Thanks to all of our fans who commented on our Art Giveaway: American blog post and for also sharing our blog and company with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Our winner is, Mary Fowler! Congrats! Hope y’all are having a wonderful President’s Day. Stay tuned for future giveaways on our blog!
In February we honor and celebrate our American Presidents, most notably President Washington and President Lincoln. These birthdays and the holiday of President’s Day often remind us and leave us feeling thankful to be Americans. If you didn’t know already, Gallery Direct is located in the capital of Texas. And if you know Texans we are proud of our state, but we are also proud to be American. Did you also know that Gallery Direct is pretty much one of the coolest American art companies around?
Are you picking up on my “American” theme in this blog post? There are a lot of American things I love. One of my favorite American food is the Hot Dog. The idea of a hot dog on a bun is ascribed to the wife of a German named Antonoine Feuchtwanger, who sold hot dogs on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri, United States, in 1880. One of my favorite American or national pastime is seeing a major league baseball game. Go Red Sox! And when I think of a cool, American toy I think of Radio Flyer. Both my kids had a Radio Flyer Tricycle as their 1st bike. And they still have a Radio Flyer wagon. The company was founded in 1917 and is based in Chicago, Illinois. And the photo above is of a young girl with a Radio Flyer wagon circa 1955.
So who wants to win this gorgeous fine art piece, Radio Flyer I by one of our exclusive artists, Justin Garcia? I bet you do! It’s a beautiful canvas giclée (18×24″) with a 1 1/4″ natural dark brown floater frame, a $289 value. Here’s how you can enter to win:
For 1 entry leave a comment on this blog post with an answer to this question, who is your favorite American president or person ……or what is your favorite American thing, food or pastime?
For 2 entries (because you want to win that bad!), leave a second comment to let us know you’ve shared this blog post on your Facebook, twitter or blog.
*Comments are moderated and will show up once approved.
Entries will be accepted from now until until Sunday night 11:59pm on February 19th. We will select and announce the winner on President’s Day and ship off their awesome free art. Good luck!
If you haven’t noticed on Pinterest yet, wall murals are the latest trendy way to decorate a space. So stop repinning those ideas and make them a reality! Oh you didn’t know that we offer wall mural art at an affordable price?…Yup, we sure do. Have a baby on the way and a nursery to decorate, consider a wall mural. Have a large playroom you want to make more colorful for your kids, consider a wall mural. Have a master bedroom that needs an inviting and peaceful image, consider a wall mural. Have a boring office that needs to be livened up, consider a wall mural.
We’ve brightened our work areas up here at Gallery Direct. We like to have a fun atmosphere to work at here…
Select from thousands of our fine art images, photos from our photo vault, or use your own image on our website Gallery Direct. It’s easy to do!
So stop repinning dream room ideas on your Pinterest – and make one yourself!
If you haven’t noticed already, we’ve been finding some pretty awesome artists to join our family. This of course means more unique and new art for all of you! We just launched artwork from Christine Wilkinson. Her digital abstract collection has a lot of a psychedelic feel to it with it’s shapes and colors. Christine started hand drawing these shapes back in school in the 60′s, a foreshadow to what she would be doing later in life…working as an artist currently in London, England. She explores with her camera using light in many different forms: light on light, light through objects and light reflected off objects.
I find this piece, Diving for Pearls, so interesting with the movement all the lines create and the layers and lightness of the different color. Though a lot of her art seems to be inspired from the psychedelic 1960′s counterculture, in some ways I felt this piece was modern or even futuristic. It reminded me of a red robotic eye.
These two companion pieces, Green Pinko I & II, are very soft and feminine. They too also give us a feel of movement. I could imagine this is what it would look like up-close and inside of a bubble.
These series of images, Grid Formation I-III, give us a more abstract, rigid and masculine feel. The repetitious elements seem to resemble a candle burning motif. The different stages keep your eye moving along.
So if you like what you’ve seen so far on this post, check out more of Wilkinson’s amazing art on Gallery Direct!
Gallery Direct is excited to welcome another new artist to our family, Brett Pfister. Brett is the Print operator for The Canyon Gallery and owner of Mind’s Eye Productions. His background and degree is in Graphic Design, this knowledge shows in his photo treatment and technique in his digital art. Besides being a professional Graphic Designer and Artist, Brett also does Photography, Video Production and Web Design.
This is one of my favorite new images by him, Veiled Eden. The female figure and soaring birds really draw you into this image wondering what could be going on in this “garden of Eden”. The texture and lightness peaking through the trees really make it interesting as well.
This new image, Intrepid Home, is being printed on aluminum to be hung in our office gallery right next to our CEO’s office door. Brett has a couple really fascinating images using barren trees, including Stretching, Nostrum Locus, The Ends of the Earth, and Cynon Valley.
This image, Break, is also going up in our office gallery. The color, technique and texture he uses in this image really give meaning to it’s title. It’s a beautiful piece.
Come check out the rest of Brett’s images on Gallery Direct!
One of my most favorite college courses while studying art was Art History. It helped of course that I had a professor who was so passionate about our world’s greatest artists and masterpieces. I recall taking notebooks full of handwritten notes on these artists, and making flashcards of each painting and sculpture with all the known facts about them. I’ve been fortunate to see some of the masterpieces in person at the Louvre in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Here is a top 10 list of the world’s greatest painters and sculptor compiled by Neil Collins MA LLB.
#10 Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
#9 Jan Van Eyck (1390-1441)
#8 Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
#7 Claude Monet (1840-1926)
#6 Donatello (1386-1466)
#5 JMW Turner (1775-1851)
#4 Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)
#3 Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
#2 Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69)
#1 Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
Did you know that Gallery Direct offers some of these amazing and beautiful masterpieces such as from Claude Monet? You can also search our Photo Vault for stock images from all of these artists or photographs of their works. We also have a Classic Art section where you can find masterpieces by many famous artists such as Klimt, Van Gogh, Degas and others. Even though they did not make it on this top 10 list, they certainly made their mark on history in the world of art.
Since these artists are so famous it’s a given that current artists will give us a new rendition (maybe with a modern twist) on some old masterpieces. Here’s an example from one of our exclusive artists Randy Slack.
Want a masterpiece hanging on a wall in your home or office, get it from Gallery Direct. We can print it for you on canvas to closely resemble the original masterpiece, or give it a modern look and print it on acrylic, birchwood or aluminum like this blogger did with Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
Happy New Year 2012 to all of our blog readers and customers!
Each new year many of us do our best to get inspired, motivated and feel good about our lives. And then come the 2nd week of January we loose the inspiration and motivation. So why not get creative, make your own inspirational and motivational art to hang on a wall in your home – something that brings a smile to your face and makes you feel good everyday you see it. It’s really not that hard to do, I’ll show you how…
At Gallery Direct we offer an Americana line and a Vintage line of art. You will see from both these art subjects that “posters” from that time period often had a message (type) on them. And now they have become great focal points and works of art to hang up and admire. You can create your own “poster” with your favorite inspirational and motivational quote, upload it to Gallery Direct to be printed – and then you will have your own one-of-a-kind artwork that you made to hang in your home!
First determine the size you want your “poster”. Go to the Gallery Direct website and click on the “Print Your Photo” tab on the top right hand side.
Choose the size you want it to be and using Photoshop (or a similar photo program) create a file at that size. To make a textured or colored background for your “poster” you can find free vector art, graphics and patterns at FreeVectors. I used Seamless Flower Pattern 3. Make sure the graphic or pattern you choose for your background is set to the print size you want at 300dpi. Next just add your quote!
For all of you that are familiar with the world of Pinterest, you can find a ton of inspirational, motivational quotes, or quotes that make you laugh, or quotes that just make you feel good from there. I chose a quote that makes me smile and laugh. Just type your quote on top of your background in Photoshop. To fancy it up, use some cool fonts. I found my free fonts at Fonts For Peas. I used Rage for the “R”, Before the Rain for “Nice”, and Haettenschweiler for “Normal”. And that’s it, you’re done creating your poster artwork! Flatten the image and save at 300 dpi. Format: JPG, TIF, PNG or BMP. File Size: 500KB to 50MB. And upload your file at Gallery Direct!
We will print it for you on paper, canvas, aluminum, acrylic or birchwood. Frame it and ship it to you ready to hang on your wall!
We encourage you to keep your new year’s resolutions this year, and do it by putting up some feel good art in your home!
Yesterday we launched artwork from Andreas Langley, our newest member of the New Era – Gallery Direct family. His art is very unique as it is of something we’ve never seen! He explores the mystery and wonder of ancient crystals revealing to us layers never seen before. Andreas has “an inherent and spontaneous drive for spirituality and a passion for metaphysics“. Andreas grew up in both Europe and the United States but now resides in Arizona. He has a background in broadcast television and film. But lucky for us he explores in the visual arts by revealing the micro cosmos of mineral consciousness expressed in crystalline form of quartz.
Above are 2 companion pieces, Record Keeper and Gateway Mystical. Andreas describes them as follows… Energies take shape in other worldly Gnome formations and entice with warm Salamander glow… A gateway offering to a forgotten Land of Dreams.
In this series of 3, Spirit Timberland, Andreas describes them as follows… The Nature Spirit of Forest and Trees expressing its range of energies in its mystical workings.
LY114A Triumphant Celebration by Andreas Langley
We hope you enjoy Andreas’ work as much as we do!
Click here to visit his gallery of work.
My main job duties have me focusing on color correcting all of our digital image files from scans of original artwork. I thought I’d give you a short screencast showing you what is involved when color correcting in the Imaging Department. Using Adobe Photoshop I am able to “fix” overall or select areas of the image that the scan did not capture perfectly. It’s important to us here at Gallery Direct that we offer our art-loving customers limited edition prints that pretty much look exactly like the original artwork. In the above photo you will see the original series of artwork (larger paintings) with my paper printed proofs next to them.
Once I made those layer changes, I print out some paper proofs to see how they look in comparison to the originals.
Do anymore areas need a little more tweaking? Take a look closer…
It’s not perfect yet, back to working on the adjustment layers until it’s just right!
This is an exciting week, we get to launch artwork from a new artist that has joined our New Era family! We are introducing Stella Alesi, who resides in Austin, Texas and has a very distinct style of painting.
My coworkers and I, who have been color correcting the digital files from the scans of Stella’s original artwork here in the Imaging Department, have noticed her interesting painting style. Her oil paintings have a very soft and subtle texture to them, yet they are bright and alive with color. The botanicals Stella paints are very realistic imagery.
Stella already has several different series of artwork. One of them being her Vanitas series. In the arts, vanitas is a type of symbolic work of art especially associated with Northern European still life painting in Flanders and the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries, though also common in other places and periods. I just love how realistic Stella painted these companion pieces, Backyard Plums I&II. She was even able to capture the dusty-white coating that gives them a glaucous appearance.
Another series Stella paints is her Mandalas series. Maṇḍala (मण्डल) is a Sanskrit word that means “circle”. In the Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions their sacred art often takes a mandala form. The basic form of most Hindu and Buddhist mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. This piece, Intuition Intenetion, is the first of this series that New Era has launched.
Lastly Stella also has a collage series. I find these companion pieces, September 11th I&II, very interesting. The older photographs really draw your interest in on the meaning behind the pieces. The colors, texture and pattern to the collages also make for great focal points.
So take a look around on Gallery Direct of all of Stella Alesi’s new art we are offering, you’re sure to not be disappointed!