even though I am on dial-up I had to be patient so that I could read the story right to the last page. Click on A Tale of Two Cockies and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.So my friends un
A quick note 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Just a quick note to let you all know if you have a look at my SnapShots Blog you will see that four photos have been added.Quick links: Free Subscription to Arts & Stuff by EmailTake a look at my SnapShots BlogArts and Stuff with Susan Borgas websiteArts & Stuff with Susan Borgas
SnapShots
Mount Remarkable WIP two 1970-01-01 00:59:59 After a very restful holiday with the daily sun, surf and sand it is time now to get back to the reality of everyday life and of cause that includes work. As I wipe my hands clean of pastel I am going to start my draft to the blog so that my thoughts are written down while they are fresh in my head. Hopefully it will lead to a more interesting post.Getting my fingers dirty once more with pastel I commenced working on the middle ground through the central area of this work. My aim is to create distance in this area using aerial and atmospheric perspective as much as possible. To help this along I actually "shrunk" the trees between the two large red eucalyptus gum trees upwards as well as downwards. This also allowed more of Mount Remarkable
to be viewed plus encourages the eye to explore this area.Hot!!!"He reckons I have got the best spot"By the time I moved across to the right hand side middle ground my rhythm of applying pastel became more natural as my break from this medium di Read more:Mount Remarkable
Adding a Second Sidebar 1970-01-01 00:59:59 What a day it has been playing around with my Snapshots blog to add a second sidebar. It was while reading New Blogger Template Tutorial: Adding a SecondSidebar
at Tips and Tricks last night that I decided to play around with the idea on one of my test blogs. As Peter says there are some well written instructions for adding a second sidebar at Adding a second sidebar to your Blog - part 2 which is the Beautiful Beta blog.A lot of time was wasted during the last part of editing the template as I found the preview didn't always tell the true story with the testing blog. In fact all was well with the edited template even though the preview said otherwise. Once more this also happened with SnapShots and have to admit to having my heart in my mouth when I decided to click on save and to my delight the blog looked okay.The columns had to be fussed around with widths to make them fit correctly in Firefox and Internet Explorer. My daughter has a Mac so she checked to see what the test blog l
Mount Remarkable WIP three 1970-01-01 00:59:59 My trip to Port Pirie went well yesterday other than a headache in the afternoon that soon developed into a migraine. Thankfully these types of headaches are not so common with me these days although getting over them still takes time. It was a late start in the studio because of being unwell but did manage to get some work done although not enough to post an updated photo.After today the branches are now taking shape in the upper top right hand side of the Mount Remarkable
painting. My hands are cleaned regularly, as I am using quite a few darks in this area along with lesser mid and light values.Hint: Because my hands do perspire such a lot I don't use rubber gloves while using my pastels nor do I get on using the cut off tips of gloves like some artist do. For this reason I am constantly washing my hands or wiping them on a very wet cloth. It is only just recently that I hit on an idea of applying Vitamin E cream onto my soggy cloth because I was always heading for the Vitamin E c Read more:Mount Remarkable
Mount Remarkable WIP four 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Still working on the branches of the large trees with a lot of concentration working out where the lights and darks with various colours fall. The bark is smooth after shedding its outer rough layer at an earlier time. The trunks and branches often have complex patterns of different colours, sometimes iridescent though I do avoid painting them all as I am not into precise realism; rather showing off the character of the trees with shape, colour and values.Getting it right"I don't want it to happen as I want to sell my painting"It must be remembered that some of the foliage does come over the "front" of the branches and I look for these areas to break up the lengths of timber or the eye will soon be taken out of the painting, which of cause I don't want it to happen as I want to sell my painting, not the neighbouring painting that maybe hanging on the wall next to mine.Standing back and looking at the large right eucalyptus red gum tree I felt the trunk needed to be widened slig Read more:Remarkable
, Mount Remarkable
Sketch of an ear 1970-01-01 00:59:59 My post will be short today because I am bushed after an extremely hot and humid day.The sketch of the eye was posted yesterday and now here is the ear. As you will see I pushed the darks more in today's sketch and rather pleased how it turned out.Catch you all tomorrow with another post on my blog, as here in Aussie land my bed is calling me much earlier.Click for a larger viewQuick links:Free Subscription to Arts & Stuff by EmailTake a look at my SnapShots BlogArts and Stuff with Susan Borgas website technorati tags: Sketch, earArts & Stuff with Susan Borgas
SnapShots
Here is looking at you! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Oops did you notice the date at the bottom of my sketch on yesterdays post? It should have had the same date as the post. It isn't unusual for me to get my year mixed up during January and can be frustrating when it happens. Oh well I can't say live and learn as I never do become practiced at remembering.My daughter returned to her place of living today after spending Christmas and New Year on the farm with her dad and I. With our son and partner now settled into the second house on the farm for some weeks now and also our eldest child and her husband coming and going during the festive season, life is now back to what I call "normal" even if it means that my daughters are many kilometers away. It is also a signal for me to find my routine to produce work on a more regular basis for my blog as well as self satisfaction as a working artist.Today's post of an eye which I enjoyed playing around with though could be improved on does have the right date and is my fair dinkum eff
Are you in Shock? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Hope you like the lighter background on this blog without going into shock as the black was bothering me that it may cause problems for visitors to read so much text on such a dark coloured design, especially when some of my posts are for the most part now around 250 words, sometimes more. If you are considering changing the colours of your website or blog this website Mandarin Design has examples of web safe colours. The one I am using is snow # FFFAFA.Before I made my changes I did post a question about it on WetCanvas with the title Black or White blog background? . As you can see it is neither black nor white. A girl can change her mind can't she! I do thank the WetCanvas members for helping me to come to a decision. The New Blogger also makes it easy to change the colours of my blog so be prepared, you might see an over the top coloured version down the track.A change of subject now. This watercolour painting is one that was promised some time ago that would be posted here Read more:Shock
CRT vs. LCD Monitors 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Is your monitor off?"monitor might just need to be calibrated correctly"Not surprising when having a conversation about web and blog background colours someone will mention what they can or can't see on their own monitors. For example seeing washed out hi-lights can happen because of the graphics card or type/age of monitor that the person has or the monitor might just need to be calibrated correctly. There is sure to be other reasons as well.I love looking at a LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), especially with video but do not own one. My CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) graphics monitor sits proudly on my desk in the office taking up quite a bit of the space and I love it for editing my images. I would imagine with technology moving forward at an incredible rate the LCD monitor will soon match my CRT screen if not better but until that time happens there will always be a CRT monitor on my desk because it is a tool for my trade.I did write a post sometime ago how to go about calibrating a monitor Read more:Monitors
Jug Sketch and holiday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Don't you just love getting visitors where you can pull out your good crockery and is often hidden in a cupboard that rarely has the door opened? Neither my husband nor I take milk in our coffee so unless my visitors do, this little jug rarely sees the light of day. I love stoneware like this unpretentious jug as much as fine china and do have a mix of both in my dresser cupboard. I really should do more scratching around amongst the assortments of items that are stored to see what else is suitable to sketch.My husband has finely found time today to make the frame up for the last commissioned painting. Tomorrow my job for me will be to mount the painting in the frame, take a photo and then send the snapshot off to the client.holiday"I can write my posts on my trusty laptop while lounging around near the beach"Over the next few days it is vital that I get a lot of my jobs tidied up because my husband and I are heading off for our annual holiday by the beach as we do every year. I made
Coffee Please! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Taking care not to contaminate my studio air with fumes from Turps more than necessary, the cheap tissue and paper that are used for cleaning up after oil painting are placed in an empty coffee jar and is always left on the trolley table near my easel. While taking a break I noticed how the light above was shining down the label and thought why not sketch it and post it on my blog as I do miss posting my current work, which I am pleased to say my last commission is now finished and only needs to dry.Considering not much time was spent on this sketch I am rather pleased that a reasonable drawing was achieved. Mmmmm…. Reckon more effort should be made on my part during 2007 and fill up some sketch books. Nope I am not going to make it a New Years resolution and end up not doing it! Sketch of coffee jar using mechanical pencil technorati tags: coffee, sketch, drawing, blogArts & Stuff with Susan Borgas
SnapShots
Read more:Coffee
, Please
Emoticons 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Painting over the holiday period has been put on the back burner with so much going on around me. Meanwhile I have been catching up with other items on the "to do list" that I have had on the back burner for some time now.Quite awhile back I came across a way to add emoticons to blog posts without using links back to an image storage space on the internet. For example Photobucket and ImageShack. Today I was reminded of this when I came across the same blog and now put into practice emoticons on this blog of mine. If you want the same for your blogger you can learn by visiting Tricks and Thinks blog or go directly to Emoticons
for Blogger. Hopefully these little faces will help my readers to understand that I am an easy going Aussie…..for the most part! On that note it is New Years Day in Australia and I am off to organise a few prawns for my evening meal.... cheers! technorati tags: emoticons, photobucket, imageshack, blogger, happy new yearArts & Stuff with Susan Borgas
SnapSho
Merry Christmas! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 To all my visitors to this blog I sincerely do wish you a MerryChristmas
and a prosperous New Year. Do stay safe over the Festive Season and take care if you are out and about in the traffic.As I am busy preparing for my family Christmas there won't be another post until Tuesday.Until then take care, Cheers! technorati tags: Merry Christmas
, ChristmasArts & Stuff with Susan Borgas
SnapShots
Arts & Stuff 1970-01-01 00:59:59 When naming this blog Arts & Stuff with Susan Borgas, it became confused with my website because the same name was used. From today my blog will have a new title called Arts & Stuff. Who knows it might end up with another name as the blog grows and evolves with time though will always revolve around my artwork.If you have visited SnapShots you will know that my daughter also has the Nikon D80 camera. She gave me permission to show you this photo that she took of her dog using the Nikon D80. The movement in this photo it what makes it special. I am sure Ash knows when his photo is being taken because many photos of him are where he is a real poser and a handsome one at that. technorati tags: SnapShots, photo, sheltie, dog, Nikon D80, camera, Arts & Stuff with Susan Borgas
SnapShots
Family and celebrations 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Tuesday has passed and Wednesday is well on the way with no post done as promised. There will be two celebrations of Christmas for my family, one has passed with another fast approaching on Saturday with my husband's large family. The grown up children take in turns at hosting the affair with four generations celebrating the festivities together. For my own family along with other siblings there will be a number of hours to travel as my sister in-law is host this year.It was by way of disappointment with myself that my last commission wasn't completed prior to the festivities because it would have been so much easier not to have it to worry about. As much as time is scarce for painting, the work that I am doing at the moment is one of my best and realizing this there possibly will be more oil paintings by my own hand in the future. Two more days should have the commission completed then let it sit for awhile to harden before adding a glaze over the surface.Not sure if I am just get Read more:Family
How many posts showing on your blog? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Do you have a very fast internet connection? It must be wonderful for those that are able to have that service provided to them although it does create a problem for the person who does not have access to higher speeds.I am one of the unlucky ones that use dial-up and often frustrated by extremely slow pages loading on blogs and end up giving up as I just don't have the time to waste when I am so busy. Hopefully within a couple of years it will change with faster internet connections for me to use. For those that do have fast internet connections you need to be aware of how many images are displayed on your blog and how it affects those that do not have a fast internet connection.Did you know that you can change the amount of posts
to be displayed when a visitor happens to click on your blog address? If not I am posting an image here of how I have mine set up for seven posts in blogger. This for me is an ideal amount of posts to show to a dial-up visitor, especially as I do often hav
Welcome to the January 8 2007 edition of Arts and Stuff Carnival. 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Welcome to the January
8, 2007 edition of Arts and Stuff Carnival
!Admittedly when signing up to the Blog Carnival early December it had me scratching my head as to how it all worked. My first edition was back on the 4th of December 2006 and as it was a tentative test, I posted my own story without advertising it here. This edition today is what I consider is a new journey of being a serious Carnival blogger that will be posted once per month. As more stories are submitted I may consider posting editions more often.Very interesting!"What caught me unaware was how many submitted to my carnival before even posting my next addition date"What caught me unaware was how many submitted to my carnival before even posting my next addition date. Even though the stories were excellent they didn't all fall into the category of what my carnival is about. In saying this I did come up with an idea of picking the best post for unrelated story for "fine art" to add at the end of my edition. Please be Read more:Welcome
Lipstick Sketch 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Some days subjects come very easy for my blog and then another day there is a struggle between my brain and other things that are going on in my day. Today was one of those days until a couple of things happened.As many of you know I do have a number of Squidoo Lenses that are listed on my Lens Masters page. I was invited to join the Everything Photography Lenses today, which I did and thank Janet for asking me, as it should be a lot of fun at the same time a learning experience with how it all works. Have a look here and Meet the Group master's page to see more on this Group.The second thing that happened today was coming across this sketch when hunting down my sketching books in readiness for my holiday later next week. Yup it is my lipstick that was retrieved one evening from a pocket on my handbag while working as artist in residence at Wilpena Pound. The sketch isn't what I consider finished though have no intentions of doing anymore work with it.I just remembered! Who has t Read more:Lipstick
A quick note 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Just a quick note to let you all know if you have a look at my SnapShots Blog you will see that four photos have been added.Quick links: Free Subscription to Arts & Stuff by EmailTake a look at my SnapShots BlogArts and Stuff with Susan Borgas websiteArts & Stuff with Susan Borgas
SnapShots
A Tale of Two Cockies 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Tomorrow my husband and I leave on our two week holiday. Not much in the way of art supplies are packed other than pencil and papers, art magazine and of cause camera and laptop. These two weeks are going to be used to recharge my batteries in readiness for the year ahead, which is going to be the busiest ever. Most important of all this holiday is to have some quality time with my husband, as he also has been extremely busy and so often when two people are working we forget to put time aside just for us.I would like to share this story with you that a family member passed onto me. It is about a story of Love, Compassion, Friendship & Loyalty. It makes one think about our own relationships and how many have to overcome obstacles along the way. There are many images that help tell this story but even though I am on dial-up I had to be patient so that I could read the story right to the last page. Click on A Tale of Two Cockies and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.So my friends un
Mount Remarkable WIP two 1970-01-01 00:59:59 After a very restful holiday with the daily sun, surf and sand it is time now to get back to the reality of everyday life and of cause that includes work. As I wipe my hands clean of pastel I am going to start my draft to the blog so that my thoughts are written down while they are fresh in my head. Hopefully it will lead to a more interesting post.Getting my fingers dirty once more with pastel I commenced working on the middle ground through the central area of this work. My aim is to create distance in this area using aerial and atmospheric perspective as much as possible. To help this along I actually "shrunk" the trees between the two large red eucalyptus gum trees upwards as well as downwards. This also allowed more of Mount Remarkable
to be viewed plus encourages the eye to explore this area.Hot!!!"He reckons I have got the best spot"By the time I moved across to the right hand side middle ground my rhythm of applying pastel became more natural as my break from this medium di Read more:Mount Remarkable
Adding a Second Sidebar 1970-01-01 00:59:59 What a day it has been playing around with my Snapshots blog to add a second sidebar. It was while reading New Blogger Template Tutorial: Adding a SecondSidebar
at Tips and Tricks last night that I decided to play around with the idea on one of my test blogs. As Peter says there are some well written instructions for adding a second sidebar at Adding a second sidebar to your Blog - part 2 which is the Beautiful Beta blog.A lot of time was wasted during the last part of editing the template as I found the preview didn't always tell the true story with the testing blog. In fact all was well with the edited template even though the preview said otherwise. Once more this also happened with SnapShots and have to admit to having my heart in my mouth when I decided to click on save and to my delight the blog looked okay.The columns had to be fussed around with widths to make them fit correctly in Firefox and Internet Explorer. My daughter has a Mac so she checked to see what the test blog l
Mount Remarkable WIP three 1970-01-01 00:59:59 My trip to Port Pirie went well yesterday other than a headache in the afternoon that soon developed into a migraine. Thankfully these types of headaches are not so common with me these days although getting over them still takes time. It was a late start in the studio because of being unwell but did manage to get some work done although not enough to post an updated photo.After today the branches are now taking shape in the upper top right hand side of the Mount Remarkable
painting. My hands are cleaned regularly, as I am using quite a few darks in this area along with lesser mid and light values.Hint: Because my hands do perspire such a lot I don't use rubber gloves while using my pastels nor do I get on using the cut off tips of gloves like some artist do. For this reason I am constantly washing my hands or wiping them on a very wet cloth. It is only just recently that I hit on an idea of applying Vitamin E cream onto my soggy cloth because I was always heading for the Vitamin E c Read more:Mount Remarkable
Keep current date and time for drafts with New Blogger 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Found a piece of paper with a draft for a post and knew that a better idea would be to make more use of drafting my ideas on Blogger
rather than loosing scraps of paper. The only problem with the draft posts on Blogger if I forget to change the date and time when posting it to the public, the post can be lost in earlier posts as the current time and date was never updated when editing the draft. A blogger called The Last Word that writes scripts for Greasemonkey for Firefox has come to the rescue with a keep current date and time for your draft posts script and the post can be found at Keep Current Date & Time On Posts. Before downloading and installing scrips it would be worth you reading this post at A Consuming Experience so that you are informed of what to expect. I am having no problems using this script and can see where it is going to save me a lot of time.It is a shame I can't find a script that will do all my holiday preparations and packing then that would leave me free to Read more:drafts
A Remarkable Story 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The little township at the foot of Mount Remarkable
is the oldest settlement in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. This area is within half an hours drive from my own home and has been the subject of many of my landscape paintings.Mount Remarkable was discovered and named by the first explorer into this area; Edward John Eyre. More can be read by going to Adelaide Library website. This is a quote from the page that will be viewed.From our present encampment a very high and pointed hill was visible far to the N.N. W. this from the lofty way in which it towered above the surrounding hills, I named Mount Remarkable.Surprise surprise, even I am surprised; my fingers did get pastel dust all over them today with some work achieved on this painting shown in this post. There will be no painting tomorrow because I have a full day of shopping along with appointments in readiness for my holiday that is fast approaching. With a temperature forecasted around forty one celsius, I can't say
Rose Sketch "WIP" 1970-01-01 00:59:59 It was never my intention to post a work in progress graphite drawing because I am not a confident drawer in the first place. Sketching roses are right down the bottom of the list with what I consider I am reasonable at executing. For some reason it is difficult to judge one line direction and length against another and because of this avoid them. My intentions is to change that over the next coming months so expect to see quite a few rose sketches posted on my blog.Getting back to why a WIP; simply it is a life size sketch that I started today and I ran out of time to complete it amongst many other jobs that were on the agenda.Quick links:Free Subscription to Arts & Stuff by Email technorati tags: Drawing, sketch, rose, wip, workinprogressArts & Stuff with Susan Borgas
SnapShots
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