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Art Giveaway: American

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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!

New Artist: Christine Wilkinson

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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!

New Year = Feel Good Art

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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!

Screencast: Color Correcting

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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.

In this screencast you will see we work in adjustment layers. When I first start on an image I will make some basic overall adjustments by sharpening, bringing in the black & white levels, adjusting overall color casts in selective colors, adjusting the hue and saturation and finally adjusting the brightness and contrast. Since our monitors are specially color calibrated, what I see on my screen should be exactly what prints out. So I want the colors on my screen to match the colors from the original artwork up on the wall in front of me. Right away I saw that there were some specific areas on the image which needed some tweaking. The green/yellowish background behind the flowers needed to be adjusted. Also several of the stripes needed to be color tweaked or toned down.

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!

New Artist: Stella Alesi

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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!

 

New Era Artist Feature: Volume 2

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I’ve been enjoying interviewing our artists. It’s interesting to learn more about the persons behind the art I work with on a daily basis. Today I am going to introduce you to Darvin Jones, one of my favorite New Era artists.

Darvin's paint brushes

Although Darvin would rather be an actor, iron-chef, super hero or astronaut he has embraced his role as an artist. He sums it up; “life is art and art is life, they really are inseparable.”

Darvin in his studio

Q: What or who inspired you to paint? How did you discover your talent for art?

A: I would say my experiences working as an artist assistant and art handler in NY and on the West Coast. I studied art academically not as a practitioner. I started painting to basically see if I could do it and if I could do it better than the art I was hanging on museum walls. I discovered my talent though really out of a necessity during a dim time in my life.

Darvin's paint splattered jeans

Q: Do you work certain hours each day or only when you are inspired to work?

A: I work every day, I may not paint everyday but I’m in my studio everyday, every week. I wish I had the luxury of painting only when I am inspired, although on second thought then I would probably paint 24/7 and never stop.

 

Q: You have some very unique titles to your pieces, is there always a deeper meaning to your pieces or do some of them just portray emotions?

A: It’s a combination of both. I usually try to sum up the meaning of the painting in the title or what I feel the piece is about. The paintings are always a riddle or a metaphor and so the titles suggest the rhetorical nature of the painting by using an interplay of words to title them.

Q: Out of all of the pieces you’ve painted, which is your most favorite?

A: Really? As I heard a mother put it when asked, which kid is her favorite I don’t have favorites, I love them all.

"Where is the Architect" JD162A. Darvin may have trouble picking a favorite, but this is one of my favorites. Here it is hanging in my family room at home.

Q: Who is your favorite artist?

A: Is this a trick question? Hum, I guess it would be a toss up between Matthew Ritchie, Julie Mehretu and Takashi Murakami.

Stayed tuned in for my next post!

Selling hundred dollar bills for fifty bucks

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Like any company trying to grow in a tough recession, we often look at other businesses to see how they are managing or thriving in these times. Gallery Direct is one of the more nimble companies around. Forward moving and risk-tolerant, we embrace a change of direction on the drop of a dime. In fact, you might even say we consider it fun.

We tried a little experiment this summer, influenced by the Groupon phenomena, a site dedicated to offering huge discounts to consumers. There’s a lot of buzz about these guys, an effective, no-inventory business model thriving in a recession.

We wondered, if gallerydirect.com offered a huge discount on our artwork, what would that be like? Not only offering the savings, but broadcasting the sale in major markets such as Groupon, using internet ads and google campaigns. We examined feasibility, made some projections and decided to give it a go.

We normally run a huge 50% off canvas gallery wrapped artwork sale twice a year. These are what we call our “secret sales.” This summer we offered 50% off, for 2 1/2 months. The “hard-stop” date is at the end of this month.

The summer is traditionally a slower season in the art business. Running a promotion like this has created tremendous results. But what do you expect when you’re selling hundred-dollar bills for fifty bucks? It was a very fun experiment. We’ve gleaned a lot of valuable information and kept ourselves incredibly busy; but, like all promotions, it has to end.