New Project: My Process

I should have the thing colored by next week sometime. It depends on when I can get to Tree Towns...

This is it, I guess........im not very excited about it. It may end up in the trash to be honest...

Long Day.

Here's the painting i began. Now, mind you that i've never touched oil paints before. I'm just trying to figure out how the medium works. Plus, i want to learn a few cool techniques like this artist I found, Harriet.

Basia's Gift, For Real!

So i ended up re-doing the mosaic for Basia. This one is completely different in every way: color. design, stones. I think this piece is much more "together" and way cleaner than the first. It turned out better than I anticipated.
I ended up giving both pieces to her for the one price we agreed on in the beginning. It was only fair since it was my choice to redo it and not hers.

Abstract Art

I have always thought those who cannot paint realistically, paint abstracts. This I have found to be wrong. Abstract painting is equally as difficult. You have to know how to work with colors, textures, flow.....everything. AND you have to create it from within, not from a picture or a reference. I had made a small collection of a few abstracts I've done in the past year. It is a sad collection, I'll admit, but I tried. I want to go further with my red and blue grid, but I don't know any techniques to get the look I want. Perhaps I need to experiment more (which I'm sure is the only way to figure it out) but I don't have the patience. My mother hates abstract art and thinks all the pieces I create are garbage. This is discouraging, as one can probably assume. But I have seen worse!

My City

Once in a painting class, I was assigned a brief read, Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino. It was a beautiful book with descriptions of imaginary cities that Marco Polo supposedly visited. I then needed to choose a city I found most interesting and paint it.


As much as a loved painting Calvino’s city, I wanted to make my own city filled with things that interested me most. So, perhaps now is the time to begin writing.

The shore lines the vacant town with jagged rocks and shells, which crush the washed up bones of fish; none but crabs and seagulls walk this beach. Salty air hangs thickly around the decrepit buildings that once maintained commanding beauty, though now chip yellowed paint off their siding. A passer-by may dismiss this broken city, but beneath the gritty exterior is a story. A story of what this place used to be.
Every shattered window, every splintered door was once a guardian of its people. But where are these people now? No voices echo through the damp alleys or within the church’s walls. Everything is grey, for the exception of a small, red hat with, what was once a white satin bow, now a sick shade of green. It is the only evidence that life ever existed here.

I will be sure to add more if I can think of anything interesting to add. Perhaps I should develop a murder story centered around the town. I don't know.

ALL IS LOST!

So as few people know, I changed my domain name from arttalkit.blogspot.com to samanthadecarlo.blogspot.com. When I did this, I lost all my comments from friends and followers. I'm a bit bummed about it.

On a brighter note, I now have TWITTER AGAIN! whoo-hoo. You can ALL FOLLOW ME @SGDart My goal one day is to have 1,000 followers, which is a bit excessive, but in a few years I think I can achieve it. Oh! And I want to get followers WITHOUT "we follow" or "geo-follow." You know, those programs that generate followers for you? That's not real marketing. I want people to care about what I'm saying and drawing.

Speaking of which, I want to highlight a couple good friends: Anthony Kosar has a phenomenal website and blog that any artist or art-lover should follow. Also, Cindy Bernhard is a fine artist at school with me, and she has developed a great portfolio. As well as Dustin Yoder. Check them all out! I"ll be sure to add a few more friends next time.

Google Analytics

So i just set up google analytics for my blog. I didn't think I could do it, but I really surprised myself! It was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Now I can track how many people look at my blog a day, what country they are from, what city they are from, and what pages they look at. I'm so pumped!

I already had it for my website (which visitor viewing is up a whole 29%) so i thought, why not my blog? Best decision ever.

For those who aren't familiar with what it looks like, it's super easy. It lists the sites you are tracking and how many visits you've had in a month period, and whether the numbers are up (green), or down (red).


When you click on "view report", it opens up to show you a much wider range of information, like visits and views per day, where the visitors are located, how many times one person has visited the site. CRAZY STUFF! it's awesome.


If you haven't set it up, and you have sites you wanna track, i recommend doing it asap.

go to:
 http://www.google.com/analytics/ and it will tell you how to do everything there. Good luck and have fun! But beware, it's very addicting...

business cards.

As an artist and a current freelancer, business cards are a very effective way for me to spread my name. SO WHY HAVEN'T I HAD THEM UNTIL NOW!? I guess I have been lazy considering I've been at AAArt now for two full years and most every upperclassman has a card or logo. Although they claim to be ahead of the majority of other artists, I believe there is no such thing as "being ahead," or "being behind." There is just getting out there.

My reasoning is this: you are never too young to start marketing yourself, just as you are never too old. My friends at school laugh at me for having a website and a blog, but I think it's silly not to start putting yourself out there. I would tell ANYONE who is in the business of "selling themselves" to start now and do everything! I'm embarrassed I only just ordered my cards this morning (1:30 am).

This is front of my card


This is the back


I wanted this to be simple and a good representation of my work. I love my monsters and underwater hybrids, so these two pieces are perfect. I love the color against the stark white, and the negative space around both figures. I thank Nick Eby for helping me with the text and figuring out what to add and how to align it.

New Octopus. (In progress)

This one is terrible. It looks like a rainbow, which is really lame.




I think I'm going to stick with this color scheme.

Colored Monster

Colored in the monster I recreated.


Colored Monster



Black and White against Colored Monster